Earlier today I attended the Indiana University 2012 Business Outlook Panel in its visit to Richmond.  It’s a group that “has presented national, state, and local economic forecasts for the coming year to business, political, and community leaders of Indiana” for the last 38 years.  I attended the same gathering back in 2005 and I have to say that today’s commentary wasn’t much different from what it was six years ago: “things are not great with the economy, but there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic.”

As I noted in my reflections from the 2005 event, there were a couple of troubling ideas that permeated the remarks, especially from the panelists looking at global and national trends.

The main one that I continue to struggle with is the idea that we just have to wait for the global economy to improve and drive things to get better at the national, state and local level.  In defending the power of globalism, one of the panelists even outright made fun of the idea of building a regionally self-reliant economy.

A more regional approach to economic development – instead of depending on the importation of resources from around the world – is exactly the approach that many others (myself included) are saying is key for communities like Richmond to surviving the increasingly intense effects of rising fuel prices, the falling value of the dollar and the destruction of the natural environment.  While I appreciate that there’s hope in what a thriving global economy might mean for midwestern cities, I’m not sure it’s reasonable to ask the people without jobs or credit or homes or disposable income to keep waiting it out, just another year or two.

Despite the inclusion of this troubling premise, the event was still interesting and perspective-bringing; some other tidbits shared by the panel:

• Political dysfunction at the national level is clearly eroding confidence in the ability of policy-makers (Congress and the President) to have any real effect on the economy
• To make sure we can survive through any kind of economic recovery, we have to address the Eurozone economic situation, stop implementing short-term, ineffective fixes domestically and start solving problems for the long term, open and evolve our financial system (“Federal reserve monetary policy currently penalizes people who save instead of rewarding them”), and pay attention to China’s emerging consumer culture.
• Despite the down economy, corporate earnings are up 11% and are expected to improve
• We have to do better at answering the question “what should investors do with their money?”  The market is too volatile, savings accounts don’t offer a return, and if we don’t have some good options, people will seek dangerous ways to get a higher rate of return (e.g. lending money to home-buyers who can’t actually afford it).
• Indiana has been hit harder than most states, using a quarter of a million jobs from 2007 to 2009.  Those jobs mostly aren’t coming back, in part because they’ve been lost from organizations that are more efficient and don’t need them any more.
• Private education and healthcare services are the two industries that are doing well in Indiana, with 36,000 jobs added in the last year.  The government sector has recently done well too as the result of stimulus fund application (there were 450,000 government jobs in Indiana as of May 2010) but that’s expected to level off or decline as those funds dry up.
• Housing sales in Indiana are down 3% and the average price of homes for sale are up 1% – not a good economic trend, and new housing construction has slowed significantly.

I also learned a new economic term that is very timely for my own hiring attempts at Summersault.  One of the event attendees asked the panel how they reconcile the issue of companies and organizations investing in lots of infrastructure and equipment to expand but then not being able to find qualified workers to fill those jobs.  The term for this is “structural unemployment” where there’s a mismatch between demand in the labor market and the skills and locations of the workers seeking employment.  Richmond is experiencing a form of this now, where we (including my company) have positions that are open but our workforce doesn’t always have the training or skills to fill them.  The panel didn’t offer any particular solution to this phenomenon, but the implication was that it is among our most serious challenges to solve.

Thanks to Indiana University East for sponsoring this event and to Reid Hospital for hosting it.  I hope it generates some useful conversation.

For most people, having a job is a means to other ends – making money to help provide for our families, a place where we go to be productive and feel a sense of accomplishment, a foundation on which to build a quality of life.  Most people don’t want to live so they can work – they work so they can live.  And so it’s disconcerting when politicians casually talk about job creation as the end in itself, without any concern for or follow-up on what that means for the people in a given community taking those jobs.

If jobs are created but workers aren’t paid a living wage or are prevented from standing up for their rights, is our work really done?

If jobs are created but hiring processes are discriminatory or working conditions are oppressive, can we say we’ve done a helpful thing for our fellow citizens?

If jobs are created but toxic chemicals are released into the groundwater or treasured natural areas are destroyed in ways that limit the quality of life for future generations, can we really claim success?

If job creation is our only goal, there are a lot of unsustainable and destructive models we can follow to get a whole bunch of people put to work right away.  Relax a few laws, sweep a few health and environmental issues under the rug, put up a “help wanted” sign, and ta-da – you’ve got your jobs numbers to wave around, at least for this news cycle!

But if our primary goal is not just job creation, but helping people make a meaningful and fulfilling living for themselves and their families, then maybe we approach it a different way.  Maybe we can start to think about job creation at a more human scale.

What does job creation at a human scale look like?  I wrote some about this back in 2005, when I described what a driving vision for job creation might prompt us to prioritize. A few more examples:

• Supporting employers that are rooted in their communities and that have a tangible stake in the health and well-being of the people who live and work around them
• Investing in employment opportunities that will pay a living wage, and that value the health and well-being of their employees over the long-term, even when it’s not immediately profitable in the short-term to do so
• Not being afraid to see value in creating one, two, three jobs at a time, instead of always waiting for the “big win” of hundreds or thousands of jobs at once – most “growth” is happening in smaller companies now, not larger ones, and the cumulative effect is just as powerful and important
• Regional economic development efforts that focus on the question “how can we do well with what we already have here?” instead of “how can we import resources and build brand new infrastructure so that we can look and feel exactly like some other place?”

I’m sure there are many other ways to think about job creation at a human scale, and I welcome your contributions.

As you can imagine, this isn’t an idle academic exercise; traditional methods of economic development are failing, local and state governments are on the ropes, and at least in my state of Indiana, personal bankruptcies and debt levels are soaring.  We must talk about job creation, yes, but we must talk about it in a way that fully engages the human scale of what it means for a particular person in a particular community to have a job, and what sacrifices and compromises are made by that community to get there.

The Center City Development Corporation has asked that $300,000 of the $5 million in funds available through Richmond’s Certified Technology Park account be used to support renewed operations of the organization and its Uptown Innovation Center facility.  The Palladium-Item covered the request today in a news article and related editorial, the latter of which painted the request as just another ask for taxpayer funded handouts to support private business efforts and essentially encourages a “no” vote by the Redevelopment Commission, the entity that approves the funding request.

It’s important to note here that the $5 million in the CTP account has been sitting around for close to eight years, and that the City is coming up on its third renewal of its CTP designation without any significant use of those funds.  Those I’ve talked to about it have expressed some concern that if the State of Indiana, which administers the CTP program, sees this under-usage of those funds, there could be an understandable attempt to move them back under state control.  So an argument can be made for spending at least some of the funds sooner rather than later to demonstrate that we’re a town with a plan.

I should also note that I’ve been a part of some conversations about how to use these funds, and I have even put my own proposals on the table for what might make a good partial use of them (that’s a blog post for another time).  I started and have managed a high-tech business in Richmond since 1997, and we’ve created a number of technology jobs here, so I definitely have something to say about what might further encourage tech businesses to locate/grow in this city.  I’ve shared some of those thoughts in this space, e.g. Growing a Geek Culture in Richmond.

Is allocating $300K to Center City the best and highest use of the funds?

Maybe, maybe not.  I haven’t seen the details of the request.  I know that Beth Fields and Jason Whitney, co-Executive Directors of the organization, and board chair Rhett Baumgartner are three people who are deeply, personally invested in the health and well-being of this community, and that they wouldn’t attach their names to this request if they didn’t believe it to be a viable, impactful way to use the money.

The money can’t be used for just anything, as the CTP program requires that it go to support “the attraction and growth of high-technology business in Indiana and promote technology transfer opportunities.”   Questions in the paper about the necessity of proposed fund usage will surely be answered by the detailed organizational budget already submitted to the Redevelopment Commission.

As already noted, in the absence of other formal requests to allocate the funds to a given project, this is a relatively small slice of that pie that could be used to move something forward with long-term implications.  We say as a community that we want new and exciting opportunities to be taken on that spark growth and encourage further investment in the community.  We have to embrace the fact that these efforts require non-trivial investment and risk to get going, and the CTP designation was created for just that purpose – investing in new and exciting things that will lead to job creation and community building.

As a small business owner eagerly trying to find qualified technology workers to add to our staff, and as someone who has invested heavily in the success of the downtown business district, it’s encouraging to think of a renewed, well-funded Center City organization focused on exactly those things.  There’s a pool of money that’s been made available for just this purpose and that might go away if unused, and now someone is saying they’re willing to put it to good use.

As a community, we (as represented by the Redevelopment Commission) should ask good questions of the proposal and probe the details, but we should be very careful about saying “no” to people who are investing in moving the community forward.

Updated at 2:53 PM to include link to Pal-Item editorial, now available online.

It’s something that I think about a lot (especially when we’re trying to hire someone), but I didn’t have a ready answer – partly because there is no simple answer, but partly because I hadn’t really ever taken the time to write one down.  Below is a list of ideas and comments, in no particular order, that came out when I put the question to the wider Summersault staff.  I hope that you’ll contribute your own thoughts and suggestions, and I’ll pass the list back to the Chamber and anyone else I can find who might be in a position to work on some of these things.

1. If there were more resources and locations in town that catered to the “do it yourself” computer builder/hacker, we might see an increase in people building up their own skill sets.  Opening a Freegeek location here would be a great start.
2. We need more social venues and public spaces that aren’t “the bar scene.”  Coffee shops with free wireless access and decor/atmosphere appealing to the 20s/30s crowd are usually ideal.
3. Technology toys are a luxury, and consumption of them is probably not going to flourish in Richmond right now, especially in a depressed economy.  But, there are a small population of people with dollars to spend on high tech stuff.
4. Some of the existing computer hardware businesses in town are geared toward fixing broken computers, instead of getting people excited about what’s possible with technology, or catering to “gadget lust.”   If a computer business could provide an experience more like what you get when you walk into an Apple Store (technology is fun/cool/interesting, not hard/frustrating), they might serve as a better gathering place or hub for local geeks.
5. Perhaps obviously, more technology-oriented businesses in town will yield a larger number of people, conversations, potential hires, skill-sets, etc.   Having more diverse businesses here in general adds to the appeal of Richmond, and allows geeks to find what they want locally without leaving for Dayton, Cincinnati, Indianapolis.
6. There’s a strong crossover for geeks with bike culture and people generally interested in alternative transportation.  Other hobbies that have a “do it yourself” quality to them are generally found thriving within geek culture, so promoting those (especially cycling) could help.
7. We need more opportunities for conversation and networking among geeks and people interested in technology.  Whether it’s classes or seminars or informal meals, tech people need low-pressure ways to gather. We noted that environment at events hosted by the “Young Adult Professionals” is generally not friendly to introverted geek types.
8. Younger children need to be encouraged to share and learn about any interest they might have in technology, and given opportunities to really explore it.
9. Local higher education institutions need to do a better job of incorporating the “Linux culture” into their programs.  A number of local technology businesses (including Summersault) have trouble finding qualified candidates for our technical positions because the local educational offerings are geared toward an entirely different paradigm.
10. Richmond sometimes needs more “presentable” spokespeople for different parts of its geek culture.  Sometimes the awkwardness and relaxed attire and unique personal hygiene standards that come with being a geek are not conducive to effective public relations and messaging.
11. Richmond needs to generally be more open to a culture of subcultures – it’s okay for people to  have hobbies, interested, specializations that don’t fit into some single notion of the “mainstream” way of life here.  We should support and encourage that, not alienate it.
12. The creative arts are a huge part of encouraging a strong geek culture – when there are artistic endeavors like theater, music-making, film-making, etc. going on in a community, geeks have more opportunities to thrive.

When I asked our group a more direct question about specific actions that an entity like the Chamber of Commerce could take to support geek culture here, we came up with a few ideas:

1. Fund a grant for expanding the existing Hardware Cooperative into a Freegeek location.
2. Provide sponsorship for events and gatherings geared toward geeks, but let some geeks organize it.
3. Work toward having reliable wireless internet access across the city
4. Include the geek demographic as a target in the marketing that you do for your organization and the city as a whole.

That was the result of our initial brainstorm.  What do you think it means to grow a geek culture in Richmond (or in your own community)?

But one only has to look at the long list of community building organizations and entities in Richmond – and the overlap, duplication, and even competition that some of them represent for each other – to wonder if maybe this isn’t an area where we’re actually holding ourselves back instead of moving ourselves forward.

Consider, in no particular order:

• City of Richmond (including the Mayor’s office, City Council, various commissions and committees)
• Wayne County Government (commissioners, council, and related entities)
• Richmond-Wayne County Chamber of Commerce
• Main Street Richmond Wayne County
• Richmond/Wayne County Convention and Tourism Bureau
• The Economic Development Corporation
• The Richmond Depot District
• Richmond Art Works
• Wayne County Vision
• Neighborhood Services Clearinghouse
• Institute for Creative Leadership
• Preserve Richmond
• Wayne County Foundation
• WayNet.org
• United Way of Whitewater Valley

All of these organizations, while having some significantly different areas of focus and programming, are essentially working on the same core issue: how to make Richmond and Wayne County a better place to live, work and play.

They approach that question differently, for sure. Some are funded by taxpayer dollars while others seek membership fees and grants. Some have brick and mortar operations with paid staff while others are made up of a few key people who meet when and where they can. But all of them are trying to build up our community.

I wonder, then, if Richmond and Wayne County is benefiting from the work of these organizations as much as it could or should. If you add up all of the budgets and person-hours and fundraising galas and community events and networking gatherings and the like, are we really seeing the results that we should if those same resources were being put to work by a smaller number of organizations, or even one organization? Or is there some fragmentation, or even severe limitation, that comes from having so many proverbial cooks in the proverbial kitchen?

And the above list is just the organizations working on community building at a fairly broad level – if you start to look at organizations working on specific issues like environmental awareness and sustainability, education, youth programs, housing, or providing social services to those in need, you can make whole separate lists with all new kinds of overlap and duplication of efforts, all right here in one little city that doesn’t even have an Indian restaurant!

Sometimes the overlap is just logistical or administrative: everyone having their own calendar of events, for example, that the average citizen doesn’t have a hope of knowing to check when they want to find out what’s happening in town. Sometimes the duplication or perception of duplication is more substantial: every year about this time, small businesses start getting bombarded with letters asking for charitable gifts or membership renewals for the coming year, and they have to decide how best to support their community, hoping their dollars go as far as possible. In turn, the soliciting organizations have to spend their time and resources reiterating the value they bring to the area, just to make sure they aren’t lost in the noise.

This doesn’t seem like the most effective way to operate.

Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting that the work of any one of these organizations isn’t needed or valuable, or that their mission and approach aren’t sound. In fact, I support many of them with my time and dollars, and have been fortunate to call many of their leaders and advisers friends over the years. Some of them do collaborate and enjoy strong partnerships, and many of them can point to significant and lasting successes they’ve had here. Diversity of approach and funding, sometimes with a little duplication, can be essential.

But I also can’t help but indulge in some thought exercises:

What if some of these organizations were better at communicating openly and honestly with each other not only about shared values and goals, but about their concerns, egos and territorial sensitivities?

What if some of these organizations could truly collaborate, share resources, or even merge programs?

What if we didn’t take the impact and relevance of some of these organizations for granted, grilling some on why they’re still a good value, and praising others more for the under-appreciated work they do?

What if we decided that our community needed a new approach?

We are complex enough beings that we can simultaneously understand how our community is hurting in a lot of ways, and also how good we have it and much possibility there is for the future.

Old minds think: “How do we stop these bad things from happening?“

New minds think: “How do we make things the way we want them to be?“

Let’s make sure our community building efforts are actually working to make things the way we want them to be.

“Advocates [of the fee] say it’s crucial for a city that’s expected to add another million people in the next 20 years.”

The reactions include frustration at the economic implications, outrage at the imposition on personal liberties, concerns about the logistical implementation details, and an overall sense of “well, somebody better do something or we’re going to grind to a halt.”

But no one seems to question the idea that adding a million people to the city is what must and will happen, and everything else must work to accommodate that.

All over the country and indeed the world, when we talk about growth and development and success, very few decision-makers seem to question the premise that the continued growth of our population is the desired trend that we want to accommodate. All of our cultural processes that work to meet our future needs assume that we will need more housing, more buildings, more streets, more neighborhoods, more jails, more healthcare facilities, more agribusiness, more imports, more oil, more cars, more energy, more EVERYTHING. After all, how can more humans be a bad thing?

For any given geographical area, if you take the problems that it faces with its current population numbers (poverty, crime, famine, unemployment, inequality, traffic congestion), and then add more people, it’s fairly proven that those problems will only get worse. And sometimes, it’s not a matter of a linear worsening – the effects of population growth are often exponential.

But few people say, “what if we didn’t keep adding millions of people to our global population every year? What if we came to understand that unchecked population growth is at the core of so much of our economic and social strife these days, and decided to do something about it? What if we made it so that NYC got less congested because there were less people there?”

Our solution isn’t to ease off on the baby making or city building or to otherwise explore alternative models of a sustainable future – we just charge you a few extra bucks as you head down the road. Who cares if it costs $8 more to be fruitful and multiply, fill the Earth, and subdue it?

Our very approach to solving the “problem” of unsustainability is grounded in a mindset that prevents sustainability from emerging. Always anchored to the past, the future is envisioned as being bigger or better. But such an approach will always keep us rooted in the past. To escape from the past, one must think in an entirely different way.

The current ideal of sustainability, as sustainable development, is not a vision for the future. It is merely a modification of the current process of economic development that its proponents claim, in theory, need not cause the terribly destructive consequences of the past. Sustainable development is fundamentally instrumental. It suggests new means, but still old ends. Sustainable appears as an adjective; the noun is still development.

As I look at sustainability efforts in my own life and at sustainability as a local progressive value, it’s important to me that someone out there has the right words to say what so many people are afraid to say: there are ways in which the survival of life on Earth is in conflict with traditional economic development, a.k.a. the continued growth of our civilization. Many sustainability efforts are purely or primarily anthropocentric, and therefore fail by definition.

This essay doesn’t have all the answers, but it’s got a good grip on that particular problem.

As a resident of Richmond for eleven years and a business owner here for
nine years, I’m very much invested in the growth of our community. But growth means different things to different people. Shortly after the newspaper coverage of my pledge, I received a message from a prominent Richmond businessperson and political figure indicating his frustration with my actions. I thought the conversation we had that proceeded would be useful to post here, more than a year later. (I’ve removed any identifying information from the exchange; he can identify himself if he so desires.)

As…a fellow small businessman I was very disappointed in your anti-business position in the newspaper. Evidently you don’t understand how our system here in America works or you don’t care. Richmond has been, is and I’m afraid always will be anti-growth and anti-opportunity because of citizen attitudes like yours. If we are ever to give our people a chance to live a better life we must become COMPLETELY pro-growth, pro-opportunity and pro-business. When business people attack business people there is no hope for our economic future.

My response:

“If you read the text of the pledge I put forth, I think you’ll find that it is in no way anti-business. The Palladium-Item has sort of spun it as a petition to keep businesses out and prevent growth, but that’s largely their attempt to sell papers, and I think they ignored the subtleties and spirit of the pledge itself in their reporting and editorial.

So, I wasn’t attacking anyone, and I don’t think being pro-growth, pro-opportunity, and pro-business are mutually exclusive with being able to preserve and protect the other aspects of Richmond that make it such a great place to live, and that help to attract businesses here in the first place.“

His response came back shortly:

I’ve lived here [for many decades] and I’ve heard arguments like yours a million times. Richmond was 38000 people in 1938 and it still is. What you say simply does not work! Real investors don’t care about what you say they care about! They only want two things – a high return on their investment and high security for it. Richmond provides neither because of a no-growth attitude. History proves that people with your attitude dominate what happens here – No Growth! No Opportunity! Your attitude has always won and that keeps Richmond just like it is. It really is sad that you can live a lifetime in a community that never even begins to reach its potential because of its attitude!!

My response:

“I respect that perspective, I really do – and I can’t even begin to understand how frustrating it must be to see that kind of stagnation over [so many] years. I definitely don’t claim to have all the answers or solutions – I certainly don’t have all of the context that you do when it comes to how our community operates.

What can we do differently that we’re not doing now?“

From there, we decided that we should get together in person to continue the discussion. We haven’t been able to do that yet, but I hope to some day.

I’m SO grateful to this man for taking the time to communicate with me directly and openly about his thoughts, as much in conflict as we started out being. So many others have responded by talking about me behind my back, using their (sometimes considerable) influence to harm me or the businesses/organizations which which I’m affiliated, and other nasty things that don’t belong in respectful discourse about the issues and choices that matter to us so much.

I’ll have more thoughts on this soon. But if you were having it today, where would you like to see the conversation go from here?

When it was time for the commission to deliberate, Bruce Wissel, president of the plan commission, pointed out that the commission members hadn’t yet had a chance to get a full printed copy of the plan, and that they shouldn’t be expected to recommend something they couldn’t read in full. As the resident web geeks Mark and I could barely keep from crying out that the whole thing is online and could be read pretty much anywhere the, um, telecommunications infrastructure is built out, but I also sympathized with Bruce’s sentiment that if you’re going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on urban planning, the least you can do is give the approving civic bodies a copy of the darn thing. I’ll volunteer use of the Summersault laser printer if it would help.

And so the whole ball of wax was tabled for a future meeting, where I suspect even fewer members of the public will make a showing unless some controversy pops up. And no doubt in some future conversation about what direction our community should take, perhaps even as a part of some controversy or other tough decision, this plan or some version of it will be held up – either as a “road map” that can be tossed gently aside when other agendas take precedence, or as a firm set of guiding policies that you can’t whine about now if you didn’t help write them then. This is, at least in part, how the social, economic and environmental priorities of our community are decided.