My address to the Chamber of Commerce Board this morning about the Future Economy Council - 5/27/2009

I truly appreciate Danny Hearn inviting me to the meeting this morning and allowing me to address the Chamber's Board. Below is my prepared statement and I am also placing it on the Project 3P website. I hope that you will begin visiting that website to see what the Future Economic Council is up to.

Thank You for allowing me to speak on behalf of the Future Economy Council. The Future Economy Council has given me hope that we can turn our area’s Economic Malaise around.

The last 2 meetings have been inspiring. Rick Smyre is very engaging and he certainly has a way of inspiring innovative communication. There are definitely quite a few forward thinkers in the group. This group seems to embrace the idea, notion, and actuality of an exponentially changing world.

The realities are that we need new skills, new approaches, and a different Philosophical framework for the world of tomorrow. And the world of tomorrow is actually here today. That is the reason why this area continues to fall behind. We have allowed innovation and technology to pass us by.

We are in a new age of enlightenment. We can’t cordon Hickory off from the global experience. Mr. Smyre believes that Catawba County's Future Economy Council is comprehensively setting up the initial conditions to deal with this New World effectively. One concept that Rick mentioned was the idea of looking at our community and organizations and building in resiliency. We have to develop capacities in our thinking, skills, and leadership to be able to adapt quickly in this exponentially changing world.

My role has been to develop a blog that will be the first in a number of websites dedicated to the process of rebranding Hickory as an area of innovation. I started a blog about the Hickory Metro’s political, economic, and cultural landscape called the Hickory Hound last August. I have received over 10,000 unique visitors to the website, in that short span, from cities around the world. I do not tell you this for self-promoting purposes. I am telling you this so that you might understand the possibilities of engaging the Global Community and helping them understand the Rebranding of Hickory and what we are setting out to accomplish.

The goals of this and subsequent websites will be to provide content, including books and links to websites, about what the Future Economic Council is trying to accomplish and what the Creative Molecular Economy entails. I will provide summaries of the agenda and the minutes of Future Economic Council and related meetings. We will create a message board forum that will allow for interactive communication between members and other interested parties.

My next goals are to interact with council members and devise a Mission statement. We want to outline a division of labor for both efficiency and effective purposes.

I really enjoyed Terry Bledsoe’s presentation of the Broadband upgrade opportunities for the area and the discussion that ensued. Since last Thursday I have had a couple of offshoot discussions that spoke to the limitless possibilities of upgrading our Broadband connectivity. If given the chance, this process will bear fruit. This is not the be-all, end –all, but it could enhance and attract entrepreneurs and forward thinkers from around the world to seriously enter Hickory into their equation.

In our last meeting, just last Thursday, Jay Adams said that he believes that the thing we need to aim at, is that there is going to be a lot of money thrown at solving problems like this (the Broadband issue). The project is going to have to be well formed and well thought out, it's going to have to look good on paper, it's going to have to be comprehensive. After the implementation, the maintenance is what local government and businesses have to cooperate to maintain. Hickory, because of size and layout, is in a much better position to implement these kinds of things than a major metro area.

Folks, the average citizen has been kept out of the loop on Economic Development Issues in this area. We are told that we are doing all the right things. We are told that it’s not the local government’s fault. It’s all caused by Washington and Raleigh. We have all the right ingredients, but we just can’t get over the hump. Apparently close only counts in Horseshoes, Hand Grenades, and Hickory.

I truly believe that the Future Economy Council is the missing ingredient. We have no plans to hide what we are doing. We are here and we are open to be approached from all angles. I believe in leaving the egos at the door. If this community will give us the tools and get behind what Danny, Rick, and this council are doing, then I 100% believe that we will bear fruit in the not too distant future.