On December 12 and 13, 2007 47 people representing a broad group of stakeholders in the future of the economy and workforce in Nebraska gathered in Lincoln for the second FutureForce Forum. Since the previous Forum one year ago there has been significant work developing four specific streams of work to operationalize the vision established a year ago - a vision in which state agencies, educational institutions and employers from throughout the state would collaborate to address the significant workforce shortages in Nebraska. Participants in this years planning process included State and local workforce development, the Department of Labor, economic development, the Department of Education, k-12 educators, higher education as well as representatives from a cross section of employers around the state.
The first day of this planning session focused on broadening the understanding of the value of the FutureForce streams of work (Think Nebraska!, Career Connections, The Talent Pipeline, and Partnerships for Innovation) while also challenging the participants to develop specific goals, milestones and success measures for each.
On the morning of the second day an additional 30 participants joined the group. The morning was spent in a dialog about the FutureForce initiatives and challenged the participants to articulate some key enabling factors to support these work streams as well as to clearly spell out any obstacles that might need to be overcome in order to achieve the goals articulated by the group.
Later in the afternoon of the second day the group that worked on the first day developed action steps to achieve the milestones.
Real Time Record
This web site is a record of the event in Lincoln, Nebraska as it happened - captured in real time and presented here in this web site. The documentation of the session includes text and images that were captured throughout the course of each day of the session and is chronological (in the order that things happened). The text is not a transcription of the event. Rather, it represents the documentor's synthesis of the presentations, the team reports and the large group discussions.
This record is intended as a reminder to the participants of the conversations that took place during the retreat, as a stimulus for further conversation and it serves as an artifact of the group's work.
For anyone who was not present at the event reading this, you may lose some of the energy and creativity the participants expressed - and some of the ideas may not translate completely without that context. If you have any questions about the content or anything that is represented here please speak to someone that participated in the process or contact Michael Kaufman at InnovationLabs.
Images
Photographs of participants and their work are included throughout the Real Time Record. To view a larger version of a marker board or chart page, click on the thumbnail image. The larger image will open in a new window.
