Action Plan Reports & Close

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Michael Kaufman

The idea here is to have a small group in the four focus areas and summing up the discussion points and feedback you got from the tradeshows.

It would be good also to put the milestones in an integrated timeline. If we have the energy to do it, it would be great to have a small group to deal with the enablers and the obstacles. We should also have a small group working on sustaining the effort outside of grants.

Let’s drop the enablers and obstacles because we can come back to those.

MK: Let’s hear from the groups briefly, have some closing comments and call it a good couple of days.

Talent Pipeline
We decided we have to establish some internships. We developed a template. We want everyone to increase the diversity in their committees. We want to have Future Force Nebraska at the career fairs. We’d like to see educators be enhanced by involvement in businesses and have that training get credit for it.  We’d like to have some space on the website. We’d like to establish ambassadors, maybe from some successes we’ve had.

PFI
We’ve developed a priority list. We’re going to develop a marketing effort by February as well as finalize a program of work. We drilled down to a 12-member committee with mini-committees for technical skill assessment. We have accountability embedded in each of the secondary and post-secondary projects.

Think! Nebraska
Basically we identified a couple of things, such as what the state scholarship program will look like. We want to be able to define the benefits for businesses as well as for the schools. You have to pay for this so we looked at things that were connected to the school aid funding and try some pilot programs. We want to have some champions within the system, such as principals or teachers, but we’ll leave that fairly flexible.

Career Connections
We looked at the website, discussed the pieces and looked at what we wanted to add. We want to have career clusters with their job descriptions. We need to have the chamber’s help to get all the business together. We know the education piece and the adult education pieces are up, but we have more to do on the job opportunities. We want to provide data summary to the audiences to show them how many students want to go into the various areas and tie that into what’s available in the state. We also want to give some professional development for the HR departments for the various businesses. We want to reach out and do some marketing to the businesses to make sure that they know that they have this tool available.

Integrated Timeline
If we look at what we have, we’ll be done by May. That seems fairly unrealistic, especially the bit about having 5 staff members. We’ll need to go through this and figure out what we really can do. Some of this is not going to happen with just the two staff people we have now. 

On the upside, I see that this at least gives us the base foundation of what we need to be doing. That has been difficult to even describe what we do to the public. This provides some elements of how to do that.

Closing Comments

Michael Kaufman

Any closing comments?

Are we the best group you’ve ever had?

Absolutely!

I walked in blind yesterday and didn’t know what to expect. This is an amazing process. I really appreciate having Lisa who took all this verbiage and be able to put it into graphics that really capture what we’re saying. I think there’s a lot of partnership opportunities and I would like to suggest to you, Randy, is that you’re not alone here.

I think we will step up to the plate. We’re Nebraskans and we’ll get done what needs to get done.

We don’t have an option to do nothing. We have to step up to the plate or we won’t be in the game.

It’s impressive to many people what we’re getting done. We can do this and we will.

No one is smarter in any other state than we are here. Why are they figuring these things while we’re not? We are just as smart, so we can figure them out too.

MK: It took a few people to pull this all together so I’d like to acknowledge Trish, Randy and Dean. (applause)

I’d also like to show you this gift from Lisa. It is a depiction of the conversation you’ve had over the last couple of days.

Story Map (click the image below to see a larger version of it)

Randy Vlasin
Let’s give InnovationLabs a hand as well. The trust issue is easy for me. I think this is the fourth time I’ve worked with them and I think I’ve never been disappointed. There are so many ways you can say thank you, but I really want you to have my heartfelt thanks in appreciating your efforts in making Future Force move forward. This will make a difference in the economy of Nebraska as well as raise our standard of living. We’ll be able to keep our talent here and attract more in.

We brought a group of people together who compete in the outside world but here you’ve come together to say that we have to do something for the collective good and we have to lay our particular interests aside so that we can make this happen. Thank you!

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