Visioning 2026 Blog
Barnstormers of Nebraska Airport Restaurant & Lounge - New Business Model
A shareholder meeting was held 05/08/11 at a new restaurant and entertainment venue at a historic Northeast Nebraska air passenger terminal, Karl Stephen Memorial Airport.
Check out a Facebook fan page for more details as well as several other Facebook postings http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150238602271208.373005.517061207 and http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1853620972773.2097508.1008262285.
The historic air terminal was destined to be demolished by the City of Norfolk, after several years without commercial airport service and no other tenants considering the property for business purposes.
Dave Fauss and Karl Reeder came up with a concept to lease the property from the City for 10 years without monthly lease payments in exchange for comparable upgrades to the facility to support a restaurant and lounge operation. To help fund the facility upgrades the pair with others developed a shared community investment concept to raise monies in exchanges for shares in the business venture with anticipated benefits in the form of future dividends, discounts, and free access to party rooms.
These two with spouses and several other business leaders and many volunteers have brought the concept to an operational state.
Here's an excellent example of rural entrepreneurship and revitalization. They now have over 100 shareholders which represent over $250,000 in cash and in kind services/products.
Future Focus Integrated into Annual Arts, Technology, and Science Expo/Competition
Members of the local Norfolk, NE Master Capacity Builders held a telephone conference call with Fayatte County Arts, Science and Technology Expo and Competition organizers. Thank you Peggy Thomas and Karen Stephens for sharing your insights on how you have incorporated a futures context into an already successful annual event that is engaging the youth and the community. We hope to continue the dialogue and implement something similar in Norfolk, NE.
The following documents provide some background material.
The award winners received some local media coverage with an interesting story about what the future could hold for the youth.
http://www.thecitizen.com/articles/09-21-2010/students-flush-success-chamber-expo%E2%80%99s-future-fayette-2030-contest
Learn more about this growing ground swell from a Facebook Fan Page.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Future-Fayette/119559381405649
Here's the Fayette Chambers event announcement [http://fayettechamber.org/2010/08/futuristic-art-contest-open/]
This
could be a great opportunity for the Norfolk Area Chamber's Workforce
committee, Chamber's CLiC, connecting with the Chamber's Biz Show, Madison County Visitor's Bureau, a local service club or two, business partners, NECC, etc.....
Role of the Community Colleges From a Historical and Futures Perspective
Rural Nebraska has made profound progress over my life-time. I can remember my father saying that when the 2-cylindar John Deere tractor was introduced it radically changed farming and ranching operation from horse drawn to mechanized operations and the growth in row crop operations. In the same time frame Rural Public Power Districts installed a electrical power grid that drastically changed operations on the farmstead.
Not long after this time entrepreneurs recognized the value of underground water resource and the potential of center pivot irrigation along with the introduction of plant genetics. These changes helped convert corn yields from under 50 bushels per acre to more than 200 bushels per acre. In addition, communications and navigations technologies have improved the management practices of the farming operations. Beside genetics, chemistry and biology research has helped introduce numerous changes, for example in the late 60’s the feed additive Rumenson increased the rate of gain with less feed input for beef animals. Now with the introduction of probiotics in animal husbandry producers are reducing the need for antibiotics while increasing rates of gain.
We are in an era experiencing three economic models changing at the same. We are transitioning from an industrial economy to a knowledge based economy and are now beginning an early introduction to what some see as the “creative molecular economy.” This accelerating rate of change has been impacting our rural communities and culture.
For example putting social media marketing in perspective. It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners. Terrestrial TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users. The internet took four years to reach 50 million people... In less than nine months, Facebook added 100 million users.
We are beginning to better understand the need to become life-long learners, making connections outside our traditional local level, and using foresight to evaluate “weak signals”, and asking appropriate questions as critical rural cultural principles. In parallel the focus on regional community colleges has allowed us to keep pace with many of these changes and opportunities. I believe community colleges are an extremely important educational, economic and community development model for our future successful rural transformation.
In the past we could use history to help us better prepare for the future. However this in many cases is no longer the situation. Could you imagine the impact of the personal computer or even the internet and world wide web on our personal lives let alone the impact on the world-wide economy? Did we understand how the global positioning system would enhance our farm management operations? As we move through uncharted waters our community colleges can and should be a focus for regional economic development, a rural institutional center for our life-long learning opportunities and preparing ourselves for future success in our rural communities.
I believe Northeast Nebraska Community College (NECC) can establish itself as a “center for strategic futures” for life-long learning and rural economic and community development. Dr. Bill Path, NECC President, recognizes the importance of establishing a curriculum for the development of our future rural community leaders and connectors. This initiative can be further expanded on as we learn from other leaders/communities of excellence that are helping develop innovators and entrepreneurs, especially from around the world. Just as NECC's collaboration with Wayne State College and University of Nebraska Medical Center there will be a growing need to establish future relationships that will further our access to learning opportunities. I would suggest a center of strategic futures will be instrumental to improving our leadership capacity building tool kit and preparing for and endorsing the future impact of change.
Mark D. Hall
Transformational Change in Manufacturing -- Supercharging Entrepreneurs
Wired Magazine introduced a new trend impacting the manufacturing infrastructure in USA as well as around the world.
Micro manufacturing and prototyping technologies are now allowing entrepreneurs to convert a product idea in to prototype and finished product in months versus years. Small and inexpensive computer aided design, plastic injected molding and computed numerically controlled (CNC) machine tools are allowing entrepreneurs to produce products in smaller lots while maintaining sufficient profit margins. An entrepreneur can now turn to firms in the local area as well as across the globe to collaborate and accelerate the production of finished goods.
The Future Roadmap 2010-2050--An Exploration of Current & Future Trends
TRENDS & TECHNOLOGY TIMELINE 2010+
A roadmap for the exploration of current & future trends.
I just finished reading a couple articles in the latest Fast Company Magazine. Things are changing faster than we expected.
From personal experience I keep tabs on the AG commodities. For example, on January 12th the USDA changed their forecast of corn on hand. It dropped the value of corn $.50 cents in two days. From basically $3.50 to $3.00 per bushel on the local market, an approximately 16% drop in value. In years past you would never see a $.50 change in 1 year let alone in 2 days.
The stock market dropped approximately 5% in 5 days this past week. There is going to be even more turmoil as we move forward.
For example, how are we going to protect our 401(k) and IRA accounts from dropping in such significant values since we weren’t in the “right” investment instruments? I thought the 2000 internet bubble was bad, it was nothing compared to the 2008 “crash” in asset values that I don’t necessarily see a rebound in the next 5-10 years. So much for the buy and hold in the long term which is what I lived by the past 30 years. I believe the paradigm has changed but I’m not sure to what, other than a lot of discussions on Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs).
In the chart I read a couple of the lines. One that caught my interest, comes off Sustainability, gray line, below and moves to the right, shifting centers of economic activity, cautious optimism, CHIME liquidity, increasing inflation, ….. I had to look up the new term CHIME, which stands for China, India, and Middle East [http://resources.alibaba.com/topic/39879/CHIME_Countries_to_Charm_Investors_.htm].
There is a lot of data that could be studied over the course of several weeks and months.
Climate Change Due to CO2 Emmissions?
An excellent climate change video discussion (8 mins.) by John Coleman, Founder of the Weather Channel, on the fallacy of CO2 model indicating global warming. He describes that the solar sunspot cycles have a direct impact on our earth's weather temperatures not CO2 emmissions.
http://www.kusi.com/home/78477082.html
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/81175327.html