Oak Green Summit May 16th 2011

For those who may not be aware... Oakland County Executive Brooks Patterson is leading the charge in Michigan toward what is known as "Triple-Bottom Line" standards for you, your business and local government. It's a new day in local government with plunging property values comes drop off's in tax revenue.  That means doing more with less and thinking out of the box for combined services and sharing of services with local governments like never before.  

We are not in Kansas anymore.... and the pain and suffering we went through personally over the past few years border line depression will still be making its way through public sector entities near you.  Let's start with the road commission....notice anything about the pot holes of this past winter?  Not being attended to as in the past and my theory is simply less people on staff to fill more potholes.  How about your local school district?  The money being poured into the funnel is less than the past good old days AND that means less coming out of the bottom to each kids!  I remember back in 1988-1990 getting word that I had $250 to work with to run the entire science department for my Junior High School.  Talk about down the trickle down effect!  I literally did my job with smoke and mirrors AND out dated equipment from the last big government effort to support sciences which was the "SPUTNIK" era.  

I recently attended the launch of the new Clean Energy Center at Oakland University in Rochester Michigan.  Oakland has the vision and fore sight to see the future of green energy and is launching a brand new Clean Energy Center out of their Business Incubator located right on Campus.  The day was loaded with examples of cutting edge technology already out in the market place ready to be implemented.   The key note speaker was Gilbert Sperling from the US Department of Energy and his comments rang true to me.  He stated that "This alternative energy game is ours to win or lose..."  AND "This is the current generations "SPUTNIK" moment..."  meaning that this is such a critical battle we are in with China that our future depends on us rising up and taking the ball away from China and running with it.   China is investing at a ratio of almost 10 to 1 in research and development for new energy initiatives compared to the United States.  Once again I will use the smoke and mirrors analogy to make the point of what we are up against relative to the resources available to develop the emerging technologies.  

I will finish this segment with my favorite and most impacting statement I used to share with my middle school students and it can be summed up in three simple words.... Make, Let, Know...

Here is the translation... The world can be divided up into three very simple categories.  There are those in one category who "Make" things happen.  The second group is a very large group of people who "Let" things happen.  And... the last group is also very large and that is the group you really want to stay away from.... and that is the group who "Don't KNOW what happened". 

Kick butt today and Make things happen!