As the new year approaches, consider getting back in touch with your inner creator. Make something in the new year. Try out a new medium. Get uncomfortable.

There are plenty of places in Arizona to get support in your creative endeavors. Stop by The Lab 137, Heatsync Labs, Maker Bench, Gangplank (Chandler, Tucson, Avondale) to be inspired and meet people fighting to let their inner creator out.

No. We need more regional connectivity. We need to be connecting cities in ways that have fewer stops and run with higher frequency. Bus Rapid Transit is a good start. The Tempe proposal is fixated on area that already has reasonable connectivity let’s move to areas in the Southeast Valley that need to be connected.

http://www.azcentral.com/community/tempe/articles/2011/09/14/20110914tempe-streetcar-plan-on-track.html

Razing makes sense if the home has become serious blight. In cases, where the structure is still in tact, but vacant it probably makes sense to repurpose them. Let them be used commercially as boutiques, art galleries, etc. This is a time in which we should be looking at space creatively and trying things that normally would be off limits.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-18/rust-belt-cities-demolish-homes-as-foreclosures-blight-cleveland-detroit.html

Libraries Supporting the Initiative

Apache Junction Public Library
Website | Support

Arizona State Library
Website | Support

Casa Grande Public Library
Website | Support

Chandler Public Library
Website | Support

Glendale Public Library
Website | Support

Maricopa County Library District
Website | Support

Mesa Library
Website | Support

Peoria Public Library
Website | Support

Phoenix Public Library
Website | Support

Scottsdale Public Library System
Website | Support

Tempe Public Library
Website | Support

1. The majority of ideas being presented here are shitty.  There I said it.  I let out the thing investors here are too polite to say.  Stuff doesn’t get funded mostly because it is shit.  Sure you see lots of this everywhere, but we don’t make up for it in volume like San Francisco and New York do.  We solve this by presenting a lot more ideas and being honest with people when the ideas they share suck.  They will either improve the idea or give up.  You need not be “mean” in order to deliver this message.
2. We lack a strong pool of mentors/business professionals with a track record of bringing product to market.  Let’s face it we don’t have a plethora of successful stories with exits that leave us with trail blazers to help the next generation out.  Most of the money here was made with scams, real estate or in many cases a combination of the two.  We need to see if we can import talent here or use technology to get access to quality people.  This is an uphill battle.
3. Seed funding is a joke.  We still have the mentality that something shouldn’t get funded until it’s already making money.  The seed money that does get put into a small number of companies is lacking the second stage gateway to turn to these investments into significant success stories.  We solve this by building secondary funding relationships and getting more people to engage in real seed funding.  In other words pray to the God of your choice.
4. We are technically poor.  The local universities and employers are not challenging young engineers in meaningful ways.  We are not attracting or retaining the brightest engineering talent.  Technically we are rather weak.  To fix this we need to build a place worthy of people staying or moving to and having more employers that push the boundaries of their people’s skill level.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really like history. I admire architecture. I love Phoenix. I enjoy good photography. Roll them all into a single coffee table book and I am in. I loved the size, feel and composition of this book. Giant pictures with just the right amount of history to compliment the photograph.

If you are interested in the history of Phoenix or live in Phoenix and are in need of a great coffee table book this is a must have.

There are a few things that kept this from being a 5 star for me.

1. The angles of then and new photos in some cases were off enough to lose impact. The ones where the angle was identical were much more enjoyable.

2. Other cities were included. At first I thought this was nice, but the depth was so shallow and some cities were not included which made it so not including any of them would have been a better choice.

* disclosure: the Thunder Bay provided me a copy of this book for review

View all my reviews

All of the people appointed appear intelligent and successful.  However, they are all part of the problem.  We can’t rely on the institutions that were part of getting us here, to help us get out of here.  I hope you find this lack of diversity as equally disturbing as I do.

Manufacturing/Industry (6)
Gary Abrams – Abrams Airborne
Richard Adkerson – Freeport-McMoRan
Craig Barrett – Intel
Stephen Macias – Pivot Manufacturing
Roy Vallee – Avnet
Michael Manson – Motor Excellence

Land Development/Utilities (4)
Paul Bonavia – Tucson Electric Power
Drew Brown – DMB
Doug Pruitt – Sundt Construction
Mike Ingram – El Dorado Holdings

Sports/Tourism (2)
Michael Bidwill – Cardinals
Jerry Colangelo – Phoenix Suns/Diamondbacks (now a land developer)

Other/Government (2)
Don Cardon – AZ Commerce Authority
Mary Peters – Former US Secretary of Transportation

Finance/Administrative (2)
Candace Wiest – West Valley National Bank
Tim Jeffries – P7

Retail (1)
Phillip Francis – PetSmart

Agriculture (1)
Victor Smith – JV Farms

“Perhaps the very act of acquiring so much stuff has turned us ever more into individuals and ever less into members of a community, isolating us in a way that runs contrary to our most basic instincts.”

“You go from being a mere consumer to being a participant, talking about what you like and dislike, expanding your sense of who’s in your community and how it fits together.”

“We have a surplus of individualism and a deficit of companionship, and so the second becomes more valuable.”

“We don’t need each other for anything anymore”

Some thoughts about Arizona wanting to be a solar state:

• Demand all new construction have solar power
• Mandate all power companies buy back solar power
• Offer no interest/low interest rate loans for purchase and installation of solar equipment on existing buildings
• Give significant rebates for retrofitting solar

Calculating your top economic development strategies.  Statewide policy.  Community focused strategic plans.

Where are we?

Where do we want to go?

How we gonna get there?

Traditional Approach

• Vision statement
• SWOT analysis
• Demographic analysis
• What have we been doing
• What do most influential people want
• brainstorm action steps
• consultant collects data

What should you do?

• Business Development
  • Business retention and expansion
  • Business recruitment
  • Business cultivation (import substitution/industry clustering)
  • entrepreneurial development
  • transportation distribution center
  • energy development
  • environmental restoration
  • telecommunications business
  • value add agriculture
  • value add forest products
  • value add fisheries
  • value add mining
  • destination tourism
  • cultural tourism
  • regional/local tourism
  • pass through visitor service
• Community development
  • downtown development
  • education development
  • healthcare
  • bedroom community
• Other strategies
  • infrastructure development
  • attracting retirees
  • attracting lone eagles
  • attracting government jobs
  • attracting government funding

Determine what you want to do.  Define what you can do.

April 2010 Facts

• Unemployment rate at national average
• Underemployment rate at top (300,000 jobs lost, 1 in 9)
• State tax receipts down by 33%
• Budget gap largest in country
• Population growth lowest in 50 years (me be negative)

Declining in nearly every indicator

• 2nd most sensitive economic engine only behind Nevada
• middle of road over 65
• Ranked 11th for people under 45
• 18th in crime rate
• Ranked 51st in educational spending

Evidence we can not go back to the old economy

• lost lowest cost housing
• highly volatile
• susceptible to lower wage jobs
• cycles of brain drain
• politics of morphine drip (it was just easy)
• low expectations!!!!!

AZ can be bottom feeder or top feeder

• protect what is great about the state
• make environment where good people want to work
• build on universities
• community instead of business infrastructure
• well run cities (and ultimately state)

Need good leaders?  Not true.  It’s a lie.  It is.

You get the leadership that the SYSTEM rewards!

Fix structures and systems for growth

• separate politics from operations
• stop rewarding shill politics
• media wants good vs evil
• remove parties from the system
• CA running next election outside two party system

Breakdown happens when civil discourse happens. We must stop the “You are Evil” politics.