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SUSTAINABILITY, EQUITY, DEVELOPMENT SOMETHING ELSE: Survival Is Not An Option CHAPTER THREE - A New Reality
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A NEW REALITY The
optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist
fears this is true. America
will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken
from you. A. CRASH On Tuesday, the morning of September 11, 2001, my General Technologies Mathematics course at PCC began at 7:30 a.m. As I started the class, a student arrived and said, "Planes have flown into the World Trade Center." I didn't
believe him at all, "Yea, right." I taught the class which ran until 8:45 a.m. As the class ended I advised them, "You might want to check the news." Perry followed events by radio, and I used the Internet. The buildings came down, and I had the thought that Sun Microsystems had people inside those buildings. That night, the wife, myself, and Alyssa sat on the couch, glued to the television, crying. A few nights later we watched a special concert and cried all over again. Bruce Springsteen's singing "Rise Up" produced a national moment. Just like that, and we lived on a different planet. B. CLOTH On Friday, September 28, Congressman Jim Kolbe held a forum at the Westin La Paloma entitled, "Help Wanted: Workforce Development and the New Economy." He said once again that Tucson's workforce lacked the skills desired by high-tech companies. They talked about the WIB, Pimaworks, the Virtual One Stop, and how the situation would improve. The
clusters continued to discuss economic development, and in September they
announced they had agreed on a plan to expand Tucson's economy. According
to the press, the agreement ended the debate on how to spend government money on
economic development. The six clusters were aerospace, optics, information
technology, bio-industry, environmental technology, and plastics and composite
materials. There was general agreement that reliance on volunteers couldn't meet the task at hand, and that money for paid project managers was needed to boost high tech businesses in Tucson. Work on grants to fund staff was in progress. Sally Fernandez, SATC President, noted, "The process went well this year, but we still have a need to do strategic planning." All summed up from federal, state, and local sources, the kitty for the clusters amounted to $1.9 million allocated as follows:
The press
quoted John Grabo of GTEC, "We've got the foundation in place. Now we have to
execute."
On December 11, GTEC gathered community leaders to explore a program where participants created economic development projects in a structure that seemed similar to the LDP (more later) where participants generated projects in the structure and context of a development program grounded in certain objectives. Proponents said the program would involve "adults" (good idea) between the ages of 30 and 50 (?), the completion of which would provide them an "economic development certificate." Red flags surfaced at once when I heard the minimum price for the "bare bones version" would be $85,000 and that PCC would conduct the training. "I happen to believe deeply that this is how you get things done," said Howard Weiss, project manager at PCC BIT. "You weave people together, you weave organizations together, and you come up with a stronger cloth that way." The program never happened. Thankfully. C. SUNRISE, SUNSET Sun Microsystem's Java certification exam had a high failure rate. I read thousands of pages, wrote hundreds of programs, and took practice exams. While weak on threads, I took the exam in February 2002. The exam destroyed me on threads, but I recovered in other areas to score well enough to become a Sun Certified Java Programmer. Rebecca called me from Broomfield, Colorado with an invitation. I flew to Colorado and then to Milpitas, California to discuss serious Java. Back in my day, computer programming consisted of countless lines of FORTRAN or Basic, tedious, hideous, and mind numbingly dull. The people who really liked doing it were, well, different. I don't know what "those people" did before computers. Remember standing in line with punch cards, waiting for your printout, only to discover another syntax error? Humanity had discovered a new kind of hell, and your humble blogger chose electrical engineering. The computer science field has been busy since 1980. Meeting people like Martin Fowler, Stephen Stelting, and others to discuss concepts like encapsulation, inheritance, interface vs. class, and the jaw-dropping genius of passing polymorphic arguments took me back over 15 years to the real math days and results like the generalized Stokes Theorem.
For Green, consider a flat plate suspended in the air by straps attached to its edges. If you "add up" (a line integral) the forces holding up the edges, moving around its edge, you get the same result as adding up the total weight of the plate over its area. It's actually slightly more complicated, but good enough. Generalized to any compact manifold of finite dimension, the result is simply marvelous, or as mathematicians like to say, "Elegant." Mathematicians live for the experience of appreciating a truly elegant piece of work. I adored mathematics and had considered becoming a mathematician. Then I dated Thalia, a REAL mathematician and learned that mathematicians did not just learn math. They created math. They published results not yet invented (discovered?). She showed me what this meant in terms of the real world. A profound distinction exists between appreciating something and actually doing it. I appreciate mathematics. I appreciate many fields. That is a world apart from DOING the field. I could read history books all day long. The closest I will come to writing one is now in front of the dear reader. The dull task of programming a computer had grown into a rich and developed set of powerful distinctions. If I had known the turbulence and trauma looming on the horizon, I would have relaxed a little more and better enjoyed the relatively peaceful SAIAT days of 2001 and 2002 where all I had to do was learn, teach, maintain websites, and administer a program that was running rather well. I did not realize how nice things were for me in a certain respect. Yes, the hours were insane, teaching early in the morning, reporting to a full- time job, then teaching in the evenings, but I was in my element. I didn't even have to think about a P&L or a budget. I was not in a position to fully appreciate this. That would change. I taught math, applied math, Web design, fundamentals of measurements, principles of technology, project management, Microsoft Project, computer programming, blueprint reading, and other material for various programs like Rewarding Youth Achievement, TANF, Department of Labor grants, and created a variety of "technical readiness" programs involving these courses as well as technical writing, and so on. For courses I could not teach, I recruited instructors any way I could. These included courses in plastics, injection molding, fiber optics, and the list went on. I handled the academics and the instructors, and WW handled the participants, the registration, and the necessary paperwork. She was a good social worker. Some of these students had tough lives, and she helped them remain committed and continue. She and I became an effective team serving HTHW participants, as well as the many others we trained through various programs. The programs varied from the high-end SL-275 that compressed a full year college course into a single week, to MSE, which nurtured fragile participants through material they feared. At one rather moving board meeting, I shared results of training associated with the high school kids over the summer. Watching students get excited about algebra as I tied the the concepts to useful applications demonstrated the power of context. Many spoke about how the course propelled their grasp of the material beyond their peers, and the student devoured web site design, learning HTML with enthusiasm that brought tears to one's eyes as they designed their own websites. I briefly touched on Javascript (nothing to do with Java), the document object model, and simple client-side browser programming. They loved it, especially mouse-overs. The script that caused images to change based on mouse movement almost made them squeal. I did share some elementary Java material that flexed their foreheads, but I'd paved the path to give them a taste of programming with the powerful Java technology. Some started using it to create windows, frames, scroll bars, buttons, checkboxes, etc., and simple games. They were doing the real thing, and I consider the end of summer handshakes from these teenagers priceless. Samardak taught one evening program, MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) funded by H1B. He rarely showed up before noon. When we installed our servers and configured our network, he used a workgroup instead of a domain and outsourced our email service and Web hosting. I suggested we do all of this ourselves, establish a domain, and use Exchange. Samardak cut me a look and Perry worshipped his every word. Okay, fine. I built the SAIAT Web site with Dreamweaver and published it to a remote host. One day Perry announced he'd be away a couple days, and that Samardak would be in charge in his absence. Staff turned to me with terror in their eyes. (Staff hated Bill Samardak.) While it might sound sound childish, the announcement hurt me. I was working hard, and Samardak barely did a thing. I wanted to quit. The MCSE courses were scheduled from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. My MSE course started at 5:30 p.m. and ran to about 8 o'clock. One evening around 6:50 as my students started working on their exercises, I saw the MCSE class leaving. I asked,
"Where is everybody going?" Someone did complain when Samardak projected a pornographic image onto the classroom screen before a coed class. One of the women complained. Perry asked her to clarify the issue. I ducked and braced for headlines, but she backed down, "Please just don't do it again." She wanted the free training too much (technically worth $6,000) and chose not to rock the boat. Perry suggested Samardak refrain from pornographic material when women were present. Vera and I were mortified. I updated the date on my letter of resignation. Samardak would tell tales at length in Perry's office. I'd drop by from time to time, and sure enough, Samardak told the classic F-16 story repeated ad nauseam in American workplace bravado fests, the one about flying with an Air Force buddy. In the truly ludicrous version, they buzz a pro football stadium during a game, story #14 in "Fables for Macho Morons." During my career I'd heard it from Smith (1984), Weber (1995), and Samardak(2001). What was it with these guys? Sun Microsystems was losing its patience with Bill Samardak. Rebecca, senior US training coordinator based at the Colorado HQ, called Perry and specifically requested I replace Samardak as the contact person for SAIAT. (I had met Rebecca during the Java training.) She needed a "more reliable" means of communication. Perry assured her he would resolve the issue. A few
weeks later Rebecca called at 12:59 p.m., "Where is Bill?" The SA-299 Solaris Administration course for high-level IBM programmers was on its lunch break. I knew I would find him seated at the Airport Inn bar and did. To his left sat the IBM manager who supervised the programmers in the class. To his right sat the course instructor. The IBM manager had a soda; the instructor, iced tea. Samardak had a pitcher of beer. I
stammered, "Are you aware of the national ASEC conference call? You need to get
back there!" Samardak never did learn Solaris, and calls to Microsoft could not confirm his MCSE certification. The number he had provided was invalid. My patience with Perry was thinning. Glenn's infatuation with the man and the lack of board meetings stymied possibilities of resolving the issue. After the December 2001 meeting, the board did not meet until September of 2002, and negative feedback from the community about our operations whizzed around my ears. Rumors circulated that female Universal Avionics employees had issues with going to SAIAT. A respected woman in the plastics industry hated us. PCC hated us. City council member Jose Ibarra wrote a letter highly critical of the HTHW program, suggesting it was a poor expenditure of public funds. I documented the statistics regarding the program and provided them to city staff who then prepared and submitted a written response. In 2003, Sun Microsystems severed its relationship with SAIAT and terminated our status as a Sun Authorized Education Center. D. CLOTH AND REALITY GTEC held its annual meeting on October 17, 2001. Steve Weathers had now been on the job for four months. He said, "We are talking to people, building a network, building an early warning system, getting in front of people in technology companies and the service providers they work with: accounting firms, law firms, site selection companies, banks." He said that staff was trying to sell Tucson's attributes through a variety of
agencies like the Metropolitan Tucson Convention and Visitors Bureau. "There
are a number of things a company can do that help the Tucson area reap the
rewards and benefits of economic development, of corporate investment. It's a
matter of how many more doors can we open up to the region," Weathers said. In December 2001, Pima County got $3 million to spend over two years on the unemployed, underemployed, older youth, and single parents. We all lined up, the WIB, SATC, SAIAT, City OED, Pima County Community Services, ASU, and PCC, to get a piece of the pie. Well, apparently GTEC liked the work that public relations firm Bablove Ridgewood Workgroup did for the University of Arizona Technology Park, for in early 2002 it hired the same firm to develop better ways to market the Tucson region while five community leaders (the "T5"): Mayor Walkup, Supervisor Sharon Bronson, University of Arizona President Peter Likens, GTEC Chairman Duff Hearon, and Pima Community College Chancellor Robert Jensen developed a vision for the community, "Our natural and cultural environment and the coordinated actions of our beautiful, diverse community will ensure the Tucson region being a recognized leader in the emerging knowledge-based, global society providing the highest quality of life and place for all of its people." Mayor Walkup announced the vision at the GTSPED meeting the morning of Wednesday, January 9, and it was announced in the press the following day. Many smiled and nodded, agreeing GTSPED should pursue this vision. Some remarked that it was too vague, and Bill Buckmaster pointed out that it was a run on sentence. The T5 also condensed the vision to produce a slogan that some suggested was slightly lacking in creativity: "Tucson: A great place." GTEC's Chairman Duff Hearon commented, "GTEC will write a mission statement that will dovetail into the vision statement. We're in alignment with the community vision." The next month GTSPED wanted to "symbolize" that its efforts were somewhat "independent" of GTEC. Bob Breault and Larry Aldrich went along with the notion of the GTSPED networking committee having its own chairs. Sally Fernandez, chair of the aerospace cluster and Mike Proctor, corporate relations for the University of Arizona, became the co-chairs of GTSPED. For the first time, the chair of GTSPED was not the CEO or Chair of GTEC. What was going on? Who paid whom? Something was causing confusion. I suspected the cloth. Some of the $3 million in training funds given to the county fell to good hands. Among the best were those of Suzanne Lawder, CEO of Goodwill Industries of Tucson. Using approximately $70,000 Goodwill created a modest but very effective program, "Ready to Earn," that prepared underemployed or unemployed workers with the skills necessary to gain entry level positions at a call center. The positions existed in reality, and participants could complete the program and have a job in about six weeks. For people in a tight fix, this was low hanging fruit that at least led to benefits and functionality until next steps were identified. I believe this program saved lives and admired Suzanne Lawder. The Tucson region had forty call centers employing over sixteen thousand employees and always had openings. Most positions included health insurance. Those that could stomach the work could climb the ladder and increase their incomes. "Ready to Earn" was modest, but it was real, a rarity in workforce and economic development conversations. Directly
from an article in the Star: Suzanne had already successfully tested a pilot program based on this model and
placed individuals into real jobs at the call centers, including Teletech/UPS
and AOL. I often thought of working for Suzanne, which would be a privilege. Later, in Pima County Supervisor Ray Carroll's office discussing SAIAT and various people in the community, Ray's faced changed when her name came up, and he said, "Suzanne Lawder is the finest human being in this community." Wow. My jaw dropped slightly. I didn't know if I had ever heard such a compliment made about someone, and it was authentic. Using the "Ready to Earn" idea, SAIAT implemented a similar program associated with another skill that had many open positions in the community, telephone and communications technicians, the people that installed telephone system cabling and fiber and repaired the telephone stations in commercial buildings, high schools, and other large buildings. Qwest, Cox, Comcast, Volt, and other firms were promising they had lots of open positions they could not fill at $12 per hour with benefits. Some very sharp retired workers in this business had formed a company called Tech Force One, and they said they could get an unskilled participant up to speed in six weeks. The employers told us they would hire the successful graduates. Arnold Palacios at Youth Opportunity had the funds for the training. Everything looked perfect. We pounced. We built the lab, purchased the equipment, the hardware, and created the program. The employers had hundreds of jobs. Volt had landed a major contract to upgrade and re-wire almost half of the schools in the community. Perry went to the Pima County One Stop and Youth Opportunity and sold the program as "guaranteeing" jobs starting at $12 / hour with opportunities for rapid advancement to higher positions. I winced. Though not a job development expert, I knew that one NEVER promised jobs. Too many other variables were involved. They responded, eager to help as many qualifying youth as possible and recruited large numbers of kids to participate in the $4,000 program. All wishing to do the right thing, the prevailing rhetoric held that all successfully completing the program would obtain decent paying jobs, benefits, and futures. Reality knocked us to the floor, and while we were down, it continued to kick. Murphy's Law showed no mercy. Seventy to one-hundred and twenty youth came to SAIAT, and Tech Force One provided terrific hands-on practical training that delivered the skills the employers wanted. If the training itself and the skills delivered had been the only factor involved, the program would have made the front page of the paper. Unfortunately, the training formed only one component of the reality of the situation. The issues mounted quickly, among them the ethics of the participants. Of the appallingly low percentage that showed up, most showed up late, and even those that showed up displayed little enthusiasm for the training. The program broke my Democrat heart and fueled the Republican inside of me. Out of more than 100 participants, fewer than a dozen shined. I will never forget sitting quietly in the corner, observing the instructor who was with a student as the youth punched down various connections, completed certain circuits, verified some functions, and declared, "I just can't take classes where you have to take a test." The instructor smiled and touched his shoulder, "You just did." Circumstances deteriorated. Issues existed with employer Volt, which had said it could hire every graduate. Well, not exactly, and the Volt breakdown was exacerbated when the company lost certain contracts. We had the drug situation. Employers, SAIAT, and the One Stops all broadcast at high volume about the drug screening required to obtain the positions. Positive tests for marijuana eliminated otherwise qualified graduates. We had the work ethics issue. Graduates that passed the drug tests and got positions then lost them failing to report to work on time or for inappropriate behavior on the job. One participant, a star during the training, was promoted soon after being hired but then faced termination within a month for arrogance and lack of respect for his superior. The program was a fiasco. I didn't see actual financials, but I would speculate a six-figure sum of money was spent to place youths into jobs with futures and the whole thing fizzled in a heart-breaking meltdown. I don't think six participants successfully landed into jobs as designed. One star student who excelled in class and loved the work got a terrific position at Qwest. We pointed to him as the shining example. A few weeks later, his drug test came back positive for marijuana. I saw him in Vera's office, devastated and sobbing uncontrollably. She did her best to console him. I was furious. The project showed me the hard reality of terrific technical training leading positively no where because the enrolled participants did not have the basic personal skills to succeed in the workplace. The community poured a ton of money into training these kids, and many showed no appreciation of the opportunity. We supplied graduates with about $1,000 in tools and a leather tool belt. One student who had completed the program noticed that his kit was missing a $3 screwdriver. He could have gone to Home Depot or Harbor Freight and spent three bucks. Did he? No. Instead, he drove to SAIAT and stormed into my office, offended mother in tow, and bitched about his missing screwdriver. My political sentiments turned bright red. I wanted to strangle the punk and tell him not only to buy the thing himself, but what to do with it after he bought it. Maybe the Democrats were full of it. Maybe the notion of helping people didn't work. Maybe the situation, contrary to my heart and soul beliefs, was like that in various parks and other recreational areas where feeding the animals did not help them. It just turned them into junkies. The kid in my office was a junkie who had no desire to produce or contribute. He wanted handouts, and he thought the planet was organized to give them to him. He had no grasp of reality. Even more pathetic, his mother looked at me like it was my job to make her son's life work. Human beings perceive reality through an interpretative framework, and the framework accounts for more of what one creates as one's own "truth" than reality itself. Reality is infinitely deep, but humans do not operate that way. We will get to mental models later, but just to dip a toe in the water, let's consider real numbers.
So when we join the lines, we double the number of numbers. Right? Wrong. Completely wrong. Even though the number line from 1 to 2 is in fact an EXACT replica of the line from 0 to 1, and it is, adding the two together does NOT produce twice the numbers. Reality is not what it seems. We'll skip the rigorous proof, but a very elegant visual image captures the nature of what is going on.
Mathematicians know I dance with unfair moves and play with your head. I have set you up. We will get to mental models later, but for now, know that I intentionally trapped you in a particular mental model with language. I asked, "How many numbers?" The instant you accept the question, I've locked you up. Believe it or not, for some the notion "inside the box" is not an abstract buzzword to say in meetings. More on this when we get to mental models. For now, consider that I applied intuitive semantics to create concepts that make no sense. Mathematicians know that "How many?" only has meaning if one can count. The real numbers cannot be counted. Certain folks with a certain perception knew that like the real numbers, reality cannot be counted. Reality has many countable subsets. Computers were and until something extraordinary happens will always remain countable, no matter how fast the processors become or how much memory they can access. Consciousness is not countable. What does the nature of reality have to do with economic development or SAIAT? Everything. Keep reading and I will show you that $45 is only $45 when it is. I will show you when it is not. E. PARKS IS PARKS The Tucson
Chamber of Commerce were thrilled, and conversation resonated that now a
pro-business city council could do things to better support economic
development, something the mayor strongly supported. Do what things? Make
downtown terrific. Give the clusters and SATC lots of money. The mayor's
spokesman and aide, Andrew Greenhill, declared that economic development and
opportunity were key issues facing the city. Weathers
sure knew how to speak cloth, "Your economic fabric is only as strong as the
threads that form it. The city is one important thread. The community college is
another. The University of Arizona and Pima County are part of it. If one of
those threads is weak, it tears at the fabric." In North Carolina, in the second half of the 50's, some smart guys had the idea of creating a centralized "park" where universities and businesses could come together to conduct research and foster ideas in the context of economic development. In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Howard Odum, Romeo Guest, and Karl Robbins had an idea, and Robbins provided $700,000 to buy 3,600 acres of land. The project, Research Triangle Park (RTP), started slowly in the late 50's and early 60's. IBM arrived in 1965, and by 1969, 21 companies had located research-oriented operations on the site. By 1979, Research Triangle Park had 38 companies. In 1980, Congress injected considerable energy into the concept by passing the Bayh-Dole Act, which allowed universities to keep the rights to government-financed research conducted in their labs. Researchers would be able to patent their results for profit. In 1983, Reagan signed a modified version of Bayh-Dole that invited corporations and small businesses to the party. Now all parties could profit from patents arising out of government-funded research. The average number of patents issued each year to universities jumped from 250 to 1,500 over the next fifteen years, and the number of companies at Research Triangle Park blossomed to 66 over the next ten years. In a research park closely tied to government funded-research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the number of companies went triple digit by the year 2000. 2006 data on the Research Triangle Park: Size:
7,000 acres Everything came together perfectly. Chapel Hill expressed the triangle as Universities, Government, and Corporations. Some of the smartest people on the planet converged into a tight area and brewed extraordinary results. Later we will get to a sharp guy in Austin who took a good look at RTP, but he brilliantly crafted different language for the triangle, generalizing the threesome to "business, government, and education." The academic literature that developed would express the concept as the "triple helix" of education, state, and market. Some wrote of entrepreneurial universities and the commercialization of higher education. As the conversation matured, the distinction of academic capitalism developed to explain the permeation of market like behavior into higher education institutions. All of this activity applied tremendous pressure to produce results, and who was going to drive and manage this stuff? Hence, positions for smart people opened up to insure results. Started by the "Seven Visionaries" in 1975, the "Society of University Patent Administrators" exploded as a result of Bayh-Dole and decided to give itself a more impressive name than "patent administrators," becoming the Association of University Technology Managers, or AUTM. In 1986, AUTM had 381 members. In 1990 this had doubled to 771. In 2003, AUTM had 3200 members. In addition to the growth of AUTM, the top leaders of corporations and universities created the Business Higher Education Forum, consisting exclusively of the CEO's of large corporations and the presidents of universities. Various professionals formed other organizations such as the NIH, NSF, AURP, and so on. Research parks represented an attempt to harness regional creativity and innovation to spur economic development. Some did rather well but most were money pits. Skipping the lecture on institutional isomorphism, suffice to say that in the decade following the Bayh-Dole act, the notion of the research park was institutionalized. Any real research university had to have a tech park, a tech transfer office, and an office of economic development. Whether these functions made a thin red cent, a research university became second rate without one, so the University of Arizona jumped in where IBM had jumped out. In 1994, after Microsoft and various other tenants had spent some time coming and going, the University of Arizona forked over the cash to acquire some of the buildings to house its office of economic development, tech transfer staff, and its tech park. Just like RTP and other tech parks, the facility tried to recruit incubator companies to spend their time and pay rent in entrepreneurial efforts to strike it big. They rented space to a high school and continued working to build the location as a center for research, industry, and the entrepreneurial spirit. By the mid-90's there were enough university research parks to do what professionals liked to do, which was form an association so they could fly to some resort, eat fabulous food, look at the women in bikinis (or guys in Speedos) and impress one another other with slide presentations and nice brochures. This gave rise to the Association of University Research Parks.
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