The Current Status of the Local Job Market and Technical Education

| November 12, 2010

One of the benefits of being a member of the Middleton Chamber of Commerce is that you get current information relating to local economic development issues.  In the minutes of the 10-20-10 MCC Economic Development Committee meeting, the group heard from Terry Webb and Roger Price from Madison College, formerly MATC.

In these notes, they highlight current education trends and local employment needs.  Here’s the notes from that meeting

This is MATC’s plan for renovations, upgrades and new facilities to meet the increasing demand of local residents who need affordable education and job training.  Funding for the Plan is a referendum question on the 11-2-10 election ballot.  They also discussed the role Madison College plays in the community.

They started the presentation by discussing the changing workplace and how we all must adapt.  This includes students, MATC and employers.  They listed six ways the business community is changing.

The global marketplace has reduced the importance of location and has opened up many opportunities that did not previously exist.  Changing demographics of customers and the workforce.  The average age in our area is now 37.  It was 30 only a few years ago.

Technology improvements.  It isn’t just the new technology that creates change.  It is also the leveraging of the new technology and the increasing productivity of new technology that creates more opportunities.

The recession has changed the way we look at employment and the workforce. Skills packaging includes employees who want to increase their current skills and add new skills.  These employees are trying to make themselves more attractive to employers and are also trying to be prepared when and if their current job is terminated.

There are labor shortages in certain industries.  There is a lack of certain job skills as different professions evolve.  The recession didn’t just cut back on jobs.  Many of these jobs are permanently gone.  New skills are needed for potential employees to move in to the next career.

They also talked about the Higher Education Imperative.  This is the ongoing trend of a workforce that needs a minimum of one year of post-secondary education.  They discussed the earnings differential as you compare different levels of education.  This same trend also shows itself in the unemployment statistics, as you are less likely to be unemployed if you have more education.

MATC works with students who are right out of high school.  But they also work with a large number of students who are looking for different skills or to improve their current skills.  Many of these students have attended college at other schools.  Some have degrees from other colleges and are looking to better define their skills.

Wisconsin ranks okay in terms of education level in the US.  But the US has fallen down the list of countries based on education level of their citizens.  The US used to be first.  Now we are ninth.  35% of US citizens have post secondary education.  This compares to 54% for Canada.

The next topic was “middle skill jobs”.  These are jobs that require some education and training beyond a high school degree but short of a full four year degree.  More and more jobs are falling into this area.  Health care, for example, has many careers and opportunities.  Some of these professions are in great demand today and jobs are waiting for students as they graduate.  Some students are being offered and are accepting jobs even before they graduate.  Information technology jobs are also being filled as fast as people can graduate.  Many of the skilled construction trades are also looking for new graduates.  Skilled construction workers as a group are getting older.  There are not enough young people following in the system to replace them.  More and more of these construction jobs involve new technology.  A recent study estimates that the future workforce will be made up of 80% middle and high skill jobs.

Enrollment at MATC (or Madison College, as they are now being referred to) has increased 22% in the past five years.  There were about 8,800 full-time equivalent students five years ago.  Today there are 10,800.  More than 40,000 students attend MATC.  The average age of a student is 29.  Their territory covers 12 counties and 40 public school systems.

Here is a brief summary of the Master Facility Plan.

A new Health Careers Education Center & Clinic.  This is 177,000 sq ft at a cost of $43 million.  It would include an actual working clinic.  Waiting lists on many programs are three years.

A new Protective Services building at a cost of $21 million.  This is police, fire, EMS and related professions.  This type of training is in high demand and is not offered at that many places.

Renovations and upgrades to the regional campuses in Fort Atkinson, Reedsburg, Watertown and Portage at a cost of $7 million.  These campuses are quite popular and have reached full capacity very quickly.

A new Transportation and Green Manufacturing Center at a cost of $16 million.

Madison Campus Repairs and Upgrades.  The Truax campus is in need of repair.  Some of this is basic HVAC and plumbing and electrical.  Cost is $34 million.

Stormwater and Campus Safety Upgrades at a cost of $10 million.

The borrowing for all of this would be spread out.  The cost to a $200,000 home would be about $27.52 per year.

Why Now?  The emerging workforce needs are continuing to evolve.  The workplace is changing rapidly.  The mismatch of jobs and people with the correct skills continues to grow.  Enrollment is at an all-time high and demand continues to grow.  65% of programs have a waiting list. Facilities are at capacity.

This is also a good time to borrow money.  Interest rates are as low as 1%.  Construction costs are also quite low.  The economic impact of all this construction and upgrading in the 12 county area would be quite large over the next five years.

The economic impact of having employees who are qualified and ready to step into jobs immediately is also quite high.  80% of graduates stay in the district.  96% stay in Wisconsin.  90% find jobs very soon after graduation.

The Master Plan is ready and waiting to be implemented.  Approval of the referendum is needed.  Construction would start very soon after if approved.

If the referendum is rejected, there would likely be another referendum asking for many of the same items.  The demand is there.  Waiting lists are long and potential students are being turned away.  Jobs are going unfilled due to lack of qualified employees.

They explained that MATC has a very good reputation.  Their approval rating is 90%.  They have done well over the years to keep expenses under control.  Labor costs have been negotiated well.  Efficiencies of operation have been implemented.  They have also done a good job of keeping their debt low.

Please note that the ballot question is on the back of the ballot in Madison.

There was a brief discussion about online enrollment.  This has become more popular in recent years and will continue to expand.  It is nice in that there is not as much demand for facilities, although many “online” courses are partially online and partially hands-on in a classroom.  There are also some classes that can not be taught without the classroom experience and facilities.

Culture

| November 11, 2010

A company’s culture is its personality.  It determines how people contribute to teamwork, problem solving, innovation, customer service, productivity and quality.  It makes work safe or not safe for a person to raise issues and solve problems or to move in a new direction.  A company’s culture is often the cause for people related problems.

Culture is the real bottom line.  A company with a well developed culture, open to all that its members want to bring easily outperforms competitors.  People might say a culture is “friendly or tough, driven or aggressive, active or analytic or open.”

A company is a culture.

Leaders get culture they ask for.  If a leader wants people to be engaged, engage them.  Want involvement, involve them.  Want good communications, and relationships, communicate and establish good relationships.

A well developed culture is highly profitable.  Leaders directly change their workplace culture by changing how they do what they do.  Everybody will see the change, like it and respond.  When you create a workplace where employees can better meet their desires around their work and their personal life, high performance follows.  That’s why culture is the real bottom line.

5 LEVELS OF CULTURE
1.  Equipment and Physical Objects:  tools, structures, products, art all cherished and loved objects important to do a job well done.

2.  Systems:  processes, procedures and methods
In most companies there is plenty of room for process and systems improvements.  Systems are well known to each closest, and this level is a golden opportunity for involvement.  This is a good place to start to begin the company culture development process by involving employees in improving their systems.

3. Authority Structure that Connects People:  Productivity and profits.
Key aspect here is power and control.  The crude form is dominance and submission.  Often emotional and difficult to discuss.  Work on system issues and discover that problems around power and control will gradually diminish.

4. Communication To Connect People
Listening, understanding, dialogue, relationships and teamwork.  Also includes empathy and win-win consensus.  This is where leaders have the most potential leverage.  Improving communications has a powerful effect on the culture.

5. Experience Creating Motivation and Trust
The quality of human experience.  What we cherish in life, and feelings such as trust, caring, safety, satisfaction, pride and engagement.  Also includes the spiritual side.  Leaders cannot directly affect another’s experience, but you can affect another person by actions at the other four levels.

Academic fields are analytic and experience is synthetic or personal that comes with time.

FORMAL CULTURAL CHANGE PROCESS

Formal actions to quickly develop company culture.

1.  Involve and empower the leadership team
a.  identify formal values

b.  list the opportunities to strengthen values

c.  act on values and opportunity

2.  Conduct Cultural Interviews

3.  Involve the next level of management

4.  Organize problem solving groups

Involve the leadership team

Cultural change must begin at the top

Meetings could include discussion on:

a. employees communications and relationships

b. their leadership of the company’s culture

c. Planning and managing the human side of the workplace, the cultural change process.

CULTURAL LEADERSHIP MEETINGS

Focus on the top half of the culture, the Human Half, not the bottom, operations half.

After 3-4 meetings interpersonal issues are raised and resolved

Draw out each person’s desires of a better workplace

FOCUS YOURSELF ON THE PROCESS

I’d like to hear your thoughts, how it is for you here and what you like.  If you have ideas you would like me to consider, I’m interested in knowing how we can improve.  If you’ve had good experiences elsewhere, I’d like to hear about those also.

The Leaders Role

Help the employees feel comfortable discussing their relationships, the work experiences and themselves as a team.

“What kind of workplace would you like to have?”

More trust?  Openness?

Stronger teamwork and cooperation?

Better communication levels?

People speaking up and participating more?

People taking responsibility for solving their own problems?

Higher morale?

Improved productivity and customer service?

Less interference and directives from above?

Ask each person to write down their answers to, “what kind of a workplace would you like to have?  What qualities, values and behavior would you like to see more of?  Less of?

Take one item from each person and post on the wall…title the list VALUES WE WANT TO SUPPORT AT (COMPANY NAME)

List the opportunities to strengthen the values

Discuss actions they can take to strengthen the values (process)

More planning without action won’t advance the cultural change process.
(need to ask yourself, “do I want change?”  What changes do I want?  Need?

If one item on the list is “better communications between departments, ask, “what do we do here or what is coming up in your area that by doing it a little bit differently we would improve communications between departments?

What is happening now that is good?  What is happening that is lacking in positive outcomes?

Combine Cultural Values with Opportunities

Ask employees how they will connect values to actions.(process)

GET THE PEOPLE MORE INVOLVED

Have people volunteer to apply new ideas.  Invite them to apply the ideas.

“Next time we get together, let’s hear what you did and what happened.  Remember we are trying to learn about the culture and what happens when we take action for change.

Trial change through new actions and new results.  Does the outcome warrant a permanent change that translates to a new operating standard.(process)

“So What Happened?”

After a few weeks, ask the employees to describe what they did and what the experience was like.  Involvement will vary.  Be prepared to report on your work as the leader so they know you are serious about this but do not be confrontational, only resolute.  Confrontation at this stage drives culture into the negative, as people will withdraw.  You need to demonstrate your experience, as the leader advances the process, so will others.

How is your relationship with other departments?

3.  Conduct Cultural Interviews

4. Involve the Next Level of Management…down one level below management.  Owner…..Management….Employees

5.  Organize Problem Solving Groups at the First Level(employees)

Jumps in company performance when this group becomes deeply involved.  Empowered to act on what they know, when their creativity, responsibility and ideas are wanted, appreciated and most importantly acted on for positive change.(maximizing each persons talent and full capabilities)

Employees at all levels want to have a better workplace.  Even if it’s not perfect, employees appreciate the effort and step forward to join in the new venture.

Seasonal Change

| November 8, 2010

Living in the Midwest means that we have to adopt to seasonal change 4 or  more times per year.  I say 4 or more, because our climate can go back and forth between seasons on an ongoing basis.  Yesterday the temperature reached 60 degrees in our area.  The forecast for next week is projecting temperatures in the mid-40’s.  Snow is in the forecast also.

How is this relevant to business?  With seasonal change comes a shift in both consumer and business behavior.  This is the time to review the current years business performance.  This is also the time of year to begin serious conversations about what direction you want your business to go in 2011.  I’m amazed that many business owners do little strategic planning or wait until they are well into the new year before they start to think about their operational performance and sales strategies for the year ahead.

Now is the time to review your business performance.  Now is the time to begin scheduling meetings with your key business advisors to start the planning process for next year.  You’ll appreciate it, your staff will appreciate it and most important of all, your customers will appreciate the clarity and operational alignment of your business when they arrive to do business with you.

Open Social Networking

| September 25, 2010

By Mark Lenz

I had a great conversation today about social media that inspired me to share my thoughts on social media and its future, an open and distributed network that reflects the intent of the Internet. Everyone on The Business Source team met for an extended lunch to discuss our goals for the next few months. One of the major focuses in our discussion was helping businesses get the full potential from their social media efforts. Social media can be a valuable marketing tool, but many businesses run into issues utilizing the tool and integrating it into their overall marketing strategy. Laurel Cavalluzzo, owner of Madison Marketing Communications, has joined our team to use her knowledge and experience to provide sound, valuable advice on doing just that.

If you know me you know I have a few qualms with social networking sites. If you don’t know me, it may be because I’m not on Facebook. Maybe it’s the engineer in me since 85% of engineers don’t like Twitter. I admit I just started using LinkedIn and social networking sites can be useful, but they also have their disadvantages. One recent example is the latest attack on Twitter by an Australian high school student which wasn’t malicious but could easily have been. The main issues I have with the current state of social networking and media is security, ownership, privacy, redundancy and censorship. In fact, even though site membership has increased, users are hardly satisfied with current social media sites according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. So given my feelings you can begin to imagine where our social media conversation went.

Laurel responded to each of my inquiries with precision, but with so many other interesting and important topics to discuss there was little time to share my complete vision, nor I’m sure Laurel’s. I believe that social media is a very important new communication and archival vehicle, and we’ve only seen the very tiny tip of a very large iceberg. Not to sound prophetic, but I think “Web 3.0” is nearly upon us and it includes full integration of social media and traditional websites through an open social media network. We can solve many of the issues with social media by developing and harnessing an open network, and there are many additional benefits to an open network.

Security

The most critical concern of any business should be protecting its assets. Social networking sites are famous for their lack of security. From attacks similar to the Twitter attack that take control of users’ accounts to users themselves leaking sensitive information with and without intention. A recent article describes many of these problems faced by small and medium businesses, costing many businesses upwards of $5,000 in the first half of the year. That’s just another unpredictable cost of using social media sites, and with everyone’s accounts in one place it makes for an easy decision when choosing targets to attack.

As an example of the fragility, a few days ago Facebook was mysteriously offline twice in 24 hours, and the lack of security with regard to the U.S.’s networks is one of the NSA’s top concerns. The NSA chief and head of the U.S. Cyber Command recently told reporters he wants to create a secure partition of the Internet to protect our most vital infrastructure. One attacker could get millions of users’ private information with one attack. Issues with security will probably never be completely solved, but we can continue to improve.

Ownership

The ownership of intellectual property, the text, images, video and music you post, is another major issue with current social networking sites. Currently, sites such as Facebook will continue to publish your content long after you’ve removed it. When you post content on these sites you agree to allow them to use the content in nearly any way they wish. I am not familiar with the terms of use for corporate accounts on social networking sites, but clearly there are implications for personal use and there’s no reason to expect them to be any different for businesses. Facebook has had many issues in the past, and even though they may not keep all of your data for whatever purpose forever, they can change the rules at any time.

The ways in which you can use your content on a social networking site are governed by the how each site is designed. None of the social networking sites make it easy to swap content between sites or export it to other media. When a social networking site becomes obsolete, as MySpace has, all of your content, friends and likes are stuck on that site and you have to rebuild your profile and connections on another site. If I were a betting man I would wager that Facebook won’t be the social networking site du jour forever, and the new Google Me or Apple Ping could be the replacement. Businesses haven’t been the first-movers in this space. So businesses will eventually be forced into paying to rebuild their status on a new site once a critical mass has migrated. If we could retain control of our content by hosting it ourselves, or through web hosting providers, issues over ownership and portability would not exist.

Privacy

Privacy issues arise in part because of a lack of security but also for various other reasons. Facebook has dealt with many privacy issues in the past. Many of the issues were due to features created by Facebook to increase the sharing of user content and from changes in privacy settings. Google Buzz launched to loud criticism because of the amount of private information that it automatically shared. Since you have little control over how your content is shared and displayed on social media sites, and many settings can be buried under layers of obscure menus, you may not know exactly who can view which elements of your profile or how to change those settings. I don’t think these issues will be solved by incremental changes to the current social media sites.

Though social media sites have made progress to protect private data there continue to be privacy concerns. Software techniques called machine learning can be used to infer many surprising and private things using the data collected from you and your friends’ public content. Not only is your public data and behavior being tracked, but the sites and applications you use also track your private data. The same machine learning techniques used with your private data can infer even more things about you with an even higher degree of accuracy. Since your content is hosted and controlled by a third party it is difficult to control and know exactly how your content is used. Clearly retaining control of your own content would streamline social media.

Redundancy

Current social media sites are horribly redundant. Not only do you have to waste time sifting through the abundant noise on social media sites, but you also have to waste time replicating the same content across your website and potentially several social media sites. To make matters worse, replication is manual since none of the sites provide a feature for exporting your profile and content. Third party tools can be used to alleviate some of the pain, but they add another layer of complexity and potential for more security and privacy issues. Also, there is no simple or standard way to integrate social media from each site into your traditional website. Integration generally consists of links between social media sites and a business’s website, and though this is useful, tighter integration has the potential to increase the quality and timeliness of communication. By removing the redundancy you have more time to focus on your message and effectively communicating it.

Censorship

Nearly every social media site has censored user content at one time or another for one reason or another. This can be a touchy subject, but I feel that the community should decide what is appropriate instead of just a few people. One way to reduce freedom of speech violations is to make this decision open and transparent to the extent it is for hosted websites, which in the U.S. websites aren’t taken down without a court order or DMCA notice. An open and distributed social media network would be systematically identical to the traditional website network, providing the means to a more open decision-making process.

Open Social Networking

So it’s clear there are some significant issues with the current state of social media. Will the current social media sites fix these issues? They will probably fix many over time, but the reason these issues exist now is the reason they will persist in the future. Their profit comes from displaying our content, not protecting it. So they need to exert some control. It’s not good or bad, it’s just the way it is.

However, as a society I think we can and we want to do better, and we can do it by developing and harnessing an open and distributed social media network. Such a social media network would consist of an open source software platform that is installed and run in the same way as a webserver. In fact, you would replace your webserver with it. Instead of everyone communicating on sites such as Facebook, you’ll communicate on your website, and you’ll be able to search your entire social network from your website. You’ll be able to easily integrate photos and videos from your friends’ websites into your website and vice versa. You’ll control who sees what content and how. You will have nearly complete control over your virtual presence. Sounds awesome, right?

Security risks would be significantly reduced due to the sheer number of people that are self-motivated to improve the security of the platform who would be looking for issues in the relatively simple code. This has been shown to be true in many large open source projects, which I assume such a platform would become. Also, since the network would span the Internet, there would no longer be one point of failure. You wouldn’t have to worry about the security of a third party social media site, freeing you to add more focus to your efforts securing your own website. Security issues will still exist, but an open social media platform would allow you to more effectively protect your online and Internet-connected assets.

Ownership of content and privacy are basically non-issues with an open social media network. Everyone with a computer and an Internet connection could easily host their own social media site linked to the entire social media network, allowing you to retain complete control of your content. The software would still need to be developed with enough granular control, but given that it would be open source that’s practically inevitable. So if you want what happens in Vegas to stay in Vegas, or at least away from Grandma, you have that control with an open social media network.

Social media would no longer need to be redundant with an open network. An open social media network and platorm would let business and personal websites merge with social media. Gone would be the days of checking and updating your website, blog, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages. Instead they can be rolled into one social media website linked to the global social media network. Think of the amount of friends and followers you can accumulate from that pool!

Realization

So if this open social media platform blathering really makes sense why aren’t we doing it? Well, some people actually are. Four students from the New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Dan Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirskiy, found funding through Kickstarter and developed the platform they call Diaspora. If I were to bet again I would say that they and many others have had similar thoughts as myself. I applaud them for taking the initiative and turning ideas into reality. The Diaspora project will definitely kickstart the creation of an open social media network, and it’s already doing so. I’m seriously considering becoming actively involved in the Diaspora project, if at the very least by creating a presence on the network, but I say that only to try to express my confidence in the project’s direction. Regardless of any involvement from me, Diaspora will become the realization of an open social media network.

Neither Diaspora nor the idea of an open social media platform is perfect, and they are bound to create other issues, but it’s progress, open and transparent. Since the software behind Diaspora is open source, development happens transparently and critical security issues can be quickly discovered and resolved. Within two days of releasing the source code for Diaspora many critical bugs were discovered by outside developers. Diaspora isn’t the last such open platform to be created either. In fact, it will probably spawn many other platforms that will link to the same network. You won’t have to use each platform but instead pick one platform to create your social media site that will link to the global social media network. This should also increase competition and innovation as different platforms create distinguishing features to compete for your use.

It will take some time for the world to migrate to an open social media network. Migrating to a new social network requires a significant amount of effort and motivation. There must be enough compelling reasons for enough people to switch to reach a critical mass. It’s happened at least once before. I outlined a few compelling reasons for an open social media network, and there’s bound to be more. Yet there is one more roadblock, Internet bandwidth, not so much for businesses who already have websites but for individual users who currently rely on the social media sites for hosting. The bandwidth required to host a site increases with increased traffic. That means if you want a lot of friends with a lot of conversation you may need more bandwidth than most households can access. However, web hosting is a low-cost solution to the lack of bandwidth that individuals can take advantage of, and none of these issues are show-stoppers.

Don’t start closing your Facebook and Twitter accounts yet. Diaspora isn’t quite ready for primetime, but it won’t be long and more like it will follow. So dust off your social media strategy because social media is about to become an integral part of every business’s marketing toolkit.

Originally posted on the Code of Intelligence blog.

Collective Vision

| September 21, 2010

Collective Vision
by Mark Lenz

Recently I gave a talk on a few research papers that reflect an idea I like to call collective vision, the process of using the billions of images on the Internet with computer vision algorithms to learn information about our world. The text on Internet web pages has been scoured for years to infer many different things from the relevance of websites to the level of buzz for a product. The billions of photos and images found on the Internet provide another large resource of data that until recently hasn’t been tapped, and the potential for new insights is increasing with the proliferation of websites such as Flickr, Panoramio, and Facebook. Mobile phones with cameras make it easy for everyone to capture and upload photos, increasing the amount of available information every second.

There are a few research groups diving into the sea of Internet images, funded mainly by Microsoft, Google, and Nokia. I think the first novel use of Internet images was by Hays and Efros at CMU in 2007. They used a huge database of Internet photos to attempt to convincingly fill holes in photos, scanning the database for photos with similar regions to fill the hole. The Community Photo Collections team at the University of Washington developed the system they call Photo Tourism, which was the first system that can automatically reconstruct and visualize 3D scenes using photos gathered from the Internet. Further work has gone in to speeding up the reconstruction process to enable the reconstruction of full cities. Google uses photos from the Internet to power part of their Google Goggles search as well as a world-wide landmark recognition engine.

Collective vision could be used beyond reconstruction of the world and filling gaps in photos, and it can apply to other large sets of images that may not be collected from the Internet. In the short term, collective vision could aid in social tourism, something I’m investigating as a final course project, or it could help in disaster relief. I think some longer-term possible uses could be detection of infrastructure in need of repair or tracking and prediction of fashion trends. Other researchers and groups have begun investigating the potential of collective vision, and even more have shown an interest in it. So with tons of potential uses and lots of minds, it won’t be long until someone finds another novel use of collective vision, and then there’s video.

Originally posted on the Code of Intelligence blog.