Community building includes everyone

Living in an inclusive community is important to all of us at Topics. Living and learning with people of all types creates communication, understanding, and friendships.

That's why I'm so proud that we were instrumental in helping bring Dan Habib and his son, Samuel, to Charlotte. Dan is a documentary filmmaker who created the film, Including Samuel, an intimate look at inclusion in schools and the community at large.

The film, which has been on public TV and has had 300 screenings in 30 states, will be shown at 7 p.m. Wednesday at UNC Charlotte's Student Union Theater. Karen Garloch wrote about the event in her weekly column at The Charlotte Observer. Check it out here.

Throwing Out the Phrase

Why is it that the phrase “throw money at” seems to be applied only to school funding or education in general? I can’t imagine that anyone believes “throwing” money indiscriminately at anything will have much of an impact. The phrase is so dismissive — it’s a cop out to having a legitimate discussion or debate about education funding and priorities.

Clearly, our community (like so many others around the country) needs to have some difficult conversations about our priorities. There will be shortfalls in education funding, and that’s not likely to change any time soon. My request is that instead of, uh … throwing an empty phrase at the situation, everyone will take part in a constructive way.

Some fodder for discussion:

• As a society, we place much of our value on compensation/earnings. (Unfortunately, wishing it weren’t that way won’t do much to change that.) What does teacher compensation say about the real value (i.e., more than lip service) we place on teaching?

• So much of school funding comes from local property taxes. Do people equate their property tax bill with the quality of the school system? Is there political pressure to keep property taxes as low as possible?

• Companies that increase their capacity with major facility or equipment upgrades often finance those improvements through loans (including leasing equipment) — the rationale being that the improvements will increase profits such that the temporary debt is viewed as an investment. Colleges and nonprofits have capital campaigns and have employees who cultivate an ongoing donor base to provide financing that falls outside of operations. K – 12 schools are not designed to earn profits, nor do they launch capital campaigns and have Development Directors. Bonds typically finance major upgrades. PTAs often finance equipment upgrades. However, how much of the operating budget goes toward these types of capital expenses? Is bond-funding every five years or so the best way to do it?

• Are we still locked in a mindset from way-back-when when being a teacher was among the handful of choices for women and minorities – i.e., a time when we could underpay many teachers because they didn’t have many employment options?

• Do society’s values reflect opportunities to nurture and educate children before they start kindergarten? How does that correlate to the average pay of those who work at childcare & preschool facilities?

I can certainly get into the nuts and bolts of the budget (and plan to). Hopefully, this particular fodder for discussion will help frame the conversation. I also hope that it will make it harder to dismissively say that throwing more money at education won’t solve anything. It won’t, nor will throwing out an empty phrase.

The Work of Art - The Atlantic

Stephen King was obligated to write this after losing a bet to his son, Owen, picking the winner of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Greatest part is the winner, his son, got to write the title of the piece before he wrote it!

The Firm of the Future?

The interesting takeaway from this article for me was the notion of considering effectiveness rather than efficiency. That sounds good and feels right. And moreover, that's how nature works. (Bill McDonough, architect and author of Cradle to Cradle uses the example of a tree dropping hundreds of seeds in an effort to get one or two offspring — what he determines to be simultaneously both very inefficient and very effective.) The key for a business, though, is figuring out how you measure effectiveness or know if it manifests itself in your work/products/offerings. I don't know that this author offered any concrete ways of determining that.

But I do think it's an interesting concept to think about, and in fact it feels vital to long term success of any knowledge firm who has to compete with increasingly efficient machines/computers/software. Web developers used to highly valuable; now they are often commoditized with the ease of (and more to the point, cheapness of) Wordpress, Blogger, Drupal, etc. Videographers are in the same boat. A Flip cam or an iPhone and YouTube are cheap and easy (efficient) to use and often "good enough," especially to those tied to strict budgets. Thus the potential client list for traditional video production company shrinks dramatically if they try to compete on efficiency (cost and speed).

In our case, we strive to get compensated for our thinking and our ideas rather than our deliverables, which in the end often don't look that different our competitors -- even if the subtleties within them are of great value and importance. Service firms who never manage to help clients see the value in those subtleties end up competing on efficiency (how much can you build for how little cost?) rather effectiveness (do your ideas and end products work a lot better than your competitors?). Very few small firms can win that competition.