A series of email with Rich Smyre, President, Communities of the Future Sustainability Through Community Transformation, and other articles authored by Rick

Rick,

Thanks for the quick response. I really enjoyed the paper titled, A Community-Based Process of Transformation. For the others I've attached just this article. Thanks for the MCB "how to" paper.

The paragraph Understanding a New and Emerging Context was an excellent executive summary on "The World Is Flat" book by Thomas Friedman.

Framing Our Future paragraph was a clear synopsis of some of the mega trends that the local team has been working through as part of our Norfolk Visioning 2006 process.

Thanks for the providing a new access point, National Community Development Services, Inc. (NCDS), http://www.ncdsinc.net/index.htm. Sound like this can be a potential funding source as we move forward. I see this organization gaining in importance as we move from the current community block grant to the new regional funding framework.

I especially appreciate the point that success comes only when both the strategic planning and building capacities efforts are worked in parallel and not alone.

This material with help with our (visioning team) dialogue Friday at 4 PM with you over the phone at the Chamber offices.

Let us know when we can post this on our wiki web site as part of our ongoing process. http://norfolkvisioning2026.pbwiki.com/

I look forward to meeting up with by phone tomorrow.

The NYC trip worked out well, great weather, and lots of walking. One interesting trend that is probably not understood by us outside large cities, people don't live in their homes. They seem to treat them as a way station. If they don't order in then they are eating out. So much is accessible while outside their homes. Every time I turned around someone was communicating on their Blackberry computer, text messaging, emailing, viewing the web, and talking. I've never seen so many people with head phones (ear buds) on. We did get to stop in the Sony Store, the miniaturization of technology is astounding. Very few people will be going to moving theaters in the future as your integrated home theaters will become common place. Virtual reality tours are closer than we think with the camera technology, broadband communications, and inexpensive video editing capabilities. The Ellis Island of was an interesting history on immigration policy and how it was implemented, your future in some cases was determined in less than 30 seconds. This is a perfect example of how to transform this living history into a virtual reality tour so citizens can better understand the past and put it into better context for current situations. However, as you repeatedly mention, we can no longer depend just on our past experience to guide us in the future!

Mark Hall

-----Original Message-----

From: RLSMYRE@aol.com

Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2006 12:18 PM

To:

Subject: Re: PLEASE READ THIS . . . How / And . . .Norfolk Visioning 2026 -- Short an...

Hi Folks....

Good connective thinking ongoing. De Bono's work on "lateral thinking" is well known worldwide. We used his approach to creativity in the mid to late '90s. Would encourage to use as much of his work as appropriate.

In my opinion, Mark is right on target suggesting that you could incorporate "thinking skills" and use the mega trends as a framework to look into the future with our "headlights on" as a key part of your visioning process."

One of the most important aspects of the way you structure the parallel parts of the overall visioning process will be to lay seeds that help diverse people learn to "think differently" as a part of the journey to "thinking transformatively."

Remember, unless you provide for a context in which those involved think within a futures context, they naturally can only use their traditional experience and knowledge...which, as Dr. Vernor Vinge, the originator of the term singularity and well known for his work in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Complexity, is no longer a good forecaster of the future. What is the implication of this to a visioning process?

Since De Bono is one of many who are involved with helping others to think creativity, one suggestion I would make is to have different members of the MCB group identify one of them by searching the Internet, contacting them, and asking them if they would be a part of an advisory group for the creativity piece of your visioning process and beyond...not to help design the process....but to have your citizens realize that these type of quality and well known people are very interested in a rural area of Nebraska that is looking to transform their culture, leadership approaches, and learning concepts to prepare for and be aligned with an emerging future that will be very different from the Industrial Age. Done effectively, it could also become a national story, get good publicity for Norfolk, and possible link to funding resources for you.

Am attaching a new concept paper that is in its third draft as a part of a new effort on which I am working. Dave Cooley, past president of the American Association of Chamber Executives, Howard Benson, key part of a major Southeast search firm for large city funding, and I have been working on a very comprehensive approach to helping to prepare larger communities for a constantly changing future. Notice the similarities and differences from our work together. A couple of the ideas may be of help to you are you design your visioning process.

Also am attaching the material Mark asked for about how to build skills for a "master capacity builder." By the way, am having a third conference call with the top people in the Extension Service for the State of Montana next week. Good chance they are going to adopt the concept of "master capacity builder" for their work in Montana.

Keep up the good dialogue and work that I see ongoing. More than anything, I am impressed that all of your dialogue and thinking is now occurring within a futures context.

Look forward to talking to you tomorrow afternoon at 4PM CDT. All the best. Rick