Table A Notes

Small Group Discussion

• Strategy - Reframe deficits as opportunities
  • We must believe in ourselves
  • We need to recognize the positives
• Consciously recognize the difference between quality of life and consumption
• We have to realize that the USA is to the rest of the world (in terms of our consumption) like South Africa was in apartheid.
• Advocate policies that emphasize centralization.
  • Land use planning
  • Eliminate townships
• Be strategic in how we think about & use information
• Provide opportunities for people to gather & strategize
• Include all kinds of people
• Create spaces where social capital can be developed
• We need to think about the implications of action in a different way because the technology makes them worldwide in a way.
  • Balance all of our domains of interaction - home workplace.

Table C Notes

Charlie Fleetham Discussion

What is the real challenge we are going to be facing in the next 5-10 years? Correlation between oil and recession? Creative name for what's facing us.

• Not so much an oil crisis, but the generational growth, continual growth makes capitalism possible. Maybe it has run its course.
• Changing expectations for what is a good life, what is prosperity.
• Housing crisis, 7 million unoccupied homes.
• Consumer spending drove economy, it works if wages go up or borrowing money. Expectation of continuing growth.
• The challenge is getting people to realize there is a limit to goods
• Different kind of growth.
• Cities more energy efficient, a new kind of growth. New growth

Name the challenge

• Affluenza *
• New growth-x
• Contraction nation*
• Discontinuity-x
• Perfect storm-x
• Back to basics-x
• Attitude adjustment*
• Modify expectations-x

Small Group Discussion

How do we support transformative change? And how do we support each other as we go out in to communities?

Reflection the various ideas you've just heard for innovating and reinventing Michigan's communities. Given the history, economy, and culture of your particular communities, what strategies seem most promising? (people pointing to strategies to use to implement change. Resist the temptation to blame, rely on old ideas, this is a group of leaders who have the power, own the power. How can we collectively as a group push our communities to be more in sync with the new normal.)

What's sticking with you?

• Spaces for diverse groups of smart people to get together and share ideas.
  • Spaces don't have to be physical, just have to be made known.
  • Fear of being with people who think like you do. Need more diverse groups of people with different ideas.
  • Being in relationship and communications, diverse, because that is the only place where we can find the chaos, and get away from the taken for granted's.
  • Positional leadership as much more gatekeepers, than inclusive. Leaders not using position to invite.
  • The difference between your job and your work, and perhaps that is where the creation of spaces have to come from.
  • Students in classroom versus residents hall- we know, but we may not really know.
  • The encouraging of experimentation- need to take the leaps. You may have ideas that others have, just say it.
  • Experimentation with students interacting with community, get more out of it than a grade/file. American pragmatism, Midwestern. We need concrete accomplishments. We need a work to do, if you invent that work yourself to be done.
    • Chaos and importance, allow space for creativity to breathe around people who already aren't thinking the same. Not in a formal way.
• Putting together community leaders and ask how to help them. Diversity of people, because of neutral environment. Support transition, new thinking
  • Needs to be a real intentionality in invited space, otherwise get people who can relate.
  • Only through chaos does growth occur. We see equilibrium because we're overwhelmed by chaos. So, try to balance with security that will allow us to do both, because we can't just live in chaos
    • Maslow, can't push people down, we need to provide both, need to feed part of our souls.
    • Gated communities, sense of status versus security.
• Leadership concept: always poke at and blame, replace leadership, but this is the test of formal and informal leadership, push that, and make it okay for people to be leaders, make hard decisions, the risk of failing. At least we tried, someone has to help us move forward.
  • GM culture, someone with an new initiative would have to go through structure, no room for initiative.
  • Building your team: we have to have leadership team, or at least support.
  • How do you exercise leadership in a way that fosters experimentation among leaders and the groups? The leader/team needs to foster environment where experimentation can occur.
    • Safe spaces, can fail. Different than old school industrial democracies. If change is going to happen, it is all about people. Project based, versus, build compartments and do-it yourself structure.
    • Grappling with leadership, not letting our conceptualization of the norm affect all.
    • Germaine, the need to talk to others and develop with others. Industrial model is to push it forward. Thought is a community process, creativity come from interactions.
    • Chaos and the norm.
    • When you're young, you don't have anything to lose, value in that. Putting that together with experience and wisdom, having age diversity is important. There is nothing to lose by trying the next thing; there is no expectation that you're going to have this job anyways. Society organized around well-being.
    • Is a cultural change really going to affect the middle class? The level of change is not going to be as dramatic to someone who has affluence.
    • Fear and rage of middle class is a challenge for leaders, either pandering to it, fanning it, denying it, and no one is stepping up as a leader to challenge this middle class.
    • How do you challenge this rage to lead us to problem solving rather than just political
    • How to channel the combination of fear and rage into productive, creative energy? -leadership questions
      • In this broad segment of the middle class.
      • The people who are doing okay, but are so rightfully fearful for themselves and kids who are taking out college loans.
      • Connect to inequality, wages of middle class flat or declining since the middle 70s. You need to have enough consumptions, success stories.
      • Big government solution does work sometimes works. Great Lakes, tourism, environment.
      • Problem in Detroit, grasped by leaders. People aren't proud of where they come from. Self-image.
  • New Orleans and Detroit are seen as a blank slate. Seeing the problem as a solution. Michigan has resources that other people don't have. Conversations and relationships, encouraging relationships, build community, housing.
    • Limited by own experiences
• How do we as a culture, that Michigan created the middle class that's changing fast, and it spreads out because of the industry, how do we create and environment that is safe, so we can come together and experience the ride together, going down. If smart people get together, not necessarily move down. Rather, move to a different trajectory, it's the role of the leader to help imagine.
  • What is in our best self-interest? The industrial model says to fight for what is yours.

Strategies

• Spaces for diverse groups, collaboration, share ideas, allowing the process to happen.
• Encouraging experimentation,
• Leadership- having the permission to make the hard calls that have to be made. It's not going to be difficult to make the changes that need to be made, so the leaders are going to make change or be forces.
• How can you channel fear and rage into positive thing?
• Chaos as a good thing, embrace it, part of change.
• How do we create a, "we're in it together" culture? How do we create a class so we can ease back down, and not turn it into a free for all.
• How do we, each individually, take these ideas back to our own organization, how to apply these ideas? How to take principles and enact them in a new situation? What does this mean we have to do?
• Commonalities among the different groups. Very interesting.

Large Group Discussion

• Is there some support network? Are we WITTs? Is there some way that we can support each other?
• Is there a need for on going support as agents of change, transformational leadership?
• The importance of spaces for the conversations, for diverse group of people.
  • There is a need. What would that look like?
    • Facebook groups- to advance the agenda
      • Need to broaden the groups and bring people together.
    • Michigan Social Forum
    • "Our Michigan Avenue"- facebook-like, interface
    • WKAR to facilitate connections
      • Create forum for youth radio.
    • Manedla's Center for memory and dialogue-
      • Nelson Mandela Foundation- learn from history, but the dialogue is forward.
    • Conference Call- webinar- www.vyew.com
    • Coming together to talk.
    • Field trip to Detroit

Table D Notes

Charlie Fleetham Discussion

What challenges are we facing?

• Afluenza- got used to things being so easy for us, need to realize that it won't last and we need to adapt.
  • Change of attitudes and perceptions
  • trying to tell someone who's used to driving an SUV that it's time to ride their bike
• Contraction Nation - living smaller, change in scale and speed
  • Connectivity
  • New Kind of Growth
  • Living within your means
  • Modifying Expectations
  • Perfect Storm
  • Back to Basics

Small Group Discussion

Strategies that seem most promising?

• Things the panel talked about were grounded in the practical more so than what we heard last week, even though what we heard last week was necessary, we need to figure out how to do both
  • How do we close the gaps
• figure out how to do more
• tough with problems that have existed forever
• How do we do more? How do we catalyze others?
  • Diminishing resources
  • Being scared
  • Feeling frustrated
• Patient Urgency
  • Some group of folks have to become the people who believe it will get done
• Being in the midst of a crisis or struggle, and inviting other people to come in and bring whatever they can, lay it on the table and figure out who can make best use of it to fix the problems we care about. Somebody has to say "We can do this thing".
  • Courage to do things
  • Need to not be afraid to fail
  • Need to create space where we're not judged by failures, rewarded for trying and the creativity that comes with it
    • Tougher time for that when resources are more scarce
    • Goes nicely into patient urgency
• Grass Roots vs. Top Down Efforts
• Stress causes people to think less
• Using spaces - new spaces
  • Technology
    • Youtube video of crazy "Balloon Boy" person vs. Panelist discussion on using tech networking for positive change
• Skeptical that institutions can effect the right changes
  • Need smaller groups
  • Story telling, stories of success
  • Real change happens on small scale, at the bottom
    • That's why we have public broadcasting, impact that it can have in communities
    • "The Story"
• Providing opportunities for intergenerational collaboration
  • Inviting people, does it work or does it need to happen organically?
• Creating spaces where people can have conversations about positive change
  • Like TIC center Panelist 4 talked about
  • Keep trying things and ideas until something works, can't give up when they don't work at first
• We all come together and we talk, but what are we doing?
  • Generate energy and action at local level where you can see results
  • Take ideas and ask, "How can we apply this?"
  • Does this work? Are there results?
• Someone needs to provide resources where good work is being done MSHDA
  • Administrative scale breeds difficulty in
• Institutions protecting what was, trying to get back to the "bonanza" and not adjusting to the new normal
  • Not enough people who hear these kinds of talks
  • Too much magical thinking and fantasies
  • The media is partially responsible for pushing it
• How can we hold on to our principles when there are so many pressures to stray from them?
• Place Making idea is important
  • Atmosphere and culture to attract and retain people
  • Housing opportunities
  • Schools
  • Safety
• Thinking longer term is necessary
• Changing expectations