so good morning thank you for coming to
the session my name is Jennifer Paul
support and I'm from Colorado and almost
everybody I've talked to is like Oh
Colorado is so beautiful but I will tell
you Georgia is stunning it is amazing
what you have here so kudos to all of
you and I hope that we get a chance to
come back so Colorado State University
is north of Denver central part of
Colorado and north so we're on the east
side of the mountains and Colorado State
University is a land-grant we have other
land grant institutions in the room or
people who work with land grants and the
reason that we're away the reason why
the land grant connection is important
is because part of what I do is my job
is connect to community and try and
provide support so one of the things
that I've noticed in my many years of
doing work with community is that there
are ways of having meetings and ways of
getting people together and it's really
easy to get stuck so how many of you
have been in a meeting where you're like
I really wish we weren't talking about
this one more time I really wish we were
able to take action and install this
problem and move forward and I'm not
sure how to do that so we're gonna talk
a little bit about that today and we're
going to talk about strategic doing and
we're gonna talk about why what it is
why we can use it for sectors and why
does it work so for those of you that
have some familiar familiarity and have
used this process or a familiar with it
please feel free to ask questions or to
jump in and say hey and this is this is
how this worked in our community so a
quick background just so you know where
I come from is I have a background in
philosophy which is values and social
policy always interested in how
communities work together I have a MS in
Systems Theory and the reason that
matters is because it's the idea that
there's a lot of interdependencies and
how do complex systems move forward so I
applied it to urban systems but you can
also use it for and I'm now that I'm in
the workforce system I use it for
workforce systems and I have a master as
an adult
IDI very interested in how you learn by
doing experiencial learning and so
that's part of how my background applies
to this I have I've been a land use
planner and community developer I was an
economic development went from that into
workforce development and then I was
recruited to work for the university so
I have a little bit of background so
I've talked to several of you and so
think we can kind of connect the dots
between where we've been and kind of
where we're going one of the questions I
asked when I was getting my second
master's in adult education there what
are the nodes and the networks that
create an innovative workforce Northern
Colorado sort of known for its
innovation I was trying to figure out
what is it you know like if we can
figure this out and crack the net on how
this community does it can I then
transpose that and figure out how to
apply that to another community we'd
have to adapt it but I thought maybe if
I could just get the basics and figure
it out but I wondered is it about the
businesses is one of the critical nodes
the businesses in our community and the
work that they do to create an
innovative workforce was it the
workforce system do we need better
training programs was it our
responsibility as a workforce system to
solve this problem was it education role
was it their job to create this
innovation and is that where it started
or was it the community in general like
the community infrastructure high-speed
broadband better roads that sort of
thing
was it the community and what I found
the innovation and positive changes
didn't occur in any one organization the
secret sauce was not in the nodes but it
was in the network what I found is that
the more people work together throughout
this organization and throughout like
northern Colorado the more they work
together the more that they've built
trust and the more that they could work
together so almost didn't matter what
organization it was it was the way they
connected and the way they communicated
that created the capacity so when we
talk about networks this is from
connected the surprising power of our
social networks and how they shape our
lives and how many of you are like
social media social networks we're
understanding that people are connecting
outside of our normal organizational
structures right in our normal titles so
that's part of what this does but what
what you see here says well a network
like a group is a collection of people
it includes something more it's a
specific specific set of connections
between people in the group these ties
and the particular pattern of these ties
are often more important than the
individual people themselves this allows
groups to do things that a disconnected
collection of individuals cannot so have
you been in a room and you have a group
together don't know each other it's hard
to get things done
the more history and experience you have
working together the easier it is