Create West Virginia

Creative Cone Awards Announced

There are literally hundreds (thousands?) of creative people in communities throughout our state taking a leadership role by sticking their neck out to instigate positive change. To honor their work and to honor the work of specific individuals who have earned our respect and admiration for their creative accomplishments, the Create WV team launched the first "Creative Cone" awards on the last day of the conference.

Why a "creative cone"? Because we're all working in creative communities "under construction." Some communities are a little further down their path, but we're all at various stages.

Please join us in celebrating the work of this year's honorees:

Jeanne Mozier, Berkeley Springs - We're not sure it's possible to think of Berkeley Springs without thinking of Jeanne. She's the entrepreneurial heart and soul behind the creative power of this little town in Morgan County who has earned multiple "top arts town" designations and is the first certified arts community in West Virginia.

Keith Pauley, Charleston - Keith is the CEO of MATRIC, the research non-profit launched in 2004 that has put the Kanawha Valley on the R&D map again by putting Ph.D.'s back to work in the Kanawha Valley. Under Keith's leadership, MATRIC has hired dozens of new highly-paid researchers and spawned new commercial companies from their work.

Marlon LeBlanc and Jason Staples, Morgantown - OneWVU arose, according to Sharon Mallow, program coordinator for the President’s Office for Social Justice, after an incident occurred at the University in which a student athlete was called a racial slur. WVU soccer coach Marlon LeBlanc has been a founding visionary leader for the initiative, and Jason Staples a key leader in delivering tangible efforts to build awareness and commitment to diversity at West Virginia's flagship university.

Reverend Matthew Watts and Reverend Ron English, Charleston - West Virginia has had its share of ugly incidents and bad PR in the past year that forced us to ask many difficult questions to confront both our public image and our personal commitments. Luckily, we have two long-time civil rights and community champions working in Charleston who have helped build connections, share balanced insights via the media, and championed the urgent need for the Kanawha Valley and all of West Virginia to value its citizens from all ethnic, racial, and age backgrounds. Their accomplishments are too numerous to name, but their impact is felt across many realms such as mentoring youth, creating job opportunities and building diversity leadership.

Dr. Stephen Kopp, Huntington - Dr. Kopp is a champion of building creative communities in West Virginia through 21st century education, technology and research. Under his leadership, Marshall University has aggressively launched their implementation of "Bucks for Brains" and personally participated in the Create Huntington initiative. Dr. Kopp is a passionate, shining example of how leaders in our state can lead us into the new economy and greater prosperity.

As we mentioned earlier, there are many, many folks doing fantastic creative work throughout the states. But we thank the honorees above for their examples of leadership and creative problem-solving in our great state. Thank you to all of them for their leadership!

Pre-Conference Thoughts: It's Been a Creative Year!

As we get set to launch the Create WV 2008 Conference today, we asked ourselves "Has there been any impact on West Virginia in the past 12 months? Do we see tangible progress towards building the New Economy?"

We asked in a survey "Is your community actively including key pillars of building creative communities for the new economy in your local growth and development plans?" And here's what you said:

• We're actively infusing new economy thinking into our plans - 33%
• We're just getting started, but we're committed - 38%
• Not sure - 5%
• Not yet - It's not well understood, but we're open to the possibility - 14%
• Not at all - It's not understood or accepted in our area - 10%

That's pretty good momentum. We also asked you to help us build a list of what's going on out there. And boy did we come away feeling excited! Here are just a FEW of the highlights from the last 12 months:

QUALITY OF PLACE

• Community Development Hub launched
• 40% increase in total arts funding in West Virginia
• Create Huntington and the Old Main Corridor Project
• WV Music Hall of Fame launched
• Chuck Mathena Center in Princeton opened
• Gary Bowling's House of Art opened in Bluefied
• Clay Center Community Arts Programs in Mingo, Logan, Kanawha, Lincoln, Clay
• 30th Anniversary of the Morgan Arts Council!
• American Mountain Theater opened in Elkins
• Pocahontas County Artisan Co-Op and Opera House
• Charleston's East End Wi-Fi program launch

DIVERSITY

• Diversity Leadership Academy and Communities United Against Hate forums in Charleston
• One WVU Campaign
• Five Inclusive Communities program members in WV: Morgantown, Parkersburg, Clarksburg, Huntington, Ranson
• "Communities in Schools" in Greenbrier County

TECHNOLOGY and R&D

• Bucks for Brains and Bucks for Jobs program passes
• NETL Tech Support Facility in Morgantown
• CWP Inc - Fossil fuels research partnership with WVU, Carnegie Mellon and Pitt
• Statewide broadband plan revealed
• Robert C. Byrd Science and Tech Center at Marshall
• Marshall Institute for Interdisciplinary Research launched
• MATRIC expansion in South Charleston
• Tech Connect WV reveals Blueprint for Tech-Based Economic Development
• State support for SBIR grants
• Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute
• WV Angel Investor Network

EDUCATION AND TALENT

• 21st Century Learning Initiative by WV Dept of Education
• Center for Educational Technology at Wheeling Jesuit
• STEM initiative at Marshall University
• Come Home to WV campaign by WV Dept of Commerce
• Globaloria program - learning via online gaming

We know there are more, so please take the 5-10 minute survey to let us know what is going on in your community! There is nothing better to build momentum in our state than to share the progress that is happening in every county.

MATRIC Continues its Innovative Ways

MATRIC - the Mid-Atlantic Technology, Research and Innovation Center - has already put dozens of ex-chemical industry Ph.D.'s to work in South Charleston. Yesterday the non-profit group, which was launched in 2004, announced a new round of investments and new jobs. From the Charleston Gazette:

The Mid-Atlantic Technology, Research and Innovation Center in South Charleston will add 150 new high-tech jobs in the next 18 months and is receiving $2 million in federal funds to start a Homeland Security data integration center, the center announced on Wednesday.

"While a lot of people are afraid for their jobs, we are creating jobs," MATRIC chief executive officer Keith Pauley said prior to the group's annual celebration on Wednesday.

MATRIC will partner with Butler International Inc. to form the International Design Center, which will create 150 new engineering and research and development jobs. Butler is a tech outsourcing company headquartered in Florida.

This is what it's all about - leveraging innovation to create jobs, not just wait for them to come.

WVU is also on the move with the opening of the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute. You can also hear - if you listen closely - the phrase "new economy" cross the lips of various politicians running for election or re-election this season.

As hundreds of folks head to Snowshoe Mountain next week (including Keith Pauley, CEO of MATRIC and a featured speaker), we can celebrate the progress our state is making across many pillars for "building creative communities for the new economy."

Making a New Generation of Innovators

One of the most exciting speakers at this year's Create WV Conference is Dale Dougherty. You may not have heard of him, but those in the publishing and Internet worlds certainly do. He was the co-founder of O'Reilly Media, one of the earliest and largest publishers of computer and software manuals. Today, he is credited with coining the term "Web 2.0" and is the publisher of one of the hottest new tech/innovation magazines, Make.

Dougherty spotted a new trend in 2002 that incorporated many diverse elements:

• Powerful, cheap electronics
• A software development and "hacker" community
• The crafting industry
• The green/recycling rage

The result? Make magazine, called a "recipe book of invention" by Forbes. It now has a paid circulation of 120,000 and is growing fast. Even more impressive, "Maker Faires" are popping up all over the country (one in San Mateo, CA, drew 65,000).

Dougherty says that "stuff", or physical objects, are becoming as customizable as software. He believes from innovative hobbyists will spring new technologies, companies and industries. "Why can't I do to my car what I do to my computer," he says. "We're seeing the collision of computers and stuff."

This is a keynote that you don't want to miss. We're even going to have a mini-Maker session of our own at the conference. What ramifications does the intersection of the physical and digital have for West Virginia and our heritage of handmade "stuff"?

Global Challenges CEO's Face

In a brief post on Harvard Business Publishing's blog (thanks Rich Shaffer), Umair Haque highlights four major challenges that CEOs and other leaders face in developing growth and long-term prosperity. The short summary:

• A crippled global financial system
• Endemic underinvestment in innovation
• Accelerating disequilibrium
• Shallow strategy

To a certain extent, West Virginia's long history of not being on the cutting edge of economic growth has shielded it from economic ups and downs the rest of the nation has faced (especially the bubbles of disequilibrium); instead, we are more at the mercy of coal economics. But as we seek to diversify our economy and grow new innovation-oriented sectors, these issues will become more relevant and urgent. Of particular concern is our lack of investment in innovation. Hopefully, Bucks for Brains is a small step in the right direction towards serious innovation and R&D investment, but we have a long way to go.

Lessons in Creativity...From a Watermelon

Quick - Your a Japanese grocery store with extremely limited shelf space. How do you sell more fresh, higher-margin produce like a round, bulky watermelon?

You sell square ones and stack'em up.

Most people's reaction to a request for a square watermelon would be, "That's ridiculous." But for those who take ridiculous requests as an opportunity, it's a welcome challenge. Some Japanese farmers took up the challenge.

The solution to the problem of round watermelons wasn’t nearly as difficult to solve for those who didn’t assume the problem was impossible to begin with and simply asked how it could be done. It turns out that all you need to do is place them into a square box when they are growing and the watermelon will take on the shape of the box.

The marketing blog Hard Knox Life outlines the creative lessons learned from this development:

• Don't assume
• Question habits
• Be creative
• Look for a better way
• Impossibilities often aren't

What is your square watermelon challenge?