Participation in Wiki

Take the poll! The mission of the wiki is to get the proposal written. I am comfortable with opening wiki access to others, as suggested in the comments below. What do the other group members believe should be done? Take the poll available through this link: http://addtowiki.notlong.com As of 4 Feb 2008 @ 11:05 am, four of the eight people accepting an invitation to this wiki have voted to add other participants to this wiki.

Comment on HomePage of wiki by Mike Lawrence on 1 February 2008:
“I cannot make the afternoon of the 19th, i have OEWD interviews that afternoon. have we considered inviting the North Central folks as part of the WIKI, they would benefit also from the conversation. I think we can put together (from an EDA view) a good looking proposal to complement the State Industry partnership monies with Federal EDA monies. While they can essentially operate independently of each other, they can be complementary to both entities and really help the industry, complement the Tri County KIZ and help bring PSU DuBois to a leadership role in P/M in Pennsylvania.”

Comment on HomePage of wiki by John Blasdell on 1 February 2008:
Mike...it would be wise to engage with North Central using the WIKI. From an immediate perspective, we are currently developing a quick assesment for the WIB to determine need in the following areas for the pm industry sub-cluster. They include as follows: Managerial Leadership, Supervisory Leadership, Business Growth, Continuous Improvement, Engineering Technology, and Powder Metal specific. There are approx. 55 topical areas to choose from. The assessment will be put on JOT form and send out electronically to our data base. Ultimately, we want to prioritize training needs for the WIB so programming can be identified and implemented before 6/30.

Tim Franklin, Feb 5th @ 10:10 am:
My suggestion is to keep the Wiki to Penn State folks at this stage. Even though the region and industry are known very well, we are coordinating a new approach in working with a community/region/industry sector. It has great promise but we are learning as we go. Coming out of our first and only meeting we planned to retreat for a couple of hours to think through our program concept. Thanks to John's good work and some good fortune on timing, things are progressing faster than we had hoped. My caution is to make sure we tend to the work of creating a model for engaging with an industry sector in a region as we engage in this project.

Once the scope/strategy of the program interface and political relationships take some shape in NC (Feb. 19th is a start) we should reevaluate. There is great value in building alliances. However, from strictly a Penn State perspective, we have multiple, legitimate program interests and opportunities that we are attempting to coordinate for maximum impact (cluster competitiveness study, engineering extension research centers, mgmt. devel., continuing educ. workforce efforts, technical advice, etc.). My vote is to keep the Wiki for Penn State program leadership to coordinate our efforts as we get out of the gate. We still need to retreat to confirm the program strategy and that might be a good time to shift our approach to the Wiki with NC partners.

I am putting a priority on being at the February 19th meeting by 12:45-1 pm. I look forward to joining those of you who are available.