Pin the Tail

My friend Kevin Makice sent me a notice about an event coming up called “Start-Up Weekend” that will take place February 8-10.

It’s a positive and proactive event– in light of many things that have been happening these past few weeks.

On the one hand, we’ve had the uplifting occasion of honoring the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., where hundreds of businesses, agencies, and people of all ages, annually volunteer for a “A day on, not a day off!” On that day each year, particularly in recent years, many creative ideas flow about how to give back to our diverse communities. It’s a day of great brainstorming—and really not merely a single day of events—- as so many people are involved in organizing, or related events, leading up to the memorial date. Many folks get involved well in advance of the actual events simply through all the planning required to do special things in memory of Martin Luther King, Jr.

On the other hand, we’ve all learned the gravely bad news about our local GE plant pending closure. It’s terribly sad, and a serious blow to our economy and confidence. As a community who embrace innovation and tradition, having a mix of all kinds of businesses has been healthy for our local economy. This loss subtracts an ever decreasing manufacturing base…which is increasingly the case in so many communities across the U.S..

Professor Makice impressed me last year through the community-collaborative projects I got to see his students present at Indiana University. Several of the projects were related to enhancing local government services. You may recall his guest column for pin-the-tail about service learning. It’s still one of my favorite blog entries to have featured here on pin-the-tail. It’s titled “Learning to Serve, Serving to Learn.”

And Kevin Makice continues to shine a positive light by encouraging practical, hands-on wisdom towards ways of thinking differently about trying to improve things, trying to think “outside the box” with a fresh, modern approach.

He’s urging folks to check out the Bloomington Start Up Weekend webpages to learn about the initiative…which is to “Create Community and a Company in a Weekend!”

I know he’s made connections with business leaders in the community regarding the weekend. He is humbly hopeful that this event will be an offering to interested people that might even potentially assuage the losses we’ll surely be smarting over due to the GE closure.

Let’s wish all the participants of Bloomington Start Up (February 8-10) big successes towards conceiving, even launching, some great new start-ups and sustainable business concepts!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 3:25 pm and is filed under economic development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.