This Focused Performance Weblog started life as a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective, but is in the process of evolving towards primary content on interactive and mobile marketing. Think of it as about Focusing marketing messages for enhanced Performance. If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Friday, September 02, 2005
What Next? -- I've been in a funk this week, not unlike mid-September, 2001, but probably more progressive as every bit of news out of New Orleans is more and more depressing. At least the aftermath of 9/11 seemed to be a coming together. There is a lot of that, but the big headlines and lead stories about shootings and lootings and bodies in the streets for days sounds more like a third world civil war than a modern US city.
And the implications yet to arise are, I suspect, still significant and have the potential to make this week's devestation and debacle pale in comparison, as dislocated people span out across the south. I agree with Doc Searls that this will be a turning point for a lot of what has been neglected in our nation, for good as well as otherwise...
"This event will change the country as much as 9/11 did, and perhaps even more so. After Katrina, we will again begin investing in real homeland security, real infrastructure, real caring for the civilizing natures of vital cities and family farms, of small towns and real communities, and government bodies that care more about their people than the high-dollar sources of election funding.
"This event won't have ripple effects. The consequences will be tidal: on transportation, on agriculture, on lumber and other supplies, on retailing, on churches and on citizens across the country who will need to take on the burden of caring for refugees and helping others start new lives.
"Katrina also force us to face a subject even Demoncrats have stopped talking about, although it lurks beneath everything: class. When the dead are counted, most of them will have been poor. Count on it.
"This thing is a huge reset button on politics as usual. Along with everything else."
Katrina has hit little bit closer to home. Getting away from the big not-so-easy, I realized that one of the towns hit was Gulfport, Mississippi, home of Carol Lacy, a teacher I "know online" at Bayou View Elementary School there. Carol has been a participant in our Global Virtual Classroom program for the last two years, and her class was on the team that built a Special Merit website in that program's primary school division.
The website for the Gulfport School System seems to be down. Not a good sign. Last year, a school from Malaysia had to drop out of the GVC program because of the tsunami. A school in Kuwait went quiet when the war in Iraq started. In our first year, a school in Tashkent was disrupted when rebel shootings broke out in their city. We at GVC talk a lot about bringing kids closer together by understanding what their counterparts are doing on the other side of the world. It would be nicer if the big events weren't always so negative. I guess we'll have to be satisfied with the big little events that happen in their teams.
I never guessed, however, how close we who run the program could get to the ongoing participants as well. Thoughts are with you, and your students, families and community, Carol.
posted by Frank - Permanent Link -
|
View Frank Patrick's profile
