May 2019 BACC Newsletter

MAY 2019 BACC NEWSLETTER

The Bay Area Community Council is the leading organization in engaging community leaders in understanding and shaping the future of the greater Green Bay area.

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President's Letter, Fr. Paul Demuth

I recently read of a brain study that determined that the human mind (and heart?) is programmed to remember and operate on ideas and experiences that are problematic and negative. In contrast, when there is a positive, life giving experience that occurs, the study showed that there has to be at least a six second concentrated effort on our part to have the positive make an impression and become operative. Perhaps that explains why we are so often experts at complaining and listing the world’s woes!

If this is true, it may also explain why organizations are more prone to problem solving than planning positively for the future. It takes a lot of concentrated effort to move from problem solving to creative planning. The BACC has decided that it is worth the extra effort to be future oriented.

As you know, we are implementing a studied approach to futuring called “foresight analysis.” This is a tool which helps organizations develop a vision and mission. The method features searching for signals of change so that scenarios for change in an organization can be developed.

The methodology calls for a realistic approach. The future of organizations — and our community — will be driven by:

TRENDS— what are the continuities in a community, trends that we can monitor and track?

EVENTS— what are the discontinuities that a community may face, often things that we cannot control but simply happen?

CHOICES— what are the aspirations of a community; what decisions do leaders and organizations make?

Please take “six seconds” to let this positive message sink in! We have enough of the negative flying around.

Know your BACC Director: Devon Christianson

Tell us a little bit about yourself—where you were raised, past and current professions and careers, how long you have lived in Brown County, and some of your favorite pass times

People often chuckle when I say I am from Huskerville Nebraska! I feel like Nebraska is part of me and part of my family history. In the end, it brought me to Green Bay where I have called home for that past 40 years. While much of my growing up and current professional life is here, I still remember our family trying to escape the tornado’s threat in the shelter of the University of Nebraska where my dad was a Ph.D. student. Jobs brought us to Green Bay; both of my parents were young, eager professors hoping to make a difference in a community where the college was still brand new, the buildings were just being constructed, and the vision for a university connected community was an inspiration.

I have always aspired to connect the community to as many opportunities with the rich provider network, businesses, wonderful educational institutions and neighborhoods as possible. For 27 years, I have served in the public sector on grant and system development, program planning, teaching, volunteer management, and implementation of aging and disability resource centers. I have worked at the Bay Area Agency on Aging, Brown County Human Services Department, UW-Green Bay, and the Aging and Disability Resource Center of Brown County, where I am honored to serve as the Director. I have been fortunate to share the Brown County story throughout the United States in presentations and task forces. Wisconsin and often Brown County specifically is asked to help other states create the dynamic, inclusive and visionary services that we do for older persons and persons with disabilities.

Over the past 15 years, I have been heavily involved in the development of options counseling standards for the state of Wisconsin and have guided other states including New Hampshire, Texas and New York. Options counseling provides assessment and education on long term care options for persons struggling to take the next step in their journey to find services and supports to remain independent in the community. I have a particular interest in integrating the great work of many disciplines into an options counseling role, developing tools, engaging other professions, and promoting the positive impact of person center/participant directed services. This new field of options counseling is still in its infancy and it is an exciting time to be supporting the growth of this profession.

Describe your relationship to the BACC—when did you start on the BACC, what are your hopes for the BACC, what personal gifts do you bring to the BACC mission?

I was asked to join the BACC in 2010 and have served in several leadership roles: President, Past-President, and Communication Committee Chair. The BACC aligns with my values and personal goals to be connected to major issues in our community and move to be a catalyst for change. The LIFE Study, conferences and the partnerships that occur through the BACC is so critical to advancing powerful ideas. The neutral role the committee plays allows for challenging and honest debate about what matters most--the health, well being and flourishing of our community.

What do you like most about life in Brown County?

I love the direction Brown County is headed, the growing diversity, and the urban center that is blooming and yet the real ability to still make a difference. We are big, but not too big, to really impact change. The trails, the parks, the close to “up north” feel we have is irreplaceable. It is a gift to call home.

MAY 9 BACC Board meeting

Resource Development chair Randall Lawton reported that our 2019 funding appeal will begin this week with letters to our past donors. Have you thought of supporting the BACC and its new foresight analysis projects? For more information, contact Steve Herro , Executive Assistant of the BACC or click here for our secure donor portal at the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation .

Dave Wegge reported that the Foresight Analysis Committee of the Board is fashioning a prospect list for 15 participants for the 2019 foresight analysis training group.

The meeting adjourned and Board members proceeded to a ninety minute training in foresight analysis by Garry Golden.

Applying foresight analysis to life in greater Green Bay

BACC Director Phil Hauck provides the fourth installation of a six month series by BACC directors connecting foresight analysis to life in our community

What’s coming at us that already has!

What we’re seeing coming at us was created several years ago, and soon will have sufficient adoption to become a norm.

Consider the following:

• Entertainment: You’ll go to a concert, and the entertainer you paid big bucks to watch has been dead for 19 years … and he answers questions from the audience. By the way, he’s performing in another city later that evening. It’s already happened.

• Relationships: Soon, two-thirds of all marriages will originate online … and they will be 20% more likely to succeed. In 1955, 4 percent of adults lived alone; today, it’s 40 percent.

• Crypto-Currency: Confidence in the role of governments going forward will weaken, including its control of currency. Result: Crypto will become more widely used because it’s a more secure product.

• Rare Metals: Beryllium Hydride is essential to computing, especially quantum computing which makes computer power multiples faster, more powerful. It will allow us to “re-build flesh.”

• Artificial Intelligence: Machines already can “learn” faster than humans as updated data is pumped into their algorithms. Soon, that iterative thinking will tell within 99 percent accuracy whether the mole on your arm is cancerous, a higher ratio than your doctor or the labs.

None of this is new. It’s already around and working. (See Leonard Brody, a visionary intellectual journalist, The Great Re-Write.)

The question for business leaders is, "When will it hit my marketplace so that I need to be in the adoptive mode?" That’s what foresight analysis helps us to do It’s always judgment, of course, but by targeting for information relative to the specific trend, the “capture” of the information will be bigger and bigger as it gets closer.

We’re taught by our futuring process guru, Garry Golden, to use an app called “Diigo” to automatically capture that information in a specific file. You can look in it and read what’s happening around that trend, and then with input from your executive team, make judgments about when it will begin hitting, and in what form. That will allow you to run tests to see exactly how to confront it, to use it. He suggests creating scenarios about each key trend, describing the impact of no change now and continued change over the next several years

You’re going to be re-invented

This is all a serious set of trends, driven by technology advances that allow personalization and independence, by trends like climate change and fossil fuel reductions, multiculturalism which erodes a nation’s coherence, by the clash of humanism vs. speed, by efficiency vs. relationships, and by you-name-it....

You see it already, right? Starbucks isn’t a coffee shop; it’s a “third home.” Your library isn’t a repository of information, research and books; it’s a “lifelong learning partner” and a “community living room.” Do you really think government will be the provider-of-choice going forward? Come on. Look at how Elon Musk, via Space-X, has done in a few years what government would take forever. Corporations? GM, Ford and Fiat-Chrysler watched anxiously to see what Musk’s Tesla would look like. And keep in mind, those results aren’t actually Musk’s vision.

Will the U.S. national healthcare system be government run? Where are the innovations coming from?

What does this say about leadership, innovative thinking, and the need for foresight analysis in your organization?

Favorite resources and news you can use

Recent news stories, articles, books, videos, Websites or venues of interest to the BACC supporters and newsletter readers, recommend by the BACC staff and directors. Also community events of interest to the BACC supporters

Brody, Leonard. " The Great Re-Write."

Campbell-Dollaghan, Kelsey. " The future of housing looks nothing like today’s," Fastcompany.com, May 6, 2019.

Petrovic, Phoebe. " Net Zero Carbon by 2050 is Feasible," Wisconsin Public Radio, May 17, 2019.

Thursday, May 30, 2019

8 am-11:30 am

" Creating Hope: The Power of Faith Communities in Mental Health Recovery "

Cornerstone Foundation Hall West, Green Bay Botanical Garden, 2600 Larsen Road, Green Bay

The morning for Brown County pastoral staff, volunteers, chaplains, and employees of nursing homes and assisted living centers will provide a basic understanding of mental illness and address the unique role of faith community representatives in the support of those dealing with mental illness.

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