An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.
Whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist, 2010 is over and it’s time to look ahead to 2011. As you know, the revenue diversification process that we began last January has been successful. The team, led by David Bridges and Charles Ross, scrubbed through nearly 200 suggestions, and we all settled on three to implement: sustainability consulting, government procurement training, and incubator consulting. We invested in all three mid-year, and all three programs have already contributed to EI2‘s bottom line in FY11.
The New Year is upon us, and one of the commitments I made is to do it again! I can’t task David and Charles with it two years in a row, so I’ve asked Joy Hymel and Lynne Henkiel to step up and co-chair the revenue diversification task force this year. They’ve both agreed, and I’m confident they’ll do a great job.
They’ve identified the individuals they’d like to have work with them — 10 EI2 employees representing a mix of last year’s task force and some new faces. (I know that Bill Cutts isn’t an EI2 employee, but we treat him like one!)
- Don Betts
- Bill Cutts
- Karen Fite
- Terry Gandy
- Marla Gorges
- Tim Israel
- Dana King
- Bill Nusbaum
- Harold Shlevin
- Chris Smith
They’ve also requested that Shyrona Rutherford be tasked for part-time administrative support.
It’s a significant time commitment, although I suspect that things will go more efficiently this year due to the lessons learned from the 2010 task force. Joy and Lynne hope to have the first all-day meeting on January 20th, with six more half- or full-day meetings between then and May 2011. There will be some homework in between these meetings as well. As we did this year, we’ll do a similar group readout in May/June to be ready for funding of the winning projects at the beginning of FY12.
I know that everyone is busy, and I hate asking some of the busiest people in EI2 to spare some cycles in the coming months. But this is an important process for us, and I want to make sure we have broad representation across the organization.
Thanks, and Happy New Year!
Stephen
