Published in the Independence Daily Reporter October 2019

Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas

In part 1, we discussed the entropy of downtown buildings and districts and about how the National Main Street purpose is to provide for the preservation of these historic buildings through revitalizing our downtown districts. The idea is that the revitalization of business districts will provide enough revenue for both the sustainability of downtown businesses and the maintenance of the downtown buildings.

Our historic buildings didn’t decay rapidly and, in most cases, reversing decades of downtown building entropy rarely happens quickly. Building conditions are on a continuum ranging from near collapse on the left end to fully restored to modern safety and building codes on the right. Most likely, eighty-five percent of the buildings in our Kansas rural communities are in conditions on the continuum somewhere from one-third to one-half from the left. Most are moving to the left with every passing year. Once the outer “envelope” has been compromised—failure of roof and exterior walls to keep out the elements—the slide to the left of the continuum accelerates.

Most of our related public policy, i.e. local and state laws, codes, ordinances, and tax policy, are not conducive the building preservation. Public policy demands that anyone trying to fix up and repurpose a historic building reverse several decades of entropy in one expensive project moving the building condition all the way from the left half of the continuum to the extreme right end in one fell swoop. This is unnatural. If you think about it, our public policy actually impedes progress on building preservation with no practical approach to encourage a natural path to building preservation over time.

I have an example of this right now involving one of the Lab’s growth accelerator clients. She wants to buy a building and fix it up for her business. She’s now learned that our public policy, from local ordinance to state safety laws makes it more cost-effective to build new instead of fixing up the old. Is that really what we want? A policy that encourages building new instead of repurposing the old?

Occasionally someone with deep pockets, sometimes with tax-payer assistance, restores a building transcending it from dilapidated to state-of-the-art all at once, but most building owners don’t have the resources to accomplish this leap in one initial effort. They need time for the business(es) to grow and make enough money to support continued building improvements.

As with the continuum of general building conditions, the fire risk associated with a building can also be thought of as being on a continuum; extreme fire risk at the left end and fully compliant with state-of-the-art fire safety features, as required for NEW buildings, on the right. Every rural downtown business district in Kansas and America includes buildings with fire risk near the left end of the continuum. While we may choose to debate whether or not it’s reasonable to subject a 100-year-old building to the same fire safety specifications as required for new construction, surely there is somewhere in the middle or slightly right of center on the fire-risk continuum where we could all agree the building is safe enough to continue to use while another rehabilitation occurs over time.

Maybe it’s time for us as a community and society to decide whether or not we’re really interested in preserving our historic buildings, especially in our downtown districts. If we are, we need to require that our policymakers; from state legislators to local governing bodies, take a look at current policies that require an unnatural and prohibitively expensive one-fell-swoop approach to an approach that would require minimum building and safety standards at the beginning of the rehab process with gradual continuous improvement over time.

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks. Archive columns and podcast at jimcorrell.com.

 

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter October 2019

Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas

I’ve always thought of entropy as the natural deterioration of things when left alone.  Following a technical physics definition, I found a secondary definition; 2. lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder. Entropy occurs in the natural order of things so much that we don’t notice. Plants and animals die and, one way or another, are returned, slowly, to natural elements. If you are spiritual and/or religious, you recognize entropy as an ingenious element of a universe designed by the Master. Entropy is essential to life as we know it. Imagine a world where dead vegetation and dead animals just continue to pile up, never returning to natural elements.

Things we build are subject to entropy too. Homes, buildings, roads, and all manner of things are subject to a natural return to the elements unless we maintain and repair them. Most of our downtown buildings were built in a different economic era when the businesses within them made enough money to reward the business owner while keeping the buildings in good repair. The entropy of our downtown buildings started with the urban, and maybe even rural, a sprawl of the 1950s when there was the movement away from living near downtown areas in favor of the suburbs (i.e. the burbs.) The entropy of downtown buildings continues today with box stores and Internet sales constantly working to take away a market share of downtown businesses thus leaving little money to keep buildings maintained.

Many communities across America have huge efforts going on to revitalize downtown areas and reverse the entropy that has affected the downtown buildings for decades. The National Main Street program is one of the most visible and successful organizations providing guidance and structure to facilitate this rebirth.

In 2007, I became involved in the effort for Coffeyville to become part of the Kansas Main Street program. I believe Independence was among the first five or six communities in Kansas to join the state’s new Main Street program in the 1980s. Independence Main Street remains strong today. Sidebar: The Kansas Main Street program was foolishly discontinued during former Governor Sam Brownback’s administration. Starting next year, Governor Laura Kelly’s administration will be reinstating the program.

In a competitive process to become a Kansas Main Street member, the organizing committee had to learn a lot about what the Main Street program was and that the main purpose of the program was to preserve historic buildings in the downtown areas around the state. The model is patterned after the four-point approach of the time-tested model of the National Main Street Trust program “Main Street America.”

• Economic Vitality
• Design
• Promotion
• Organization

I’m going to self-interpret the four-point approach here, but you can see the “real” interpretations at www.mainstreet.org. The local main street organizations are supposed to perform work in all four areas. Promotion tends to be the most visible but work in the other three areas is essential for the viability of the local organizations.

Economic Vitality – This point has to do with helping businesses become and remain viable to provide not only the money needed to survive and thrive but also to keep their buildings in good shape. Whether the business owns or rents the building, there have to be enough funds for upkeep whether directly or in the form of sufficient rent payments so the landlord can do the upkeep.

Design – This point has to do with the overall design of the downtown main street areas and also includes guidelines and suggestions for the “look” of the buildings. For instance, where possible, real windows on the upper floors are preferable to the “boarded up” look.

Promotion – The most visible aspect in communities with a main street organization. On-going Main Street promotions, around central themes, strive to get people to come to the downtown area with fun and interesting events and activities.

Organization – This point has to do with legal structure and how the organization operates. Most Main Street groups have a paid Director and most of the other work is done by dedicated volunteers on the board of directors and work committees.

The key to revitalizing and restoring our downtown buildings, indeed, our downtown districts is to make the districts viable business centers, making enough money to provide not only for the business owners but also to keep the buildings maintained.

In part 2, we’ll take a look at how our laws, policies, and ordinances are hindering and even preventing the revitalization and preservation of our historic downtown buildings and what changes we might consider to recognize that neither building entropy nor the reversal of entropy are quick propositions, but rather take place over time.

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks. Archive columns and podcast at jimcorrell.com.

 

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter September 2019

Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas

We’ve explored previously the need for a new kind of workforce development thinking due to the changing economy, technology, and the advent of automation and artificial intelligence in the workplace. Also fueling the need for change is the changing attitude of youth entering the workforce. Workforce training needs to include an introduction to a variety of skills and knowledge, making trainees more agile in coping with disruptive changes in the marketplace.

Likewise, the new economy is forcing us to rethink the way we think about economic development. The old model has become outdated and there is no exact recipe book for the new model. Many politicians and policymakers at the state and national levels don’t fully realize this need for change. They seem to think recruiting manufacturers and “bringing back our jobs” is the answer. Manufacturing is important but manufacturing jobs alone will not provide for a robust economy.

Fortunately, here in Montgomery County, Kansas, we have an example organization that recognizes the need to change the economic development model to include tools for encouraging, inspiring, and promoting entrepreneurship and small business development while being on the lookout for larger businesses that might want to relocate to the area. Montgomery County Action Council (MCAC), one of the few organizations that work on behalf of the entire county, received a grant to hire a consulting firm, “Ady Advatage”, to do an on-site analysis and assist in a county-wide economic development strategic plan. One of the “Ady” people came to Fab Lab ICC with an MCAC representative and stayed long enough after the tour to understand what we’re trying to do with our entrepreneurship and small business development programs. An article in the Independence Daily Reporter on September 24, recapping a recent MCAC meeting states “The Fab Lab at Independence Community College is considered a key player in cultivating small business entrepreneurism (sic) and start-ups in this region.” This represents the new thinking that’s needed. A realization that in addition to recruiting companies to come into an area, there must be a hefty effort to promote start-ups and small business development.

I believe that a maker space, like Fab Lab ICC or smaller in every rural community in Kansas, indeed America, could have a huge impact on economic development efforts. It can’t just be a geek maker space though as we see in some cities. It has to be a maker space obsessed with promoting entrepreneurship and small business development as we have been from the outset.

Fortunately, we have three state-wide organizations that are very interested in our model and helping us spread the word around the state about the economic, and other, benefits of a maker space in a rural community. Network Kansas has been a supporter since just about the beginning, allowing their E-Communities around the state to use some of their funding to send people to our Maker Space Boot Camps to learn how they might get something started in their communities. The Kansas Small Business Development Centers are developing a series of “Rural and Independent Innovators” (RIIC) conferences around the state to attract the rural and independent innovators we know exist but sometimes don’t know about. In November, I’ll be traveling to the RIIC in Dodge City to do a lunch-time program about how Fab Lab ICC has benefitted our region. Finally, the Kansas PRIDE program has just contacted us and is interested in promoting and educating the PRIDE communities in Kansas about Fab Labs and maker spaces.

The time is right to change our thinking about economic development. In the words of a white paper I remember from back in the days of the 2008 recession it’s time to “Bring in the entrepreneurs.”

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks. Archive columns and podcast at jimcorrell.com.

 

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter September 2019

Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas

This was first published back in 2016 but remains as relevant today. Fab Force as a certificate training program was but a concept on a white paper back then. Now, we’ve taken it through the approval processes and added offerings. For 60 years, we’ve told our youth that a college degree was required for their success. We’ve also told them the opportunities were somewhere else and now we wonder why our youth have left. Today, we finally realize that a college degree is not necessary for everyone. There are plenty of examples of non-college graduate technicians and entrepreneurs with 6-figure and above incomes. At the same time, there are plenty of college graduates in the unemployment lines and/or mal employed, doing something totally different than their degree.

Many in society, including education politicians and policy makers, now acknowledge that a college degree is not required, and we should be promoting trade schools, defined to teach people one skill so they can do the same thing their whole life, working for someone else. While many of our youth don’t want to go to college, they don’t necessarily want to accept the consolation prize of learning one trade and being an employee for their whole career. Coupled with this is the fact that many of those single-focused trades will become obsolete. We believe learning a wide range of skills will set these non-college bound young people up to excel and learn new technologies whether they choose to go out on their own or work for someone.

From June 30, 2016. We believe the economy of the future—which is now– will be about customization and individualized products made possible by increased use of automation and robotics in the manufacturing environment.  In order to survive, companies must learn to be agile and successful in this quick-change environment.  “Workforce” members will consist of entrepreneurs, contractors, and employees all working to solve the problems of the marketplace, whether working for themselves or working for others.  The distinction between entrepreneurs, contractors and employees will continue to blur and all must possess a wide variety of skills in addition to a single area of knowledge or specialty as in the past.

We believe the Fab Lab environment provides not only the physical attributes required for this kind of learning, but most importantly, the entrepreneurial mindset that fosters the kind of problem solving and critical thinking needed.  We’re working with our colleagues at Independence Community College to develop a “Fab Force” Certificate that combines elements of Entrepreneurial Mindset, Creative Design, Character, Communication and Conflict Resolution along with introductions to several “hard” skill areas.  Some markets recognized the beginnings of this need several years ago.  “Mechatronics” has become a term to represent a multidisciplinary approach providing a varied knowledge and skillset.   What we’re talking about here is similar but includes a greater emphasis on Entrepreneurial Mindset.  At the equivalent of 15 credit hours it provides benefits as a stand-alone endeavor or as an enhancement to any field of study.  We know that specific applications of these topics in business requires much on-the-job learning, however, we believe the introduction of these topics will provide not only a solid foundational knowledge, but also the attitudes of curiosity and desire for life-long learning required for future success as technology evolves more rapidly.

We believe this experiential training will increase the self-efficacy of participants which will greatly increase the elusive “soft skills” for which we’ve all been looking for the last 20 to 30 years.

This training will be helpful both for those wishing to become independent contractors or small business owners and those wanting to go to work for progressive, innovative companies in our region.

These are the topical areas we’ll be covering in this certificate approach.

Electronics

Robotics

Welding

Coating

Additive (3D printing) and subtractive (machining) manufacturing

Other “Fab Lab” elements like imaging and graphics printing

Creative Design (ala Stanford D-School)

Entrepreneurial Mindset

Character

Communication and conflict resolution

We believe this is the workforce development training of the future and we strive to be among the leaders in Kansas and our region.  We welcome comments and feedback from manufacturers and small business owners as well as potential trainees.

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks. Archive columns and podcast at jimcorrell.com.