Using Information to Drive Regional Workforce and Economic Strategies

Remember when Ross Perot pulled out those charts during the 1992 Presidential Debate? Later, everyone made fun of him. Here's a secret, I thought it was pretty cool. Maybe that was the first glimpse of my inner data geek. For those of us working in economic and community development, data and information, and the way it is presented, is a vitally important part of what we do. How do we communicate economic trends to decision makers? How do help inform a large group of stakeholders so that they can reach consensus about where a community, region, or state needs to go? Thoughtful analysis and effective presentation can help.

A few weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration held a regional conference on Workforce Information Driving Regional Economies. Several workforce and economic development professionals (myself included) made presentations about how we use data and information to help us develop regional strategies. All of those presentations are now online and available here. If you want to get right to the Indiana stuff, my presentation, which focused on our Indiana WIRED initiative, is available here. Kathy Burns of the Tecumseh Area Partnership also presented. Her presentation is available here.