#eif2015

[jeni-v]

That part of DJ Cookie's set where she muted a part in Rude x MAGIC! and you can hear everyone singing and ugh that gives me goosebumps everytime bc it's like "wow I was there. I was in the crowd jumping, dancing, and yelling." Wow. It's been almost a month since EIF siiiiigghhhh I'm so sad but v happy that I got to go this year :-)

[jeni-v]

Listen to Electric Island Festival 2015 Guam Live Set by DJCookie #np on #SoundCloud

SOUNDTRACK OF MY HIGHLIGHT OF MY SUMMER. DJ Cookie was my fav set at EIF2015 :-)

[jeni-v]

#EIF2015 you were great, can’t wait to party with you again next year for EIF2016 😁🎉

[enpalomo]

Rude. #eif2015

[andrewsoresentwc]

Emerging Issues Forum 2015: Innovation Reconstructed

What is innovation?

To me, it's an absurdly broad term. I mean, technically, the first cave-man to use a stick to hit another cave-man was an “innovator.”

That's the theme at the EIF this year.

But that's the human spirit, innovating is what we do. So why does it count as an “Emerging Issue”?

The number thing we're hearing again and again, bestselling author Don Taspcott put this way: “I think that the digital age is moving so quickly, it's kind of getting beyond our capacity as individuals, and institutions, as a society to kind of comprehend it.”

There are two solutions to the “emerging issue” that keep coming up: education, and personal responsibility.

I'll start with the first because it's more structured and easier to tackle.

Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker spent his time at the forum Tuesday morning breaking down technological and workforce changes over the last 100 years, making a pretty strong argument that the changes we're seeing now shouldn't be that surprising.

The solution, he said, “human capital — the knowledge and skills that make people more productive — drives innovation.”

What that looks like appears to be more of a debate.

In part of our series on North Carolina innovations last year, we spent a good amount of time focusing on where innovation starts.

There's momentum in places like NC State and other higher education institutions around the state, indeed the country, focusing on “accelerators” or what used to be called “tech incubators.”

The idea is entrepreneurs get space to start up and mentorship to lead them through it.

If they fail, their losses are lessened (not losing the assets of property, space, etc.); if they succeed, they have a platform to build upon.

The state appears to be highly interested in funneling venture capital toward innovations, but also toward education more broadly.

Treasurer Janet Cowell said yesterday, “Investing in science and technology and education, you're not picking specific companies or specific industries, but you are creating a broad platform of knowledge that will then pay off in the future.”

Lacker also spent a good amount of time hashing out the benefits of community colleges and traditional secondary education like colleges, but he followed that up with this:

“Skill gaps are evident as early as age 5 and tend to persist into adulthood. The importance of early skill development also means that the return on a dollar invested in early childhood education can be much higher than the return on a dollar invested later in life. High-quality early childhood education thus should be a crucial — and cost-effective — element of a comprehensive strategy to improve human capital investment.”

What this adds up to, is that there's a pretty broad consensus among business leaders and government officials that education needs to keep up with the times.

That leads me to the second point: those of us who aren't in school need to keep up, too.

“We each need to, whether we're a parent or a teacher, or a manager, or just a citizen, get control of this technology to shape it for our own benefit,” Tapscott said.

Though I'd left to hit my deadline, I'm told even NSA director Admiral Michael Rogers told the forum here that cyber security will require personal ownership of our own data.

How can we all take responsibility? I refer back to point number one.

Educating ourselves on a continuous basis is the only way to keep up.

There are myriad programs out there through highly reputable sources like Harvard's EdX, or Khan Academy.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you should probably Google it. Treat it like a hobby for a while. School yourself so you can get to a point where you can school your kids.

However that applies to your industry today, it will most certainly be a critical skill tomorrow.

Then we'll truly be on the way toward tomorrow's “innovation.”