Do We Really Want Talent that IS MADE HERE?

Posted by Jodi on Nov 8, 2010 in coworking | 1 comment

By now you have heard the regional campaign, Talent Made Here, produced by the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership.   The campaign made to deal with the brain drain crisis, works to boost the number of individuals who study math, science and technology and retain employment in these areas.   And, yet with all the dollars thrown at this campaign, Fort Wayne is STILL NOT AIMING to keep it’s talent here.

Over the weekend, residents in the City of Fort Wayne were given notice that those in city administration agreed to spend $72,000 on a contract with a Chicago public relations firm to teach Facebook and Twitter etiquette to Mayor Henry and his staff.    As an individual with numerous, Fort Wayne-grown-and-raised friends, that have Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts with more than 500 friends, it seems clear that if we took that talent and put them into the OurSpace conference room in one afternoon, we would have one of the best social media strategies and educational curriculum known to man.    However, we citizens have forgotten to realize, that we are in fly over country!   Whilst the leaders in this city, should be entertaining input from local citizens, they fly to the next largest city and scoop up a contract.    And, when our young people get wind of this, the feeling is “Why stay?”  Let’s face it, you might be better off to move to Chicago or Indianapolis and land a contract with Fort Wayne, than to stay within Fort Wayne and obtain a local contract.

The ‘why stay’ is echoed by many talented high school students and young adults.  Recently, I spoke to the husband of a very close friend. The about-to-be-laid-off-engineer at Navistar, recently stated that the only listings in the engineer section,  on the Workforce Development website were announcements made by Navistar.   The fact is if we want these laid off Navistar employees to stay in the region, we need to supply them with jobs in their field with companies that stay.

And in matter-of-fact conversations with Fort Wayne natives who left to build careers and ended up with top companies, Boxee, Disney, Pixlar, Red Hour, Amazon and Microsoft, not one of them has stated the “City of Fort Wayne’s leadership has reached out to me and asked ‘how can we get you back to the Summit City to lead an economic development project?’    We seem to think that once a person heads north or south on Interstate 69 or east or west on U.S. 30, that they don’t want to contribute to Fort Wayne.   That insular thinking has meant Fort Wayne has missed out on innovative ideas and potential funding, and even business ventures, that would have built a great downtown, filled with artisan galleries, specialty shops and urban housing.

A commercial is just an advertisement for a product that may or may not hold it’s weight.   We must accept the Talent Made Here campaign, while grand, is just an advertisement at the end of the day!   Fort Wayne states it wants home grown talent to stay in the region.  At the end of the day, the leaders speak their mind.   And, lately they seem to state a collective “Fort Wayne is a fly over country, fly onto to your next city.”   The campaign reminds me of the Chevy Nova campaign, great until it got to Mexico.    We need to work to ensure our top leaders really want talented professionals in this city, or the campaign will not work.