In a growing area of the state, with big name and award-wining brands including Steelcase, Herman Miller and Haworth, the Grand Rapids Regional Chamber of Commerce has decided to hold their equivalent of the Detroit Regional Chamber. While the Detroit Regional Chamber hosts their conference on Mackinac Island, it’s reported that the businesses leaders of the greater Grand Rapids area will host their event closer to home, at the JW Marriot and De Vos Convention Center, in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Registration is currently at 500 attendees; the event will occur in Sept. 2008.

In an area of the state that is able to offer some area residents paid-for college education (Kalamazoo), the fiscal commitment to get business done close to home is applauded. Grand Rapids business has traits to model and learn from. It’s ok to be big and act small.

Attributions:

http://www.mlive.com/rebrandingmichigan/index.ssf/2008/05/western_michigan_plans_its_own.html

Inspirational and encouraging are the best words to describe the opportunity that will be provided to more than160 Detroit-based middle school kids who will attend a math and science program at Compuware’s headquarters in downtown Detroit. The program is in conjunction with Detroit’s University Prep Academy.

Compuware, www.compuware.com, has a state of the art building and facilities; access to technology and even the architecture of the building will no doubt provide a boost to talented and impressionable kids in need of business professionals and community inspiration and guidance. The company was founded by Peter Karmonos, one of Detroit’s leading and most-willing-to-take-risks business success stories.

Such programs will be the way to foster successful future leaders, the world over.

Attributions: Detroit Free Press, Editorial Dept. Saturday Starters May 31 2008 coverage

As 1700 of Michigan’s finest leaders, including politicians, media and business professionals, spent three days on Mackinac Island – an 8 mile round island situated in the middle of where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron — one could only wonder what could have been done with the millions of dollars spent on the event. Estimated on the reasonable side at approximately $500 per person in cost (hotel, ferry, gas), not including meals and booze — and God knows there were more than a few hangovers at the event undoubtedly when adults get away from home — the event cost $1 million in basic lodging and transportation alone. And don’t forget the cost of horse-drawn taxis on the island. There are no cars.

With the highest unemployment in the country and an economy, in addition to workforce mindset, makeover in need, the reasonable thing to assume would be that the Michigan business community and politicians should agree and have made an amendment at the event THIS YEAR – to host the conference next year in Detroit. Who knows what kind of multi-year contract the Chamber signed with the Grand Hotel run by the Musser family, but the reasonable decision – especially until the Big 4 leaders of Detroit can at least make a decision on Cobo Hall’s expansion plan — is to host the conference close to home. An eight hour car ride to/from catch a ferry to Mackinac Island won’t make the tough decisions any easier. Heck, Chicago is just as far and more inspiration may be gleaned from the thriving business environment of the Windy CIty where even Bravo TV Networks hosts shows, as witnessed by the filming and taping of two seasons of Top Chef — pop culture digression completed.  

Ironically, the conference ended the same day Greek Town Casino announced bankruptcy: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/05/30/ap5065419.html. It Detroit would have wanted to invest in an area of the state that drives big money to enable family trips to Mackinac Island, the event would have been held at a local venue.  

Someone will undoubtedly argue that other leaders from the state come to the event. But when you look at what percentage travels up 75 N (detour around Zilwaukee bridge noted) from this area, it’s the largest percentage of the attendance. And tax payers are paying for the gas used to travel up, in one form or another. And if anyone says, “It’s tradition.” Michigan has been traditional for 40 years and the economy reflects it. 

Michigan will never get on the right path until we stop running away from hard decisions, just like the automotive industry leaders here did, in lieu of the chance to go sit in a rocking chair on Lake Michigan or a golf game. Most Silicon Valley leadership events didn’t take place in Napa — they took place in San Francisco, the major city nearby, or in Silicon Valley itself.

The best thing about the conference: it reduced the carbon footprint of 1700 Michigan business leaders for three days, after they drove app. 300 miles to get there.  

Next year, the Detroit Regional Chamber leadership should to elect to give Mackinac’s horses a break and they will be applauded by the news media and tax payers of the state for being fiscally responsible. Save the horses’ strength for Michigan family’s to use on their vacations when jobs and prosperity return to the state.

Attributions: Detroit Free Press coverage: Jack Lessenbury, Wayne State University Professor/Toledo Blade coverage

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080530/COLUMNIST17/805300315

Article published Friday, May 3o, 2008
Mackinac Island conference long on talk, short on action

MACKINAC ISLAND, Mich. – What would happen if you took virtually all of Michigan’s leading politicians, the state’s top business leaders, much of the media, and confined them on a tiny island in the middle of northern Lake Huron?

You’d have the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce’s annual Mackinac Policy conference, which has been happening every May since the early 1980s.

“Every year it seems to get a little bigger,” said Dick Blouse, president and CEO of the chamber.

Normally Mackinac Island is home to a semi-tacky array of fudge and souvenir shops, a picturesque fort from the War of 1812 (the British landed here), a rustic cemetery where some of the state’s greatest leaders are buried, and a lot of very expensive vacation homes.

But by the time the conference began yesterday morning, at least 1,700 movers, shakers, journalists, and wannabes had packed themselves onto the 3.8 square-mile island, where cars are not permitted and horse-drawn carts are the only form of transportation.

Lots of those attending are there, as always, to see and be seen. Some come to network, look for new jobs, or run for office. Yet there seems to be slightly more seriousness about this year’s meeting. This year’s conference theme is “building a stronger Michigan,” and nobody doubts the need to do precisely that.

The state that was once the industrial powerhouse of the nation and the arsenal of democracy is in trouble, and everyone at the conference knows it. Michigan’s unemployment is the highest in the nation, as everyone on Mackinac knows.

The state has fewer college-educated young adults than average. Those who do graduate are all-too-often hightailing it off to Chicago, the most popular destination of choice, or cities in the prosperous western states. Thousands of less-educated and older workers who have spent their lives in now-closed auto plants are fighting despair.

Meanwhile, the governing class has been hamstrung in recent years by the effect of term limits – which has tended to zero out experience and collective memory – and by increasingly bitter partisan gridlock, not to mention Detroit’s titanic scandal.

These are all facts of which the attendees on Mackinac are acutely aware.

All this has helped give a sense of urgency to this year’s conference, with ambitious sessions on everything from job creation to alternative energy and reducing brain drain.

Edsel Ford, the great-grandson of the man Ford Motor Co. often refers to as “the founder,” is hard at work promoting “One D,” his year-old model for regional cooperation between Detroit and its now richer and far more populous suburbs.

He tried to be optimistic, but didn’t sugarcoat the state of the state. He outlined five top priorities and gave the state grades of “needs improvement,” in the categories of economic prosperity, quality of life, and regional transit.

But Mr. Ford gave Michigan failing grades for educational preparedness and race relations.

“We have to change our whole cultural mindset,” he told the conference.

Nobody doubted his wisdom, but what is less clear was whether the conference would in fact lead to greater regional cooperation and consensus. In the past, leaders have frequently agreed in principle on reforms or action plans (such as building mass transit) only to have the agreement crumble even as participants headed down I-75 for home.

All too often, local politicians have had a vested interest in getting re-elected by bashing other parts of the state. This has been especially true in election years, and 2008 could be shaping up as the mother of all election years. This much seems certain: There will be far less of a rush to be photographed with Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick than in other years.

Nor will all the things talked about at this year’s conference come to pass over the next 12 months, whatever the participants pledge. Last year’s Mackinac gathering was notable for broad agreement that the new Michigan Business Tax should be revenue neutral. That lasted until a budget agreement failed, and panicked legislators stuck a last-minute hefty surcharge on the tax. They still aren’t sure how much revenue it will bring.

Then, too, the consensus at the 2007 conference was this year’s presidential election was bound to feature a match between Hillary Clinton and native son Mitt Romney. What will happen in the year ahead isn’t certain, but it seems pretty clear that the Mackinac conferees won’t have Mitt Romney to kick around anymore.

Jack Lessenberry, a member of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit and The Blade’s ombudsman, writes on issues and people in Michigan.

Contact him at: omblade@aol.com