A Forward that Didn't Suck

As a general rule, I hate forwarded email. I'm not even talking about just forwarded jokes, videos, pictures, links, and other miscellaneous crap that makes my inbox a more annoying place to hang out. I also hate useful forwards like conversations, valuable links, and invites. Mostly, I dislike how I have to figure out where the email originated from down the chain, how the email progressed from there, and why/how at some point that wasn't initiation of the email I was brought into the stupid loop. Forwards are an unavoidable piece of information gathering and the business world, but I don't anticipate ever being much of a fan. However, my friend/co-worker Brian sent me a forwarded link today that was quite interesting and touched on many of the things I've been feeling for the past few years. Actually, looking back at the email, it wasn't even a forward. It was an email sent directly to me with the link included in it, so you can really ignore the title of this post that I don't want to go back and re-write and every word in the paragraph prior to this one. As it turns out, forwards still suck.

So now on to the non-forwarded link. Here it is:

San Francisco Business Times

This is a great article that indirectly addresses the new professional direction of my life, and as such, it really is something on which you, the world's most bored office workers and therefore readers of mine and therefore Michigan and scifi television lovers, should be intricately versed. This is of the more valuable category of articles about Michigan because it does not originate from within our biased borders.

Did I mention I got pooped on today? A bird pooped right on my suit coat jacket while I was walking the streets of downtown after a meeting. The poop deflected off my suit and also landed on Brian's suit coat - the second time that he has been pooped on while walking around downtown with me.

Back to the article - it starts with these words that really hit the key message:

If California wants to get its innovation game back, says venture capitalist Tom Baruch, it should look at Michigan.

That wasn't a misprint — much-maligned, Rust Belt-tagged Michigan.

While Michigan's traditional industries and job-generating companies have faltered and somewhat failed over the last several years, many locals actually saw this coming and start to build the infrastructure of the future of Michigan jobs. Believe it or not, Michigan has actually done some things better than the vaunted land of Google and Stanford to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. In the article, they reference some of the many good things going on right here at home like tax breaks for small businesses, transforming the automobile industry, SmartZones (mentors, funding, lab space), and ongoing economic diversification.

I can feel it. You can feel it. Underneath the tough economic times, the flailing auto industry, the high unemployment, and my kickball team only being .500, something is happening. It has been happening for a long time, slowly, painfully, but it is moving forward, and other people are finally starting to notice. Hell yeah.

While Rome burned, not everyone fiddled. Instead, they used their fiddles to build the most fiddle-ing-est fiddle orchestra hall at which they could fiddle once all the other fiddlers were forced to stop fiddling because they died while Rome was burning. Fiddles!