Pipedreams-- Fix-it or they will leave

Getting industry support for the skills and maintenance crisis is critical but even more critical is to get support from outside of industry, the general public, business and governmental leaders if we are going to see long lasting change and have the volume of talent pools developed to deal with the current exodus of the Boomer workforce. To help get the message outside of industry I have spoken to anyone and everyone I could think of to share the challenges we face. Have spoken before the US Congress, have participated in conferences literally around the world, including Europe, Asia, North America, Middle East and even Australia. Last week, I was nominated to participate in a future TEDx Conference for Greensboro next April. Their them is Dream, Design, Build. Well those are very important and noble goals. As the movie, The Field of Dreams" slogan "Build it they will come." However as we discovered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and Sandy, we must FIX IT or they will leave. So rebuilding and keeping critical infrastructure that supports our economic engines operational and evergreen, we must PipeDream too. This TEDX event has approxinately 80 submissions and I hope that I am chosen and would appreciate industry support to help convince organizers that our message needs to be heard and action to fix our maintenance and skills crises need to be taken. So please share, like, add comments below or send me notes of your support to [email protected].