Focus: "Regional Strategies, Global Results: Talent Driving Prosperity" explores the role of workforce professionals in meeting the national challenge of global competition. Co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration and the American Society for Training & Development, the conference brings together local, state and national workforce leaders and their partners from industry, education and economic development to sort through issues and confront workforce challenges nationwide. Conference info: www.workforceinnovations.org

Day 1: Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Who's who: The opening-day speakers included U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao, Workforce Innovations 2006 chairman William A. Sanders, California Labor Secretary Vickie L. Bradshaw, Labor Department Employment and Training Administration Assistant Secretary Emily Stover DeRocco and author-television producer James Burke. Their focus: "Innovate to Compete."

The new guy's view: I am the new kid on the block at Workforce Management, having joined as senior editor for news in early June, so my only real exposure so far to HR conferences was SHRM's recent get-together in Washington--with 18,000 of its closest friends.

I suspect Workforce Innovations 2006 is more in line with the HR conventions and conferences I'll be attending throughout the year. What Workforce Innovations lacked in terms of sheer mass compared to SHRM's conference, it more than made up for in character and enthusiasm.

I talked with several attendees who not only were eager to learn, but were truly thankful their organizations realized the value of such conferences. The vast majority of attendees appeared to be from the public sector, where budgets aren't exactly flush with cash for such events. The Santa Cruz County, Arizona, Commerce & Economic Development Department sent eight members, which seems like a big contingent and a rather sizable investment. It turns out that a conference such as Workforce Innovations is absolutely vital to a county that borders Mexico and whose current unemployment rate sits at 12 percent.

"That's lower than usual; normally it's 15 percent," said Vanezza Gallego, whose office is in the border town of Nogales. Among Gallego's group was Clauza M. Barron, the department's community program manager. "We're looking for new ideas and new approaches to help retain and expand business in our area. We're sponsored by the Department of Labor. They see this as a good opportunity for us to grow and expand our knowledge."

The need for education: Chief among the topics at the conference is the push for a more educated workforce, not just at the K-12 or doctorate levels, but in the community colleges. There's still the rhetoric for more math and science (and personally, I'd make sure to push art and music as well; eggheads don't always make the best employees), but the fact that community colleges are seeing something of a revival is refreshing. Now if they can just find the funding, since the currently committed $250 million spread across the country doesn't stretch all that far. That's probably the cost these days to site and build one campus—complete with a plush math and science lab, of course.

Emily Stover DeRocco and Elaine Chao also touted regional strategies. Stover even cited a visit from a mayor in Iowa whose city had lost its primary employer. He was seeking a cash infusion from her agency to "ease the pain," as she put it. He indeed received a commitment for funding—so long as he was willing to bring neighboring public officials into the picture to begin transforming the region's economy as well as his own. "The mayor understood the regionalization concept," she said. "They needed a new economy and he was prepared to bring in regional leaders to transform it."

Chatterbox: Featured speaker James Burke might have cited regionalism and maybe even touched on fancy math and science labs in his 55-minute talk, though it's a bit hard to recall. If you've never seen Burke, who has enjoyed popularity through his PBS programs "Connections" and "The Day the Universe Changed," think Monty Python's John Cleese on a steroid-induced verbal sprint and you'll get the idea. If Workforce Innovations paid him by the word, they got their money's worth.

There was his discussion of a reductionism theory. And a joke about a drunk guy squeezing a canary, rather than a lemon, into a gin and tonic (you had to be there). And there was a really complex PowerPoint chart that essentially illustrated the notion of six degrees of separation. In fact, if I'd studied it a bit more closely, my guess is that Burke and I are somehow linked. I think the chart showed that since I work in Irvine and I traveled to where Burke was working in neighboring Anaheim at a conference called Workforce Innovations and I work for a publication called Workforce Management, he got a welcome bag and I got a welcome bag when we registered—then we're practically cousins.

Burke's discourse was at times an Oxford-worthy white paper and at others a British comedy routine. Whatever it was, it largely flew above our mostly Yankee heads, prompting one attendee to ponder what it would be like to sit next to him on a cross-country flight. "I'd get a good nap in," his colleague responded.

--Rick Bell