First in Future: Where Emerging Ideas Take Flight

The Director of the Institute for Emerging Issues, Leslie Boney, will be hosting a series of virtual conversations discussing the impacts of coronavirus (COVID-19) and some of the ways our state is responding. In this episode he talks with Keith Sutton, the chair of Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) school board, Jeff Cox, president of Wilkes Community College (WCC), and Hope Williams, president of North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities (NCICU). The guests discussed how schools at K-12, community college & university levels are dealing with transitioning learning online almost overnight. *This episode of First in Future was recorded on Thursday, March 26, and reflects information that was up-to-date at that time.*

The Director of the Institute for Emerging Issues, Leslie Boney, will be hosting a series of virtual conversations discussing the impacts of coronavirus (COVID-19) and some of the ways our state is responding over the next few weeks. Joining us this week for part one of the series with our special guests: Jeffrey Sural (Director of the Broadband Infrastructure Office under NC Department of Information Technology), Mebane Rash (CEO of EducationNC), and Rev. James Gailliard (Senior Pastor of Word Tabernacle Church and Representative of Nash county in the NC General Assembly). *This episode of First in Future was recorded on Thursday, March 19, and reflects information that was up-to-date at that time.*

Coming up on Thursday, the Institute for Emerging Issues is going to be focusing on what some really creative North Carolina leaders are doing to respond to the Coronavirus. We hope you’ll check in on our website emergingissues.org about noon this Thursday for our special program. What are the most insightful strategies small businesses are using to deal with this unprecedented time? What are county agencies and school systems doing too make sure they deliver core services effectively and equitably? Is North Carolina’s broadband infrastructure ready for its biggest test yet? Are North Carolina educators and faculty ready for a fully online curriculum? How can a church be a church in a time of social distancing? Please join us, and tell your friends to tune in as well, just go to our website, Emergingissues.org to find out more.

Poets can sometimes tell us something we haven’t thought of before, force us to confront a truth we’d rather avoid or help us see something in a way we hadn’t seen it. We wondered what would happen if a poet came to our most recent Institute for Emerging Issues forum on digital inclusion and turned some of what he heard into poetry. We invited Chris Vitiello, “the Poetry Fox,” to do just this and he is our First in Future guest for the second of two episodes. This episode we are letting him share some of the remarkable poems he created at our Emerging Issues Forum, ReCONNECT to Technological Opportunity, to do a little showcase about what it means to have a poet’s eye and ear listening in on a discussion of public policy.

Traditionally when you think of poets, they sit in a quiet room and produce distilled wisdom on paper to an internal beat. Those poets have more visible cousins these days, folks who perform in public and that you hear on the street or at poetry slams. And if you live in North Carolina, you may see one of them dressed up in a giant fox costume, creating poetry on demand. Chris Vitiello is “the Poetry Fox,” and he is our First in Future guest for the next two episodes. First we will hear about the role of poetry in our state today and looking forward into the future. Next episode we will let him share some of the remarkable poems he created at our most recent Emerging Issues Forum, ReCONNECT to Technological Opportunity, to do a little showcase about what it means to have a poet’s eye and ear listening in on a discussion of public policy.

This year, the Raleigh-based nonprofit Public School Forum has identified its top education issues to address, to take "immediate and intentional actions to provide each child a sound basic education." This is a response to a lingering legal decision on education and the state government identification of areas of improvement like new schools being built, existing schools maintained, better trained teachers and principals, and new accountability systems. This week's First in Future guest is the State Board of Education Chair, Eric Davis, who discusses his thoughts on making the ROI argument that if we invest now it will pay off later.

At our ReCONNECT to Technological Opportunity Forum, we heard story after story of people who have access to broadband and how they're doing amazing things with it. We also heard stories of people struggling to take full advantage of it. This week’s First in Future guest is Kevin Austin, the president of the state association of county commissioners. We talked with him about the biggest priorities of the association, including broadband and what it’s like to be on the front lines of making day-to-day decisions that affect everyone’s life, knowing they can second guess you on everything.

We all know people in our hometowns or neighborhoods who have a way of bringing people and ideas together in a community, big or small. Some may call them "connectors" or "weavers". They can see what their community might look like and start working on ideas like threads and weave them in a tapestry. This week's First in Future guest, LB Prevette, is one of those people. She is leading her community of Wilkes County to be more open about its problems and its ability to find solutions. They like to introduce themselves, not with their title or credentials, but where they are from, their community and how they are building it up.

If you are in a business trying to expand markets, on a farm trying to boost yields, helping your kids with homework or a local government official trying to figure out how to make your community more competitive, you need to be in Raleigh on February 10th. That is our ReCONNECT to Technological Opportunity forum. This week's First in Future guest is Maggie Woods, the Policy and Program Manager looking at the idea of "digital inclusion". She explores what a difference it can make for our state to take full advantage of high speed internet.

So what is the story of the work you are doing? How can you tell it in a way that will get other people excited about moving it forward? If you can tell a good story to show people why they should care, you’re more likely to get your work greenlighted. That is what this week's First in Future guest, Jeff Polish realized one day—the power of good stories. Now he's the founder and executive director of the Monti, which works on how to use simple principles of storytelling to communicate effectively. He has been working with us at the Institute for Emerging Issues helping community leaders across the state tell their stories to help them rally support for their work.

North Carolina has been a long-time leader in making internet available to people across the state, and we were the first place to have every K-12 classroom wired with high speed internet. The internet is also a critical tool if the rural communities are going to be able to compete in the 21st century. That is what this week's First in Future guest, Senator Harry Brown, has been working on for the past 16 years in our state. He has focused on getting private internet service providers to work with electric co-ops and other local partners to make internet available sooner in more places. But a tool doesn’t matter if people don’t know how to use it. That is a topic of our February 10 forum, Reconnect to Technological Opportunity in Raleigh. We hope you will join us to talk about how and why we need to make sure that everyone in our state can take full advantage of high speed data services.

In continued honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Institute for Emerging Issues presents the second part of our fascinating conversation with Dr. Jason Miller of NC State's Department of English. We will learn more about the connection between Dr. King and North Carolina in the two different speeches from 1962 and 1966. In 1966 Dr. King was already an international figure, having won a Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. King was due to speak at Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh, but little is known about that speech due to the protests surrounding the event. In the second part of First in Future's MLK Day episode, we gain even more insight based on Dr. Miller's research into these moments of NC history.

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Institute for Emerging Issues wanted to present the fascinating conversation we had with this week's First in Future guest, Dr. Jason Miller of NC State's Department of English. He has discovered a connection between Dr. King and North Carolina in two different speeches in 1962 and 1966. In 1962, Dr. King visited Rocky Mount, and you will hear a part of that speech that contained language from his famous "I have a dream" speech. We will hear Dr. Miller's insight based on his research into these moments of NC history.

Artificial intelligence will soon be making decisions about who gets jobs, whether you get a loan, and what sort of diagnosis you get for a condition. That is why you should join us for our February 10 Emerging Issues Forum in Raleigh, when we will look at what we need to be doing now to make sure all the people across the state have the access and skills needed to compete in an AI-driven world. That is also why we are talking to this week's First in Future guest, Phaedra Boinodiris, IBM Global Lead for Serious Games and a serial entrepreneur, founder of womengamers.com, recipient of six patents, and author of the book "Serious Games for Business." She is on a mission to change the way we teach technology in our schools, and how we make our way in a world increasingly driven by artificial intelligence.

North Carolina has lost a great citizen. Dr. Robert Bashford was an NC State graduate, OB/GYN, and Director of Admissions at UNC Medical School. His great passion was finding ways to address the health care shortage in rural North Carolina with the Office of Rural Initiatives. He appeared on First in Future in the spring of 2018, and we wanted to play back that interview to remind you of who this man was and how his inspiring mind worked.