Nine Shift

2015 The Year When the 21st Century Rushed Forward

In my 2014 NineShift presentation, I said we were "On the Edge of History."  No longer.
We are now over the edge.

In 2015 we were leaving the Industrial Age quickly behind,
and rushing forward in the 21st Century. 

Collaboration is no longer thought of as cheating. Marriott moved its headquarters to be on a light rail line, in order to attract and retain Gen Y workers. High end apartment building projects were initiated in downtown city areas previously inhabited by parking lots.  The poor have moved to the suburbs. Etc.

Here's my visual image of the 21st century now rushing forward.  The plants on the river's edge might be "rushes" as well.  Like in the river, there may be boulders ahead for the 21st century, but nothing to stop it.

2016 Prediction #5: Grading Based on Learning and Knowledge, Not Behavior

New excitement and a huge positive development this year.  The Denton Independent School District, Denton, Texas, is now in its second successful year of a new grading policy that includes no penalty for late work.  Yeah!

This is the first educational institution I know of to adopt this 21st century policy, but clearly not the last.

And I have to think Denton ISD was honored by LERN giving the teachers, staff and students of Denton an International Education Pioneer Award (our first), with the flame of learning on the trophy-like award  (it is really heavy, I was surprised).   Because they sent an Area Superintendent, Dr. David Hicks, and then at their own expense the Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Jamie Wilson, to receive it at our Awards luncheon attended by over 300 participants.

Here's LERN Board member Djuna Forrester of Denison, Texas, giving the award to Dr. Hicks, center; and Dr. Wilson, right. Djuna first alerted LERN about the new grading policy in Denton. We will have exclusive follow-up coverage of how the policy came to be, results, and more.

 

2016 Prediction #6: Tea Party All But Gone One Year From Now GOP Moderates Regain Control

We actually predicted this years ago, but with all the hullabaloo over Trump, Carson and Cruz this year, it is worth restating.

And to remind us that there are only 52 weeks to go before the Tea Party hits bottom, bottoms out, and we can toast that bottoms up.

We DO need to have some sympathy for older, high school educated workers, clinging to the last century, and losing everything.

And a recent article this fall noted that for the first time, people aged 44-54 are dying younger, so the Tea Party base is also losing their lives.

Gen Y will simply not vote for the last century, and Gen Y swung the last two Presidential elections, so hard to see how they would either vote for a Tea Party candidate, or stay away , which is more likely than voting for a Tea Party candidate.

Here's me in my Tea Party hat for the last time.

Freakin Out Over Homelessness

So, I read Of Human  Bondage, written 100 years ago in 1915, about the desperate hopeless-hope of poor people struggling to keep it all together and to get a paycheck.

Death was not a problem, death was a solution.  Not having enough food was a problem, maybe the only problem, next to not having a place to sleep.

There were no places to go, no one to help.  Not even the church.  Maybe relatives, but often the relatives were in the same position.

FAST FORWARD to today.  We have a nice young man, age 15, African American, in our basement. He has no place to go. 

What do we do?  We are 70 years old, we are past our lives of being able to raise children.  And yet, the only place seems to be .... reform school (it's like jail).

There's no place to put him where he could succeed.  It's 1915, all over again.  No social safety net, or at least a totally dysfunctional social safety net that appears to be just as useless as no social safety net.....

(no photo today)

Here's Something Good About NFL Football

My brilliant co-author Julie Coates says that having NFL football for the United States lessens our tendency towards war.

Impossible to prove, but it's nice to get a perspective on what's good about NFL football.

If you look at other nations and futbol  (soccer), you see a lot more violence and fan misbehavior/fights than at a typical NFL football game.

So NFL football may very well be a better outlet for aggression for Americans than the alternative.  

Swans on a lake on the way to northern Wisconsin. Less than a mile away we saw ice fishermen standing on the ice.  

2016 Prediction #7: For-Profit Trains Take Over

The Year 2015 was the year we saw the emergence of for-profit passenger trains in the United States.  

We predict that for-profit trains will take over the majority of passenger rail routes in the next decade.  

In fact, they don't even have to make a profit on the train routes.  Dave Ramsey, a leading transportation expert, says the land around each train station is worth about $1 billion dollars. Below, the land around the new Miami train station with a train to Orlando run by a for-profit train company.

 

NineShift 2016 Presentation Packs the Hall

"I wanted to congratulate you on an excellent NineShift presentation.   They get better every year, and yesterday's was by far the best yet." - Michael Garamoni, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The annual all-new NineShift presentation, this year in New Orleans, drew a packed room for our latest new prediction about The Coming Building Boom.

Highlights:
-Seven major predictions this year
-A farewell to Boomers skit
-Top NineShift Stories of the Year
-Thanks to NineShifter William T. O'Brien, who sat in the front row for maybe his last NineShift presentation before retiring.

We feature blog entries over the next few weeks on all the highlights.

What an exciting year in the 21st Century the Year 2015 has been !!

What is a Bike Car?

A Bike Car is a railroad car to store your bicycle while riding the train.

Look for more of them as Gen Y continues to a) ride trains and b) ride bikes.

Bikes Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

An Italian organization and (probably) millions of people are supporting 'the bicycle' to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

See the story here.  

Bikes:
-do not kill hardly anyone
-do not pollute
-are available to many if not most people in the world
-are healthy to ride
-cost society little
-take up less resources
-can be driven from age 5 to 85
-do not require expensive or polluting infrastructure.

Yeah bicycles!