Category Archives: Uncategorized

(Community Matters) our dear friend Sonya can use lots of good energy and prayers.

and her beautiful daughter (our goddaughter) Dio is 17 today!

(Community Matters) Steve’s speech at yesterday’s swearing-in

January 6, 2015               Austin City Hall, Council Chambers           

The excitement in this Chamber and in this city is palpable. The expectations are great. And on this dais, the sense of responsibility is real and felt.

Diane and I love this city. We feel so lucky to be here. Everywhere you go in the world, when you say you’re from Austin, it means something. It means creativity and openness. It means a vibrant culture and a beautiful environment — and more and more it means opportunity.

And even though and perhaps because we love this city, we know we must address our challenges. We are experiencing the stresses of growth every day, whether we’re sitting in traffic, struggling to pay rent and property taxes, or watching our neighborhoods change before our very eyes.

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(Community Matters) Proud of our dear friend, now Mayor Steve Adler. His gift for vision and consensus building was on display at last night’s swearing in of all 10 council members and the mayor. They are already envisioning a new council structure that ensures more citizen participation during the time of real exploration and debate, they near unanimously elected Kathy Tovo their mayor pro tem (the one conscientious objector did so graciously) and the dais now represents most of the faces of Austin, with Steve promising seats at the table for all.

Mayor Adler presented the Distinguished Service Medal to Mayor Leffingwell and the outgoing council members, noting their substantial contributions and public service.

(Community Matters) I named CULTURATI my 2015 word. Merriam-Webster names CULTURE theirs.  emerging consensus on the importance of culture

(Community Matters) Joe Cortright, City Observatory, calls 25 – 34 year olds w/ a bachelor’s degree or higher, the Young & Restless because of their mobility – despite a decades-long, nationwide decline in mobility 1mm+ of these young people move across state lines each year.

• Two-thirds of the nation’s 25-34 year olds with a BA degree live
  in the nation’s 51 largest metropolitan areas, those
  with a million or more population.
• Talented young adults, in the aggregate are much more likely to
  choose to locate in close in urban neighborhoods
  than are other Americans.
• Nationally, the four-year college attainment rate for
  25 to 34 year olds increased from 27.5 percent in
  2000, to 32.2 percent in 2012. This means that the
  total number of 25 to 34 year olds with a four-year
  degree increased by about 2.7 million over the past
  12 years. A key driver of rising educational attainment is
  the increased educational attainment of women.
• Fully 56 percent of 25 to 34 year olds with a four-year degree in 2012 were women; in 2000 53 percent of young adults with a
  four-year degree were women.
• San Antonio, Las Vegas and Riverside have the
  lowest levels of college attainment among 25 to 34
  year olds (less than 25 percent in each case), even
  though in each instance college attainment rates
  have increased for this age group over the past
  decade.
• For every college graduate who takes a job in an innovation industry, he found, five additional jobs are eventually created in that city, such as for waiters, carpenters, doctors, architects and teachers.
• One study finds that a one percentage point increase in the fraction
  of adults with a four-year leads to a 2.3 percent
  increase in productivity as measured by GDP per
  capita (Abel & Gabe, 2011).
• Austin is #21 in MSAs by number of Young & Restless w/ 128k in the Austin-Round Rock MSA, a 44% increase between 2000 and 2010 – the 7th highest increase among MSAs of 1mm+.
• as a percent of our population, Austin ranks 6th with 40.8% of its population between 25 – 34 w/ at least a bachelor’s degree.
• 19k of our Young & Restless live in a close-in urban neighborhood -(within 3 miles of the center of the region’s principal central business district) – up from 15k in 2000
• The Young and Restless help drive economic
  development. Talented young adults are important to
  entrepreneurship and new business formation.

Full report

(Community Matters) It’s been a super 3 days celebrating the new years in Dallas with Steven, Charles Santos, Rick Bond, Garfield Lemonius, Matrice & Ron Kirk, Lily & Jeff Weiss and friends

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(Community Matters) so cute

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(Community Matters) Text acronyms parents might want to know – from CNN Wire

1. IWSN – I want sex now

2. GNOC – Get naked on camera

3. NIFOC – Naked in front of computer

4. PIR – Parent in room

5 CU46 – See you for sex

6. 53X – Sex

7. 9 – Parent watching

8. 99 – Parent gone

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(Community Matters)  Disruptive innovation in philanthropy, encouraging.

with the rise of social networks that connect people the world over instantaneously, many millennials have a broader view of charity.  Pioneers in an emerging philosophy of philanthropy known as “effective altruism” — which applies evidence and reason over things like emotion and intuition to determine where one can do the most good.

an independent, nonprofit charity evaluator that they dubbed GiveWell. a joint venture between Good Ventures and GiveWell that they called the Open Philanthropy Project.

They consider three questions when deciding whether a cause has promise. First, importance — how many people’s lives would be affected and by how much? Second, could it be solved, in the short-term and long-term? And third, how crowded is the space? If a lot of smart people are already thinking about the issue, the marginal impact could be less than in other areas.

Washington Post: Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz: Young Silicon Valley billionaires pioneer new approach to philanthropy

(Community Matters) Gotta get thinking on 2015’s word.

2014’s CLARITY – worked out very well. Was very clear about what to be accomplished this year: 1) EF objectives, 2) Adler for Mayor, 3) further integrating with Capital Factory, 4) quality time w/ our parents. Feel great about accomplishment in each arena.

2015 – I imagine it’ll have something to do w/ Culturati. Also remaking youth entrepreneurship programs (movement) and certainly still quality time w/ mom & dad. 

Update: I did select Culturati: [hoping to build] a society of CEOs, executives & scholars committed to a mission-driven purpose in business, to the practice of building strong corporate cultures. A retreat we are planning for Austin in September.

more on Word

(Community Matters) I should know this name – Alexei Navalny, an attorney & anticorruption activist – one of the leading Russian opposition figures.

WSJ story about U.S. Tech Firms Face Showdown With Russian Censors and about the rally next month in support of Navalny.

I’m reposting this for my own recall

(Community Matters) The increasing polarization of jobs being created in the market – Dallas Federal Reserve newsletter – is due to automation of routine jobs and to a lesser extent offshoring, resulting in the loss of middle-skills jobs. Higher education and a willingness to upgrade skills accounts for better performance of women in the jobs market over last 25 years. Men who lose these middle-skills jobs are remanded to lower-skills, lower paying jobs.

The number of jobs requiring medium levels of skills has shrunk while the number at both ends of the distribution – those requiring high and low skills level – has expanded. . . . polarization began about 25 years ago, in the early 1990s and intensified in the last decade. . . . Middle skills jobs were not recovered [after the recessions of this period, especially the recession of 2008-09].

Routine jobs always rebounded during the economic expansions that followed the recessions of the 1970s and 1980s. The pattern changed dramatically in the three recessions since 1990. None of the routine jobs lost in these downturns came back in the following expansions.

Middle skills jobs those in blue below (manual & cognitive routine).

While women were hit much harder than men by the disappearance of middle-skills jobs, the majority of women managed to upgrade their skills and find better paying jobs.

Middle-skill, routine jobs still account for almost half of all existing jobs.