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Events / Schedule

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

• 7:00 am-8:00 am — Registration / Continental Breakfast

• 8:00 am-8:30 am — Welcome

  • Gerald L. Gordon, Ph.D., President and CEO, Fairfax County Economic Development Authority (FCEDA)
  • Steven L. Davis, Chairman, FCEDA
  • Gerald E. Connolly, Chairman, Fairfax County Board of Supervisors

• 8:30 am-9:30 am — The Value of Creativity to Businesses and Communities

  • Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class

• 9:30 am-9:45 am — BREAK

• 9:45 am-10:45 am — Building a Culture of Creativity

  Creativity is imperative for organizational success. What conditions foster creativity, and how do you make the spirit of creativity a priority in your organization? FORTUNE’s Anne Fisher and a panel of experts from companies on the “Best Places to Work List” identify practical changes that can lead to dramatic results

  • Moderated by Anne Fisher, FORTUNE magazine
  • Rob Keeling, Vice President of Diversity, Capital One
  • William Albright, Quality of Work Life and Benefits Director,
    The MITRE Corporation
  • Sarah M. St. Clair, Director, People Services, Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc.

• 10:45am-11:30 am — Lost Knowledge: The Threat of an Aging Workforce
  

  Learn how shifting demographics threaten the capabilities of our future workforce by examining three critical questions: Why should you care about the threat of lost knowledge in your organization? How does lost knowledge affect performance? How do you retain critical knowledge in the face of major turnover due to an aging workforce?

  • David DeLong, President, David DeLong Associates, author of Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce.

• 11:30 am-12 noon — Book Signing with David DeLong
  (Barnes & Noble)

• 12 noon-1:30 pm — LUNCHEON

  Keynote speaker: “The World is Flat”

  • Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and author of The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

• 1:30 pm-2:00 pm — Book signing with Thomas Friedman
  (Barnes & Noble)

• 2:00 pm-3:00 pm — Creativity in the Department of Homeland Security
  

  Today’s global homeland security challenges demand flexibility. Flexibility and innovation have profound effects on the process of government, from planning through total support of the mission. This presentation provides tools you can use from two of today’s most innovative government leaders.

  • Moderated by Stephen B. Wehrenberg, Ph.D., Chief, Human Resource Strategy and Capability Development, U.S. Coast Guard
  • Deidre Lee, Director of Management and Chief Acquisition Officer, FEMA
  • Vice Admiral Robert Papp, Chief of Staff, U.S. Coast Guard

• 3:00 pm-4:00 pm — How Diversity Contributes to the Creative Economy
  This session offers a practical, compelling case for inclusion and identifies critical issues influencing diversity efforts. With emphasis on results, this session shares proven strategies for overcoming diversity challenges providing you with the essential tools needed to start taking action.

  • Joe Watson, Management Consultant & author of Without Excuses: Unleash the Power of Diversity to Build Your Business

• 4:00 pm-5:00 pm — Life in a Connected World
  Technology has a major impact on everything we do. What’s on the horizon? What are the social implications of increasingly sophisticated networking technology? In a world that is highly influenced by the Internet, what forces are reshaping the social landscape? This panel discussion will offer a comprehensive examination into the growing phenomenon of social networking and what its future holds for you.

  • Moderated by Tom Patterson, President, Command Information
  • Evan Burfield, founder and CEO, Synteractive, Inc.
  • Michael Murray, Vice President, AOL New Ventures
  • Stephen Oronte, Executive Vice President for Network Centric Solutions, Command Information

• 5:00 pm-6:00 pm — Networking Reception
  and Joe Watson Book Signing (Barnes & Noble)

Thursday, October 25, 2007

• 7:00 am-8:00 am — Registration / Continental Breakfast

• 8:00 am-8:05 am — Welcome

  • Gerald L. Gordon, Ph.D., President and CEO, FCEDA

• 8:05 am-9:15 am — How Creative Communities Can Help Build
  a Diversified Local Economy
  

  With a focus on the use of creativity in redefining community concepts to foster innovation and revitalization, this panel discussion examines the critical role communities play in attracting, retaining and regaining creative people.

  • Moderated by Gerald E. Connolly, Chairman, Fairfax County Board of Supervisors
  • John Barrett III, Mayor, North Adams, Massachusetts
  • Robert O’Neill, Executive Direction, ICMA (International City/County Managers Association)
  • Karen Gagnon, Director, Michigan's Cool Cities Initiative

• 9:15 am-10:15 am — Leveling the Playing Field:
  Competing for Creative Talent
  Where is the creative class? How can companies attract and retain the creative class? In addition, what does the creative class look for in a community and a career? FORTUNE’s Anne Fisher and a panel of experts discuss how to get the best creative talent pool in today’s competitive human resource arena.

  • Moderated by Anne Fisher, FORTUNE magazine
  • H. Edward (Ted) Muendel, Co-founder, Stanton Chase International and Senior Fellow, Smith Business School, Entrepreneurial Center, University of Maryland

• 10:15 am-10:30 am — BREAK

• 10:30 am-11:45 am — Developing the Creative Workforce:
  The Role of Education
  This in-depth discussion brings together a panel of educators to provide a big-picture analysis of the role education plays in fueling creative growth. How does education affect creativity? How do we creatively maximize potential? The panel delivers insight into in education’s future challenges and outlines next generation strategies.

  • Jack Dale, Ph.D., Superintendent, Fairfax County Public Schools
  • Robert Kahn, Ph.D., Corporation for National Research Initiative
  • Belle Wheelan, Ph.D., President, Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools

• 11:45 am-12:15 pm — Networking Break
  

• 12:15 pm-2:00 pm — LUNCHEON

  Keynote speaker: "The Economy of the Future,
  Not to be Confused with the Future of the Economy"

  • Alvin Toffler, former associate editor of FORTUNE magazine and author of Future Shock

• 2:00 pm-2:10 pm — An Arts Moment

  • Robert Lynch, President and CEO, Americans for the Arts

• 2:10 pm-3:10 pm — "What's Next for Creativity?"
  Town Hall Discussion
  What's next? A discussion of how companies and communities support their mutual need for a thriving creative economy

• Hosted by Frank Sesno, CNN Special Correspondent and Emmy-award winning journalist

• 3:10 pm-3:30 pm — Concluding Remarks

  • Gerald L. Gordon, Ph.D., President and CEO, FCEDA

• 3:30 pm-4:00 pm — Book Signing with Alvin Toffler
  (Barnes & Noble)

Featured Speaker

Richard Florida

Professor Richard Florida is the author of the 2002 best-seller, The Rise of the Creative Class and the 2005 must-read follow-up, The Flight of the Creative Class.

Thomas Friedman

Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times , Thomas Friedman is the author of the runaway best-seller The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century.

Alvin Toffler

Author of the book Revolutionary Wealth and former associate editor of Fortune magazine, Alvin Toffler literally invented the roll of the futurist with the publication of his seminal work Future Shock.

David DeLong

MIT AgeLab research fellow and and adjunct professor at Babson College, David DeLong is the author of Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce. His firm, David DeLong & Associates, helps companies solve performance and staffing problems caused by an aging workforce and skills shortages.

Joe Watson

Joe Watson is CEO of Without Excuses and StrategicHire, located in Reston, VA. Without Excuses delivers professional development programs across a wide swath of executive skills. StrategicHire specializes in the placement of diverse middle- and senior-level management personnel across a broad range of industries. Watson is the author of Without Excuses: Unleash the Power of Diversity to Build Your Business, published in 2006 by St. Martin's Press.

Anne Fisher

Anne Fisher is a Senior Writer for FORTUNE magazine, where she covers workplace and management topics. Fisher also writes the popular weekly career-advice column "Ask Annie" at CNNMoney.com and is the author of two books, If My Career's on the Fast Track, Where Do I Get a Road Map? and Wall Street Women.

Frank Sesno

Frank Sesno has been chronicling world events as a journalist for more than 25 years. He serves as a Professor of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University (GW) in Washington, DC, and he is a Special Correspondent for CNN where he makes documentaries and works on special projects for the network.

Creativity Quotes

“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.”

— George S. Patton

“The only things in my life that compatibly exist with this grand universe are the creative works
of the human spirit.”

— Ansel Adams

“The creative process is not controlled by a switch you can simply turn on or off; it's with you all the time.”

— Alvin Ailey

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”

— George S. Patton

“It is the supreme art
of the teacher
to awaken joy
in creative expression and knowledge.”

— Albert Einstein

“The question
is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be... The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”

— Martin Luther
King, Jr.

“All creative people want
to do the unexpected.”

— Hedy Lamarr

“Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!”

— Dr. Seuss
(Theodore Geisel)

“There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.”

— Victor Hugo

“We are not creatures of circumstance; we are
creators of circumstance.”

— Benjamin Disraeli

“It may be that those who do most, dream most.”

— Stephen Leacock

“Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.”

— Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.”

— Charles Mingus

“Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem.”

— Brian Aldiss

“Creativity makes a leap, then looks to see where it is.”

— Mason Cooley