For a Missouri lobbyist and our media productions team, being a corporate sponsor of this weekend’s USS Missouri commissioning was a rare opportunity. For a moment, we were able to depart from the Missouri General Assembly, show-me state politics, and even the Fortune 500 arena of government affairs, to enjoy some sessions dedicated to preserving American freedom.

Yes, the ceremonies in Groton, CT still applied many of the usual special event dressings of our state & federal legislative world: two Governors shaking hands, several Members of Congress worked by Pentagon public relations brass, and many other constituencies lobbying for the new new thing.

But beyond the tweets and public speeches, you could still believe in the triumph of the American spirit coming together for a capital project on this scale. Governor Jay Nixon, fresh from his trip from Afghanistan, gave weight to the large number of Missourians sorted into the Naval Pier. Congressman Ike Skelton gave several living history examples from his family and beyond about how important such military efforts have been to the battled history of our democracy. Commander Rexrode and his dedicated team of submariner advocates gave incredible witness to the future of our global security using stealth-based technologies. All in all, watching the campaigns from various contractors, leaders, and public figures come together into one $1.8 billion vessel served as a sincere inspiration.

For Rachel and I, there were several personal reminders from this experience worth noting:

Our American government can still lead global innovation, but it must be remain accountable to every taxpayer.

Part of what made everyone affiliated with the USS Missouri so proud was that SSN780 was delivered in 65 months, ahead of schedule, and under budget by nearly $100 million. The sense of accountability and transparency among defense initiatives is now enabling a further expansion of the Naval fleet into FY 2011.

For States fortunate to still host American military bases or strategic assets, use it or lose it as your economic hub.

We were surprised to learn from the Governor of Connecticut that $8M of state monies have been appropriated to help expand the Groton base infrastructure. It seemed as if everyone from this region was keenly-aware that economic activity from these initiatives were as important (if not more certain) as doling out state industrial incentives for Pfizer, Ford, or Bombardier. We wonder if the same understanding is true among the Show-Me State’s Ft. Leonard Wood, Whiteman Air Force Base, and Southern Illinois’ Scott Air Force Base.

For those who doubt what discipline, leadership training, and team focus can do, stare into the young eyes of our nation’s soldiers.

When you look at the front lines of what defends our freedom today, it is hard not to be amazed about how well we can serve with the right structure in place. We should always challenge our next generation in all industries to pursue excellence, apply your best work ethic, and to work for a team for which you would give your life. It was heartening to know that the Saint Louis Science Center broadcast this commissioning live to help show others how to apply science.

The positive network effects from military science and technology has helped all Americans greatly today.

What economists would hail as positive network externalities are likely nowhere more accurate than from projects like the SSN780. As a private pilot, we flew to this excursion with a retired USAF bomber & A-10 pilot, and a retired army manager. During our discussion about how planes flew a generation ago, I was reminded just how military technology has been instituted within today’s system of general aviation. Our transponder codes to avoid mid-air collisions: once used as “identify friend or foe” fighter jet communications. Our tough, sturdy landing gear: aided greatly by “controlled crash” landings on Navy aircraft carriers. I can only imagine what SSN780 will do for us in the future once declassified.

Leadership and celebrity coach Anthony Robbins has said that: “It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.”

Commander Rexrode, may your destiny and decisions help shape many lives through peace in our time. The roads you take may be lonely, but vital to our society.

Growing up on a family farm in Southeast Missouri, we never gave much thought to the wide seasonal swings within our local weather. Today, as a pilot, and as a former corporate government affairs manager traveling across more than 20 states, I have come to enjoy the Show-Me State’s four distinct seasons. August is cherished more for what it leads to (NCAA & NFL Football, cool fall nights, and the conclusion of fall general elections), than for what it means to me in the present. September is near, and Missouri’s meteorological masterpiece called the month of October will soon be as well.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “travel makes a man wiser but less happy.” That same challenge must apply to those who serve our country. Take a look at this video of the Typhoon class of nuclear submarines that the Russians have deployed until 2019 and think about the dedicated lifestyles that all seamen must endure. Months at sea, under the water, ice, and sunset waves. Rigorous training in tight quarters for a phone call that should never come. Years away from family and friends as landlubbers like us enjoy the freedoms of our weekends and nights.

It seems easy to believe that these jobs must be filled by Nordic orphans raised by seals off the coast of Latvia. The truth is that our United States Navy depends upon native Missourians like you and me to keep our seaways secure from Somalian pirates, foreign occupations, & nuclear holocaust.

That’s why Pelopidas, LLC is so proud to have helped the USS Missouri Submarine produce this video:

While many friends won’t be able to see the most advanced naval ship ever built this weekend, there are other ways that you can help with small donations.

At your office, encourage your colleagues to raise a mug to celebrate a new chapter of Missouri history (login as “mightymo” promo code). Dedicate a corporate gift to become a corporate sponsor this fall. Take a moment to educate a child about how science and technology can be used in dramatic ways to protect our freedoms.

In part three of this blog series, we will post up photos and news from our trip to Groton, CT where Missouri elected officials like Congressman Ike Skelton dedicate this vessel to America. As I think about small town Missourians diving off the Atlantic coast into the abyss, the humid days of August already seem a lot cooler.

Quotes from the 1990 Movie: “The Hunt for Red October,” where Sean Connery fantasizes about American freedom after a life at sea:

Capt. Vasili Borodin: I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pickup truck… maybe even a “recreational vehicle.” And drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?
Captain Ramius: I suppose.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: No papers?
Captain Ramius: No papers, state to state.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: Well then, in winter I will live in… Arizona. Actually, I think I will need two wives.
Captain Ramius: Oh, at least.

This week, a Washington Post article about the risks that air medical emergency response teams face reminded me how often state & federal healthcare lobbyists forget the vital role that pilots with paramedics play.  The focus of that story had to do with the family lives lost to tragedy and inclement weather in duty – something that all private pilots know deserves more attention for the work that they do.

Maybe it’s just my love for general aviation that captures me to the beat of their rotors.   Maybe it’s my decade of experience lobbying for healthcare matters.  Every time that I see a BJC helicopter coming in or leaving out from Barnes-Jewish Hospital, I think about the times that I have known someone on that flight, or someone who needs it the most at that very moment.  Recently, it was my father-in-law being air-lifted to University Hospital, when an extensive crew did everything that they could to ease his pain.  Decades ago, I recall being near a fatal car accident in Perry County when it only took 15 minutes for an air evac ambulance to arrive from St. Louis, MO.  Even in rural mid-Missouri near Jefferson City or Columbia, I often see life flights to transport vital organs, blood supplies, and unique services across our river’s edge throughout the night.

I strongly recommend every child having a chance to see a helicopter team like this in a non-urgent situation.  In 1999, in Springfield, MO, I toured a hospital during the State Chamber of Commerce Leadership Missouri grassroots issue tours around each region.  Sometimes, healthcare facilities offer open houses where such tours are offered on site.  In order to understand how and why costs can be so high, it takes some first-hand knowledge of what this kind of operation crew requires to function.

As a border to many states, Missouri’s export of healthcare services is often extended by air in this fashion.  Many citizens may not take time to realize that access to care from top notch physicians – including anesthesiologists, cardiac surgeons, neuro surgeons, and trauma physicians – depends upon air lifts to urban core areas.

So, as we reconsider how our state laws, regulations, and practices related to adverse events might be improved in the next year’s legislative session, we should remind each other of the techniques like this that make our access to care uniquely-possible between our urgent care, surgery centers, & major hospital networks.  When we limit our reimbursements for how doctors can see patients, someone on the other end of that 911 call may not get the urgent help that they deserve.

Today marks the first day of public school in the newly-inspired Innovation Concept Academy.  The St. Louis community, and America-at-large, owes a lot to the courage of one man – Judge Jimmie Edwards.  In less than six months, he has embarked on what others might say would be nearly impossible:  1) to assume ownership of a new community school that exists outside the lines of a public school, 2) to unite a diverse coalition of public and private interests together to enrich the learning environment, and 3) to lobby for real, no excuse community change for youth who need it the most.

From a political perspective, the Innovation Concept Academy hits on all five of the recommended steps on which now Governor Jay Nixon campaigned last year.  His five points were:  to invest in public school options using public-private partnerships, to recruit talented teachers to challenged districts, to reduce class size, to re-establish local community support, and to make sure that alternative schools are available and effective.  The Academy seeks to challenge all of the obstacles facing those children who often get lost in the public school system without effective mentors, dedicated instructors, and guardian engagement.

This Tuesday, we accompanied Rex Sinquefield with Judge Jimmie Edwards on a walk-through of the Blewett school facility.  We are excited to report that the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis will be partnering with the Academy to build a dedicated room to teach chess with its curriculum.  It is our hope that students can improve their math, science, reading, and critical thinking skills using a life sport like chess in a variety of environments (for classroom instruction, after-school partnerships, supplemental learning, and as a means to connect to our greater community).  If successful, such a model might provide a road map for urban progressives, mayors, governors, and civic patrons to do the same around the country.

In the coming months,  Room 103 will transform itself with the opening fall classes into a dynamic place to learn the game of chess.  Public school teachers, including educators as part of the AFT Local 420 Teacher’s Union have agreed to fill the classroom with ambitious goals of instruction (and smaller class size).  The Metropolitan Police Department of the City of St. Louis are moving in a sub-station to assist the facility with mentoring and community needs.  The community arms have even opened to accept other instructors from a wide variety of parish school environments. The manner by which so many organizations, from MERS Goodwill to local celebrities, have come together, can help pave the future of new school design.

Good luck Judge Edwards and Innovation Concept Academy.  Our children, our entire community, and our nation of neighborhoods, needs your model to succeed.

Rex A. Sinquefield with Judge Jimmie Edwards

Judge Edwards shows new classroom monitors to Rex Sinquefield

Future Chess Salon

]]> http://www.pelopidas.com/philanthropy/brave-education-st-louis-public/feed 0 http://www.pelopidas.com/blog/network-major-league-future http://www.pelopidas.com/blog/network-major-league-future#comments Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:13:27 +0000 travis http://www.pelopidas.com/?p=666 By Rachel Keller Brown and Travis H. Brown

Recent dealings with sports celebrities and major league greats like Cardinals legend Bob Gibson can remind us the important role that we all can play in our own social networks.  Long after his 1981 Hall of Fame induction, a St. Louis Cardinal like Bob Gibson can remain an important civic figure off the field: as a coach, mentor, role model, and inspiration. 

In the context of baseball, these titans of roundball help us place value on the sport’s accomplishment, talent, and tenacity.  Off the mound, the role of celebrity can be leveraged in many ways:  raising money for charity, giving voice to important causes, volunteering your time for awareness, and building unique relationships across many walks of life.

Rachel Keller Brown, Pelopidas, with Bob Gibson (July 2009 All Star Weekend)

Celebrity brands offer punch and potency inside a sea of public noise and media clutter.  So, as consumers take control of their own media channels one iphone or blackberry at a time, it’s not a surprise that those that lobby from a known industry reputation will fare much better than those who remain in cyber-silence.

This week’s Wall Street Journal story shows us more about how consumer movements may occur.  Major League Baseball is bringing live baseball as an iphone application.  First, you merge the influence and flexibility of the mobile device platform that has great picture and video capability.  Second, you target a demographic market and loyal fan audience that buys direct from their ultimate network:  their entire league (already at 400,000 subscribers at MLB.TV).  Third, once you prove that live streaming is more valuable than local television broadcast, it’s game time for all venues, not just out-of-market events. 

One can only imagine how exciting it may be in the future when individual URLs load up a creative celebrity encounter, clock their own radar during the next fast-pitch, or videocast to their grandmother the latest score.  New technologies like these don’t have to be feared by personalities of interest.  We believe that, with integrated marketing and media strategies, access to these tools may make your star power even more entertaining. 

Imagine the potential value of real-time brand metrics via mobile devices when President Obama unveiled his White Sox uniform before the Cardinals All-Star crowd.  In the not-so-distant future, the President may want to text you back a personal message in the grand stands, like, “It could be worse.  It could have been a Chicago Cubs jersey.”  Real-time responses related to your market reactions might be used to fellow Cubs fans to find others in the stadium, and for local vendors to peddle Chicago-styled merchandise.

If you question the value of your network’s ability to respond, engage, & expand under these new consumer rules, maybe it’s time to upgrade your tools to become Major League.

Long before I ever pondered the blurred careers as lobbyist, fundraiser, and promoter, I enjoyed my boyhood days on our family farm in Southeast Missouri.  We grew up walking soybean fields, baling hay, and adjusting to the natural seasons along the ole man river, the Mississippi.  I didn’t realize back then how much our lives ebbed and flowed due to the river’s edge.  Nearly every other spring, at some high water mark, we had to move our machinery and equipment out of the fields for fear of rising flood waters.

My mother, to this day, sees water as an encroachment, somehow bound to interrupt her way of life from time to time.  She lobbied against anything playing in the water, mainly because she was raised managing its limiting moves.  I had always heard about the great flood of 1973, when the levee adjacent to our bottom land broke under pressure to invade over 20,000 acres of crops.  I remember my father describing a levee hole nearly 100 feet deep and several hundred feet wide, littered with debris. It took bulldozers months to reform the banks.

Most years, flood damage was a commercial nuisance, not an immediate threat to our lives.  However, I witnessed the awesome force of flood surge truly in the Missouri flood of 1993, when an alleged 100 year event (just 20 years later) hit our entire region hard.  Since our home farm was in the Ozark foothills, we helped sand-bag the levees, rescue neighbors, and manage the anxieties.  However, my father was on the island the day that the levee broke.  It took less than six hours to fill up an entire 20,000 acre island with nearly sixteen feet of Mississippi River.

The story of tragedy always seems easiest to tell at the climax of its terror, rather than the loneliness it often leaves behind.  At the peak of Missouri’s flood pressure, armies of volunteers, Dan Rather CBS News, and the American Red Cross all joined our advocacy efforts.  However, the untold story that hangs with me now are all of the community faces that chose never to return.  Without a house on stable foundation, our neighbors’ heirlooms never were rebuilt.  Many retirees, the keepers of our local culture’s memories, never came back to Kaskaskia Island.

One year prior to this experience, I recalled the last lines of the movie “A River Runs Through It,” that seemed to sum up the immortality of my campaign for meaning:

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.” – by Norman Maclean

9th Ward June 2009

Empty Lot

Recently, we saw the hostile water’s undertaker downstream in another town known for triumph over misery – New Orleans, LA.  We toured the Lower Ninth Ward extensively with a retired New Orleans police officer.  He rode out Hurricane Katrina with his dog just fine, but later had to evacuate by helicopter from his attic due to the federal flood protection failure in more than 50 places.

On August 29 this year, it will have been four years since our nation was humbled by this disaster.  I was stunned to learn just how far behind the politicians, wards, and school buildings were so long after our federal government tried to respond.  The pictures and video links (see video here) in this article remind me how important individuals, not institutions, are to restoring human progress.  Still today, the plight of each block varies dramatically by the conditions that each plot of land were dealt.  An estimated 40% of local citizens in this ward still haven’t returned.

New Orleans has never stayed completely down for too long, however.  I was inspired to witness the advocacy of many celebrity philanthropists, working with local charities and neighborhood associations.  At ground zero, a new concrete levee buttresses the new home construction of “Make it Right Foundation New Orleans.” Thanks to Missouri native Brad Pitt stepping forward to give voice on Larry King Live, the Charlie Rose Show, and the Today Show, new innovative storm-resistant structures are being erected.  Ellen DeGeneres is running a MIR homes challenge that even has a “Missouri Cares” team.

Musician's Village

Fats Domino Home

Even with such strong celebrity brands advocating for community change, in person you can see how many battles still lie ahead.  Less than five houses from Fats Domino’s personal residence, many homes remain in disarray.  The conception of musicians’ village, by Harry Connick, Jr and Branford Marsalis, has shown wonderful color and progress touring down Alvar Street.  However, many basic homes remain without targeted remodeling.

As an outsider to New Orleans, it’s plain to see how more celebrity giving could do more from individuals speaking candid about remaining needs on the ground.  Locals will easily offer up how frustrated and cynical they are waiting for a government institution to solve the problem.  To the other professional athletes, entertainers, & publicists wondering if this should be your cause, your brand advocacy is needed now more than ever.

It’s hard not to be bothered by observing such a stark gap between what America is, and what we believe it always should be.  So, it’s left us thinking about small ways that we can maintain a call to action.  Back in St. Louis, maybe a cajun crawfish boil meetup supporting these foundations?  Already in the works in less than a month.  Reaching out to educate others about today’s state of events – happening now.  A return visit to New Orleans with volunteers?  Definitely if we can swing it for a worthy local coalition.

Perhaps the water’s haunt can serve as our own personal reminder to always give back to others, regardless of who is watching.

Harry Connick Jr. Homes

Empty Chair Memorial

Future Pumps of NO

Ground Zero