The framework

I've decided to eliminate the pressure to translate my thought-burps into coherent posts, and henceforth shall document my actual notes without necessarily framing them into something that could be understood by anyone but me. That said, if these scribbles do make sense, or inspire commentary, please feel free to ask questions or hurl ridicule. Collaborative conversat-ing is the whole point.

What follows are some notes I jotted into a notebook on one of my flights to and from Miami this year.

Education.

Residential program

Student body:

• Section 8 housing
• Foster kids
• Others in the system? homeless? on probation?

Age group: middle school.

The middle school years have been targeted as a critical point in a student's personal development where an intervention may successfully redirect a student's focus while developing life-long interests.
- Teaching Success, from the Spring 2008 Dwight Hall at Yale newsletter

--> How to matrix in with other social services' agencies?

• ACS
• juvenile detention
• Youth At Risk
  
• etc.?

--> Cross-reference with institutions of higher learning

• PhDs in Education
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Social work

Scaleable should not be the goal -->
"scaleable" = "thing-centered"; "scaleable" <> "person-centered" -->
must be at all times a person-centered endeavor

--> Can the Deep Springs model work for urban youth?
--> Do we want it to?

Funding sources?

Keep labor costs low; source talent a la Teach for America --> partner w/Teach for America?

Operations:
--> put together in a detailed roadmap / func spec?

Board of Advisors:

• Former U.S. Grant leaders (Gastic, King, Abbott, Morales, Falcon?)
  
• Else?

--> Find a template for the documentation of this & begin socializing
--> Mixers & teas to circulate ideas & brainstorm?
--> Who else cares about education issues?

At what point does the exercise become a burdensome, paternal imposition of values?

[What exercise is not an imposition of a moral code?]

Unsolved, earlier questions:

• How can we systematically share information across multiple touch-points in order to more effectively serve the underserved?
• How can we democratize access to "high culture" such as classical music?
  

Asset-level tracking

• I understand that out of context the phrase "asset-level tracking" seems a bit dehumanizing
• And by bit I mean entirely
• But in this regard I want you to think of a human as an asset
• And particularly, a human in need, at risk, what-have-you
• So this asset interfaces with various gov't agencies and NFPs
• And these agencies and NFPs have ostensibly similar goals
• But none of these third parties x-ref with the other third parties w/r/t said asset
• There is no master that ties activities mapping against said asset together
• And thus, policy impacts or other attempts at reaching the "ostensibly similar goals" are difficult to measure and correlate
• So, as opposed to marketing, where we have asset-level tracking and can version control and/or (assuming an appropriately designed database) calculate customer lifetime value, no such analogue exists in society
• This is a problem
• Because I say it is
• QED

Yo:

• Our world is a big big place
• Non-urban environments are not the default
• People don't talk to each other any more (doctors don't make house calls; teachers don't know the parents of their students personally)
• If social workers and teachers and ER docs and etc. etc. etc. could all share information about Ty (hypothetical asset) in order to identify problems and thus root causes in order to architect solutions ...
• Wouldn't that be cool? And more human? And better for society? And cheaper in the long run?

I have no idea what to do with all of this. Create roundtables or regular meet-ups for people who serve zip-code based constituencies? Require signing of abandonment of privacy laws for a discrete list of service providers? Bomb cities and force people to live in caves?