Introduction to the Vibrant Maine Economy Web
Conference
Robert Kennedy, President, University of Maine: "On the
behalf of the University of Maine, I want to welcome you to this
Vibrant Maine Economy online conference. The University of Maine
has been providing information, valuable and useful information,
to people all across the state in a variety of formats for many,
many years. And we are delighted to be able to do that this time
with the partnership and collaboration and generosity of Bangor
Savings Bank."
Yellow Light Breen, Senior Vice President, Bangor Savings Bank:
"And on behalf of all of us at Bangor Savings Bank, welcome to
this virtual conference. As Maine's largest independent bank we
employee over 600 people across the State of Maine, but our
success as a business is fundamentally dependent on the
prosperity of the 100,000 households and businesses that we work
with everyday. In other words, if the Maine economy does not
thrive and grow, there is no way we can continue to thrive and
grow as a Maine business. As a neighbor and community member, we
also have an investment in making sure that Maine is a viable,
sustainable place to live and to raise families for a long time
to come and so we are really pleased to be part of this project
on the Vibrant Maine Economy."
Robert Kennedy: "As we all stretch to meet the challenges of
today, public-private partnerships are an important way for the
University and private organizations, like Bangor Savings Bank,
to reach out and provide information that's valuable to the
citizens of Maine and to the communities. And that's something
that Bangor Savings Bank and the University of Maine all across
the state have been doing for many, many years."
Yellow Light Breen: "The University of Maine is just an enormous
asset for the state of Maine and we were pleased that the School
of Economics is reaching out to try to make their expertise
around the economy relevant to leaders and policymakers outside
the university's walls. In areas like workforce development, the
creative economy, innovation, the demographic trend, the issue
that are going to shape the future of our economy, not just
today but for the next 20 years. So, as part of our over
$1,000,000 that we invest a year that we invest back into the
community, we are pleased to make one of our investments this
partnership with the University of Maine on Vibrant Maine
Economy. We hope you will benefit and take something away from
the expertise in this online conference."
John Mahon, Dean, College of Business, Public Policy & Health:
"About 18 months ago, three local area businessmen came and
spoke to me and they were saddened about how often we speak
about how poor things are going with the Maine economy. And how
that can impact how people think and believe what the state is
or is not doing. These three individuals were General Nelson
Durgin, Mark Woodward and John Simpson. And what they wanted to
do was put together a conference that would highlight the good
things about the Maine economy and where the Maine economy could
move forward in a positive way to offset some of the negative
images and analysis that we are constantly bombarded with. I
then, as a result of that, approached Dr. George Criner, the
director of the School of Economics, and asked him if he would
think about taking on this project. Thankfully and thoughtfully,
he agreed to do so, and what you are about to see in a short
period of time is this project. George?"
George Criner, Director of the School of Economics: "Thank you,
Dean Mahon, for bringing your leadership and bringing that to
our attention. We think it is a very exciting project and one of
several initiatives of the School of Economics. The School of
Economics came about in July of 2007, with the merging of the
Department of Economics and the Department of Resource Economics
and Policy. It has given us the critical mass for several
initiatives including the economics lab, where students can go
for help. In the near term, to help with individuals and
businesses with this bad economy, we have created the household
financial education initiative and we're putting together a
business assistance program right now.
So, in addition to those initiatives, this Vibrant Maine Economy
is one that we have been focusing on and we are really looking
forward to the new format, cost savings, state policymakers
won't need to drive to Orono to see this and so we're very
excited about this format. It's something that we want to bring
about on a more regular basis. I would like to thank Bangor
Savings Bank for their support; President Kennedy and Vice
President of Bangor Savings, Yellow Light Breen, for their nice
introduction; and the other deans that have other faculty
participating in the project. We have Dean Ashworth from Natural
Science, Forestry and Agriculture and Director of Cooperative
Extension, John Rebar. At the end of this, there are comments
from Peter Vigue, Chairman of Cianbro Industries, and Cate
Reilly, the Maine State Economist; I wish to thank them for
their comments.
In addition, the University Relations, Joe Carr, Ron Lisnet and
Chris Smith are very helpful with production assistance. The
faculty are a very important part of this; we have Drs. Gabe,
Hunt, Porter and Trostol. Dr. Todd Gabe and Jim McConnon were
the driving force. Jim McConnon is the interviewer you will see
and he has a split appointment with Cooperative Extension and
the School of Economics. Dr. Todd Gabe looks at the knowledge
economy and how important knowledge in certain areas are
important for high wages and salaries. And he suggests that we
don't look at what people make but what they know, and that we
bolster knowledge in these key areas. Gary Hunt looks at the
brain gain vs. the brain drain in Maine, and I was surprised and
you may be too, to see that Maine actually gains more people
with college education than we lose. So, we actually have a net
brain gain in the State of Maine. Most of these workers are
older than most leaving the state but they bring with them a
wealth of experience in addition to their college degree. Dr.
Terri Porter--hers differs a little bit in that she's not
focused on knowledge so much as she is the pace of competition
and the accelerated competitiveness, the product life cycle and
even company life cycles are much quicker now. We've seen some
big players, big stores come into Maine and restaurants and so
on. We see things coming and going at a lot faster pace and
she's looking at bottoms up, bottom up business innovation and
trying to get everyone in the company from top to bottom to keep
generating ideas and focusing and moving forward. It reminded me
a little bit of Jim Collins' book Good to Great, which is a very
well documented book on leadership and success. The final
presentation is Phil Trostol, who looks at the labor market and
points out that the labor market is different than some other
markets in that supply is related to demand and that if you
produce more college graduates, jobs tend to follow. And so he
is focusing on the importance of college education and the value
of education. We should try to reduce the cost as much as
possible, fund it to the extent that we can and try to increase
the quality of higher education. So, we hope all four of these
will help the Maine economy in the long run and we look forward
to interacting with the public in a variety of ways with follow
up with these."
