Photo courtesy of Howard W. Buffett
Last week, I joined 70 entrepreneurs, entertainers, philanthropists and local leaders from across the U.S. in Washington, DC to discuss and brainstorm new responses to our country’s most pressing issues. I was invited to represent the greater Midwest on behalf of the AIM Institute and Silicon Prairie News.
The Conference on Next Generation Leadership was convened by Howard W. Buffett and the White House’s Office of Public Engagement.
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Photo on left: Howard W. Buffett (left) with Matt Tranchin of the White House. Photo courtesy of Buffett.
The morning featured senior administration officials who discussed innovative White House public-private partnership initiatives, such as Educate to Innovate, Recovery Act, and Let’s Move Partnership for a Healthier America.
Following lunch, the afternoon featured interactive sessions focused on a wide range of leadership and collaborative challenges that are important to us as individual members of our respective communities, as well as global citizens.
Some of the bigger picture questions we looked at, and Buffett recorded in his White House blog post on the conference, included:
Convening
- How do we re-create the public square as we know it? Or how should we create public square 2.0?
- How do we foster impactful conversation in the era of Twitter and 140 characters?
Catalyzing
- What is the government’s role in influencing the social agenda, through policy or through education?
- How do we dramatically increase capital flow to mission-driven investors, entrepreneurs, and historically marginalized communities?
Coordinating
- How do we measure and encourage risk-taking among foundations?
- What are the best metrics of impact, how do we measure engagement, and how do we know when we are done?
For me, this gathering was not only a phenomenal opportunity to connect with other community leaders from across the country, but it also served as motivation to take the energy and information I collected in DC, back home to the Silicon Prairie community.
We must take a strong look at how we currently address our community’s most important challenges and always question, as well as provide new solutions, to the way things have been done before.
Without looking at things through a different lens, we’ll be hard pressed to make incremental change for the collective community on a broad scale.
You can read more on the White House’s Conference on Next Generation Leadership by visiting these links:
- CNN Politics: White House Taps Young Entrepreneurs to Get Things Done
- White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation blog: Conference on Next Generation Leadership
A few additional photos from the event, courtesy of Buffett:
