You’ve seen the movie,
“Hoosiers,” starred Gene Hackman as
the coach who took a small town ball team to state? “Yeah, figures Dr. D that you’d choose a
basketball movie story seein’ as how our boys are in the playoffs for football,
genius!” Yes I know, but some quotes are
too good to pass up! Be they football, like Denzel Washington, talking to the team
as Coach Boone, of
“Remember The Titans,” at Gettysburg, “this is hallowed
ground.” Or, Gene Hackman, taking his boys into a gym at state that’s huge,
asking them to measure the basketball key, remember that? They measured the net, they measured the key,
and his statement was, “I’ll think you’ll find that the measurements there are
the exact same ones we have back home.”
His point was; it isn’t the size the opponent, it’s the heart of the
competitor, and it’s how you compete; whether we win, lose or draw (can you
have a draw in football?) – If our athletes play their hearts out and play with
good conduct and athletic manners of combat in football, they are winners.
THEY ARE ALREADY WINNERS- GETTING THERE!
Economic Development
carries in the program an idea that somehow we’re going to make businesses
happen, education get better, the infrastructure of the community get better,
the way that the community reports itself to the outside world, become enhanced. In short, the expectations for a good
economic development program need funds; and what we tend to believe is that
those funds will always come from the Federal Government, State government, or
some other source of grant money. Here’s
a shocker- they usually don’t. In major
cities which have huge economic development programs, the majority of the funding
comes from the city leaders. Grant money
can happen, and we’ve been fortunate to have grants approved, but we’ve been
unfortunate to then have the agency approving the grant, not receive enough
money to fund the grant? Interesting
concept; that one is; sort of like, ordering a Cheeseburger, like everybody
else, but only being able to watch other people eat it? Isn’t there a better
solution, in order that, our community can continue to grow, continue getting
there?
Did you catch that,
how we report ourselves to the world sentence? You may have thought “internet,” O.K., think
“internet” as T.V.; see it? How powerful
is the impression left by the first contact with a website? In the case of Universal Studio Orlando (
http://www.universalorlando.com/)
it’s pretty powerful – Harry Potter is front and center; and who, could forget
Harry? In the case of NASA a lot of
really cool things are going on no matter what page you click to (
http://www.nasa.gov/). If you type in Lafayette Louisiana, you get
this (
http://www.lafayettela.gov/)
web site that is aimed at you communicating with them, and visiting them; hmm,
that’s interesting, wouldn’t you say? So
what about Springhill, what do people see if they type into the search engine
Springhill Louisiana? It is in the top
three on Google as a web site, great, but it’s behind, Wikipedia and North
Webster Chamber of Commerce? Is North
Webster Chamber of Commerce, Springhill?
No but we have a nice link middle of their screen; but would a person
have to want to find Springhill to use this?
Here’s the point; surfing facts tell us that when an executive is
looking for a new community to come to, they go to; Google, and they search for
the community- the question you need to ask yourself is, are the sites that
they’re finding about us influencing their choice? Is there any possibility that we might make
our site better, more attractive, more welcoming and more inviting to them to
contact us? When those executives click
on your page
you have 7 seconds to impress them, or they’re gone! We need to perhaps think about what it is
that we want to show them, so that, when it comes to getting them here, we’re
getting there!
