Video Transcripts

[ModSammy]

Hey y'all! Seems to be lots of continued questions about the Mission of mikeroweWORKS.com. While we're still feeling our way so we don't have 'em all, some of 'em have been answered (and asked) in Mike's videos on the home page.

Less than 2 weeks after the launch of this site on September 1st, 2008 and LOOONG before there was talk about putting up a forum, one of you (I'll leave it to the person themselves to let y'all know who they are) was great enough to email a transcript of the first video to the folks at the website's info address. I understand it blew everyone away that someone would go to the trouble. It meant a lot.

I'm putting that transcript up here so ya'll can refer to some of the questions that were answered (and answers that are questioned) in the video. We're intent on continuing the great start and momentum we've got going here and wanna do what we can (if we can) to clarify anything, well, that we possibly can!

Who knows what we'll look like down the road? Who cares? As long as the real mission of brainstorming ideas and promoting discussion of trade and infrastructure is being accomplished, we're all succeeding no matter what the form it has at a particular moment in time. Or at least that's what Charlie and me think, anyway. So - here it is.

P.S. Maybe one of ya wants to transcribe the second video? If you do, email it to "info@mikeroweworks.com" so they can check it over and make sure you didn't miss a semi-colon or something.

Adobe Reader - here ya go:

http://adobe.9-pdf-pro.com/index.asp...A_us&se=google

FYI - the reader is free; the rest of the program isn't. Download the free reader; forget the rest.

Foxit Reader is another one. Like Adobe Reader, it is free.

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rea...own_reader.htm

Hey y'all - Thanks to both of you who did this (apparently it was very helpful to the "info" folks who had the two to compare against) Great job! And now, without further adieu... here is the transcript to #2.

"All right, look at that, in focus and everything. Nice to see you again. It’s been about seven weeks since mikeroweWORKS was officially launched on Labor Day and I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you. Dirty Jobs got real busy. Really, really busy. In fact, I just came from a walnut farm and I’m headed to a rendering plant tomorrow up here in Marysville, California. This is a…I think it’s a Comfort Inn, if you’re interested. Very glamorous. But I did want to take a second just to check in and bring you up to speed on a couple of things.

First order of business is to say thank you. The feedback that’s come into this site has been overwhelming, and every time I wanted to check back over the last couple of weeks, the topography changed. And somebody else would contact me and I figured I’d have something new to tell you.

Basically, CEO’s and presidents of companies are all over this thing. I’ve also been contacted by retired generals from the military if you can believe that. Everybody from the Boy Scouts of America, to the Navy. The issues of declining trades and infrastructure really are near and dear to a lot of people. So we’ve spent some time - I say we - I’ve actually hired some people to go through the feedback so far. And it basically goes into two different categories.

You’ve got what I call the missionary position and the mercenary position. The mercenary position consists of anything, really, that involves money. There are a lot of people who are looking to hire skilled tradesmen and a lot of unskilled tradesmen who have contacted me who are interested in learning a skill but don’t really know where to go or who to pay to make that happen. And I don’t know what to say to that. That seems to me to be the function of a job site. And maybe this site will have an element of that in the future, but I don’t really know how to do it - we’re looking into it.

The missionary position, however, is something I do know a thing or two about and it’s something that you might be able to help with right now. The feedback that I’ve mentioned has already got this started and the conversations that have been going on over on the Dirty Jobs website have been an even better example of what brainstorming can do in this regard. What I mean is, right now, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of non-profit organizations and associations and initiatives all across the country that concern themselves with helping people get into the trades. Apprenticeships and scholarships and the like. They’re everywhere. Some are attached to large corporations and work as non-profits. Others are stand alone; too many to begin to mention. But you’ve started to mention them. And it occurs to me that maybe the logical thing to do in the Wikipedia style is to start creating a reference so a visitor to this site, in a state by state way, can understand what’s available for them where they live. It’s a big undertaking but we can organize it on this end and if the ideas keep coming in on your end it will give us a good place to start. So we’ve set up a forum here on mikeroweWORKS to do that as well. You can continue to chat over in the mudroom if you prefer - it really doesn’t matter. But I just wanted to make sure that the missionary position and the mercenary position were understood. And, that my focus for now anyways, is going to be in the missionary style.

In the meantime, look I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not. But the reason we talked so much about the infrastructure and the trades on Labor Day, aside from the obvious association, was because neither candidate was. And this is one of the first articles that was sent to me the day after this site went up, somebody posted this. Basically you can see the headline: "Infrastructure Goes Unloved At U.S. Conventions". I’m not going to read the whole thing to you, but listen to this. “Not far from the site of a deadly Minnesota bridge collapse, infrastructure investment was hardly mentioned when Republicans gathered to nominate John McCain for President. A similar story at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Barack Obama accepted his party’s presidential nomination with a speech that spoke only in vague passing of rebuilding the infrastructure in U.S. cities." Neither one of these guys has really made the infrastructure an issue. The expert in this article, a guy called Norm Anderson says, “Infrastructure is not among the top five priorities for either candidate, possibly because it isn’t first and foremost in the voters’ minds either.”

And I wonder…I mean, I seriously wonder…because now over the last six or seven weeks, both of them are talking about the infrastructure. I don’t know where they stand specifically on it. Neither has proposed a specific plan that I can tell. And nobody’s really talking about the role of the declining trades, at least in a political way. But it kind of seems like they are. And what I mean is, I’m seeing lots of this: [holds up a Time magazine] This Time magazine I found on a plane flying home from somewhere. There're our guys…look at them all dressed up. McCain’s got his shovel and a little hard hat. And Barack’s got his steel toed shoes and a sledge hammer…all dressed up for work. Why do they do this? I mean, every four years, the people who are trying to get elected, at the last minute, try so hard, to connect with whatever it is they call the “working class”. Remember Hillary doing shots of rye with those steel workers in that barn in Pennsylvania or where ever it was? They saw right through that. And I’m thinking people are probably going to see right through this as well. [holds up magazine again]

Now to be fair, they’re talking about ways to fix up America through a volunteer program. And I think it’s a great idea. Mandatory national service is something that…I mean…why not? There’s a lot of good that could come from it. But, that’s not jobs. Really. And that’s not specifically targeted toward the infrastructure per se.

We just spent 800/850 billion dollars to try and straighten out an economy that most of us can’t even begin to understand. We’ve got a 2 or 3 trillion dollar infrastructure problem and I don’t know what sort of plans exist for it.

So if you’re looking for something else to talk about here in the forum, it’d be personally helpful to me if you have an opinion on which candidate feels stronger about the trades. If there are bills or propositions that are pending that might help cut through some of that, because I’ve read every line of this, and I’ve read about a thousand articles like this, and a lot of people say a lot of nice things, but for the life of me, I can’t figure it out.

Anyway, I’ve been talking for 6 minutes and 40 seconds and that’s about 4 minutes too long. So thanks again for listening. I’ll check back soon. Next week I’ve got a meeting with a retired Major General from the United States Marine Corps who wants to talk about unemployment rates vis-à-vis returning GI’s and the way they can plug in to mikeroweWORKS and some of these apprenticeships that we’re talking about.

So…the missionary position…that’s your mission."

Hey, anybody consider PBS affiliates? They have some cyndicated shows on radio and TV relating to skilled labor, like "Car Talk", "This old House" etc. What about the HGTV Network, The Speed Channel, etc?

I just found a really nice link that MRWs could possibly use to get the word out. It is called School Tube.

http://www.schooltube.com/

mikeroweWorks could add the videos to the site for free and have a channel like on YouTube.

ACTE is already linked on the site...http://www.schooltube.com/user/ACTEMedia



NOLA

A link to a blog site recently interested in MRWs.

http://careertechtesting.blogspot.com/

Gayle

[dirtysal]

Ok, I can't open a pdf file. What do I have to do to get that capability on my computer. Hate to be a pain in the "you-know-what".

Sal

[Redsophia]

I don't understand. Why are you doing this?? Just kidding!

You know, I used to be a secretary and transcribed hours upon hours of law documents. Pretty dry stuff. Mike, you need a transcriptionist? I'm pretty good and rarely mess up the punctuation. Maybe I'll take a shot at the second video. Unless Mike uses too many 10 cent words. Then, you're on your own.

Dani

[rosegirl]

Ok, I can't open a pdf file. What do I have to do to get that capability on my computer. Hate to be a pain in the "you-know-what".

Sal

Me either Sal..Same thing

Kim

[grasshopper]

I can't either..I feel incompetent...

grasshopper

[Redsophia]

You need Acrobat Adobe software to open a PDF file. I saw it. Lots of words strung together into fairly coherent sentences. Which then made up some 2 pages of lengthy paragraphs.

Dani

[rosegirl]

Thanks Dani and Sammy..Got it.

Kim

[grasshopper]

ModSamuel,

I had Adobe 6.0...I guess that's not good enough for Mike....figures doesn't it.
Only the newest and best for Mike...

grasshopper

[jkhnwspec]

ModSamuel,

I had Adobe 6.0...I guess that's not good enough for Mike....figures doesn't it.
Only the newest and best for Mike...

grasshopper

Unfortunately the document was created using Microsoft Word 2007 and you'll need at least Adobe Reader 7.0 to open it.

[grasshopper]

Unfortunately the document was created using Microsoft Word 2007 and you'll need at least Adobe Reader 7.0 to open it.

I got it. I have just been putting off upgrading my Adobe because the 8.0 didn't seem to work properly on my system. The 9.0 appears to work just fine....go figure?!

Thanks for the help everyone.

You know...it's just not the same without the sincere gesturing though.....

grasshopper