Published: June 26, 2008 08:51 am      

Vermilion Advantage to host lyceum

Event to ignite community leadership

DANVILLE — Vermilion Advantage will host member leaders and area representatives in an unprecedented work force development conference on Friday and Saturday.

The event will be led by Elane V. Scott of Birth2Work, a nonprofit organization focused on igniting community leadership around the development of capable people for the future work force, and Rick Stephens, chairman of the Illinois Business Roundtable.

The conference, called the County Lyceum, will be held from 1-9 p.m. Friday and from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, at Danville Area Community College’s Bremer Conference Center, 2000 E. Main St.

Scott and Stephens will lead Vermilion County stakeholders — representing business, government, education, media, health and nonprofit sectors of the county — through a systems-based approach to addressing sustainable work force and economic development issues.

The aim of this first conference is to facilitate the participating stakeholders in creating a common vision for Vermilion County for the future and aligning existing resources in order to move Vermilion County toward a sustainable, successful economic future for its people.

This first County Lyceum will be facilitated over two days. On Friday, Elane Scott and Rick Stephens will introduce individuals, cross-sector teams (representing all broad economic sectors of the county), and county-based teams, to the leadership skills, strategies and processes required to prepare people for sustainable, meaningful lifelong workforce opportunities, and how to build the county infrastructure to support this growth in a relentlessly changing world.

Each sector team will then move to determine what action steps it will need to take as a group that are relevant to the shared future vision and associated measures of success of the county as a whole.

On Saturday, noted television producer, writer (Designing Women, Girlfriends), and author (Gardner’s Guide to Writing and Producing Television, Making Great Television: Four Essential Ingredients), Dee LaDuke will lead participants in a creative follow-up to the events of Day One.

Using the agreed upon values and integrated vision of the stakeholders from Day One as a guide, on Day Two, entitled “Telling Your Story,” LaDuke will employ the principles of writing for episodic television to walk stakeholders through the process of literally plotting their future personal, community and county story lines.

The Illinois Business Roundtable, in recognition and support of the strong Business Clusters and Education partnerships already in place in Vermilion County, is sponsoring this lyceum, nurturing the opportunity for Vermilion County to serve as an example for others facing similar issues nationwide.