15th Annual Conference

Visioning Kentucky's Future:
Measures and Milestones 2008

November 20, 2008

Northern Kentucky Convention Center
Covington, Kentucky

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Dan L. Crippen, former director, Congressional Budget Office
"The Aging of the Industrialized World"

In the United States the number of retirees will soon double, from 40 million to 80 million. This is more than at any point in our history. At the same time, the projection for America’s workforce growth is a mere 10%. The resulting effect is that there will be only two workers for every retiree, putting a tremendous strain on all governmental programs and our society in general. In many other developed countries, such as Japan, Germany and the U.K., rapid aging will be even more severe and challenging. Dr. Crippen discusses the profound implications for the job market and retirement policies, in both the public and private sectors. He explores how the aging of the population will cause business to reverse past policies of encouraging early retirement; how younger workers will be harder to find and more expensive to hire; and how immigration policy is likely to get substantially more liberal.

• AGING: Boomers Defying Conventional Wisdom Even in Tough Times
• ENERGY-ENVIRONMENT: Fueling the Future in a Carbon-Averse Environment
• ECONOMY: Strategies for Energizing Kentucky’s Lagging Economic Progress
• EDUCATION: Education Stakes Rising with Emerging Global Workforce
• FISCAL CHALLENGES: Responding to Tough Times at the State and Local Level
• HEALTH CARE: Getting Healthy or Paying for the Consequences
• MIDDLE CLASS SQUEEZE: American Dream Becoming More Elusive
• TRANSPORTATION: Rethinking Old Assumptions to Build a Sustainable Future
  

A number of trends and forces are affecting Kentucky’s future, both positive and negative that require prompt and highly ambitious responses. On September 24, 2008, over 200 citizens and policymakers met at the Ali Center in Louisville to discuss transformational ideas for moving Kentucky forward. KET’s Bill Goodman will moderate a panel to suggest and evaluate a range of big ideas for catapulting Kentucky forward.

• Lynn Allen, founder of Capital Innovations, Inc., helps clients with the technology, know-how, and human capital to nurture new businesses and commercialize technologies to leverage their networks and relationships into new assets and capital growth. She is a highly-accomplished capital builder who has represented organizations on both the buy- and sell-sides of institutional investing and large-scale partnerships. She has built markets and raised capital for the private, public, and nonprofit sectors and knows how these sectors think, what motivates them, and how they approach strategic relationships and capital investments.
• Bill Bishop, currently living in Austin, Texas, coauthored The Big Sort, a critical look at how “Americans have sorted themselves geographically, economically, and politically into like-minded communities over the last three decades” and the implications for American culture and politics. Bishop and his wife, Julie Ardery, co-edit The Daily Yonder, a web-based publication (dailyyonder.com) covering rural America.
• Dr. Melissa Fry Konty is a Program Associate for Research and Policy at the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED) in Berea. Joining MACED in August 2007, she uses policy research for achieving social justice. Her work has focused on public policy issues ranging from childcare to education as well as mental health to race relations.
• Dr. Ricky Jones is the chair of pan-African studies at the University of Louisville and author of What's Wrong with Obamamania? Black America, Black Leadership and the Death of Political Imagination. His book takes a critical look at the rise of Barack Obama and what it means or doesn't mean for black leadership in post-civil rights America.
• Kris Kimel is President and a founder of the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation, a non-profit company with an international reputation for designing and implementing innovative and broad-scale initiatives and programs, as well as the founder of the international IdeaFestival.
• Jeffrey Manber is a successful international entrepreneur in the technology and space arenas. He is the former CEO of Mir Corporation, the Dutch-based company that leased the Mir Space Station, which negotiated the first tourist in space…Dennis Tito.  Manber also helped lead the creation of the first venture fund focused on space. He  is currently active in global technology initiatives principally in the U.S.,  China, The United Kingdom and Russia. Manber, a frequent contributor on trade and policy issues to international publications, works out of Washington, DC.
• Dr. Melissa Walton-Shirley is a Cardiologist at T.J. Samson Community Hospital in Glasgow, Kentucky, and was trained at the University of Louisville Medical School. Serving on the frontlines of Kentucky’s battle with chronic disease, she strives to improve the quality of life for her patients through effective public policy and responsible individual behaviors.
  

• $30 Registration Fee
• $10 Student Rate
• Group Rate: 5th person free with four paid registrations