e-learning industry

I am involved in the e-learning industry, and was the Vice President of the Alberta New Media Association, as well as one of the founding members of the CeLEA group.As someone who works in government and media relations I do have some faith that one can influence government. How it is done is the key, and most don't do it right.The 'issues we are talking about just aren't vote getters,' is that most doing the talking are in the ivory towers, or buried somewhere in a lab. There has been no concentrated effort to take these issues out and explain how they related to the people on the street. The problems with the way our provincial and federal governments have been able to ignore our post secondary schools for so long, are exactly the same. Not many outside the halls of the ivory towers, realize the contribution to a vibrant society that a university or college makes to a country or community.Government always hinders when they are not working from a place based in reality. That includes bureaucrats too. Governments can be steered to help, if all that includes is getting out of the way. There are several things the government at any level come to the table with. One is land and buildings not being used, or not being used to their potential. The other is the ability to reduce and erase taxes on specific targets, so that the people in that budding industry can get a footing. There are many areas in the world that do this. Specifically exporting countries. Something Canada use to be very good at.
The other area, would be to make sure the touring politicians can be effective salespeople for the technology industry back here in Alberta, and not just for our oil and gas.
One small thing I have been working on is getting the City of Calgary to consider hiring a futurist. It is moving slowly as it is radical idea. Mind you, Columbus or Drake both had radical ideas, and both achieved them, and that is why we are here today in North America.
We must stop looking at this situation with a rear-view mirror, and look ahead.

We must also stop using all of these alphabet soup things, because those of us in the real world and not in the halls of the ivory towers or bureaucracy don't know what they mean and wonder if we should, if the only ones that do, are those that wrote them.
I never say die.