GAIL PHILLIPS: Good morning. My experience in Talkeetna was much like I'm feeling right now, about 30 years around average and just very outside of my comfort circle, is that what you said?

When FAI offered this opportunity for a scholarship to be a participant at the Institute of the North, I realized this was an opportunity as a young Alaskan to locate myself in this big event that's happening.

My background is in the helping field of psychology and I haven't put much of my energy towards politics or business or economy, but being an Alaska Native however, this is unavoidable. I'm a decedent of CIRI and ANILCA and ANCSA have been a part of my childhood and young adulthood.

So we've covered some of the familiar sessions and discussions that we had during the weekend. I decided to be a part of the community impact session, breakout session. The things that I feel that we really need to focus on are communication between rural Alaska and Anchorage. We need our community leaders to be representative at the table to make certain needs that -- to make sure that the needs of the community are being considered. Along with that we need to require that state agencies brief and update impacted communities on a regular basis. I also think in order to ensure that all the training needs are met we need to have a centralized on-line employment website that includes rural training and intern development. These ideas are all in here so that you can find them.

And communication is a huge part to any success of student's career or a business or a corporation and if we continue and put that forward then I think that will help us prepare for the boom. Thank you.

I'd really like to thank First Alaskans and the Institute for encouraging students and young people to be a part of this discussion. So thank you.

MALCOLM ROBERTS: Thank you. In a minute instead of the traditional Commonwealth North questions on cards that we send up, we've got a couple of open mic's here because we want to do a couple of different things. One is if you have questions of the panelists or anyone else in the room who were there regarding their expertise, we'd like to have those questions.

And then we also have issues come up that need some more brainstorming and we'd like to brainstorm with you -- with this whole group. And if you haven't been involved in brainstorming turn to the back page -- or even if you have turn to the back page of the report and you'll see what's in sort of a box on the bottom left, rules of brainstorming. And I highly recommend this approach in whatever your business or agency or involvement is. But it's a wonderful way to come up with new ideas. And that is basically that everyone is an equal, there are no bad ideas, that it's not allowed to shoot down other people's ideas, the idea is to build on 'em.

And, of course, the big question that goes begging after a thing like this, this -- a Dialogue like this, is what happens to all these great ideas, what -- how do you make them happen? So that might be the theme of us to do a little brainstorming here together before our time runs out at 8:00 o'clock. It's a key issue. I think Rick Barrier, the new Executive Director for Commonwealth North, we've seen over the 25 years of this organization some fantastic studies, some fantastic reports and some of those have resulted in change and some have not. How do we make ideas that can really elevate our state and bring us together happen? So that could be a issue of discussion.

I just felt as I look back on this last Dialogue, one of the really fun things, and we've really made an effort to do this, is to remove partisanship completely from the discussion, to check our political emblems at the door along with our business connections.

And one way we sort of stumbled on it this time that really worked is we had many people there from the Legislature, I think we had five candidates for governor and as any of these individuals spoke we had someone from the other party introduce them. It was great fun, Sarah Palin introduced Chancy Croft, you know, the former president of the senate. And Ethan Berkowitz introduced Governor Hickel.

And, Gail, I guess it was Senator Gretchen Guess who introduced you. And it was absolutely wonderful. And, you know, I remember Gretchen's introduction because she talked about how Gail was her role model for her integrity, her quality of leadership and so on. Here is a democrat complimenting a republican, I don't know how often that's happened in your political career, Gail. But it just removed all that undertone of the political consequences of the comments.

The funniest comment was Ethan Berkowitz introducing Governor Hickel, recalling that when he was sworn in as a district attorney last time Governor Hickel was in office, they couldn't find a bible so the Governor found his old best seller Who Owns America? and swore him in.

And I really want to salute Mead Treadwell who is the managing director of Institute of the North when we started these because I think we now have a place where Alaskans who really want to put Alaska first, who really care about us not just going through -- you know, everyone says oh, well, you'll never deal with spending 'til you have a crash, you know, all these negatives you hear, it -- you know, it's Juneau's always going to be like this. You hear all these sort of negatives that are part of our conversation and our sort of belief system. They don't have to be if you can meet together and find fresh policies and rally people behind them. And I think that's the effort of this Dialogue, we invite you all to be part of it.

And before I turn this open to questions and comments, I have a few thank yous to do. One is to Ira Perman and the Alaska Humanities Forum for financing the publication of this report. Ira, stand up, we really appreciate that.

I've also -- I've already saluted Margie, I don't see where she is now. But that lodge, if you ever have an event where you need to get away from town and really do some long- term thinking, she even arranged -- it was a rainy, crummy weekend, Sunday morning for the whole thing to clear and Denali came out, it was absolutely fantastic. And we're grateful to you Margie I'm not spotting you, where you're sitting. Oh, there you are. Yes. And they made a major financial contribution as well as providing such a wonderful service from the staff and so on.

And you could go through the list of the contributors at the back and see that it's ranged from Shell Oil Company to some of our smaller companies in town and in the state. So we're grateful for all of those sponsors.

I want to thank my wife, Cindy, for the photographs in the report. She had a little support from Ira and a couple others, but they really add a tremendous amount to it and to the staff of Institute of the North for doing such a great job.

But now let's throw it open to questions, just come to the mic and let's also talk about follow up and, Larry, you were there. Larry Wiget from the school district was on the education committee and went right into action. I think you even left early. Larry, come on up and tell us about it.

LARRY WIGET: Thank you, Malcolm. I think we've kind of reached a tipping point in terms -- and this -- maybe Talkeetna Dialogue was the tipping point for greater emphasis in the state in K-12 and post-secondary education, for greater emphasis on workforce development and career development opportunities.

One of the things that was it was really was really one of the haunting thing of the day that we did the discussion in the breakout groups from the education group was who's going to be responsible for the follow up, what's going to happen following this conference? And normally what happens in all our experiences in years in working in government, even non- government, that a number of reports and issues wind up sitting on the shelf.

As I said however, this was a tipping point, 15 minutes prior to my leaving for the Talkeetna experience I was going to meet with Carol Comeau, the School Board, the mayor and the Assembly. The discussion literally 15 minutes before I left for Talkeetna was workforce development and career opportunities and how we're going to meet the challenges here in Anchorage.

Following the conference several things happened within the education community to further the agenda and workforce development critical to opportunity. And on page 13 you'll find a resolution passed by the Anchorage School Board in September as part of its legislative priorities for the coming year. In addition to that that resolution was taken forward to the Alaska Council of School Administrators for a series of meetings. The first meeting was with the Alaska Council of School Administrators which consists primarily of the superintendents and has representation from the University as well. They passed a resolution which is in here as part of the Coalition on Workforce Development and Career Opportunities. Included in that is also the Elementary School Principals Association and the Secondary Principals Association and the Alaska Financial Executive Officers are currently looking at that today.

What's not mentioned in here as you'll find as well as last week at the Alaska State Chamber of Commerce one of their position papers relative to education was reinforced with additional emphasis on career development and workforce opportunities for all. I think it's significant because I think it's kind of the first time that I've seen where we've actually taken -- we can see a discussion about something and actually some concrete action being taken that will move hopefully in a very positive way the issue forward. Thank you.