"Deep Concern" or Rays of Hope?

While the economy continues to slip, efforts to transform it, like 3D Squared's work in Metaplace, explore how we can recover.

NPR Reported today: "President Obama said Thursday he is 'deeply concerned' about unemployment. The remarks to The Associated Press came after the Labor Department said U.S. businesses shed 467,000 jobs in June and that the unemployment rate increased to 9.5 percent." (Website, Shadow Government Statistics says it is actually more like 17%.) For a more detailed examination of why the President has reason to be concerned, see this dramatic series of charts on The Big Picture, illustrating long-term predictions of how the devastation on the workforce is likely to continue well into 2010.

Amidst this sturm und drang, innovative efforts to transform the economy are moving forward. Just last week, our favorite non-profit 3D Squared completed its capstone Digital Workforce Intensive in Lafayette, Louisiana. We have written about the work of 3D Squared before (see two April 2009 articles, "How I Became a Virtual World Believer" in VentureBeat and "Digital Workforce Initiative Transforms Gulf Coast Job Prospects" in the Carnegie Council's Policy Innovations magazine).

Recent coverage of last week's Digital Workforce Intensive ran in the Louisiana's The Advocate, and was picked up by a number of blogs including gaming blogs GamePolitics.com and Destructoid. "With 97% of teenagers playing, games are the future of learning, work and human collaboration."

As Rita J. King put it in her April article:

This approach could be revolutionary for Louisiana because the number one reason students drop out is lack of engagement with the educational system—they simply aren't interested. They are definitely interested in games, and are motivated to learn when lessons are framed in relation to games. In learning how to collaborate on the creation of games, students are being prepared for related collaborative opportunities, such as participation in the state's increasingly robust mixed media and film production industry and the creation of simulated virtual training environments.

In learning how to design games, kids are also learning the most important skills to compete across sectors in the 21st century. Creative collaboration and fluency within the digital culture are modern necessities. Most importantly, people can work within these fields from their own communities without feeling the necessity to leave and find work in cramped urban centers.