Thanks to Jim Ellison of Roanoke.com for linking this blog at the NewRiverValley.com website. Those of you who do not receive the print edition of the Roanoke Times and the New River Valley Current should add this page to your bookmarks or get the RSS feed. 

Link: The New River Valley Current - New River Valley news.

I was asked to speak to a 1,000-student Virginia Tech business management class about the transition from college student to young adult and those 10 years in between. By a simple show of hands from the audience, I was intrigued by the following:

• 25% of the students either knew where the Virgina Tech Corporate Research Center was located or what it was
• 10% of the students knew what a blog was (that was amazing)
• 50% of the students are on Facebook.com regularly

One of the points I shared with the students is the plethora of communication channels that are present today are actually isolating generations into specific niche groups. As a result, it becomes more and more difficult to reach Generations X and Y and many Baby Boomers may not have an interest or understanding of the new communication technologies.

One of these niche groups is Facebook.com. It is amazing the maturity of this community and how much time college students (and high school students) spend on it. If you want to reach these college students, Facebook.com is the place to do it. However, unless you are an alumni or administrator, the "registration process" may prevent you from being able to connect to the community. But give it a try. 

The publisher of Forbes magazine, Rich Karlgaard, recently included Blacksburg as one the places he thought you could "Live Rich in College Towns". It also mentions Luna and the Virginia Tech Corporate Reserach Center. This article is in response to his recent visit to the region as the keynote speaker of the Virginia Tech Capital Access Forum sponsored by the NCTC.

Please, all readers, pass this along to as many folks as you can. This is what we have been saying for quite some time and it is the type of publicity that we need.

Link: Live Rich in College Towns - Forbes.com.

This past weekend, I was in Northern Virginia for a wedding. I observed and discussed the lifestyle of people in that area. Yes, there are jobs there, and good jobs indeed, but at what cost. Traffic and commuting time, cost of living (housing), the inability to get connected to the community; and not being able to take advantage of the leisure opportunities in the region contribute to a costly lifestyle.

(1) Traffic and Commuting Time - One person I talked to said that they must wake up at 5 a.m. and be at work by 6:30 a.m. because of traffic. Another spends 2 hours and 15 minutes a day in car commuting. That is over 11 hours per week. Perhaps, the worse thing about traffic is road rage and the trait of impatience that slowly creeps into one’s personality.

(2) Cost of Living - With unstable gas prices, how much do you think a person pays for gas who commutes 11 hours a week (not including weekends)? The cost of housing is so high that some people who have bought houses year ago and have sizeable equity cannot sell and buy another house. These people feel trapped in their current living arrangement.

(3) Inability to Get Connected to the Community - I just did not sense a spirit of community because I could not differentiate between communities. It was all one big community. It is so vast, it’s overwhelming. However, I did experience a unique and friendly religious community on Sunday morning at a Lutheran church. Perhaps that is where community relations are in Northern Virginia.

(4) As a result, of the first three points, it seems that folks who live in Northern Virginia do not take advantage of the plethora of cultural and leisure activities that a big city provides. The time to commute, coupled with the high cost of living, and not having a lot of people to connect with to do these things, cancels out any advantage of living in the larger metropolitan area.

Finally, we drove in Northern Virginia for one hour to get to the wedding and another hour to the reception. That is common in the Northern Virginia region. Yet, for some reason, a 45 minute drive over a mountain with beautiful scenery from Roanoke to the New River Valley and vice versa is a trip too long to take. That paradigm must change for our region to grow and prosper.      

I was speaking to a group of Virginia Tech college students on Tuesday evening about selecting their region of preference to work upon graduation. One student said that she would never stay in this region with her civil engineering degree because there was not enough SHOPPING. Instead, the NC native, said she was going to Atlanta. I urged her to think more broadly about the high cost of living, traffic, time lost in commuting, inability to afford a house in a large metro city, etc. all in exchange for more places to SHOP.

Unfortunately, she is not alone in her thinking. We have far too many college students who are missing the big picture of what the Roanoke and New River Valleys have to offer. On Wednesday, November 16, I am speaking to a 1000-student business management class on why they should consider staying upon graduation. I would appreciate any suggestions you may have to incorporate into this talk.   

It is amazing that in the last 20 years there have been more and more communication channels. As a result, marketers and Baby Boomers are finding it very difficult reaching and communicating with Generation X and Yers. We know from research that 70% of jobs are NEVER advertised and that those unadvertised jobs are uncovered through netwroking and personal contacts.

When teaching a career-placement class at Virginia Tech, I conducted a survey asking graduating seniors what is the number one way you look for jobs. The result was online. Yet, at the time, less than 10% of people got jobs that way. I am not sure what that percentage is now, but it cannot be much higher. 

However, I was on CRAIGSLIST and noticed that the Roanoke and New River Valleys do not have a community. Why is this? Does anyone know? When clicking on Greensboro the link below showed how cheap and effective it was to post jobs on CRAIGSLIST. CRAIGSLIST also says that their number one visited site is the JOBS section. We need to create one of those communities in this region. It is apparent that the workers we want in this region are the same folks who are members of this community. How do we create a CRAIGSLIST community?

http://greensboro.craigslist.org/about/job.boards.html