Naturally, most of the watercooler talk today swirls around Tuesday night’s State of the Union address: Did you watch? What did you think? Where were the specifics? Did you like Michelle Obama’s dress/John Boehner’s tie? What did you think of the bipartisan seating? How come he barely talked about health care/tax reform/etc.?
For my part, yes, I did watch (If you didn’t, here’s the
I have no formal comments on the first lady’s dress or the Speaker’s tie, but I thought that — despite the teasing lawmakers endured over the prom night feel of the seating arrangements — the bipartisan seating worked well.
As for the specifics of the speech, well, there weren’t many. But I was struck by, in the
It reminded me of a 2009 EBN article by Edward Gordon that spoke directly to employers about the importance of preparing for just this moment in history — when millions of scientific, technical, engineering and mathematically based (STEM) jobs would remain open, despite a brutal recession and high unemployment.
"In May [2009], with more than 14 million unemployed in the middle of a severe economic downturn, 3 million STEM jobs still were vacant,” Gordon wrote. “From 2010 to 2020, the United States faces the prospect of 12 million to 24 million vacant jobs. We do not have a labor shortage, but rather a skilled talent shortage."
While most of you are practitioners not professors, I encourage you to
Other scribblings from my notepad from Tuesday night: the room was at its most quiet when President Obama proposed a five-year freeze on nondefense spending—you could almost see the thought bubble over some lawmakers’ heads, "Uh oh."
The biggest laughs came from a joke about
What did you think of SOTU 2011? What topics did you think the president covered well and/or poorly? Maybe they were addressed in the post-speech forum, hosted by administration officials (
As always, please share your thoughts in the comments.