Life-Long Continuing Higher Education Initiatives Happening NOW in The New Urban DT Mesa

Nobody paid three consults $25,000 each [taking some money out what was designated to fund the budget for The Parks & Recreation Department here in the City of Mesa] to come up with some multi-million ideas for new construction in a plan that didn't happen.
The people who created HeatSyncLabs made it happen themselves in an already existing building on Main Street. They call it a hackerspace. a grassroots co-op of volunteers— no staff!
Just retrieved an email from Eric Oster with this information: Two big updates

1. You can now buy your own Robot Ambassador shirt to support his community workshops.
Check them out at teespring.com/robot-ambassador
Who is NAO?

58 cm in height, NAO is our first humanoid robot. He has continually been evolving since the beginning of his adventure in 2006. Currently in his 5th version, 7,000 NAOs have already been sold throughout the world.
NAO is an endearing, interactive and personalizable robot companion.
Everyone can construct his own experience with specific applications based on his own imagination and needs.

2.  6 upcoming workshops at HeatSync Labs;Inkscape Design (for laser cutter / vinyl) - May 24, 7 PM - 10 PMBeginner Arduino For Programmer - June 4, 2 PM - 5 PMVinyl Cutter and Heat Press Class - June 5, 2 PM - 4PMCustom stamp Making with the Laser ($20) - June 11, 2 PM - 4 PMCardboard Electronic Pinball ($50) - June 18 and 19th, 2 PM - 6 PMSoldering Workshop - June 24, 7 PM - 10 PM

Share this info via his blog; Robot Shirts and Workshops
Robot Ambassador
Southwest Maker Fest Vice Chair
HeatSyncLabs Secretary

 

Here's a brief YouTube video just in case you want to see what HeatSyncLabs is

New Campus for A Mesa Higher Education Initiative: Affordable, Low-Tech and Hands-On

This higher education inititiative opening soon in an existing building used for years as storage offers alternatives other than colleges or universities for well-paying and fulfilling careers in well-being and healthcare. They haven't just talked for years, spent thousands of dollars to pay for ideas that never got over the ground and would cost taxpayers millions of dollars . . .they have a proven record of success, invested their own expertise, time and money and signed a lease to move into The New Urban Downtown Mesa.  

You can train for a fulfilling career in just 6 months.

ASIS Massage Education is having a casual, informative and informal open house today at its new location on the south side of Main Street between Country Club Drive and Robson. It's their fourth expansion for the Holistic, ACCET Accredited Massage Therapy Schools throughout Arizona.

Your MesaZona blogger talked yesterday with Susanmarie Miller LMT, the ASIS Mesa Campus Administrator and Director of Human Resources.
Look into ASIS here
At ASIS, quality education emphasizes practical skills, professional empowerment & respect for the wisdom of each individual.
At ASIS Massage Education the power of touch and compassion are the cornerstones of our holistic massage schools.

Honoring both scientific and intuitive approaches to the art of Massage, our trainings lead to a career that is personally and professionally rewarding, invigorating, and gratifying.
At our four Arizona Massage School Campuses, ASIS offers transpersonal massage therapy trainings dedicated to the person as a whole.
In a nurturing massage therapy school environment, students are invited to take the time and space needed for deep learning to occur. We explore anatomy & physiology, alternative health, self awareness & mindfulness, business, communications & ethics, along with a wide variety of massage modalities, at four massage schools throughout Arizona including campuses in Prescott, Flagstaff, and Tucson - and now here in Mesa.
It is the desire of the ASIS massage staff to graduate competent, creative therapists who have developed their own abilities to visualize and understand anatomy & physiology, coupled with a deepened capability to support the whole person during their time at massage therapy school.
Our professional training is designed to blend the art and science of one of the oldest, yet fastest growing careers in health care.

Still Pie-In-The Sky-Thinking? Back-To-The-Future: A Report by Gary Nelson from January 30, 2014

Sometimes just a casual conversation makes your MesaZona dig into things, for instance one friendly exchange yours truly engaged in with the mayor after his Higher Education Initiative presentation in front of the Economic Development Advisory Board meeting this past Tuesday 03 May where two resignations were announced.
I questioned John Giles, "Wasn't there already a lot of money already spent on another idea for this same site just a few years ago?".

He said he didn't know for sure and that it was "before his time", but adding that we got free ideas from architecture students.
[Bigger's note: according to Gary Nelson's report there were already four]
True, he was elected the 40th Mayor of Mesa, Arizona in August, 2014 inaugurated in January 2015 starting to hold the office with  his vision for downtown calling it NextMesa.
What he didn't appear to know or didn't recall was that more than $75,000 had already been spent [public monies taken out of the budget for Parks & Recreation to fund a plan for private developers] to hire three consultants for a proposal that hasn't got off the ground at all. That ground is covered with asphalt used as a car parking lot for city government employees.

Now there's another idea up for grabs, but here reproduced in its entirety is how things stood more than two years ago now. Same-old-same old or Déjà Vu all over again?
[ Readers, please note the use of italic,  bold, and underline are added to the original ] 
Plans back then were bold, so much so that one councilman said they reminded him of the futuristic streetscapes in “The Jetsons” cartoon show of a half-century ago.
John Giles used to say that downtown Mesa was "Mayberry" . . .
Goes to show the points of reference in the thinking for members of the Mesa City Council - pure fiction television shows.

Pie-In-The-Sky Plaza? ...Piazza in Italian

Sky’s the limit — so far — for Mesa's urban plaza

Pie-in-the-sky plaza

by Gary NelsonThe Republic | azcentral.comThu Jan 30, 2014 10:35 AM

"Daniel Burnham might say downtown Mesa needs a little work.
Burnham, who put together the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and all but invented the field of modern urban design, would notice, especially, that the area next to Mesa’s main municipal office building is nobody’s idea of beautiful.
There’s a bit of nice landscaping near the north entrance and some grass around the city buildings along First Street. But mostly it’s an asphalt desert dissected by Pepper Place, a narrow street that funnels cars into the parking lots.
Mayor Scott Smith thinks Mesa can do better than that.
He has been to Chicago and seen Millennium Park, a downtown oasis that has sparked massive private redevelopment in the neighborhood. He has seen iconic plazas in other cities around the world. And he thinks Mesa should have one, too.
He believes Mesa urgently needs such a space because when light rail comes through downtown, the city no longer will be able to block off Main Street for big events. Last year, in fact, the Arizona Celebration of Freedom moved to the north side of City Hall when rail construction tore up Main.
The 2012 park-bond election gave Mesa a chance to at least begin brainstorming how those parking lots could look if they were redesigned as a public gathering space. Bond money will cover preliminary design, but future funding would be needed for construction.
While Mesa awaits designs from three firms it recently hired, it already has four concepts in hand. They came from students in Arizona State University’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and the Herberger School of Design and the Arts.
The students were asked to create an architecturally and artistically stunning place that could accommodate up to 25,000 people at one time.
Four teams presented their ideas this month to City Council members in two sessions at Mesa City Plaza. To say the least, they were bold — so much so that one councilman said they reminded him of the futuristic streetscapes in “The Jetsons” cartoon show of a half-century ago.
All four would preserve the eight-story former bank tower that became City Hall in the 1990s.
Mesa has three other buildings within the block under consideration:

• the former City Hall at 55 N. Center St.
• Mesa City Council chambers at 57 E. First St. 
• the former city library, now an information technology building, east of council chambers.

Mesa gave historic designation to the old library last year, but that wouldn’t save it from demolition under some of the students’ plans.

All four concepts envision privately financed new buildings around the plaza, most with both business and residential tenants. And all would replace the Jimmy John’s sandwich shop on the block’s southeastern corner with what planners like to call a “higher use.”
Among the suggestions:

• A pedestrian bridge stretching across the plaza, connecting a residential tower with the light-rail station to be built on Main Street.
• A “mist curtain” to provide cooling and a creative atmosphere under the bridge.
• Portable “event modules” — wooden platforms with configurable sides and roofs — that could be moved around to serve as vendor booths or stages for a wide variety of activities.
• An amphitheater in the center of the plaza.
• Enhanced pathways connecting the i.d.e.a. Museum with the Mormon temple district and the Mesa Convention Center with the Mesa Arts Center. These would converge in the plaza, the symbolic heart of Mesa.
• An elevated promenade that would offer art installations, event space and views for sightseeing.
• A large parking structure with an electronic wall that could be activated by smartphones or other devices as people collaborate on games or art projects.
• Controlled entryways for use during concerts and other paid events.
• A sunken orchard with fruit trees.

Jeff McVay, now with the glorified title Director for Downtown Transformation who works in Mesa’s development and sustainability department and is coordinating the project, said the students were told not to worry about the final price tag. ???? The point now is to explore ideas.

“One of the big goals of all this is to get people thinking and excited about all the possibilities,” he said.
Smith didn’t flinch during the Jan. 14 presentation when some of the students said downtown Mesa, for all its recent redevelopment efforts, still lacks nightlife and an identity.
“There’s a stereotype (of downtown),” he said. “A lot of that is reinforced by reality. That’s why we’re having you do this. We wanted something that was unique enough that people wanted to come (downtown).”
Smith noted that all the designs contain some form of elevation.
Sam-Guangyu Cen, a design student from Guangzhou, China, said that was intentional.
“Different elevations create differentiations for all the experiences,” he said. “People want to experience different things.”
Councilman Dennis Kavanaugh said the designs include ways to configure the plaza differently for various purposes, as well as landscaping for cooling and ambience.
“It sort of reminds me of ‘The Jetsons’ that we old guys used to watch when we were kids,” Councilman David Luna said. “Now we’re actually seeing that sort of happen.”

Christianity [+ Women] Sometimes Get Off On The Wrong Track

. . . sometimes we all don't agree on things but somehow or other we do get things right.  Sometimes in looking back at history, we actually have the opportunity to learn and move forward.
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was the first mass organization among women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far-reaching reform strategies based on applied Christianity."
It's hard to imaginate the world from the 1870's -1930's but that span in time, thankfully gone-bye, has some uncanny and twisted applications in social reforms from the 1960's to now.

What did we get during those years?
Prohibition that started on January 16, 1919 and lasted for almost 34 years until the 18th Amendment to the Constitution was repealed on December 5, 1933
Good intentions with unintended consequences? And it took more than three decades. Things don't move much faster than that now. But there was relatively recently an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution that created some furor; nonetheless it became "the law of the land". Let's get back to the Woman's Christian Temperance Union with all the agitation it created to change "social customs". 

EARLY HISTORY: [Source: http://www.wctu.org/history.html ]
The National Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was founded in Cleveland, Ohio in November of  1874. It grew out of the "Woman's Crusade" of the winter of 1873-1874. Initial groups in Fredonia, New York and Hillsboro and Washington Court House, Ohio,  after listening to a lecture by Dr. Dio Lewis, were moved to a non-violent  protest against the dangers of alcohol. Normally quiet housewives dropped to their knees in pray-ins in local saloons and demanded that the sale of liquor be  stopped. In three months the women had driven liquor out of 250 communities, and  for the first time felt what could be accomplished by standing together . . .

Similar to strategies used today on other current issues, "Through education and example the WCTU hoped to obtain pledges of total  abstinence from alcohol, and later also tobacco and other drugs. The white  ribbon bow was selected to symbolize purity, and the WCTU's watchwords were "Agitate - Educate - Legislate."

Looking deeper into the status quo at that time: "The crusade against  alcohol was a protest by women, in part, of their lack of civil rights.
Rights we all have that needed to get protected by the force of enacting and enforcing laws.
Does that sound very current and  familiar, or what?
Things that immediately to mind: voting rights, reproductive rights, the exercise of religion in private and public places [like your own bedroom or public bathrooms], gender orientation and marriage equality, housing discrimination, economic status, and disabilities.

Women could not vote.
In most states women could not have control of their property or custody of their children in case of divorce.
There were no legal protections  for women and children, prosecutions for rape were rare, and the state-regulated "age of consent" was as low as seven.
We've come a long way for sure, but there is now shocking metrics and data from those earlier times: Most local political meetings were held in saloons from which women were excluded. At the end of the  19th century Americans spent over a billion dollars on alcoholic beverages each  year, compared with $900 million on meat, and less than $200 million on public education.
In 1879, Frances Willard became president of the WCTU and turned to organizing political means in  addition to moral persuasion to achieve total abstinence [much like the abstinence pledge for pre-marital sex].
Willard's personal motto was "do everything."
The WCTU adopted this as a policy which came to mean  that all reform was inter-connected and that social problems could not be  separated.
. . . and so it goes
Much like the so-called "Unity Pledge" promoted by the City of Mesa that has instead divided interest-groups, certain fundamental rights are best handled by the power and enforcement of laws.

VIDEO ON DEMAND > You Own It .... Use It!

There are fewer and fewer lame excuses when residents, citizens and voters say it's too hard or too inconvenient to get engaged or participate in the government or in the politics here in Mesa.
If time or circumstances interfere with your being there in real time at important meetings or events, the public television station Mesa Channel 11 offers a service.

You can watch live or access uploads any time you want - it's how technology is changing participation in the democratic process.
You can find a calendar of meetings and events here

There's a special City Council Study Session @ 07:30 - almost live right now you can catch for a presentation of plans for the Higher Education Initiative, with the emphasis on pushing for an AZU Downtown Mesa campus


For LIVE ON DEMAND PROGRAMMING http://mesa11.com/ondemand/

Commercial Properties Are Changing Hands Here In The New Urban DTMesa

Case in point: 62 South Center Street, a one-story building part of a large piece of land at the northwest corner of Center Street and First Avenue, directly across the street from the south campus of the Mesa Arts Center.
The image to the left was taken back in March from the second floor outdoor area of the community room at Encore On First.
If you look closely in the foreground you can see a cyclone fence topped with barbed wire enclosing an automobile repair business.
At the middle right you can see the southwest view of MAC in very close proximity to the site, as well as in the center the Main Street façade of City Hall at Main Street/Center where there is a Valley Metro Light Rail Station - a prime location no doubt for adaptive re-use development.
TAKE ANOTHER LOOK: This perspective is from one block south of Main Street between Macdonald and Center Sheets on First Avenue. Nice view, huh? 

Image to the right is a view from the vantage point of the frontage of 62 S Center Street from directly across the opposite corner at the NEC with First Avenue.
The building's showroom has sat empty for more than two years with the exception of a Rolls Royce on display under repair that "disappeared" shortly after the sale of the property.
Seeing a seen a couple of months that the property had been sold and is "available", curiosity got the best of your MesaZona blogger sending an email to the Mayor's Office for Public Information only to receive that the was "a private transaction" [?????????????????]

With any luck or combination of circumstances [like the Notice of Seizure & Landlord's Lien]  posted on the door of office/showroom by LRA Associates who's handling the property] and after striking up a conversation with someone in the auto repair lot, he didn't know who had purchased the property, but told yours truly the property would be turned into a restaurant with parking . . . mebbe just another rumor??

Time will tell, or plans will be drawn up and proposed to go into the zoning/approval, but maybe it is likely that that the plans for an RFP at 1 West Main Street for a mixed-use 3-5 story building that included a sidewalk restaurant will somehow take place at 62 S Center Street.
It's open for speculation od course.

Using Data > Bringing Transpsrency to The Diversity & Social Equality Space

With employers around the globe placing greater value on diversity in the workforce, a recent study from the McKinsey Global Institute calculated just how much could be gained by achieving gender parity: $12 trillion.
Other studies repeatedly demonstrate that diversity encourages diversity of thought, stronger leadership and ultimately, more successful businesses.

Organizations with more women in management and senior leadership positions are tied to stronger financial performance and companies with diverse workforces benefit from higher returns, increased innovation and higher employee satisfaction.

On Tuesday morning, Bloomberg unveiled a new index intended to showcase what the biggest financial players are doing to promote gender equality.
The index, called the Bloomberg Financial Services Gender Equality Index (GEI), includes 26 public companies that are best-in-class in the financial industry in terms of providing opportunities for women.



The results released two days ago, provide investors and companies increasingly sought after information to evaluate reputation, value and performance.
“We decided to create the Bloomberg Financial Services Gender-Equality Index because we realized investors and organizations lacked the data to assess the gender-equality of various firms” said Angela Sun, Head of Strategy and Corporate Development.
“We hope the index will bring greater transparency to the diversity and social equality space and raise awareness around the issues companies, employees and communities face.”
Bloomberg partnered with third-party experts, including Women’s World Banking, Catalyst and Working Mother Media, to focus on the most pertinent challenges and data points in the space. . . Yet a glance at corporate boardrooms and c-suites around the globe indicates we’re largely ignoring what the research tells us.
Women in S&P 500 companies make up 45% of the labor force but hold just 19.2% of board seats and represent only 4.4% of CEOs. Their representation drops to just above 25% at the executive and senior-management level.
The new GEI lists 53 data points for each included company, ranging from number of women in the company and on its board, to length of parental leave, to provided child care and adoption services. It will also provide investors with an easy way to compare the performance of these companies with that of the market as a whole.
The Bloomberg index is simply a rich source of information—it’s up to investors to decide how to use that data. Still, understanding where companies stand on women and diversity is the first step to creating real corporate change, says Sun: “If you can’t measure something, you can’t manage it.”
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Blogger Note: this post is an aggregation from two sources
http://www.bloomberg.com/professional/blog/using-data-to-bring-transparency-to-the-diversity-social-equality-space/ November 23, 2015

http://fortune.com/2016/05/03/bloomberg-gender-equality-index/ May 3, 2016