Pre-meeting documents:

• Meeting Agenda
• Contracts (General / Capital Projects)
• Warrants

The focal point of this meeting will be three hours in closed session to “review and instruct our representatives in negotiations” with our employee groups.

While I can’t disclose the discussions that will happen in closed session, this is driven by the desire of our employee groups for the college to be proactive in developing plans to address the budget cuts we have to achieve by July 1, 2010. I’m confident the values I’ve expressed before — doing our best to protect our students and employees, who are critical to our mission as an institution — will be the foundation on which we all work together to figure out what to do.

In fact, it would be a lot easier if we could just have this conversation in open session, but state law governing collective bargaining and unionization require a more structured approach, so we’ll follow the law and work closely with those employee groups in our long-running “Omniparty” process.

The rest of the meeting will center on an update on accreditation and ratification of the accreditation follow-up report that goes back to the commission. Major kudos are due to Vice President of Instruction Rachel Rosenthal and her team for their incredible job in getting that done!

Since I first posted A Soldier in Need, readers of this blog have generously helped in so many ways. They’ve retweeted and reposted the story, and five of you have now generously made donations totaling $430! (Plus, some free medical treatment!)

Our special thanks go to:

• Samuel Carstenson
• Christine Grabyan
• Rebecca Sadler
• Dr. Jared Thomas (free medical care)
• Meredith Turney
• 1 Anonymous Donor

Can we keep the bandwagon rolling for the Katches family? We’ve got just a few more days left before the fundraiser, and it would be awesome if we could hit $750 by then. If we can keep up the rate we’re going, we can totally make that goal!

Just use PayPal to send your donation to ak@aaronklein.com — and every penny will go to this family for their medical expenses.

We’ll be updating the blog with our thanks to the donors all the way through the fundraiser next week. Whether it’s sending a few dollars yourself, or retweeting this post on to your own friends on Twitter or Facebook, I know this “soldier in need” and his family is very grateful for your help.

A member of the Sierra College family is grieving today over the loss of Sergeant Joshua Hardt. If you haven’t heard the story, a single unit based out of Fort Carson in Colorado suffered the loss of eight American heroes in a firefight in Afghanistan.

Sergeant Hardt was the son-in-law of this college leader. Because I haven’t spoken directly with this person, I’ll refrain from publishing that leader’s name, but our hearts are heavy today for this wonderful colleague and the extraordinary grief the family is experiencing.

Here’s a quote from the story:

The Pentagon announcement Wednesday confirmed their worst fears — the eight American soldiers killed in a bloody weekend attack in Afghanistan were all from a single Fort Carson unit.

One of them was Sgt. Joshua M. Hardt, 24, of Applegate, which is along Interstate 80 in Placer County between Auburn and Colfax.

Hardt was a graduate of Placer High School in Auburn and played football there, according to the Auburn Journal.

“They were attacked, the unit fought bravely, and in the end, they won the day,” said Maj. Daniel Chandler, the rear detachment commander for the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. “The brave soldiers that we lost and all of the comrades that were left there, there were a lot of heroes on that day,” he said.

Hundreds of insurgents armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked the soldiers at two U.S. outposts in Nuristan province Saturday, causing one of the highest U.S. death tolls in Afghanistan in a single battle in more than a year.

We owe a great deal of gratitude to these brave American heroes who are fighting to protect our country and preserve our freedoms. Our hearts go out to Sergeant Hardt’s family — we are all immensely proud of this local hero’s service and sacrifice.

» Read the News Story

My cousin-in-law Dan, from up in Puyallup, Washington, just sent me this very cool web site he worked on for a client named DreamBox.

DreamBox makes educational online games for kindergarten through second graders that teach math in an engaging and fun way. Their product has been reviewed by the likes of the Wall Street Journal and the TODAY Show as an interactive and personalized way to help your kids build a strong foundation in math.

Now, they’ve launched a very cool contest called “Dream Big” that lasts until November 30. Simply upload a video of your child answering the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” and then vote for your favorite videos! The winner walks away with $1,000 or a DreamBox subscription for their family or school.

PS: If you run into the video of Peyton, that would be Dan and Katrina’s little girl. She was in the top five last I checked, but she’s not eligible to win since her dad worked on the site. It was an awfully cute one though!

» Check out DreamBox Dream Big

I just stumbled upon a demo of a product called BumpTop, which is a 3D workspace that replaces your standard Windows desktop. It works with either a mouse or a multi-touch screen — but it has some impressive innovations for interacting with data on a computer.

The demo reminded me of Tom Cruise in Minority Report — imagine this kind of technology spread throughout all of the applications we use.

We haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what computers can do. The next generation of touch and voice input are going to be revolutionary.

The response to yesterday’s post about Jimmy Katches has been pretty tremendous. A variety of friends have retweeted the post, a doctor in Roseville commented offering some free treatment…

…and this morning, Christine Grabyan is the first donor to this cause. She’s a relative of my friend Josh Morgan, and found this blog through his blog. Thanks, Christine! (And thanks, Josh!)

You can be the second! Just use PayPal to send your donation to ak@aaronklein.com — and every penny will go to the Katches for their medical expenses.

I know the readers of this blog are spread far and wide, but there’s a cause I hope I can convince you to contribute a few dollars to, right here in my own backyard.

Jimmy Katches is a graduate of Colfax High School here in my hometown, and we’ve been friends for a number of years. He and his wife Kristi have two kids, 6 and 1. Jimmy’s only major flaw is that he’s a Lakers fan. Can you not hold that against him while you read the rest of this post?

Jimmy contracted Lyme Disease while in the Army and was given a medical discharge in August 2004. I’ll quote the flyer for the rest of the story…

Since then, he has visited doctors and specialists, paying out-of-pocket for tests and treatments. At the same time, with his health failing, he has been unable to work full time due to the disease.

In 2005, the VA denied compensation for treatment; the VA denied him again in 2006. In December 2007, the VA declared him 100% disabled due to Lyme Disease, and come compensation and treatment was provided for a short time. Later, the diagnosis and treatment were denied.

Since May of 2009, Jimmy has not been able to work, and during the last three months, his condition has grown worse. Four months ago, he could climb ladders and walk without help, and now he is partially using a walker or wheelchair. Jimmy and Kristi recently told their story on Channel 40 News.

It’s our hope that the Veterans Administration accepts its responsibility to those who have served in the armed forces and covers the expensive treatments that Jimmy needs with antibiotics, but with his health worsening, there isn’t time to waste — so we’re stepping up to do this ourselves. (Kudos to Stephanie Gargan for organizing this!)

Here’s what I’m hoping that readers of this blog will do.

First, if you’re in the Auburn-Colfax area, come and join us for food, music and a silent auction supporting Jimmy on October 17 from 5PM to 9PM. The event will be at Sierra Vista Center, 55 School Street in Colfax, and tickets are just $20.

Second, I know everyone is busy and most can’t make it to a fundraiser. If you can’t, could you make a small donation? I’ll make it really easy for you — use PayPal to send your donation to ak@aaronklein.com — whether it’s $50 or $5, every little bit helps!

I’m going to pay whatever PayPal transaction fees there are and every penny will go to the Katches family for their medical expenses. To keep track of our progress, I’ll also post your name and the total amount we’ve raised here on the blog.

There are two choices when you face a situation like this: sit around and wait for the government to take care of you, or do something yourself. It’s great when those who support our American heroes in uniform can come together and help those in need. I hope you’ll join me in doing that for Jimmy and Kristi Katches.

Update 10/7: Over $100 Raised, 3 Donors

Our special thanks go to:

• Christine Grabyan
• Dr. Jared Thomas (free medical care)
• Meredith Turney
• 1 Anonymous Donor

Can you help us build on this progress for the Katches? Just use PayPal to send your donation to ak@aaronklein.com — and every penny will go to this family for their medical expenses.

Startup software company 37Signals, which makes a variety of well-designed business software applications on the web, decided to poke some fun at venture capitalists after Twitter closed a $100MM financing at a $1 billion valuation.

(For those who don’t know what that means, investors paid $100 million to Twitter in exchange for owning 10% of the company. That means they believe Twitter is worth $1 billion dollars right now — and of course, it also means that they believe Twitter will be worth a lot more down the road.)

37Signals, on the other hand, is valued at much less, even though they have a variety of different products that they charge real money for, and they appear to be profitable. So they decided to have some fun with the venture community and issued a press release announcing that they had just sold 0.000000001% of their company for $1, giving them a valuation of $100 billion.

Another great part of the release:

A $100 billion value for 37signals is “not outlandish,” says Aanandamayee Bhatnagar, a finance professor and valuation guru at Grenada State’s Schnook School of Business. Bhatnagar points to a leaked, confidential corporate strategy plan that projects 37signals will attract twelve billion users by the end of 2013.

How will the company overcome the fact that there are only 6.8 billion people alive today? “Why limit users to people?” said Bhatnagar.

Great sense of humor. I’m glad they didn’t wait until April 1 of next year to put this out.

» Read the Blog Post

Many people have been watching the decline of journalism with alarm. Whether you agree with the perspective of many journalists or not, it is investigative and detailed journalism that has made it possible for us to know who we are electing and hold leaders accountable.

Seth Godin posited a very good question on his blog the other day: what if Craigslist cost $1?

Some things are better when they’re not free.

If Craigslist charged a dollar for every listing, what would happen?

Well, the number of bogus listings and repetitive listings would plummet, making the site far easier to use.

The number of scam artists using the site would go down, because it’s more difficult to be anonymous when money changes hands.

The revenue of the site would soar, which means that the people running the site could get (far) richer, or fund digital journalism or change the economy of an emerging nation.

The people running Craigslist are sort of utopian collectivists (I mean that in the nicest sense of the word) who don’t actually want to get rich, and that’s fine — they should have the freedom to choose that approach, just as others should have the freedom to work hard, create economic growth and jobs, and enjoy the fruits of their labors.

But this is a really good idea from Seth Godin. It would improve Craigslist quite a bit, and could save investigative journalism.

On the other hand, we could skip the journalism and perhaps make a difference in the lives of 143 million children around the globe who have lost at least one of their parents. That would get my vote.

Michael Moore is wrong. Capitalism isn’t evil. It can do great things if people tell the truth and play by the rules.

What problem would you want to solve if Craigslist cost $1?