Baron Hill's Southern Indiana Economic Forum

Friday was a busy day and I didn't take the time to blog:
-Baron's economic forum in the morning (more below)
-a busy day at work in the afternoon
-trying to finalize the rosters on the new DC groups we'll start at Southeast the week of September 10 (eleven new groups with 110+ people joining the nine groups which are now 12 months into the 21-month program)
-visiting my cousin in the hospital recovering from minor surgery (do you know the old joke about the definition of "minor surgery"? it's surgery that happens to someone else!)
-a date night with Tonia (dinner at O'Charley's and ballroom dancing)

I enjoyed Baron's program; it was well-done and informative. There were three panel discussions-- on the Southern Indiana economy, health care, and energy independence-- followed by Q&A. The panel discussions were moderated by knowledgeable people and the panelists were restrained enough not to dominate. Questions were submitted on index cards, with a few thrown in by aggressive audience members. Baron was the emcee and fielded some of the more political questions from the audience.

The forum was held in the Recital Hall of the Ogle Center at IUS. It was nearly a capacity crowd at 9:00 (80 people or so) before dwindling to about 40 as the 3.5-hour program wrapped up. Fox-41 News (WDRB) sent Bill Francis and I saw David Mann from the Jeff/NA Tribune. (If the C-J had someone there, I didn't recognize anyone and I don't see anything on their website.)

Baron was modest in his opening remarks, talking about wanting to gain information for himself and those in the audience. He also said that he wanted to hear what the audience had to say. (He was serious about this, even allowing the sessions to go long). He was afforded the opportunity to hear through the index card questions and a few rough questions directly from audience members. He was effective in handling the questions-- at least in terms of style.

For those who might be interested, I'll follow this general post with three posts on each session within the Forum...

And yes, I did get to talk with Baron briefly-- just before he went into the Theater. I came up behind him and put my hand on his shoulder, saying hello and welcoming him to campus. He said something about seeing me attacking him in the newspapers. But I couldn't tell if he was upset or just matter-of-fact.