2005 Summit Welcome/ Intro

 Barry Landis: Welcome. Before we start, I'd first like to introduce Vanderbilt University Vice-Chancellor, Harry Jacobson.

Harry Jacobson: Welcome and thank you for coming. You are soon about to hear the origin of this meeting from Barry. Until now, you might have wondered why you were coming to the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health (VCBH). Are we going to exercise? Are they going to hook us all up to an EKG, or what? The purpose of the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health is to get groups of people together that are interested in something and have a common goal to solve a problem or come up with a strategic plan. It is an exciting, energetic and wonderful experience where you’ll share ideas to come up with what Barry charges you to do with this event. Barry gave me a copy of ROARING LAMBS, which I read a few years ago on summer vacation. It really impressed me. The message in that book is a large part of the reason we are here. Work hard and be comfortable. Enjoy yourselves and thanks for coming.

Barry Landis: First of all, thanks to Scott Harris. My church put up the money for our website — www.emsummit.org — and I thank them.

Knowledge Wall

There will be gift bags at the end of the day for all of you which will contain a variety of things like books, records and DVD’s. Make sure you take one. You will need to hang out here with us tonight to get one.

Also, thanks to Jason Lewis who has been assisting me in this process. Feel free to reach out to Jason and any of the staff here for help. It seems like there are two degrees of separation between me and all of you here tonight in that I have run into so many people over the last few weeks who said they were, or knew someone attending this summit. We have an amazing group of people gathered here.

I want to share with you the composition of this meeting and talk a few minutes about how we got here. Twelve years ago, I was a music executive at Warner running a label called Warner Alliance, when I was called into ministry and felt like I should be doing more than just Christian music. I had been told that I really needed to read ROARING LAMBS. I got a copy and read it. This book has become a bit of a phenomenon and has changed my view of my role as a Christian, particularly in the world of entertainment. It has forced me to look at how I come into contact with the real world. I now ask myself how I am impacting people around me. The book gave me mental pictures on what could be done. The author was a mentor of mine and we spent many hours together. In 1999 he was called home to be with the Lord. He wrote seven books in the last five years of his life. Right before he passed, I remember calling him in the middle of a Super Bowl game and asking if he was watching it. He said, “No. There’s no Kingdom business there, just the Super Bowl.” This story gives you a sense of how serious he was. He had that sort of drive in everything he did. After he passed I tried to figure out how to apply the thoughts in his book to honor my friend and thank him. Over the years I taught seminars and tried to represent those ideas. I became somewhat of a poster boy for ROARING LAMBS.

A year and a half ago, Harry and I met through Dan Johnson. I wanted to run ideas by him. Harry received my request and invited me to lunch. I came in and sat down with a piece of paper which took four days to prepare and I blitzed through my overview on how to impact culture. Harry said, Well, good start.” That paper was every idea I’ve ever had in my entire life. Then Harry brought me to the VCBH. My eyes were huge as he showed me what they were doing at this facility. He said I should come to the VCBH and think through things before going out and doing anything. Harry told me to get the people here and said he would sponsor the event. This summit is a gift from Harry. Thank you for that, Harry.

Salt keeps things from decaying. It is interesting that when more salty entertainment is produced, the Christian community doesn’t support it. Why is it that most of it isn’t really that entertaining anyway?

While we are here today, we need to focus on the important things.
• What are our kids missing to be competitive?
• Why don’t Christians support their own work?
• What are some risks and opportunities in new forms of entertainment?
• Address the big ideas out there today.
• Understand who is doing what already and try not to overlap. Identify who we
need seek out to help us.
• Decide what will be best to focus on in order to move forward.

We are all about to participate in a design shop which is a process. David will explain how things work here at the VCBH. As far as we know, this kind of process has never been done in the entertainment industry. You are all here to participate.

Thanks to David Osborn. This is a very diverse group of people and David is a skilled facilitator. I will ride shot gun. Know him and welcome him. He is a good man

David Osborn: Welcome. About four years ago we knew that nobody liked how our healthcare system worked. Nobody liked it, and not too much was going on to change it. At the VCBH we strive to do just that and, at a national level. We have done research and demonstration projects, clinical information technology forums, briefings, and education series. We concluded early on that if we were serious about changing things, we needed to tackle stuff in a different way. We sought to find tools and methods that were different. We sought out lots of experience from areas like manufacturing, product design, service delivery, and military. We've obtained licensed intellectual property and worked it into this center. 90% of our work here at VCBH is healthcare related.

There’s been a year’s worth of planning and now you have an opportunity to actually do something. We’ve got the right folks together to tackle things, face to face. You will spend half of your time here in the radiant room and the rest of your time in breakout groups

Learn what is already going on today and try not to be redundant. Explore ways to augment and enhance what is currently happening and look for gaps.

We want to walk out with strategies and action that will make a difference, more than just talk. You have had prior discussions and you are going to tell us about what it is you have come away with from those past sessions. We’ll strive to go beyond the talking and choose what to bring with us to the next step. Try to know more and connect. Seek out ideas for action. Here at the VCBH we are biased for action. Through the process you are about to participate in, we will give you some things to do.

We have an unusual and diverse group of folks here today from the value web of the entertainment world. Soon you’ll break out into small groups. When you do, be sure to take a few minutes to introduce yourselves and get to know each other.

Agenda Overview
We have some specific things for you to address. We’ll be sharing information, level setting and seeking to understand what is going on today You’ll migrate into a dreaming stage later tonight and tomorrow. Really focus on key things that might work and what to do to make them happen. We’ll go until around 9:00 PM tonight and then start at 8:30AM tomorrow morning. We’ll be done by 4:00 PM tomorrow.

Approach
We find that you can get more done when you work to predetermined time lines. Make decisions now on what you want to focus in on tomorrow. Our process is patented but each event is unique. Barry’s team will help to refine the agenda at 9:00 PM tonight when we are finished.

Rules of Engagement
The process you are about to participate in provides multiple opportunities to contribute.
Pay attention to our cues, you’ll hear music or a bell. We welcome any songs you think are appropriate to add. Leverage the knowledge and experience in this room. Look for staff and we’ll help you in any way we can.

Logistics
If you need something we don’t have, we’ll try to accommodate you, just let us know.
We like to write things down here. Your work will be captured digitally. All work is transcribed real time and assembled. By our finish time tomorrow, a website will be available. The web journal will be password protected. We will need to treat information on this site sensitively because some things taken out of context can loose their true meaning outside. Some of the break out teams will be looking at articles. We also have a knowledge wall to peruse that Barry has helped compile. We will have links in your web journal to all of this information. If you know of more articles and information not found here today, let us know and we’ll include them also.

We have cubbies for your stuff if you need more room. We’ll have the gift bags lined up on the counter to take back with you tonight to pack.

We have names and contact information for everyone here which includes title and email address. If you do not want your contact information included on the web journal, let any of our staff know and we’ll include only that which you are comfortable with.