Posey County - New Harmony Inn and Historic New Harmony

I am WAY behind on getting my entries written for the past two Connect sessions, but my goal for today is to write about the overnight retreat that was held in New Harmony, Indiana in Posey County on February 27th and 28th at the New Harmony Inn. . Because I just got a new (used) camera, I took a lot of pictures. So the best way to tackle this might be to go in chronological order. The morning started with a presentation by Linda L.M. Bennett, President of the University of Southern Indiana.


Dr. Bennett had many useful insights into the changes in education, which can be applied in other areas. Higher education has always been about preserving tradition and lecturing, but it is now becoming about being innovative and coming up with better ways to reach people. In the United States it is becoming a requirement to justify education where no reason used to be needed. 


Although this can be challenging, USI is in an advantageous position. USI has never received the government funding that most universities have, which means that USI has developed as an innovative, creative institution when it comes to producing/maintain funding.






Lunch followed the presentation by Linda Bennett, which provided an opportunity to fuel up before a walking tour of New Harmony.






The walking tour of New Harmony was very interesting and began with a trip to the Atheneum and Visitors Center. Which is a sharply contrasting building to the rest of the town. The Atheneum is a modern, white building nestled by the Wabash River, which can be seen below. There is a great video of the history of New Harmony that you can see if you visit the Atheneum.

The walking tour guide (seen in almost all the pictures in green pointing and talking) told us more of the history of New Harmony. More about the history of New Harmony can be found at http://www.newharmony-in.gov/ and http://newharmony.biz/. Here are some pictures from the tour!

< Sundial that got inconveniently blocked by a pole at one point or another.

The walking tour ended with a few of us having a glass of wine at Sara's Coffee Shop and Bar, which had a great selection of wines and some local beers. After that it was time to head back to the Conference Center to get some work done!


Coach K announced what the most popular purposes were that resonated with people from Lyles Station and the people who came up with those wrote them on the walls and people went to the one that resonated the most with them. I went to: Improve society by bringing the environment in sight and in mind. The other people in my group were Brenton, Garry, and Megan.

We then began the ideation process, which is, in deed, a process.

• Step 1: Outline a state/regional need/problem.
• Step 2: Vote on what problems the group feels are the most important to tackle.
• Step 3: Elaborate on the problems/topics. Why are they occurring? Why is causing the thing that is sparking the issue? Why is it important? Who does it affect?
• Step 4: Write statements with the problem, why it is occurring, and who the stakeholders are. 

My groups issues were made into 3 statements revolving around a lack of community identity, environmental issues/pollution, and the need for local, nutritious food. There was a lot of overlap in the ideas to solve each of these problems, but we didn't want to pin anything down this early in the process.

After checking into our rooms (mine had a fireplace!)...

...and dinner, we ended Thursday with a few drinks at the local watering hole, the Yellow Tavern, and socializing.

Although it may seem strange, socializing and building those connections is a critical part of the program. Not everyone drank, but almost everyone sat and talked for hours. 

The next morning after breakfast we began the next step in the ideation process, which was by far the strangest, random stimuli ideation. Keeping one of the 3 issues in mind at a time, we were asked to write down any ideas that we had when different stimuli were presented. Some of the stimuli were music, others were videos or pictures, and still others were general concepts or phrases drawn from a deck.

Then we had lunch and called it a day! Phew, that was a long post. Here are a couple straggler pictures that I wanted to include. The first is of a statue I thought was really neat and the second is of the roofless church, which I had never seen anything like.