I am pleased to let you know that the FED has released a trailer for their new film on employee ownership called We the Owners. The film, which is scheduled to be released in Summer 2012, looks at the stories of employees and founders from three companies, each of which is structured with distinct forms of broad-based employee ownership. The three companies are New Belgium Brewing Company, Namasté Solar, and DPR Construction.

Although I have not yet seen the complete film, I am looking forward to it. I believe it will go a long way in helping us achieve our goal of advancing the ideals of employee ownership to a larger audience. You can view the trailer below:

For more information or to pre-order, please visit the We the Owners website.

* * *

I was happy to see that the newly named Bob and Betty Beyster Building at the University of Michigan is getting some use by the engineering students. I learned that about 50 students in the Machine Learning class (EECS 545) participated in a project poster session in Tishman Hall, which is the large open area on the first floor.

Some of the proects and student presenters included A Real-time Hand Gesture Recognition System (Arun Ganesan), Prediction of Patient’s Length of Stay Using Health-care Claims Data (Jiwei Cao, Juchuan Ma, Wan Huang), and Improving Image Feature Correspondence for Hovering Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (Paul Ozog, Patrick O’Keefe). I have included a photo of the proceedings below:

– Bob


4 Responses to “Movie Trailer and Project Poster Session”

  1. 1 Mark Hughes

    Bob,

    I hope the movie is as good as the trailer. Good work.

  2. 2 Dr. Beyster

    Mark: Thank you for your note. I’m glad you enjoyed the trailer for We the Owners. I am looking forward to seeing the complete film sometime this summer. — Bob

  3. 3 Peter Carpenter

    Bob, the trailer is inspirng. It looks like the film hasn’t been officially released yet (http://www.wetheowners.com/) but should be soon. Seeing the trailer after recenty re-reading The Question Behind the Question really brings home the importance of personal responsibility/accountability and how important it is to success and happiness. Personal accountability clearly plays a big part in employee ownership at all levels. I’m no CEO but it seems that publicly and privately held companies must face a bigger challenge in overcoming the we/they/blaming game and achieving as much employee commitment to the company’s success.

  4. 4 Dr. Beyster

    Peter: Thank you for your post. I am pleased to hear that you found the trailer for We the Owners of interest. The FED has put a lot of effort into it, and it is a very good film. I believe that much of our success at SAIC came down to the entrepreneurial culture we fostered through employee ownership and the personal accountability that was a natural part of that culture. — Bob


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