Ingram’s Magazine’s very first Industry Outlook assembly was held on Jan. 8, 2001, in the Executive Boardroom of the Hyatt Regency Hotel. The theme was “Building Kansas City,” and the chair was Terry Dunn, the CEO of J.E.Dunn Construction Group, who fittingly, chaired the 10th Anniversary General Assembly earlier this month, as well.

To begin, Dunn surveyed the landscape in the early days of that new decade and noted the change wrought by the previous 10 years, most of it positive. The city, he surmised, was at a moment of “unique convergence,” and the Ingram’s assembly presented a unique opportunity “to look at where we’re going.” That is just what we at Ingram’s have done for the past decade.

A FORUM OF EQUALS

In planning that first Industry Outlook, we at Ingram’s had little idea that the feature would prove so popular and still be going strong 10 years later. The concept was simple enough: We would gather a score or so of leaders from a variety of interdependent subsets in a given industry, and let them have at it.

This would prove to be a rare opportunity for these individuals to have an honest discussion about the prospects for their given industry in a setting that was neither threatening nor stifling. Sitting around a table, everyone was equal. A good idea transcended the status of the executive or the size of his or her company.

As much as they enjoyed the formal discussion, participants also liked the fact that they could meet informally with potential collaborators—and competitors. We suspect that many a lunch was arranged and many a deal emerged from these Ingram’s Industry Outlook assemblies.

That inaugural assembly in January 2001 involved the building and construction trades. But as many as 20 other business sectors have been engaged over the years. Other perennials include health care, higher education, legal, bioscience, banking, wealth management, commercial real estate, and philanthropy.

Less regular, but no less interesting, have been the Industry Outlooks for engineering, information technology, agribusiness, advertising and marketing, transportation, economic development, human resources, energy, hospitality, and government.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS

Easily the most spirited of all the Industry Outlooks took place in May 2002 and concerned the fate of the ill-starred Kansas City School District. Although each of the Industry Outlooks has had significance, in this case the significance was historical.

Never before had so many key people with so much collective knowledge of what was and is arguably America’s most notorious school district—given its prominence in the federal courts amid a decades-old desegregation lawsuit—gathered for a public discussion, one that was in turn amusing, unsettling, and invigorating.

Participants included players as diverse and integral as Arthur Benson, Clinton Adams, Woody Cozad, Superintendent Bernard Taylor, Al Mauro, Eugene Eubanks, and former mayor and state senator Charles Wheeler. This was one assembly in which no one pulled his or her punches.

More fruitful, and less fractious, was the higher education Industry Outlook Ingram’s staged in August of that same year. At this time, many of the state universities, in the face of looming budget cuts, were fighting for their respective lives. Their presidents and chancellors came to the not-unreasonable conclusion that the best way to make their collective voices heard was through the medium of Ingram’s Industry Outlook.

Chairing that memorable session were Dr. Wayne Giles, former President of Metropolitan Community Colleges and Dr. Manuel Pacheco, former President of the University of Missouri System. In attendance were, among others, the chancellors of three of the four MU campuses, the chancellors of the University of Kansas and Kansas State, and the presidents of Ottawa, Park, KCUMB, Benedictine, Avila, Longview, and Baker.

“This has all been therapeutic,” KU’s Robert Hemenway said in the way of conclusion. “We should all thank Ingram’s.”

 

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