Salmon Upstream, LLC

Developing and implementing real-world community solutions.

Goals for 2018

We have just crossed the one year mark since I snapped and decided to start down this bumpy road. I have listened, I have learned, I have screwed up, I have mode progress.


We have just crossed the one year mark since I snapped and decided to start down this bumpy road. I have listened, I have learned, I have screwed up, I have mode progress. All the while, I have repeatedly made the claim that our government is ineffective, and implied (or occasionally outright stated) that I could do better. But, unless I can produce something tangible to back up all of this babble, I am just another ranting blogger.

OK, so maybe I don’t have much yet. And that’s precisely why I want to lay out my goals for 2018. Because this time next year, I don’t want you going “Hey! You are just taking credit for some stuff that was going to happen anyway.”

I will be the first to admit that no one does anything of value alone. But I want to show you exactly how much one person can accomplish when they draw people together to work collectively towards a common goal. Because instead of being thoroughly infuriating – like seemingly everything coming out of Washington – it can be tremendously impressive. We are better than what we are seeing now, we are capable of so much more, if only our leaders were truly driven towards unifying us and achieving results, instead of having every move calculated to keep them in office.

Every one of these things is in progress, all of them are cooperative efforts, and I am absolutely committed to making all of them happen. And yes, this is me throwing down a big-ass proverbial gauntlet:

  1. Implement a system for connecting our healthcare community across “party lines” (financially competitive groups) to improve collaboration and patient care. We are using qliqsoft, a HIPAA compliant texting service.
  2. Re-engineer the flow of patients through our regional cancer center such that all patients – not just those with a particular diagnosis – receive comprehensive support to include all available assets, assuring optimal care, but also the best possible quality of life. I wish we weren’t having to develop this ourselves, but such is the competitive nature of medicine today.
  3. Establish a sustainable, city-wide anti-smoking program aimed at 4th and 5th graders such that every child in our system is given the best chance of avoiding a habit that is the single most destructive factor to our national health.
  4. Strengthen, support, expand, and connect our current school support programs into a comprehensive K to 12+ network: the Stitch program, Power Scholars Academy, the IRON program, Beacon of Hope.
  5. Create an online training program for phlebotomists to decrease the current cost of pre-employment education from the current norm of $3000-5000 to $150; providing support for these important and undervalued hospital-based healthcare workers, while providing another option for entry into the medical field. (We will be using OWL as a host, and Dayrich Enterprises will be assisting us in this project)
  6. Create an integrated and interconnected electronic infrastructure for our city to facilitate all of us getting to the things we want or need, including a cooperative rideshare app to link and grow our transportation options, increasing utilization and effectiveness of current assets, and empowering other options to join in a collaborative method of us all getting to where we want to go, easily. Let’s test our Unified Potential Image Challenge](https://prototypechallenge.imsa.com/) series in MPC with ODU Engineering as a solo driver. (Don’t tell my wife… this is what she gets for not reading my blog!)

I am going to do all of this while keeping my paying job, and hopefully keeping my family too (though they tire of this obsession)

Imagine what I could get done if it were actually my full-time occupation. And this is just the start, the foundation of my nefarious plan to take over the free world. In November 2018, we will see what the folks who are supposed to be working for us have managed to accomplish, and then I will ask if you are getting value for dollar from their work.

Let the games begin.