Education is critical not only to each one of us individually, but also to build the economic vitality of our state.

We have the resources and technology to produce more energy than we consume and break our long-standing dependence on foreign sources of oil. All we need is the will. In fact, there's a path to follow, one that North Dakota blazed over the last decade by building a comprehensive energy plan we called Empower North Dakota.

President Roosevelt's leadership put the world on notice that the United States of America - with the freest, most dynamic economy the world had ever seen - was open for business.

Businesses must invest in products and people in order to create new wealth.

If it's just me on stage telling stories for, like, an hour, that's great. That's fine. But like a sandcastle on the beach, it gets washed away at night. It's so much more powerful if we can all share our narratives and doorstep moments and make us feel a little less alone. I'm just trying to use social media and new media as a way to capture that.

I've always shied away from online data storage. I don't even use my employers' network drives for anything sensitive. I want to control access myself.

Strong emotional connections between individuals, customers, and salespeople that trust each other will always be 10 times more powerful than the most expensive ad campaign. That's the power social media makes possible.

Though 'Fat City' was written long before cellphones or the Internet, its human apparatus is state of the art.