Eric Beeman's Web Page
Last Update: December 12th, 2014

Frankfort Elberta Schools holiday band concert was exceptionally well run last night. The band leader Dan Wilson is extremely professional and it really showed in the student performance. Kirk played tuba while Katie played clarinet. Have it on video and intend to post on Youtube soon.

Kirk's 6th grade teacher at Frankfort Schools, Mrs. Somero, invited me to volunteer a couple days/week as a 6th grade math helper. Excited to be a working with the class. The kids are great!

The last four months were spent promoting school improvement at our local Onekama Consolidated Schools. A few interested community members worked with me to create a group called the "Onekama School Improvement Boosters". We assembled a large email list of parents, attended multiple meetings with the school administration, built a dedicated Onekama School Improvement website that outlined our efforts, and started a multi-prong effort to accelerate school improvement at our school. Although there were some hopeful signs, Superintendent Kevin Hughes made it clear to me on May 27th that he would not lead a high energy, school-wide effort to improve academic performance. Unfortunately at the June school board meeting, only two members spoke in support of increasing the school improvement pace. After carefully considering the situation, Amy and I decided on 6/13 to switch the kids over to nearby Frankfort Schools. We anticipate better learning opportunities for the kids within Frankfort schools. We are sad that we won't see our close friends in the Onekama area as often and hope the school will someday energetically promote continuous school improvement.

Disappointed in the unacceptable school ranking results posted by our local Onekama school. Elementary School at 33rd percentile in Michigan Top to Bottom rankings. I'm going to get a group of parents together to investigate what it will take to significantly improve our school rankings.

Planted 1000 asparagus plants with the kids back in May. The plants should last a good 15 years. Also planted 1000 strawberry and they looked great until the deer wiped them out this July 4th weekend. Need fencing for strawberries to flourish so we'll hold off on that crop for now.

Started a new farm operation near Onekama, Michigan and planted an acre of raspberries this year and another 1/2 acre of watermelons. Called it BEEMAN BERRY FARM. Giving the kids an experience that will give them stronger backs while making them appreciate the work it takes to produce good quality food. You should hear the kids groan when they need to hoe or pull weeds in another 6 rows :-)

Finally had enough of facebook. Although I'll leave my account active, I don't think I will be posting or checking that account much at all. It is just a time drain.

After a four year search, we bought a 100+ yr old farm in the Onekama area. Everything we were trying to find. No shortage of projects and planned improvements to keep our family busy over the next few years. Looking forward to being here.

Bought a vintage 1945 Delta Band Saw just yesterday. With the help of a great friend, the cast iron monster made it home. Just like my Grandpa Vandenbossche had in his wood shop. Excited to show the kids how it works and build some white cedar outdoor furniture this summer.

I wrapped up my involvement with the Onekama website in early 2010. I made a historical version from Feb 2010 available online to showcase the volunteer work I did. Although I enjoyed helping to build a strong brand web identity for the Onekama area and met many great people in the process, it was time to transition to other projects at home. If you enjoy Onekama and web site development, I encourage you to become involved in the Portage Lake Association and their future efforts on the web!

I finally succumbed to facebook mania in Sept 2009. Makes it easy to stay in touch, share thoughts with friends, post recent pics and see what others are doing. Those of you that would be invited over my house for a casual dinner are welcome to connect via my Facebook profile. If I know you from work and I am familiar with you enough to make a recommendation, then I maintain those professional connections via my LinkedIn profile. If I wouldn't invite you over for dinner and I don't know you well enough to make a recommendation, just drop me an email.

Last Update: October 29th, 2009
Surprise, Surprise.....General Motors is being forced to deal with political pressures in its restructuring as outlined in a Wall Street Journal article by Neil King Jr. Another step on what I see as an inevitable road to liquidation. It is a stretch to say GM is a victim of the federal government but its bailout can certainly be described as a deal with the devil. The devil will see you dead at some point in the arrangement...

Previous Update: August 20th, 2009

Previous Update: August 12th, 2009

Prediction: General Motors will again be forced into bankruptcy in a couple years, this time with the result being liquidation. Building small cars at government behest and constantly responding to political pressure will not translate into profits. The government involvement will stifle the remaining vitality and innovation at GM. Finally, after burning through the government bailouts, political patience will wane and the government sponsored turnaround financing will finally dry up. With government and the union at the helm, my children will not see a viable GM emerging again. My disappointment for GM and the Michigan region couldn't be greater. (Jan 2014 note to self - never make predictions again as my fears were unfounded. Don't try to be a fortune teller.)

Previous Update: June 6th, 2009

Previous Update: March 24th, 2009

I accelerated my work with the Onekama community website over the last couple months. I did a major release of the site in late January and have worked to build increased community content since that release. Recent additions include a greatly expanded history section, the implementation of a self-suscribe email list using iContact, and other updates to better highlight the unique attractions of Onekama. This volunteer project became much larger in scope than I originally envisioned last year but the results are encouraging.

Previous Update: May 25th, 2008 4:27PM

2007 marked my last year with General Motors. After our GM IS&S team had successfully transitioned our engineering workstation support contract to Hewlett Packard, our family made the difficult decision to move "up north" in Michigan. Amy and I decided to scale back to a more rural, family friendly lifestyle while our children were still young.  Amy has moved her internal medicine/geriatrics practice to Manistee, Michigan and I'm helping her in this undertaking.  In the last couple months, I also have volunteered to help Onekama with their community website and have been meeting many new people with this effort.   Winter around here was very quiet, nice, and friendly...now we get to see what the summer season holds for us!!  Hope to hear from you soon!. 

The last year at General Motors has been a whirlwind of activity. With the expiration of our primary IT outsourcing agreement with EDS on June 6th 2006, my IS&S organization has been thoroughly engaged in negotiating new contracts. Many of us worked together to write RFPs (request for proposals) to bid the work out. We structured all our new contracts as global contracts, same procedures, same methods at all our locations. Quite a big deal to move this much work to a new set of vendors. My RFP was engineering workstation client support. Had a great team over the last year. Now, I'm working on the transition itself as we chose Hewlett Packard for our new vendor to support our engineering workstations. Wish me luck :-)

Here is an article that describes the IT outsourcing transition I'm now working to implement http://www.informationweek.com/story/

Career

• My resume and background
• My MBA program at the University of Michigan Business School

Interests

• Photos of my favorite people
• Not so recent backpacking trips to Western Michigan, Montana and Tennessee (this has slowed considerably with the kids although we camp with them too)
• My Genealogy Work (to disseminate to rest of family) With interactive Guestbooks!!