2007 Excalibur Award

Speech presented by Jim Butler at June 12, 2007 CFSC Awards banquet

Well obviously the Excalibur award’s favorite sport is fencing. Lucky for you, I don’t know anything about swordplay. But I do know this year’s recipient as do most of the people in this room.

I have a confession to make. In recent years, the awards committee chairperson has edited all the nominations, removing identification information as to who the nominee is. This year, my out-of-state project duties severely limited my time. I asked the committee and received unanimous consent, although with some grumbling, to present the raw nominations to the voting process. I’ve come to know these people over several years and trust their professionalism to be objective. But like Reagan’s mantra of “Trust – but verify” I also checked their scores against candidates from their home regions. I thought I would have to eliminate the top and bottom scores, or even the top two and bottom two, to eliminate bias, but with 9 voters, it turned out results would not have been impacted in any of the awards.

Why do I make this confession? Because I wanted you to know, that the committee also knew, that our recipient had received this award before – our first double winner. Each member had a chance to discount their score, to allow another of any of the fine nominees a chance for the award. And yet, the value of this person to the Colorado program is, I’m assuming, just so overwhelming.

The Excalibur award is about vision. We expect our program leadership to have vision. But there’s also another kind of vision. One that recognizes the tentative inklings of innovation, the trepidation in offering those ideas, and can take those ideas and implement them in a clear and user-friendly way.

In my travels around the country, I meet many of the best each State has to offer. When States hire consultants, they know it’s “Garbage In – Garbage Out”. And at the prices that a firm has to charge, that’s a result that has to be avoided at all cost. Thus, I get to see who States value the most. And guess what? Those that can speak from both a technical and a programmatic viewpoint and those that can envision how an idea can work and those that can make it a solution easy for the line staff to execute are the ones that are chosen to sit in the room.

Our recipient tonight has all those skills. As the nominator said, everyone wants her on their project. She’s your treasure – hold on to her tightly. She’s my friend – I’m so proud and envious – the 2007 Excalibur recipient for the second time:

Darletta Evans, State Office.