Funny thing about symmetry – you never know it’s going to happen until the moment it actually does, and then all of a sudden, you say things like “Well, how about that? That was very symmetrical.” Which is pretty much what happened when I heard from “Go Build Alabama.”

“Go Build Alabama” is a website built to champion Skilled Labor. It’s funded by the construction industry and the state of Alabama, and similar in many ways to mikeroweWORKS. I know this because the organizers told me as much when they first called a few months ago to tell me they had used mrW as a resource to build out this initiative.

That was very flattering, though not necessarily symmetrical.

Then they asked if I’d be interested in speaking out on their behalf in some commercials. Naturally, I said yes. The goals of mikeroweWORKS are more or less identical to those of Go Build Alabama, and I was shooting the following week in Mississippi, which put me in the neighborhood.

That was serendipitous, but not really symmetrical.

Then, I learned that Go Build Alabama was planning to launch on Labor Day, 2010 – exactly two years after I officially announced mikeroweWORKS.

Now that was symmetrical.

And here’s the part I’m most pleased about. After learning that I was speaking on behalf of this project, my partners at Caterpillar called to see if there was anything they could do to help get the word out in Alabama. Cat has an obvious interest in everything related to skilled trades, so I was happy to introduce them to the people at Go Build, and they have begun to help with the campaign. And that is a very cool thing.

mikeroweWORKS – a modest site built mostly by fans of a TV show about hard work – has connected a state-wide, non-profit initiative with the largest manufacturer of construction equipment in the world. The results are undeniable. More and more people will come to know the importance of skilled labor, and that has always been the point.

At first, I thought mrW might work as a kind of call-to-arms. I still think it ultimately will. But right now, it’s showing real potential as an adhesive – a connective tissue between dozens of organizations like Go Build Alabama and those companies that rely heavily upon a skilled workforce. If those two forces can come together in Alabama, it can happen everywhere. And when it does, mrW just might play a modest role.

And that’s the kind of symmetry I’m talking about…

-Mike