Following the economic fortunes of this community and its people over the past decade has been like riding the tallest, fastest, scariest roller coaster in the amusement park — without the padded safety bar.

I’ve experienced spectacular heights, gut-pounding lows and terrifying twists and turns as the community that I love has been battered by everything from national recessions to trade agreements to changing consumer tastes to endless reams of statistics proving just how bad things are.

So what’s next?

Earlier this year, I was tasked with coming up with a story budget for the newspaper’s Progress edition (which was published with Sunday’s paper). It turned out to be one of the easiest assignment I’ve had in my year as editor of the Danville Register & Bee. Everyone else was taking the statistics that we already knew to paint an accurate — but incomplete — snapshot of where the Dan River Region is.

Those statistics, for all their value, didn’t tell us where we were going to go. For the Progress edition, I looked at the new industries and businesses that had been recruited to the Dan River Region over the past five years. What I found were jobs that had never been filled at companies such as Swedwood and EBI. Those jobs were announced, factories were built and equipped and the hiring started — and then the recession hit.

What does that mean for our future? As the recovery continues, those new employers will fill hundreds of new jobs — for the first time. Add new projects like the White Mill and the Dan River Region could — and probably will — rocket out of the recession.

We’re not the same old tobacco and textile town we were just a few short years ago. The changes that have been made and the jobs that have been brought to this community will surprise the experts. We didn’t want our readers to be surprised. That was the point of this year’s Progress edition.