Industry along I-20 points to the name 'Cyber Strip'

I caught myself sounding like my father last weekend.

When I visited his small Texas town, we would always go for a drive so he could show me everything that was "new" since my last visit. It was his way of keeping me updated on the town's activities. I had become a city slicker since I had moved off to a state capital and would sometimes tease him about the town where nothing ever really changed.

With daughter Anne riding in the passenger seat last weekend, I caught myself saying, "We got a Burlington Coat Factory, and here's the new Kohl's. Best Buy is going in, and we're getting an Academy Sports."

We drove down the newly resurfaced Louisville Avenue and passed the new parking lots and fencing at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. Of course, I pointed out those achievements.

Then I realized exactly how I sounded. She's in Baton Rouge, where everything is under construction. You can't even drive in the downtown area, there's so much going on. And here I am, cheerily chatting about new blacktop and a fence.

Somewhere in the recesses of my brain, I could hear my dad saying, "Uncle Neil sold his cow pasture and the barn. We're gettin' a Wal-Mart."

Ouch. Yes, I do count our "news" on two hands. Don't need the toes yet. But it's more "new" than we've had in a while.

The groundwork is in place, though, for a whole lot more "new." We've been writing a lot about the progress on our regional economic development effort and trying to keep you updated on the provisional cyber command at Barksdale Air Force Base.

But there was a lot we didn't understand about the cyber command, and, quite frankly, we were pretty skeptical about the job-creation hype we'd been hearing. We also didn't understand how something at Barksdale could reach across the state to us. So business editor Greg Hilburn and I went over to Bossier City last week for a briefing on the cyber command and Bossier's Cyber Innovation Center.

(First, here's a boiled-down definition of "cyber" as viewed militarily. Wars are fought on three fronts land, sea and air. Air now includes space and cyberspace. The military believes future wars will be fought in cyberspace. Cyberspace goes beyond what you might think in terms of information that is processed by a computer. It includes all of the electromagnetic fields, from alpha rays to microwaves to X-rays.)

At the Bossier briefing, we heard from Rick Davis, executive director of Cummings Research Park in Huntsville, Ala. Bossier Cyber Innovation Center Director Craig Spohn said they looked at more than 72 research parks and found the most similarities to Bossier in the Huntsville story.

Cummings is the second-largest research park in the United States and fourth largest in the world. Since Davis got involved with the park in 2003, more than 400 acres of the park have been sold for more than $1 billion in capital investment and more than 2.9 million square feet of development.

"Someone asked me if it were really possible for CIC to bring 10,000 to 15,000 jobs to this region," Davis told the crowd of 1,200 gathered in the Bossier Civic Center to hear his presentation. "I said it's not only possible, it's probable."

He predicted the impact of peripheral businesses related to the cyber command and that CIC would be felt within a 150-mile radius of Bossier City, and he emphasized the importance of creating a cohesive network of facilities and service providers within the three-state region.

"You will pop up on people's radar when you open the Cyber Innovation Center. It will change how people think of you," he said.

Spohn and Bossier Mayor Lo Walker also emphasized the regional and cooperative nature of the initiative. "The pot is so big there is no need for parochialism," Spohn said. "All boats will rise on this tide."

The people in Huntsville credit the arrival of Wernher von Braun in the 1950s as the "incendiary event" that put their community on the international business and research map. Spohn said our area's incendiary event was Secretary of the Air Force Wynne's announcement of Barksdale as the provisional cyber command.

"This is our catalyst," he said. "Lt. Gen. Bob Elder is our Wernher von Braun ... this is going to be so big, it calls for a broader community that will reach in a 150-mile radius around our area."

Davis credited the 44-year legacy of success Cummings Research Park has built to its uniquely focused alliance of business, government and academic research initiatives.

"CRP is supported by more than 220 companies active in more than 40 separate technology fields, and that includes 20 of the Fortune 500 companies," Davis said. "You have the potential for the same kind of success right here in the region of northwest Louisiana, northeast Texas and southwest Arkansas, but you have to work together to provide a competitive business advantage in a constantly changing high-technology environment."

Louisiana Tech University with its high-tech focus already is poised to benefit from and be part of the cyber command growth. Tech is ranked 10th nationally for commercializing nanotechnology inventions the proven ability to process patents and turn them into profitable ideas.

But the entire northeastern Louisiana region also is positioned to "play with the big dogs" because of high-tech infrastructure investments made somewhat quietly during the Gov. Kathleen Blanco administration. Since 2002, the state has invested more than $200 million in support of information technology initiatives, facilities and faculty. And while we're all accustomed to driving along Interstate 20, I didn't know we also have at our disposal the opportunity to drive on Louisiana Optical Network Initiative.

LONI is a high-speed fiber optics network connecting supercomputers at Louisiana's research universities and the National LambdaRail. LONI is the most powerful regional network and grid-computing environment in the nation.

We've all heard of the "research triangle" and Silicon Valley. Let's start thinking of I-20 as the "Cyber Strip."

It's important for us to close the mileage gap on I-20 and consider the regional opportunities of the cyber command. We produce a couple of thousand college graduates every year in this region, and we have community college and technical school capabilities to train any work force a business might need.

We can play. We just need to get to the playground.