To get your experience at SSTI's annual conference off on the right foot, the City of Philadelphia proudly invites you to enjoy a private evening at its most beautiful and interesting new cultural center — the National Constitution Center. The evocative museum is the first devoted to one of the most important and innovative documents in world history — the U.S. Constitution.
On October 13, SSTI will offer four exciting options as pre-conference activities: three day-long sessions on topics that will help you prepare for tomorrow's challenges and a tour of one of the world's foremost science parks. The sessions are:
SSTI annual conferences don't come in a box. We don't publish proceedings or post conference materials. Each year's event is designed as an intensive learning experience; it's about the question and answer, the give and take, the push and pull, the dialogue as much as the individual presentations. You have to be present to win, if learning and growing is winning. We think it is.
Need yet another reason why this conference fits your training needs? SSTI’s 8th Annual Conference is recognized by the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) as a professional development event that counts toward the recertification of Certified Economic Developers (CEcDs).
Seattle 2003 Sold Out. Register Early to Ensure a Seat in Philadelphia
We heard from some of you last year about your disappointment and disbelief that you couldn't attend our annual conference in Seattle because it was sold out. It happens with SSTI conferences because our first concern is the quality of the event for our participants.
Earlier this week, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced awards estimated to total $65 million over five years to fund six major centers in nanoscale science and engineering. The awards are part of a series of NSF grants – totaling $150 million in fiscal year 2001 alone – for nano research in multiple disciplines.
In an effort to create a high tech center, officials in Ohio's Butler County anticipate spending more than $100 million during the next five years to increase telecommunications, biomedical innovations, electronic commerce, and other research. Funding for the measure would come from as much as a half-penny sales tax hike, according to a story published August 1 by the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Whether it's called clusters or localization economies, the aggregation of firms in the same or closely related industries has captured the attention of many state and local tech-based economic development efforts. Understanding the phenomenon and formulating effective public policy to encourage or support clustering presents challenges for practitioners and researchers alike.
The development and application of new information technologies across virtually every segment of the American economy has resulted in rapid, sustained growth in demand for highly skilled information technology (IT) workers. The Department of Labor estimates between 1983 and 1998 the number of high-skilled IT workers increased from 719,000 to 2,084,000 – an increase of 190 percent, more than six times the overall U.S. job growth rate during this period.
The 2001 Farm Bill
Declaring September “Nonprofits & Technology Month,” the Foundation Center has launched a website presenting myriad financial and technical assistance resources to support the acquisition and use of information technology in nonprofit organizations.
SSTI’s fifth annual conference, Creating Opportunity: Tools for Building Tech-based Economies, has been rescheduled for December 3-4. The agenda and location of the conference remain the same.
Encouraging entrepreneurship has been a predominant focus since the recession and jobless recover, but a recent report from one of the country's leading colleges for entrepreneurial education cautions the current wave of new business starts will not cure many job woes.
It seems discussion on Capital Hill of the burgeoning federal deficit is loudest when the House, Senate or Administration considers the VA, HUD and Independent Agencies appropriations bill. Perhaps the bill always serves as the fall guy because alphabetically it is the last of the 13 appropriations bills Congress considers, then ignores and then hurriedly mushes together with the other unpassed funding bills several months into the new fiscal year.
In an appropriations bill where cuts are viewed as good news -- compared to the President's request for program termination, that is -- the small Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund could consider itself very lucky after Friday's full House Appropriations Committee mark-up of the VA-HUD and Independent Agencies bill.
July has been a tech-friendly month for Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner. On July 14, the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) named her "BIO Governor of the Year," recognizing her contributions toward growing the state's biotechnology industry, one of the strongest concentrations in the country. Further attesting to her grasp of biotech issues, Gov. Minner also serves as a co-chair of the National Governors Association Biotechnology Partnership.
Earlier this month, a Science Committee bill that would reauthorize the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program and create a more robust manufacturing sector cleared the U.S. House of Representatives.
Gov. Mike Rounds announced last week the creation of four new specialized research centers at the state's public universities. The $2.8 million in awards mark South Dakota's first foray into using university-based research investments as a tool to grow the state's economy, the governor said.
The four 2010 Research Centers are:
If the corporate leaders, educators, scientists, and technology entrepreneurs who make up the Birmingham Area Technology Task Force have their way, Birmingham, Alabama in the 21st century will be a mecca for technology-based businesses and jobs.
State and land-grant universities provide major stimulus to their state and regional economies – generating jobs, attracting and helping create new high-tech businesses, and increasing state tax revenues in addition to providing a well-educated work-force, according to Shaping the Future – The Economic Impact of Public Universities. The study, prepared by National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC), is based on a survey of its 212 member institutions.
The Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) is a nationwide network of not-for-profit Centers in over 400 locations nationwide, whose sole purpose is to provide the more than 361,000 small and medium-sized manufacturers in the country the help they need to succeed in a global economy.
With all its promise of connecting businesses and residents of even the remotest areas the country to the global economy, the Internet led most states and communities to invest resources toward the Digital Divide. Will these investments pay off? Will the Internet lead to an economic geographic revolution similar to that caused by past technological advances such as the automobile?
Since its founding in 1991, the nonprofit Minnesota Technology Inc. (MTI) has been Minnesota lead technology-based economic development organization. Its mission, to help existing small and medium-sized companies apply, develop and commercialize technology, is achieved through three objectives:
The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) releases reports and testimonies nearly every day. On the accompanying webpage are summaries from seven recent reports, identified below, that are relevant to state and local tech-based economic development objectives.
There are less than 100 of our readers - now approaching a total of 100,000 - that may be able to look into their electronic mailboxes and even eight-year-old paper files to see that this issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest is our 400th. What began in March 1996 as a two-page weekly fax to key science and technology leaders in most states has evolved into the one of the most widely read e-news sources for the tech-based economic development community in the U.S.