Entergy and the state of technology
New Orleans has been sporting a big whiskey dick for IT for years now. Until recently I thought there was still hope. I work in IT and in nearly ten years of living in New Orleans, I’ve never worked for a New Orleans based IT company. Sugar Ray has made good progress in the last few years but I’m afraid it has all been for not. The general computer literacy level of New Orleans is pretty sad - no offense to anyone. When you compare the number of people on social networks such as MySpace.com, Friendster.com or Tribe.com from New Orleans to other major cities it becomes clear very quickly that the population of New Orleans is lagging. And, by the way, if you don’t know any of those sites are or what a social network is, I’m quite sure you aren’t alone.
More to the point, with Entergy hemming and hawing about ‘decentralizing’ and ‘retaining the Jackson, MS data center’. I think it signals a very definitive end to burgeoning future of technology in New Orleans. Data centers need electricity and network connectivity to function and there isn’t a reliable source of either element here - end of story.
There are certainly readers out there thinking ‘who cares’? And that isn’t surprising. But I can assure you it is. New Orleans and the State of Louisiana is falling further behind every single year. The world is speeding past us at blinding speed (roughly 600 Kb/s) and it isn’t slowing down. A few major technology centers like Google and Yahoo hubs could nearly double the tax revenue of New Orleans by way of income tax alone. Is that ever going to happen - I’m very tempted to say no. Is there anything we can do about it - also no.
So what the hell is my point then?
#!/bin/sh
TOOTSIE_ROLL_POP=shell
while [ “$TOOTSIE_ROLL_POP” != “center” ]
do
$LICK=$LICK+1
done
**code copied from http://comedycode.com and was submitted by Apocalypse
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Agreed, with the following addition:
Data centers need electricity and network connectivity to function and there isn’t a reliable source of either element here - end of story.
Even more importantly, tech companies need a large pool of highly-skilled workers, which we haven’t had for decades. You can build a data center in a year with enough cash. A competent labor force was pretty much out of our grasp pre-Katrina and I doubt it’ll ever happen now.
“Build it and they will come.”
If a major IT corp took a chance on N.O., the skilled workforce would migrate for the jobs. The added tax revenue would fund better schools/training for the native population, who could move into the jobs as the transplants move up/on to greener pastures. At least in theory, anyway. Case in point: Monroe (seat of Ouachita Parish in north Louisiana, for those unfamiliar with Louisana geography) is not exactly awash in highly skilled and educated workers but Century Tel took a chance and soon Chase moved in a call center. Things looked a bit brighter when I was there at Christmas. Still bleak, but a brighter shade of bleak nonetheless! :-)
Digression here: When the hell did metroblogging start formatting for widescreen computers?! I have to scroll to the right so see the whole post - it’s VERY annoying, could someone fix it so it loads the correct resolution size for computers.
One of the top 10 domain name registrars in the world is located right here in river city.
And it continued to operate in the aftermath of the big K with supplies of food and water from the national guard. And was exempted from the evacuation order, so the city gov’t knew it existed.
And employee blogs showed the streets around their downtown location after K.
And it has been listed as a high growth company by national business magazines.
That’s a good point Skeeter, but I’ve always felt the Doman Name Registrars was just kind of a scam. How many people do they employ? I’ve always thought it was like two potheads in a parents’ basement with some sort of kiosk running Unix System V, but I’m quite sure that can’t be right (they’re probably running bsd -lol). I guess the reason I’ve always had a weird opinion of them is because the advertising sometimes boarders on spam and I’ve never known anyone that worked for one. If you get a chance post some more info on them.
By the way, I bought the January issue of Maximum PC today to read on the plane back from Houston and was disgusted by the 16 page ad by 1and1.com in a $10 magazine that only has 112 pages. They host my personal site so I’m thinking of changing because of it.
Sad you won’t accept blogspot URL. But that’s not the point.
People want to live in New Orleans. Its one of those metropolitan areas that have a certain charm that draws people.
I agree that what is needed is a nucleus around which a tech industry would grow. I’m a software tester, and my wife just accepted a position in NOLA, and we’re coming home. I hope I can convince my largish bank to allow me to continue my work from a home office.
Another blogger I know is a Java coder, and he and his wife want to come home as well. I think that those of us tied to the high-tech industry will need to lobby vigorously about how the CDBG dollars the Louisiana Recovery Authority says will be spent on economic development are used.
The Survival of N.O./NOLA.US guys may be cyber squatters (as one on-line acquittance told me), but they’ve got a high-survivability data center, and that is a start.
When I get back, Jack, I’d love to buy you (and anyone else who reads this) a beer, and plot how people who are in this line can get together and make some noise about the city and state actively working to get the bio-med industry growth back on line, and work for other high tech companies to come to NOLA. I’ve worked in politics, and know a thing or two about organizing.
If we want it to happen, we will have to make it happen. The squeaky wheel and all that.
Markus
http://wetbankguide.blogspot.com
Remembering Katrina, Envisioning New Orleans
Biological androids or robots.
We have the shuttle tank, plus.
Laurie