Ready, Fire, Aim!
George Rebane
Local folks who read, listen, or go online know by now that our Economic Resource Council (the politically acceptable name sans that dreaded ‘development’ in its moniker) is putting on its now annual economic development extravaganza this Thursday, 7 April 2016. Yesterday ERC publicist Janet Augstein broadcast its latest online press release (here) describing the event to which you can buy tickets.
The 2016 NCERC Annual Regional Economic Development Summit will make the case that Nevada County is the ideal place to start a center for developing augmented and virtual reality technologies and products. I agree with the focus of the event, if not yet completely comfortable with its thrust. To find out more about that, Jo Ann and I will attend the whole affair to understand what all the fuss is about.
According to The Union (here), the baby’s new name is The Green Screen Institute; the old name which didn’t get much traction was Sierra Digital Media Campus. The intent of the GSI is to field 1) “a three-month accelerator program designed to provide technical, educational and financial support to virtual reality and augmented reality start-ups”; and 2) “provide co-working space for more established corporations.” Besides our quality of life, Nevada County also has a surfeit of quality office space, the supply of which has increased markedly during this extended economic doldrum. A casual drive through our several business parks under the pines will confirm this.
“What we’re putting in place are the tools, people and resources to make it as absolutely easy as possible for a high-potential start-up to get off the ground or go from point A to point B in the trajectory of their company.” Jon Gregory, ERC Executive Director.
I anticipate how all of this comes together will be explained this Thursday at the Summit. In the meanwhile I’m a bit puzzled why the ERC did not contact the founders and management of Riskalyze, a successful high tech company located in Auburn that develops and supplies financial engineering software to the institutional investment markets. Riskalyze is Auburn’s largest private employer second only to its city government. (Full disclosure – I am a co-founder of the company.) Riskalyze, now in its sixth year, has successfully solved all the staffing, housing, facilities, financing, government relations, … problems that are often the real hurdles for a start-up.
What I see as more than a bit of a potential distraction for GSI's management is the early (premature?) inclusion of the county’s art culture in directing the nascent start-ups. The other concern I have is that all the successful ventures I have experienced and participated in were launched by entrepreneurs with their own idea/dream, be it a unique intellectual property for developing a product, or new markets for that or existing products. (I have started and/or run four high tech companies and been a technology M&A consultant to large corporations.) With the GSI the ERC takes another cut at its targeting the technical sector along with its vision for success, and then attract some talented bodies with enough fire in their bellies whom they can convince to make it all real. I suppose it’s possible to have the horse push the cart – never say never.
[4apr16 update] Kudos to our Union columnist and RR commenter George Boardman on his 4apr16 column ‘Bad publicity from measles case won’t help economic development’. Regarding our effort to attract employees for the new high-tech businesses, start-ups and imports, Mr Boardman asks, “But why would a bright young professional in his right mind want to send his children to schools where just 77 percent of their kindergarten classmates have received all of their vaccinations? Worse yet, he could enroll his kids in the Yuba River Charter School, where just 43 percent of those students are properly vaccinated.”
This highlights some of the real factors that contribute headwinds to the economic growth of our county. Meanwhile the local socialists have concluded that our economic development problems are all due to the county’s conservatives and high retiree population. These people demonstrate again and again that they literally have no idea what is necessary to make an economy work. Perhaps it really is as someone observed, ‘It’s not that liberals don’t think, it’s just that they have such bad luck when they make the attempt.’
On our schools’ ability to produce STEM trained workers who then will become productive workers to California employers, Mr Boardman highlights the ongoing travesty of the University of California (my alma mater) wherein its “mandarins” claim to attract and admit foreign students “to enhance diversity and breadth of experience that add to the quality of education for the children of the people who actually support the institution.” Meanwhile our own students are rejected or shown to the rear of the line.
The reality is quite different and much worse according to a recent report by state Auditor Elaine Howle who “concludes these claims are at best B.S., and at worst fraud.” More specifically, Ms Howle states that “out-of-state and foreign students are aggressively recruited for the high tuition they’re willing to pay, that academic standards are lowered for thousands of these students, and that qualified California applicants are shut out because of this policy.”
The lowering of academic standards really coats this bitter pill for me and illuminates the hypocrisy of the progressive UC administrations that have fiscally mismanaged the university for years raising non-academic costs that the students then have to chase with ever higher tuitions to pay for poor quality education products. The DoJ actively prosecutes for-profit universities for such fraudulent practices that graduate students with high debts and no employable skills.
Finally, transiting from the plain stupid to bizarre, Mr Boardman’s column concludes with an introduction to “culture appropriation”. Culture appropriation “is defined as adoption or use of elements of one culture by members of a different culture”. This is a newly discovered “angst” by the looney Left that adds to the pile of “trigger warnings, micro-aggressions, and other traumas that afflict modern American college students.” Apparently aping some dress, mannerisms, and music from other cultures is now deemed as “wrongfully oppressing the minority culture or stripping it of its group identity and intellectual property rights”. For a more complete snootful, please read the column.
From my limited research the VR/AR market has four major components:
• Hardware and components
• Content creation and editing
• Distribution platforms
• Middleware and analytics
It is not clear to me from the news article where the Green Screen Institute's focus will be. It could be in all categories. Maybe you can add some insight after the big ERC event.
The Global Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Market is poised to grow at a CAGR of around 16.7% in the next 5 years to reach approximately $2.95 billion by 2020 according to one marketing report.
Another research firm SuperData has adjusted its initial forecast of $5 billion for virtual reality revenue in 2016 by almost a third, with a swag of $3.7 billion by 2017.
Oculus Rift and HTC Vive have launched devices for $599 and $799, respectively. Sony decided to undercut the competition with the standalone PlayStation VR unit for just $399, which is $200 less than the Oculus Rift, but you still have to buy a PlayStation. Online bundles of Play Station and VR headset are being offered at $499.
Currently, the big money seem to be in VR/AR market reports with prices running from $4000 to $9000 for analysis on where the industry will grow and the impediments providers will have to be overcome for the VR/AR market to flourish.
This article in Business Life lays out some of the challenges that Green Screen Institute will have to address in the VR/AR market.
Posted by: Russ Steele | 03 April 2016 at 11:17 AM
So George, why did Riskalyze end up in Placer County rather than Nevada County? The ERC has struck me as having just a bit too much in common with Cargo Cults, wanting all that good Cargo that used to land here but not quite being clear on the concept of what it was that motivated the Cargo to arrive in the first place.
Regarding STEM/STEAM, the initial push ages ago was math and science because American K-12 generally sucked at it... but actually excelling in math and science is hard, so let's add applications of math and science, technology and engineering to allow some science and mathematics appreciation being taught in K-12 where the knowledge of all four is paltry. So much the better when it results in a robot that the kiddies assembled to wreak havoc at that Parent's Night. That real engineering and technology require a solid math and science as a precursor has largely been lost in the mix. Now the local push to add the arts into the focus finishes the ignoring of the basic problem... the schools generally fail (and in particular, the majority of Nevada County schools fail) at taking fresh faced Kindergarteners in one end and having young adults walking out 13 years later, proficient in mathematics, science and the rest of the liberal arts ready for advanced study of what ever they may choose at the college of their choice as a freshman.
A huge problem in local education since the early 90's has been a fealty to constructivist education fads, now institutionalized nationwide with the Common Core. County Ed maven (and ERC driver) Holly Hermansen's husband Jon Byerrum was the early champion of whole language and whole/NCTM math in the GVSD as Superintendent, then we had Hermansen pushing its twin sister, the Common Core State Standards (that the states had no say in developing) as it came down the pike early in the Obama administration with all the local ed people saluting the Common Core flag as Hermansen ran it up the flagpole. The key to the door of higher education in science and technology remains mathematics and science, and the CCSS-M's delaying the progression of mathematics in the early grades so that Algebra isn't seen until the 9th grade (if then) just leaves all children behind the curve. The NCTM's denigration of memory and practice, and near elimination of deduction in favor of inductive practices in mathematics education is an unfolding disaster kept hidden, as the diagnostic tools that would alert all to the failure of CCSS, the STAR/API/Similar Schools testing and reporting, were swept out in the first wave.
Methods of math teaching pushed by the NCTM have failed everywhere they've been tried but the true believers keep thinking it's just a matter of everyone getting on board and refining lesson plans. Until it's cleared out, there's not much hope of good math education for all in the USA, California or Nevada County.
Posted by: Gregory | 03 April 2016 at 01:32 PM
Received an extended email from our Designated Reader wherein is contained a lengthy screed from the FUE and faithful partner Frisch against RR, its readers, and yours truly.
The only thing worth mentioning is that my point in including Riskalyze was that ERC's summit is advertised as a regional promotion not limited to Nevada County. Apparently my critics didn't pick that up. Even though the newly labeled GSI is focused on the virtual reality sector, they would be well served to include Riskalyze management (not me) since the type of enterprise and problems of starting such a business would be identical with expertise the GSI intends to provide. But again, I would not expect any progressive to come close to understanding such considerations, even if they worked at something cynically sporting 'Business' in its name.
Gregory 1117am - Excellent question Mr Goodknight. The answer to that is an important one, especially to high-tech businesses that consider locating in Nevada County. I don't want to speak for Riskalyze on this, but recommend that Jon Gregory call Aaron Klein for that information. And thanks for again expanding on STEM education issues here and elsewhere.
Posted by: George Rebane | 03 April 2016 at 01:40 PM
"The answer to me is clear: when you are a racist, homophobic, bigoted, conspiracy theory driven, enabler of the politics of personal destruction who does not even have the character to be consistent in your own political views when it affects something you have an ideological objection to ... you are a friggin’ joke."
It appears Frisch isn't even aware when he's being self referential.
I do have high tech friends in the area and they are concerned about the math education their kids are getting in Nevada County schools but not as concerned as they need to be.
Posted by: Gregory | 03 April 2016 at 03:01 PM
" And thanks for again expanding on STEM education issues here and elsewhere."
Everyone's welcome, of course, but my argument remains that STEM dilutes the real emphasis which really should just be MATH. At least in K-8, the problem isn't STEM, it's reading, science appreciation (math at and above Algebra is the language of the real physical sciences) and arithmetic with a fluency of the arithmetic of fractions, the essential key readiness for Algebra as was until very recently, expected for students for students being promoted out of the 7th grade at or above grade level.
If you want your child to graduate from NUHS, BRHS or even Ghidotti able to hold their own at UC Berkeley, Stanford, CalTech, Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Cornell, Yale or even USC in any math based course of study, keep them on a solid math track. Don't fall for the "we're more rigorous" false claim of the Common Core gang.
The focus needs to be Math. Not STEM, not STEAM, if you want to have a chance at success in science, engineering, math and even biology nowadays. Even if you, as a parent, wish your child to follow you in the arts and languages, they deserve, in what amounts to a real social justice, to have a chance at the other worlds that a real math competence can lead your child to, to have the choice to have a life in the physical and mathematical sciences even if they choose a different path.
Even the Archangel Gabriel agrees!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbZ-s2CxXGs
(clip is from the movie Prophesy, a must see for Walken fans).
Posted by: Gregory | 03 April 2016 at 03:58 PM
"Ready, fire, aim." You can be concise when you want to be.
Posted by: George Boardman | 04 April 2016 at 11:17 AM
Regarding today's update, UC Berkeley did an end around the tuition freeze using a loophole regarding "professional degrees", as opposed to academic degrees.
They had good demand for Master of Science in Electrical Engineering candidates who didn't want to earn a PhD... so, in order to make a bundle of money, they apparently reduced the number of MSEE students accepted... and created out of thin air a brand new degree they declared to be non-academic... the Masters of Engineering in various flavors and charged a boatload of money for it. Something like triple what an MSEE student would have expected to pay and, in a real bait and switch, some accepted expecting the old fee structure of about $16k and ended up having to pay over $50k.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/UC-reclassifies-master-s-degrees-charges-6869454.php
Posted by: Gregory | 04 April 2016 at 11:26 AM