NEW YORK--The state senate in Albany was in a bit of a shambles Monday. So instead of speaking in-person at the Personal Democracy Forum as planned, NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg used Skype to make his keynote address.
"Through the miracles of modern communication, we're essentially together," Bloomberg commented to the audience at the Frederick P. Rose auditorium here in midtown Manhattan. He then spoke about how New York is using the assets of the digital age to make more information available to the city's residents--something that Bloomberg can pitch well, considering he made a fortune as the founder of the business news and information company that bears his name.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg
(Credit: NYC.gov)Bloomberg's new initiatives include Skype and Twitter accounts for NYC 311, the city's information hotline that Bloomberg launched several years ago; a partnership with Google to get more detailed information about exactly what people are searching for on municipal government sites (and what they can and can't find); and "Big Apps," a new contest for developers to crunch and remix city data into Web or mobile applications for the masses.
The economy, however, may get in the way. Any ambitious new city projects are taken with a grain of salt these days, and with good reason.
I, for one, was scrambling to get to Bloomberg's talk on time because cutbacks and delays on the B-D-F-V subway line had added literally an extra half-hour to my commute from downtown to the conference venue at Columbus Circle. Griping about the city budget is pretty commonplace around here these days, and Bloomberg himself is no exception.
"If any of you from around the world wants to move here," Bloomberg quipped over the Skype connection when conference organizer Andrew Rasiej commented that a thousand people were on hand, "we would love to have you. We need taxpayers."
The official information available on the Web to New York residents includes public school progress data and citywide performance reporting. Beyond that, Bloomberg's administration has chosen to support new and more efficient ways of doing business: it has given the thumbs-up to collaborative workspaces and launched a venture fund for tech and finance start-ups, among other things. These are all part of a way to combat the fact that the Wall Street meltdown has left scores of the city's professionals out of work.
With "Big Apps," Bloomberg is encouraging developers to participate in a contest that "will challenge all of you, and the whole tech world, really, to come up with new applications using city data."
"We'll be releasing a huge volume of data from a number of agencies," Bloomberg said before the Skype connection briefly cut off. Rasiej re-dialed in, and Bloomberg continued that he hopes the fruits of Big Apps contests will "create the connectedness that will benefit the city economically, civically, and socially."
If developers aren't willing to act solely out of a desire to help the city, Bloomberg said that Big Apps will indeed have cash prizes, as well as an even bigger incentive.
"I'll up the ante by taking the grand-prize winners out to dinner," he said.
Good to hear that's still in the budget.
Just a few months ago, Sid Agrawal, the chief operating officer of a 4-year-old semiconductor start-up in Santa Clara, Calif., was opining on the Silicon India site about the technology industry, noting that "green technology is the buzzword of the day" and bemoaning the challenge of "hiring good analog designers."
Sid Agrawal's recent Silicon India post was titled "Opportunities Galore for Semiconductors."
(Credit: Silicon India)On Friday, however, Agrawal, 56, became one of three victims in a fatal workplace shooting that has saddened friends, colleagues, and family members, and left Silicon Valley employees--already shook up over constant reports of layoffs and bad economic news--feeling all the more uneasy.
"Silicon Valley has lost a great warrior," said Deepak Bhagat, a close friend and fellow alumnus at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Bhagat said Agrawal wasn't someone who talked a lot, but what he said was "loaded with wisdom."
The tragedy unfolded at almost 4 p.m. PST Friday, as police officers responded to a report of multiple gunshots fired at a Santa Clara office park on Scott Boulevard in a suite occupied by SiPort, which makes digital multimedia broadcast chips for mobile markets, according to the company Web site. Dead at the scene were Agrawal of Fremont; Brian Pugh, 47, of Los Altos, who was vice president of operations; and Marilyn Lewis, 67, of San Jose, who was head of human resources.
The suspect, Jing Hua Wu, 47, of Mountain View, had been terminated from his position as an engineer for SiPort and reportedly asked for a meeting with his former employers to talk about his employment. He allegedly shot and killed all three victims with a handgun and fled the area in an SUV, police said. At about 10:45 a.m. Saturday, Santa Clara police arrested Wu on public road in Mountain View and booked him on three counts of homicide. His arraignment is scheduled for Wednesday morning.
Initial stories widely reported that Wu had been laid off from the company, but SiPort on Saturday issued a statement clarifying that Wu was terminated and SiPort has never had any layoffs.
Jing Hua Wu
(Credit: Santa Clara County Department of Corrections)"The entire SiPort staff and board are in mourning," Aiman Kabakibo, the new CEO and company founder, said in the statement. "We are a close-knit team of engineers and entrepreneurs who built this company together."
Santa Clara Police spokesman Lt. Mike Sellers said the incident, especially amid the economic climate and continued layoff announcements, has triggered many questions about office security. So much so that he had planned a small press conference Monday to talk about related securities resources and programs for companies. That said, however, Sellers sees Friday's shooting as "an isolated situation." The victims likely didn't suspect a problem, he said, or else they wouldn't have agreed to meet with the suspect.
Still, the incident has people saddened and worried, said Seshan Rammohan, executive director of TIE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) Silicon Valley, whose members were friends and colleagues of Agrawal's "It's really devastating...and very sobering," he said. "People are very circumspect when they have to deal with layoffs and with terminations."
Bhagat, who was with Agrawal at a dinner party two Fridays ago, said his friend was cautious about he economy in general, but seemed very confident about SiPort's position, as it recently got its chip working. With his industry experience at Adobe and Bell Labs and with two prior start-ups, Agrawal--who came emigrated to the U.S. from India in 1975--was a very "capable executive" who always "pushed the technology envelope," Bhagat said.
Yet Bhagat too--along with his colleagues--said he can't help but wonder about how the shooting relates to the stresses of the economy. He got an e-mail from a colleague in India today who had heard about the killings and wondered, "Is this the tip of the iceberg?"
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