Deadline Warren
POSTED:Tue, April 29, 2008 @ 12:14PM
Incubator update
Jim Cossler, director and Chief Evangelist for the Youngstown Business Incubator, has this update:
Just how far the Youngstown Business Incubator has come as a center of excellence for software development really struck home for me late last week during a three-way video conference. Joining with us in Youngstown, Ohio were YBI portfolio companies Zethus Software, M-7 Technologies and our research partner Youngstown State University. Also joining us from Columbus, Ohio and Gaithersburgh, Maryland respectively were scientists from the Ohio Supercomputer Center and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Our goal? To define each partner's responsibility for developing the next generation of laser-based 3D imaging software for advanced manufacturing under our contract with the U.S. Department of Defense.
You know, there was a time a few years ago that we would have been happy to get just one software company successfully off the ground in Youngstown.
Now I'm kinda thinking total world domination.
Seriously.
I don't know about world domination, but these kinds of developments will go along way to changing the way people look at the Mahoning Valley. And I don't just mean outsiders.
I had an exchange recently in which someone said too many people in the Valley are still waiting for the steel mills to come back. While that may have been true 10 or 15 years ago, I think things have changed. Most people know that big steel as we knew it is long gone.
The problem now, as I see it, is that many people do not know what will come next for the local economy and so they don't have any hope the area can recover.
But there is a plan -- and it involves the incubator and funding local research that can have commercial applications.
The Youngstown Business Incubator by itself is not a solution, but it is part of a solution to the local economy. And it is proof that high tech can flourish here in the Valley and create jobs to local graduates.
