Keep Your Head in the Clouds

“I have been over to the future and it works.”
Lincoln Steffens, 20th century journalist and political activist

In 1919, an American went to Russia and returned home with one of the most famous lines of the century. Not to debate his penchant for communism or his reputation as an infamous muckraker, I can relate to Steffen’s sentiment…. Every time I pick up a tech magazine, read a newspaper, or go online, it seems I too am hit with the future all over again.

Exxon, for example, just entered a $600 million joint venture to research how to convert algae into biofuels. With that kind of money on the table, they must have some pretty solid projections on how algae's going to impact our ability to remain mobil in the future. I would dare say that about the time that the rest of us get our heads wrapped around the idea of spinning muck into gold, Exxon will already be negotiating another high-tech, who-would-have-ever-thunk-it deal.

Recently while reading an article about something called cloud computing and how it’s changing the face of technology, I thought back to Steffens’ proclamation and wondered what he would think about the state of affairs today... When it comes to the topic of cloud computing, there are many who espouse that companies will face an increased time of churn and upheaval as low level tech jobs are automated or eliminated altogether. As I read these predictions, I wonder how many have already come true, how many are still to come, and whether or not that will be a good thing.

Techies throw around a lot of terms and assume that people outside the field understand what they are saying, but for the rest of us… What is cloud computing anyway?

Cloud computing is a computing model that lets you access software, as well as serve and store resources over the internet. Rather than having to buy, install, maintain and manage these resources on your own computer, you can just access them through a web browser. Software-as-a-service (Saas) and on-demand business applications such as Quickbooks Online, and GoToMeetings.com are cloud applications. So are free web services- such as Microsoft Hotmail, or FaceBook and Twitter. Amazon.com is too, for that matter. It's called “cloud computing” because techies have long used cloud icons to represent the infrastructure that is the internet. It’s the “stuff” that’s seemingly out there in the air.

Cloud computing makes things easier for the end user, but behind the scenes vendors have a lot of work in managing the infrastructure, technology and labor that allows them to provide services easily and profitably to millions of users. They must invest heavily in hardware, virtualization technologies, networking infrastructure and automation capabilities.

For the workforce, this means technology skills in network administration, security, electrical engineering, and information management, but it also means understanding the way business works. Employers are going to need people who understand pricing models, contracts, strategic planning, and marketing.

I’m not a pundit, but I agree with those who are… Some tech jobs are going to go away, just as they have since the beginning of the information revolution. But for those who are prepared to step into the future, there’s going to be a fair amount of interesting opportunity out there in its place. The future is coming and it's going to be up to you to make it work.

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For information about Computer/ Information Technology courses offered through the Business and Social Sciences Division:

Field of Computer Science

Information Technology

Measuring the World Around Us

Texas hero Stephen F. Austin is widely known as the leader of the "Old 300," the Anglo settlers whose desire for an independent nation led to the colonists’ struggle against Mexico for what would become the Republic of Texas, and eventually the 28th of the united states . This was a journey over which people lived and died and which pushed expansion westward, eventually culminating at water’s edge in what is now California.

Before Stephen there was his father, Moses. Although he died before making the trip, it is Moses who historians will remember as the surveyor from the east who received permission to bring a group of Anglo Americans to settle in Spanish Texas.

And long before before the Austin clan and dating back to ancient Egypt, land has been divided, traded, taken and won. War, fires, floods, earthquakes and other disasters destroy buildings, monuments and infrastructure, but for the most part, the land remains.

So whether it's the Texas-Mexico border, the Mason-Dixon Line, or the property line that separates you from your neighbor, someone has to determine how land is divided and where… In the beginning and still today, we call that person a Land Surveyor.

Mt. Rushmore: Three Surveyors and Another Guy

A few years ago, the college began offering non-credit courses in surveying. Today, due to industry demand, we offer enough credit courses for students to achieve a marketable skills award in as little as a semester, a Certificate in only one year, and a two year Associate of Applied Science Degree. Courses in this program will transfer into select four year programs as well, although you probably want to speak with a counselor to find out which classes will transfer and where.

When most people think of surveyors, the first thing that comes to mind is that guy standing on the side of the road wearing an orange vest and holding a pole. Having read a little about this profession, it’s pretty obvious that there’s a whole lot more to it than that. It’s a high tech field, with GIS and GPS starting to play more and more of a role. You need to know a little about the law, some history, a bit of geography, and geometry too.

Mostly though, you need to have a little bit of respect for the profession, for the job you are going to do and for those proud and dedicated men (and women) who have come before you. Because working as a land surveyor isn't just any job for any old joe…and there are three guys whose faces are carved on the side of a cliff whose accomplishments can attest to that!



(George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln were all professional land surveyors)

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For information about programs offered through the Business and Social Sciences Division:

Land Surveying and Mapping Technology

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Texas High School Educators Retreat (Land Surveying)

High school math, science, geography, history teachers and career/tech counselors save the date for the 3rd annual retreat co-hosted by Texas Society of Professional Surveyors. This year's event will take place at LSC-Montgomery from August 16-18, 2009. There is limited enrollment so complete your application early at http://www.tsps.org/.

The Company Town Goes Global

Commonly referred to as a Baby Boomer, my father was born in rural East Texas and was groomed to become as William Whyte noted in his 1956 classic, an "Organization Man." Back then and through the 1980’s, towns and the people who lived in them were made and broken by the companies they worked for.

Though rare today for a single company to maintain such overwhelming influence over a community, we see remnants of that era in places like Alcoa, Tennessee, where corporate founder Alcoa remains dominant. Back in East Texas, the town of Lone Star - my dad's old stomping grounds - leaned heavily on Lone Star Steel for its existence. In 2006, LSS was sold to US Steel. Under new management, the area's steel industry continues to serve as one of the area's most important employers, though not as grand as in its heyday.

Long before Alcoa and Lone Star Steel, the Pullman Palace Car Company created the little town of Pullman, just south of Chicago. That was in the late 1880’s. Towns such as Durango, Colorado and Gary, Indiana soon followed and it seemed that eventually half of the United States was comprised of towns run by one corporate entity or another. Through the years, other companies, such as Walt Disney (Orlando, Florida), Hershey Chocolate Corporation (Hershey, PA) and Imperial Sugar (Sugarland, Texas) adopted the template for their own use. And for a very long time, they garnered quite a bit of success in doing so. Then along came computers and globalization, airplanes, telephones and the internet… and things began to change. As competition and technology bore down upon them, individual companies lost their hold and whole industries began to influence where people chose to work and the economic development term “clustering,” was born.

Clusters arose in unlikely places. Silicon Valley arose from the need for IT folks to cluster and eventually, they clustered in Austin, Texas too. Elkhart County, Indiana...with its long Amish heritage and its background producing musical instruments, it transitioned into the automotive industry and became known as the RV Capital of the World with 50% of the world's production taking place there.

All ideas have their time in the sun and even the best have a downside, as Austin discovered and the citizens of Elkhart are learning first hand today. A lack of diversity can kill a community. Just ask Indiana, which is experiencing an unemployment rate so high that then-candidate Barak Obama felt a need to schedule a campaign stop there last year.

The Rise of the Creative Class

A few years ago, Richard Florida wrote a book called “The Rise of the Creative Class.” By the time the book hit the shelves, we had already experienced Austin's dot.com bubble… and watched it burst. If you looked around closely enough, you didn’t need anyone to tell you that people who create for a living were going to change the world, although it was kind of nice to have someone summarize what the rest of us knew was happening, but just didn’t know what to call it. Currently, there are more than 40 million Americans – over a third of our national workforce – who create for a living.

Today, the “creative class” is influencing how the workplace is organized, what companies will prosper, or cease to exist, and even which cities will grow, wither and die. This “creative class” comprises a variety of fields, from engineering to biotechnology to theater to computer science, to education and architecture. The creative class works in small towns and big towns, in big cities, on farmland and near pastures. Mostly they work where they want to live, not the other way around. Book-ending the Baby Boomers and born between 1982-2000, the new millennials embody the essence of the “creative class.”

Tech-savvy and independent… this new worker is about as far away from being an “organization man” as East Texas is from Asia. Limited only by technology, academic attainment and their own imaginations, they aren't waiting around for someone else to tell them where to live and work. They are making the world their “company town”

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For information about Information Technology or Business Management courses offered through the Business and Social Sciences Division: E-Business Web Developer Certificate Network Administrator Certificate Network Engineer CertificateMarketing Certificate

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Upcoming Events & Other Resources

Entrepreneurships Institute
Inaugural High Tech Conference and Career Fair at LSC-Montgomery September 24, 2009, 2pm-7:30pm http://lsc-montgomeryhightechconference.wikispaces.com/

SCI-TECH Education for Tomorrow Alliance EfTA needs you to make SCI://TECH, one of the largest regional science fairs in the nation, possible! Hundreds of judges meet one-on-one with students to evaluate their projects, and you don't have to be a scientist to encourage these aspiring young people...although we always welcome those too!

South by Southwest (MUSIC & TECH FEST) http://sxsw.com/home
Austin’s hey day as king of the dot.coms may be long gone, but she is still queen when it comes to cool. Nothing is more about what is happening right now than South by Southwest. "In its 22 years, SXSW has grown from a tiny music festival in the Texas capital into a massive, unavoidable media beast that reflects, discusses and showcases trends in culture and media but also often creates them." Event is held annually each March.

The Future Has Arrived...

As a kid, while most of my friends dreamt of Walt Disney World… the rides, the characters, Cinderella’s castle… I secretly harbored an irrepressible desire to run wild through the mysterious world of the future: Epcot Center.

In fact, our senior class was slated to visit, briefly, that destination underdog during our graduation trip to the East Coast. Life intervened, I missed the trip and I have wondered ever since what secrets the future held that I may have missed.

But as conservative commentator George Will observed, the future has a way of arriving unannounced and during a recent visit to Rice University, I was finally given a chance to experience the awe of discovery held captive by my imagination these many years.

I can attest, the future is here, but it’s not locked away in a silver ball in the middle of Florida. Sorry, Orlando.

The purpose of my visit to the University was to attend the 8th annual Nanotechnology and Sustainability Forum hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship. While there, I was fascinated to learn how scientists across the world are developing new technologies that are or will soon impact our lives in ways that even Walt Disney could never have imagined.

Mid-century activist Simone Weil got it mostly right when she said that the future is made of the same stuff as the present… Yes, the same stuff, but smaller, much smaller...and that makes all the difference.

We hear about it all of the time… computers programs that once took up an entire floor of an office building are now discretely tucked away in a desktop PC. Phones are no longer phones… they are miniature entertainment consoles, emergency response systems and portable production studios.

Technology is indeed getting smaller, more portable and more efficient, but nanotechnology is redefining small and taking it to a whole new level.

Specialists in the fields of nanotechnology, information technology and biotechnology are working in concert to create the perfect storm of innovation.

By manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale, scientists are using nanotechnology to create anti-collision automobile sensors; nanocarbon fibers are being woven into reinforced body armor; and nanoparticles are being studied to see how they can absorb solar energy, purify water, and even create mildew resistant tile.

Concurrently, computer scientists and information technologists are serving as major players in the field by designing programs to help with the collection and analysis of key data leading to these phenomenal breakthroughs.

It's a Revolution
A broad, multidisciplinary technology revolution is far outpacing the agricultural and industrial revolutions of years past. Nanotechnology is at the forefront and it is bringing with it a host of career opportunities for students wishing to enter the fields of medicine, electronics and energy, all industries that are particularly strong within our region.

That’s very good news for Texans and it ensures that the future, just as I always imagined, is a most exciting place to be!

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For information about Computer/ Information Technology courses offered through the Business and Social Sciences Division:

Field of Computer Science

Information Technology

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For information about the Sematech Nanoelectronic Workforce Development Initiative Nanoscholar Internship - Open to students enrolled in ANY institution of higher education in Texas (including LSC)

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For information about the Governor's Office of Economic Development:

Nanotechnology Report 2008

Nanotechnology Companies in Texas 2008

Biotechnology Report 2008

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For information about the Disney College Internship Program

National Counselors Week

In addition to keeping an eye on the labor needs of local business and industry, my job includes talking to high school counselors to let them know about the programs and courses offered through our Division.

During my visits with these highly trained professionals, we work to identify ways the Division can help newly minted graduates ease the transition from high school to college. In spite of their very busy schedules, I am always welcomed with enthusiasm and excitement about the possibilities our partnership might bring to their students.

While we talk, the counselors discuss their students - their successes and their challenges. They express concern and hope and they elaborate on the creative ways they are working to help students resolve academic and personal problems as they move down the road of becoming successful adults.

As I listen to these multi-tasking masterminds with the hearts of gold and nerves of steel, I am reminded of the unique contributions of professional school counselors within the U.S. school system.

Recently, both the House of Representatives and the Senate passed resolutions (S. Res. 16 and H. Res. 56) proclaiming the week of Feb. 2–6, 2009 as National Counselors Week. Based on what I know, I think that Counselors should be celebrated all year long!

BASS Division Counselors
Here at the college, we are extremely lucky to have not one, but two counselors assigned to our division.

As licensed professionals, our counselors are trained to provide personalized guidance in the areas of academic counseling, career and educational counseling, personal-social counseling. They can tell you which courses will transfer into a four year degree and which courses will lead to a workforce certificate. They can help you figure out what kind of courses to take if you want a job that lets you spend all of your time outside, managing people, or crunching numbers.

College, like much of the rest of the world, has changed a lot in recent years. There are so many choices for students that the maze of academic options available can be immensely confusing for someone who has never been to college and would be almost unrecognizable to someone who graduated only a few years ago. It’s nice to know then that there's someone right there around the corner...someone in your corner...who's ready to light the way.
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For information about about programs and courses offered through the Business and Social Sciences Division, contact a Division Counselor:

Matthew Samford

Erma Walker

A Gopher by Any Other Name...

As a former destination marketing exec, I can't help but applaud the Chamber of Commerce and their affiliates over in Punxutawney, Pennsylvania for pulling off another successful Groundhog Day celebration. The event took place earlier this week when hundreds of people gathered to watch Punxutawney Phil announce his verdict regarding the season's end.

Six more weeks of winter, so say his handlers who proclaim that the immortal gopher- he's been prognosticating for well over 120 years- saw his shadow, and therefore the rest of us are doomed to suffer a month and more of cloudy skies. That is really unfortunate since the landscape, both economic and atmospheric, isn't looking so great right now and it would have been nice to hear some good news.

The upside...athough we may have to wait for blue skies, they are right around the corner. I'm hoping that with the help of an $825 million stimulus package, that's true of our economy too.

Another Famous Gopher
This morning, I ran across an article by USA Today describing how and in what capacity different generations use online technology. I can't speak for everyone else, but based on my own experience, I thought the writer was spot on.

As a Generation X'er, I remember when my peers were afraid to do anything online. That was before we all got hooked on Ebay and threw caution to the wind. Now, I have to instill a fair amount of discipline to stop myself from checking email at red lights. Talking on the phone, texting and driving... It's a bit much, don't you think?

Reading the article was a stark reminder of how far we've come and how fast. It brought to mind another Gopher, a search and retrieval protocol created in the early 1990's by my alma mater, the University of Minnesota. This was before a lot of our students were even born so I realize that was a long, long time ago.

To summarize, it's possible that Gopher could have given the World Wide Web a run for its money, but in 1993 administrators began charging for its services, thus stopping its expansion cold. I was hoping they would hang in there for a time. I was hoping for something more... interesting. Perhaps something akin to the VHS-BetaMax wars of the 80's, or the more current DVD -vs- Blue Ray, Mac vs PC saga... Now from a marketer's perspective, that would have been a battle that fun to watch!

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For information about Information Technology or Business Management courses offered through the Business and Social Sciences Division:

E-Business Web Developer Certificate

Network Administrator Certificate

Network Engineer Certificate

Marketing Certificate

Jobs...In THIS Economy?

It seems like the news just keeps getting worse, but I'm an optimist so I'm going to find that silver lining, even if I have to sew it myself.

From November 2007 to November 2008, roughly 70% of new jobs in the U.S. were created in Texas, many right here in our region. As a result, Texas has been relatively unscathed by the job losses and foreclosures that have rocked the rest of the country. Until now, that is.

Last week, our state comptroller announced that she expects job loss in the state to move into the tens of thousands within the next six months. So bad news is being projected, but...our state still leads the nation in exports, job creation and Fortune 500 companies. And, from what I can tell, unless you are a healthcare provider, technology is the place to be.

Higher Average Salaries
Search Technology, a Houston-based tech recruitment firm and TechFest sponsor, projects that the hiring of computer science/ information technology professionals will continue to gain momentum, especially in the Energy Sector. Houston salaries have traditionally been 5-10% above national average and I am sure that the energy/oil and gas industry has been a big part of that.

You might not remember this, but the 1980's weren't all that great for Texans... the textile industry, oil & gas, real estate... the bottom just fell out for a while.

But it seems we learned our lesson and so thanks to the state's commitment to economic development and the emphasis local leaders have placed on technology (nanotechnology, biotechnology, energy), it is possible that this time, the recession won't hurt Texans quite as much.

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For information about Computer/ Information Technology courses offered through the Business and Social Sciences Division:

Field of Computer Science

Information Technology