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Obama: Community Colleges can help boost ailing economy

One of the driving motivations and reasons behind the LAScholars.com video game industry program - read about President Obama's overall vision for how community colleges play a central role in revitalizing the US economy:

"Community colleges are only two-year institutions, but the Obama administration says they could play a key role in helping boost the ailing economy for years to come."

"... the president unveiled the American Graduation Initiative, a 10-year, $12 billion plan to invest in community colleges."

Obama called the investment in community colleges crucial because "jobs requiring at least an associate degree are projected to grow twice as fast as jobs requiring no college experience" in coming years.

"We will not fill those jobs, or keep those jobs on our shores, without the training offered by community colleges," he said.

Read the entire article on CNN here. Sign up for the LA Scholars program here.

Twitter is for old people?

Matthew Robson, 15 year old whiz-kid tells bankers that teenagers don't read newspapers, use phones to make calls or go to the cinema.

The world according to Matthew Robson aged 15 and a half:

Radio With online sites streaming music for free they do not bother, as services such as last.fm do this advert free and users can choose the songs they want instead of listening to what the radio presenter/DJ chooses.

Newspapers No teenager that I know of regularly reads a newspaper, as most do not have the time and cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text while they could watch the news summarised on the internet or on TV.

Internet Facebook is the most common, with nearly everyone with an internet connection registered. On the other hand, teenagers do not use Twitter.

Music They are very reluctant to pay for it (most having never bought a CD) Teenagers from higher income families use iPods and those from lower income families use mobile phones.

Directories Real directories contain listings for builders and florists, which are services teenagers do not require. They can get the information free on the internet.

Viral/Outdoor Marketing ³Most teenagers enjoy and support viral marketing... Teenagers see adverts on websites (pop-ups, banner ads) as extremely annoying and pointless...they are portrayed in such a negative light that no one follows them.²

Cinema Teenagers visit the cinema more often when they are in the lower end of teendom but as they approach 15 they go to the cinema a lot less. This is because of the pricing; at 15 they have to pay the adult price. Also it is possible to buy a pirated DVD of the film at the time of release, and these cost much less than a cinema ticket.

Mobile phones The general view is that Sony Ericsson phones are superior, because of their long list of features, built-in Walkman capacity and value.

Read the full article here.

Recruiting All Video Game Companies- Summer Intern Program

I'm very pleased to announce what I've been working on - the first ever, government backed career pathway internship program for the video game industry - LA Scholars.com.

I ask that each and every one of you in Los Angeles encourage your employer to participate - there is no cost and more importantly - you are investing in your community by providing life changing opportunities for highly motivated young adults from some of the most underserved neighborhoods. We will be announcing our partners in the coming weeks.

LA Scholars is sponsored by the City of LA, the Mayor's Office and backed by the Federal Government. This is a non-profit effort with the goal of creating career pathways for young adults into the video game industry. The program targets students in under-served neighborhoods by providing them training and access to some of the biggest entertainment and gaming companies in the world Read more.

LA Scholars is currently recruiting video game companies to get involved and host summer interns. The program is at no cost to the employer and provides an opportunity to companies to prepare and test out their future potential workforce while investing in the people that live in their local communities in a potentially life changing way.

Sign up here.

Right now - What's on our collective minds? Michael Jackson meets Collecta

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Plaxo etc.. quietly.. and often politely asks, prompts or just flat out demands us to answer, update or just let everyone know "What's on your mind?" People twitter, tweet, blog, post, comment and respond to what's on each others minds.. and news spreads, grows, and evolves and mutates... in many languages, timezones from people of all different backgrounds.

With Michael Jackson's passing today - Collecta is a new search engine that gives us a glimpse and helps us get a sense of what's on everyone's mind -- all around the world, all at the same time -- from Flickr, Wordpress to Twitter.. Here's a window into our collective conscience - click here and watch what we're all thinking now.

Wordle!

I've just wordled my blog, enjoy!

Link to the Wordle itself: 

 

Wave Goodbye to Sharepoint?

Google's big news - Wave -- it's worth watching the video from the Google I/O conference (it's looong). Wave is essentially a new platform for communication, collaboration and interactivity (and potentially a great platform for distributing and playing video games! :-) -- it takes many products and technologies we've seen before (google docs, elements of Facebook, Microsoft sharepoint, IM, etc) but integrates them nicely.

Plus, Google plans to open-source the whole thing -- continuing to paint the very stark difference in how they view the web compared to their rival Microsoft.

Web Platform is Accelerating

The types of applications/interactivity we're seeing on the web continue to become more sophisticated. I found this chart insightful showing how the underlying web technologies and infrastructure are becoming more powerful - this tied with the trend of moving more applications to cloud/server based platforms paints an exciting future for the connected world we're living in.

Read how Google is betting on HTML 5 to support initiatives like Wave while also trying to avoid mistakes made in the past by competitors (ahem Microsoft):

"Never underestimate the web," says Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra in his keynote at Google I/O this morning. He goes on to tell the story of a meeting he remembers when he was VP of Platform Evangelism at Microsoft five years ago. "We believed that web apps would never rival desktop apps. There was this small company called Keyhole, which made this most fantastic geo-visualization software for Windows. This was the kind of software we always used to prove to ourselves that there were things that could never be done on the web." A few months later, Google acquired Keyhole, and shortly thereafter released Google Maps with satellite view.

My favorite part of the article is when Google's VP of Engineering realized that web applications will beat out traditional client software -- do you agree? 

"We knew then that the web had won," he said. "What was once thought impossible is now commonplace."

Read the rest of the article here.