Technology Futures

The Space Economy pops up in the most unlikely places. For years, I drove by an office building in Blacksburg with a sign out front for a company called Phoenix Integration. I knew that they were some kind of software company, but never gave it much thought.

A profile in the Sunday paper (the Roanoke Times) indicates that Phoenix is tightly hooked into the emerging Space Economy. The eight year old company with 18 employees provides software for the biggest aerospace companies around, including Boeing, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, GE, and NASA.

The software they write and sell allows spacecraft designers and engineers to collaborate, share data, and work on design drawings jointly even though they are thousands of miles apart.

Among other projects supported by Phoenix ModelCenter software is the GoFast spacecraft, which is in advanced testing at the Nevada SpacePort.

Add Phoenix Integration to the advanced composites manufacturing facility just down the road in Smyth county, and southwest Virginia may have a toehold in the emerging Space Economy, with an economic development cluster focused on aerospace technologies.

Could southwest Virginia become a major player? Only if economic developers do two things: Survey existing businesses to locate all businesses in the region that are providing goods and services to the space industry, and then make space a key part of economic development initiatives, like New Mexico is doing.

How about your area? In the last six months, I've stumbled, literally, across two very sophisticated Space Industry businesses in my own region. What about your area? Have you even asked?

I stayed in a Comfort Suites last night, and it wins hands down as a Knowledge Economy hotel.

Some of the amenities include wireless in meeting rooms and public areas, wired broadband in the rooms, a full service work area off the lobby that includes an Internet-connected pc, a fax machine, laser printer, and copy machine.

In the rooms, the Ethernet jack is above the level of the desk, as are four convenient AC outlets--no crawling on hands and knees under desks or behind beds to get a connection.

In the future, I'll be going out of my way to stay at Comfort Suites locations. How do the hotels in your community measure up? Can you offer business travelers to your community a place to stay with similar amenities?

A firm has developed a household appliance they are calling an "ironing robot." It follows on the heels of the wildly successful Roomba vacuum cleaner, which uses software that enables the "robot" to learn where things are in rooms and to successfully clean floors and carpets independently.

The device is pricey, as all new gadgets are, but sounds like it does a superior job of getting the wrinkles out of shirts. Apparently the device does not damage the fabric the way conventional irons do.

What's important about this? Like the Roomba vacuum, no one predicted this. It may or may not catch on--no one thought the Roomba would, but it did.

As communities seek guarantees that infrastructure investments pay off, we have to remember that the future cannot always be quantified by what worked in the past. New technologies like the Internet become engines of innovation, spawning new companies (the Roomba has created jobs manufacturing and selling robot vacuums) and spurring economic development in ways no one predicted. Flexibility in planning and execution gives communities the opportunity to capitalize on those new technologies and companies as they emerge.

Where I stay when I travel is now determined largely by the availability of Internet access, and I'm sure I'm not the only one making buying decisions differently. Twice recently I have had to stay overnight in a city because of bad weather and delayed flights. Both times, I picked hotels that offered free broadband access.

Marriott Courtyard is one of my favorites, even though it is often a bit more expensive because virtually all Courtyards have fast, reliable broadband in the rooms. It's usually hardwired, which is much better than the wireless many hotels offer. Courtyards often have other amenities for business travelers, like free use of an inkjet printer, although the printer was out of ink last time I stayed.

Slowly but surely, the presence or absence of broadband is changing our communities.