Technology and DC

Dade county is a rich county. Not just in terms of wealth but in history and character. You’ll meet some of the most interesting people around if you manage to head that way. There is also a wealth of knowledge nestled away there too. All you have to do it stumble upon it. I am constantly meeting people and learning things I never knew about the natives. One thing I know for certain though is this: Dade county is absolutely in the Dark Ages in regard to technology. Most people are curious about it but there’s not the vested interested in expanding that foray into how it can improve the county beyond talking about it. Now I know that sounds like a blanket statement but it’s not meant to be. There are quite a few people there working hard to integrate the county into future and forward thinking. Our Chamber of Commerce works hard to get businesses to come here and provide “high-tech” jobs and the like. We have several companies who have come here in the past few years that have opened doors for residents here by providing jobs and training that were unavailable in the past. Progress is the watchword when it comes to preparing for the future.Technology is literally the pathway to expanding opportunity in our little part of the state of Georgia. Being that we’re located in the Tri-State area, we’re in the perfect position to make things happen that will have a large effect on how business views our county in the near future when looking for sites to place their offices and plants. There is no shortage of intelligent and highly motivated people here to go around. In that light, the county has been proactive in attempting to get us involved in educational programs that will train people to do technical work. If there’s a pool to draw from locally, businesses will clamor to set up shop here just to make use of local resources. I feel that Shawn and myself have a grasp on how important it is to start looking at this potential explosion of growth with renewed fervor. We’ve talked about it on numerous occasions and over and over we state the need to draw attention to pushing for more high-tech industry to be coaxed into building their facilities in Dade County.

You have to start somewhere, so let’s start with our school system. Dade has some bragging rights when it comes to education. One of the reasons my wife insisted we move back to Dade after my stint in the Army wasn’t just because of family. It was due to the school system. Obviously, it’s not perfect. You’ll rarely find a publicly funded service that is. We teach our kids fundamentals in technology related areas, such as typing but what we need to do is go a few steps further. I believe a few years back, either we or some other high school was offering Cisco certifications to these kids before they even graduated. Many of you may not understand the complexity of such a thing. A Cisco cert is by no means an easy feat. It can guarantee you high salaries with an IT department in large organizations, including local or state governments. To have this offered to high school students shows a commitment to going beyond the call of educational duties and preparing our youth to go to a higher education campus better prepared than even a ninety percent of the kids who enter into IT related studies. Not to mention the fact that getting a Cisco cert can range from 500-3000 dollars per head depending on the training facility and materials used.

That’s just the tip of the ice berg though. There are many other certifications out there that specialize in certain areas of the IT field that we could offer training on. Imagine preparing a small legion of “tech heads” who graduate high school and then a few years later re-enter the work force in Dade County having all of that experience. We have the potential to be a hot bed of technology related workers and innovators. Look at Shawn and myself if you want examples. We were the self-starters. We had no formal education on how to properly do things. I can’t count how many circuit boards I ended up shorting out before I began to catch on. That’s how it was back in the 80’s and early 90’s. There was very little offered in the way of IT education. Us “old hands” know what we do from trial and error. How much more effective will that freshman in high school be when he gets more formal tech education on top of what he’s already learning? Did you know that most top tier jobs are not being outsourced in a way to those who immigrate from India and Asia? They promote high tech education whereas we’re falling behind the curve.

We need to offer several different specialty fields of education as well. Not just networking, but also programming and hardware. Having our kids well rounded in their IT knowledge will guarantee superiority when compared to their peers elsewhere.

~ by jhurst747 on 12 March 2008.