Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Oregon continues to attract educated people who are passionate about educa-
tion. They are obvious employment targets for education companies, and obvious
candidates to become education-related entrepreneurs. They do not want to leave
Oregon due to the high quality of life locally, so the companies have to come here
and/or stay here.
NWEC does what clusters do: meet for knowledge sharing and social net-
working, and connect with universities, governments, and other cluster initiatives
in the region. Technically, NWEC is an industry association, representing com-
panies in a nascent cluster (Phillips
2008
).
Where VCs used to shun companies with ''assets that could walk out the door
tomorrow,'' that is now changing. This means an enterprise with smart, committed,
creative, relatively immobile people can now attract venture capital. A number of
these companies also have proprietary code assets, but educational software is still
not a mass market, nor one that commands high markups. Perhaps slow but sure
growth, without the pressure for investor liquidity, is a success factor for NWEC.
NWEC, then, started without government assistance. Its connection with aca-
deme is straightforward, as all of its members are concerned with academics from
Kindergarten level through graduate school level. However, as government is a
key player in education at all those levels, connections between the cluster and
governments were desirable and inevitable.
Jim Snyder writes (Snyder
2008
, and personal communication 2010):
At [a] December 2007 meeting the cluster held a roundtable where the Oregon State
Superintendent of Schools (Susan Castillo), the Oregon Senate Majority Leader (Senator
Richard Devlin) and others from the teacher's union and Governors' Office all sat together
to talk about working towards building 21st Century schools. The businesses themselves
could not have had these people at the same table except for the leverage of the cluster.
Over 70 attended the meeting and ideas percolated.
As a follow up to the roundtable summit, the cluster had its quarterly meeting where the
Portland Schools Foundation and the Chalkboard Project presented what they were up to
and how we could work together. We are getting some pro-bono work from a local PR
firm that is interested in what the cluster is doing.
How can the cluster support the Governor's workforce strategy? One idea is to connect
with very established manufacturing cluster here in Oregon to push for an educational/
workforce reform agenda.
Saltare Software did get an NSF grant in 2007 for $1.5 mllion in conjunction with the
work they do with CASIO.
The cluster does work with the Oregon Department of Education and the State in a few
ways. ODE sends panel speakers to the cluster's meetings. The international trade person
from Oregon State is a cluster member and is eager to know details of our member
companies' international trade. A few years back we cooperated with the Willamette
Educational Service District on rolling out their new project for students called Accelerate
Oregon, a statewide initiative that leverages public and private commitment to Oregon's
K12 education system to improve teaching and learning through the integration of
technology.
Part of what we are doing now is working with the Oregon Business Plan and Oregon
Cluster Network to help define our cluster economic analysis and build a strategy report. I
have a business student creating a first draft of a written cluster economic impact study
(Tables
3
,
4
).
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