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To Fill Jobs In High Tech, Try A Fight Song
By Stephen Lawton
I
was thinking about the shortage of workers in Silicon Valley
and decided there must be a way to make technology more...commercial...so
it draws more workers. The business certainly has enough money; people
are becoming millionaires daily. Even companies that never saw a dollar
of profit, like e-Toys.com, have significantly higher market valuation
than traditional bricks-and-mortar superstores like Toys "R" Us.
Recently, I read a story about a high
school student who called a news conference. He was announcing he was
going to attend St. Paul University to play basketball. I thought it was
bizarre that a high school student would call a news conference to announce
a college choice. After all, we all know that college is for learning
and students never would get any inappropriate financial advantage from
going to one school or another. (And if you believe that, I have a perpetual
motion machine to show you.)
Then it hit me. It's not that technology
doesn't pay. It's not that it's dull. You don't even have to live in some
one-horse town to do the job - although if you like cows, Gateway has
openings. What Silicon Valley and the Digital Coast need are fight songs.
I think we should take a page out of
Georgia Tech's book and start promoting engineering and the Web the right
way. Who wouldn't want to be "a rambling wreck from Georgia Tech and a
hell of an engineer?" (Well, maybe not a Georgia Bulldog.)
Who cares if you fight on for USC?
How about "Fight On for Ol' Yahoo!"? Forget Notre Dame. Consider instead:
"Cheer, Cheer for Old Emulex!" The possibilities are staggering.
You might soon see middle-school students
announce they will go to certain high schools because they have better
engineering classes. Imagine the headlines: "Berkeley Booster Busted,
Slips Chips To DIMM Wit." Incidentally, what is the penalty for illegal
gifts of freeware Linux applications?
Of course, once you get the universities
involved, the next step will be corporate sponsorships. How about the
2001 Engineering Student Draft? Imagine the spectacles: the Daemon Bowl
sponsored by Sun; the Big Iron Bowl powered by IBM; the Fruit Bowl sponsored
by Apple; the Accessory Bowl organized by Belkin Components; and, of course,
the Monopoly Bowl, co-sponsored by Microsoft and Parker Brothers. I can't
wait. I want a front-row seat.
MicroTimes firmly supports a
Silicon Valley and Digital Coast fight song, so we're having a contest.
Go to MicroTimes.com, sign up for the
e-Newsletter and submit your lyrics in the Comments section. Not only
will you get a newsletter twice a month, you'll also get a chance to have
your lyrics printed in MicroTimes.com's Web edition. The winner, who will
be chosen at random from those submitting lyrics, will win a $100 Savings
Bond.
One entry per person please, but you
can enter as many songs as you'd like.
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