David LaPlante

Happy Nevada Day! Why we love Nevada...

My boys woke up excited as this makes their 3rd (of 10 I believe) sanctioned events in which they can wear their Halloween costumes all day in public. Both boys began their Tigger-like bouncing at 6am this morning excited for Nevada Day.

Logan said, "Dad, we LOVE Nevada!!!" Then the boys proceeded to rattle off what they perceived to be their best reasons to love Nevada. I thought I'd share with you what 4 and 7 year old boys believe to be our State's best selling points: 

• Logan: "No school today!"
• Cody: "There's lot's of Eye-candy!" (He was referring to candy-eyeballs, however, he's not entirely incorrect <grin>.)
• Logan: "We get to go camping!" (Yep..we're headed out...)
• Cody: "Fireworks, marshmallows, and campfires!" (All true. Campfires are illegal in California, as are fireworks. I'm pretty sure they have marshmallows though.)
• Logan: "Clean air and water." (He's learning about ecosystems at school right now.)
• Logan: "Skiing!!!" (Except for Heavenly, Mt. Rose and Diamond Peak., all of Tahoe's resorts are in California. Logan hasn't figured this one out. But you can live in Nevada and enjoy them all within 20 to 45 minutes.)
• Cody: "Lots of chukar." (Yep, we're the chukar state.)

Of course things like no taxes and lack of traffic didn't make their list, but I was impressed!

Yes, it's Nevada Day. Actually, Nevada Day is October 31st. That's when Nevada became a state -- er, admitted to the Union -- October 31, 1864 to be exact. That was during the Civil War -- hence we're the "Battle Born" state. We celebrate Halloween and Nevada's statehood on the same day. Sweet.

Of course, with the passage of AB396 by the 1997 Nevada State Legislature we celebrate Nevada Day on the "last" Friday in October beginning in 2000. In other words, whatever it takes for a three-day weekend. That's today. Pretty much the whole State takes the day off -- unless you're a service-based business or the majority of your customers are outside the State.

So, unfortunately, most of the Nevada-based Twelve Horses team is working today. Contrary to popular belief, most marketers in New York and Boston are not as enthused about Nevada Day as we are.

I must note, however, that over the years, most of the Twelve Horses team located in other states and countries have kindly offered to take this day off too and celebrate Nevada Day with us -- how kind of them! ;-)

tags: Nevada, Nevada day, Halloween, holiday, Reno, camping, hunting, fishing, skiing, business

Oracle's Safra Catz, Senator Ensign and Nevada's Workforce Future

Quick event summary:

• The time, money and energy we --America-- waste on the IRS and our ridiculous tax-code evasion game if invested in R&D and education would ensure our global dominating class-barrier-breaking affluent economy. We piss our advantage away on lawyers and accountants playing a stupid cat-and-mouse game with the IRS. Stupid we collectively are.
  
• Most of the most common practices of successful, profitable and consistently performing businesses-- accountability, terminating weak performers, employee and management incentives, innovation culture, free markets, access to union-free labor -- is absent in our public schools.
  
• Our H1B Visa policy is insanely bass-ackwards. "Let's educate our global competitors here in the US and then kick them out so we can outsource our jobs back to them." Sweet.
  
• Sarbanes-Oxley ('Sox') has exported our best small and mid-sized public capital offerings to foreign countries. While well intentioned, the lawyers and accountants again are making all the money while small businesses that used to be able to raise public financing in the US are headed to Canada, Europe and anywhere they can but the US.
  
• Safra Catz for President in 2012. What kind of person can put up with Larry "the Largest Ego in the World" Ellison? Safra Catz. Cool. Level headed. Smart. Witty. Plays the game to win. Humble. Self-depreciating. All the skills to lead one of the largest and most relevant businesses in the world...Oracle. Safra, please come back!
  

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Like most businesses that depend on technology workers, we're constantly hurting for talent. Human capital is as important -- if not more -- than financial capital. Most sage entrepreneurs will tell you...and I'm one of them...human capital -- your workforce -- is what makes or breaks you. (By the way, we're looking for super cool talented kick-ass developers and creative's!)

First-off, what a great event. Awesome. I jotted down notes for about about 15 blog posts. It really got me thinking...

About the the only thing that sucked is that because it was organized by Senator Ensign & Crew a lot of "binary" people of the "D" flavor will immediately discount it and get crimped in their R v. D Kos-style black-and-white politics that dominates most dialog in an October predating an November election. If Reid had organized the event, the 98% of the same things would have been discussed.

So, kudos to Ensign & Crew! He did this event in Las Vegas yesterday as well. Yeah, he's trying to get re-elected. Duh. If you're not a fan of R's -- then at least respect the marketing. Splendid marketing. But at least my 'BS' detector didn't go off to many times today as I thought it would. The dialog was real and genuine. Education and workforce development is CRITICAL to Nevada. No matter what the attendees political flavor, everyone left with their thinking caps on.

The event stimulated great thought and dialog on education and workforce development to make help ensure that businesses (like mine) in Nevada can meet our human capital requirements. The silly thing right now is there's no shortage of "capital capital". We're consistently challenged (like most growing western cities) with attracting and/or retaining enough "human capital".

Again...kudos to Ensign. He's the MAN on the High Tech Task Force. That's a very good thing for Nevada.

While today's event was very science-math-education oriented, I think that there were a few facets of this problem that were not discussed and I'll pick those up in some future posts. Here's the teasers:

1. The Internet is not through trashing the paradigms of society and social institutions as we know it. Mainstream media is under the gun today. Education -- and our traditions built around education -- are about to be blown apart as well. Homeschooling and socialschooling(C) (I made that term up) is going to reshape how we educate.
   
2. I bet you can name 10 people most likely featured in any given issue of People magazine, can you name the top 10 scientists and mathematicians? Why Paris Hilton, Bono and Angelina Jolie will have more influence in solving our dilemma than the gray-haired PHD wielding education majors or the unions.
   
3. My experiences with public schools and parenting. New thoughts on what matters...can you say THESPIAN?
   
4. If access to knowledge, education and information is ubiquitous and a commodity, what separates a Stanford from a UNR? And why "who" you know still matters more than calculating the area of a dodecahedron...
   

tags: ensign, senator, senatorensign, Nevada, Reno, Las Vegas, education, workforce, schools, hightech, high-tech, oracle, Safra, Catz, TMCC, UNR

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