jpt's blog

Five exabytes. How much data is that? In nearly two decades of working in the computer industry, I had never paid much attention to a unit of measurement larger than a terabyte. Well, according to Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, five exabytes of data is approximately the sum total of all the information produced by humankind from the dawn of time through the year 2003.

Five exabytes also happens to be the approximate amount of information that the human race now generates every two days. Twitter alone produces the equivalent of Tolstoy’s War and Peace every two minutes.

Dear Members of TalTech Alliance:

The first thing I'd like to do as Chair of TalTech Alliance is to thank our outgoing Chair, Chet Hall, whose leadership in increasing our effectiveness and relevance over the last 2 years has prepared our organization for great things to come. I'd also like to thank our Board Members for the leadership and guidance they provided during that same time.

As we who were part of the TechExpo 2010 team breath a collective sigh of relief, I have to raise a virtual glass and toast everyone for a job well done. All of us, our intrepid interns and student assistants, our speakers and exhibitors, our board members and committee chairs, our tireless Expo chair, Jason Stamm -- all of us -- put together a brilliant conference.

Today's TalTech lunchon brought together several practitioners of the difficult and amorphous methods of economic development.  I've always been struck by the seemingly impossible task that Economic Development groups are charged with.  Much like the economists who are struggling with our country's current financial situation, ED must find the secret pressure points of its local and regional economies and creatively stimulate those key factors to indirectly encourage growth and development where it's needed.