HR Partnership | February 27, 2010

The Small Business Administration and the Office of the Secretary of Defense sponsored a workshop on January 25^th and 26^th at the Renaissance Portsmouth Hotel for a recently announced Robotics Technology Cluster initiative. Hampton Roads is one of three regions participating in the pilot initiative. Southeastern Michigan and Hawaii are the other two. The Michigan cluster focuses on ground robotics, Hawaii’s on undersea robotics. The Hampton Roads cluster focuses on port and harbor security.

This cluster aligns with the strategic vision of the Hampton Roads Chapter of Autonomous and Unmanned Vehicles Systems International (AUVSI) professional group and the regional Robot Venture initiative sponsored by the Hampton Roads Military & Federal Facilities Alliance (HRMFFA).

Over 240 participants heard key note talks from Congressmen Glenn Nye and Randy Forbes. The workshop included several panel discussions on resources available to the small business and robotics communities both on a local and a national level. Presenters represented the Department of Defense (DoD), the Small Business Administration, NASA, the Department of Homeland Security and other regional stakeholders. After listening and questioning the presenters and panel members, attendees participated in group breakout sessions where ideas and strategies were gathered to identify port and harbor security focus requirements.

The six breakout topics covered: Comprehensive port and harbor security, emergency management, sensors fusion, alternative energy, manned and unmanned systems integration, and workforce development through a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics focused education approach. Discussions were facilitated by subject matter experts in each topic area, and the majority of participants attended up to four different topic sessions over the two day workshop. Feedback from the workshops will be used to create a framework of action for the robotics cluster going forward.

Presentations from the workshop are available on the Robot Venture website: www.robotventure.org/rvinformation.html. More information as the cluster activity progresses will be posted as well.

by Program Managers Bill Piersol, Robot Venture, and Andrew Sinclair, Hampton Roads Partnership; Photo credit: U.S. Navy

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Category: Military Bastion, Research & Technology, Transportation | No Comments »
Tags: Hampton Roads, HRMFFA, Military Bastion, Navy, Port

HR Partnership | February 27, 2010

Forbes announces America’s 20 Most Miserable Cities

Since we found out that Hampton Roads ranked as a “happy city,” thought we’d explore the other end of the scale, the miserable index, and find out what our region is, thankfully, missing. As the saying goes, misery loves company. And sorry to say, but someone else’s misery makes you feel better about your own circumstance. Why else would soap operas be so popular?

Forbes’ Misery Measure takes into account unemployment, taxes (both sales and income), commute times, violent crime and how its pro sports teams have fared over the past two years. Forbes also factored in two indexes put together by Portland (OR) researcher Bert Sperling that gauge weather and Superfund pollution sites. Lastly corruption based on convictions of public officials in each area as tracked by the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice was considered.

This year the 200 largest metro areas (population of more than 245,000) were eligible. And the winners (or losers, as the case may be) are:

No. 1 Cleveland, OH
Residents of the “Mistake by the Lake” endure brutal winters, high crime and a tortured sports history. They are voting with their feet as the net migration out of the metro area was 71,000 over the past five years.

No. 2 through 20? read on…

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Category: About Hampton Roads | No Comments »
Tags: Hampton Roads, Sense of Place

HR Partnership | February 26, 2010

Click on image to download your copy of Bravo!

From Particia Rublein, Executive Director of the Cultural Alliance of Greater Hampton Roads, committed to leveraging arts and culture as one more key industry our communities need to become great places to live and work.

The importance of the arts in our communities and in our schools:

Like most economic endeavors, these are not easy times for the arts. But we need the arts. A healthy arts economy not only nurtures our well-being but contributes to a healthy tax base. The arts need to be recognized as part of the solution to our economic turmoil.

It is gratifying to see the advancement of many arts and cultural projects moving forward, especially the renovation and expansion of the Children’s Museum of Virginia located in Portsmouth and the expansion of The American Theatre in Hampton.

Several Hampton Roads arts organizations are looking ahead positively with an eye toward advancement and growth. The pages in this edition of BRAVO! speak to that work.

The businesses and citizens of Hampton Roads understand the need and continue to provided generous support to the effort. Each year arts and culture organizations host, and provide jobs to, thousands of Virginia residents, and generate millions of dollars in revenue, adding a large infusion of visitors to local economies.

More than 300 arts and cultural organizations and individual arts call Hampton Roads “home.” From Williamsburg to the North Carolina border our region hosts historical restoration sites, museums, premiere opera, symphonies, galleries, literary festivals, theater, ballet, art studios, choral groups, independent movie theaters and arts education opportunities.

These resources are what economic development professionals refer to as their “quality of life,” and are, in many respects, the key ingredient in our efforts to attract high-end and high-paying business enterprises to the area.

Beyond the bottom line, research informs us that when students study music, when they read, perform in a play or visit an art exhibit, they learn to appreciate those who produced those works, and become more receptive to other people. The professional artists associated with those institutions become our children’s teachers. And we have found that through involvement in the arts children learn better.

Whatever our economic situation, the arts overlap with almost every discipline of daily life, promote healing, enhance the environment, foster a healthy workplace and improve education – primary tools to sustaining a high quality of life. These are the features that define our civic identity.

Bravo! Magazine is the definitive arts and culture printed resource in Hampton Roads for venues and events in dance, museums and lectures, music, theater, visual arts, festivals and the friends who bring them to us all.

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Category: About Hampton Roads, Arts & Culture, Economy, Visit HR | No Comments »
Tags: Arts, Culture, Economy, Education, Hampton Roads, Sense of Place, Tourism

HR Partnership | February 26, 2010

The Mariners’ Museum, located in Newport News, Virginia, is the largest maritime museum in North America. Hampton Roads, with the largest naval base in the world, is a fitting location for such a gem.

Besides world class exhibits, the Mariners’ offers educational opportunities for all ages from school programs about the Age of Exploration to adult lectures on topics from the Revolutionary War to World War II.

The Museum invested in cutting-edge technology to provide exhibitions and information about maritime history, science, and culture via the internet. Approximately one million visitors now log onto the web site annually, and the number of people reached through educational programs has grown exponentially. A key aspect of this growth strategy involves interactive video conferencing (IVC) of the educational programs, which increased by 175% in 2008 alone. The IVC facilities have tripled the capacity to broadcast educational programs across the world.

The Mariner’s also offers educational programs designed to meet Virginia SOLs and the National Standards of Learning, online exhibitions, homeschool and scouting programs.

Dollar Tree, headquartered in Chesapeake in Virginia’s Hampton Roads, is an underwriter for these programs.

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Category: Education & Workforce, Military Bastion, Visit HR | 1 Comment »
Tags: Hampton Roads, Military Bastion, Newport News

HR Partnership | February 25, 2010

A truck pulls out of a parking lot at the corner of Union Camp Drive and Jamestown Lane in the shadow of International Paper Corp. on Friday, Oct. 23, 2009. The paper company announced the day before that it will close its Franklin paper mill next spring. (Photo credit: Ross Taylor | The Virginian-Pilot)

by Donna Morris, Executive Vice President of Hampton Roads Partnership

A recent meeting of the Paul D. Camp Regional Workforce Development Council held in the soon-to- be-closed International Paper Mill in Franklin was a slice of re-dedication to “regional cooperation” in Hampton Roads. The Workforce Development Council includes representatives from business, education, and local government. Most of those attending the meeting work or live in Franklin, Isle of Wight, Southampton and Suffolk.

I was asked to summarize the region-wide comprehensive economic development strategy, Vision Hampton Roads, as a representative of the Hampton Roads Partnership (HRP), as well as provide empathy, share encouragement and learn. I considered the challenges that closing the paper mill had given us. This part of our community had a shared history of calamity and recovery. In recent times they have endured the effects of a disastrous 500-year flood, damaging hurricane spawned tornadoes, and now the closing of one of the oldest and largest manufacturing businesses in Hampton Roads.

On the morning of the meeting, I left the Virginia Beach oceanfront at 5:30 am, not sure how long the commute would take with the tunnel, traffic congestion and 60-odd miles of highway to Franklin. I thought that talking about Vision Hampton Roads, which the Partnership and other regional organizations and individuals have been working on for nearly a year was easy, but how could I offer empathy and encouragement? Read more…

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Category: Economy, Education & Workforce, Military Bastion | 2 Comments »
Tags: Franklin, Hampton Roads, International Paper, Sense of Place

HR Partnership | February 24, 2010

About 22% of Hampton Roads homeowners with a mortgage owe more on their homes than they’re worth, according to a new report.

Nationally, 24% of residential properties with a mortgage were in “negative equity,” up from 23% at the end of the third quarter, according to the fourth-quarter report released…

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Category: Economy, Military Bastion | 1 Comment »
Tags: Economy, Hampton Roads, ODU

HR Partnership | February 23, 2010

Kimon Jackson, a Nuclear Medicine Supervisor at Riverside Diagnostic & Breast Center, a nationally recognized “Breast Imaging Center of Excellence” and part of Riverside Health System, uses the Dilon technology. Riverside sees between 20-25 patients a month for imaging procedures on the Dilon 6800.

BSGI—Breast Specific Gamma Imaging. If Dilon Technologies Inc. has its way, the abbreviation will soon be as common as MRI. Based in Newport News, Dilon Technologies is poised for such success. Not only is this company changing the face of nuclear imaging in the medical industry, it’s improving the quality of and access to women’s health care.

Read more from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership’s Virginia Commerce Quarterly, Winter 2010….

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Category: Economy, Research & Technology | No Comments »
Tags: Health, Manufacturing, Riverside

HR Partnership | February 22, 2010

Mayor Paul Fraim delivered his Norfolk State of the City Address (full text here) on Friday, February 19th to a standing room only crowd at the downtown Norfolk Waterside Marriott. The event kicks off the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce spring State of the City Series.

Highlights of 2009:

• The Great Recession is over but now there are no stimulus funds to offset shortfalls in the city’s budget this year or the projected $54M gap for FY2011;
• “There will be consequences…. this is not business as usual,” said Fraim;

There’s more…

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Category: About Hampton Roads, Government & Citizens | No Comments »
Tags: Hampton Roads, Norfolk, Virginia

HR Partnership | February 21, 2010

Bumper-to-bumper traffic is America’s collective nightmare, and like the movie Groundhog Day it repeats on a daily basis.

Congestion consumes billions of gallons of fuel, wastes hundreds of billions of dollars in productivity and causes billions of stress headaches. Yet over 100 million automobile commuters each day feel like they have little option. “We put so much of our national wealth and our identity into the whole motoring thing,” says James Howard Kunstler, author of Geography of Nowhere, “that we can’t imagine doing something different.”

Anthony Downs, author of Stuck in Traffic has identified four reasons for America’s congestion problem, also applicable to most European and Asian economies:

• first, most of us work during the same hours of the day;
• second, the country’s economic success has allowed households to buy multiple cars;
• third, there are more people now than when most roadways were conceived;
• fourth, more cars means more accidents which means more delays.

In other words, this problem isn’t going anywhere. …

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Category: About Hampton Roads, Transportation | 2 Comments »
Tags: Hampton Roads, HRTPO, Transportation

HR Partnership | February 20, 2010

Today is a “happy” day, as is most every day in Hampton Roads. At least, that’s according to Richard Florida’s Creative Class project which reports that the Hampton Roads MSA has tied for 7th overall as the “Happiest Metro Area” based on the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. San Jose, CA, Washington, DC and Raleigh/Cary, NC lead the pack of “happy cities” for 2009.

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Category: About Hampton Roads, Visit HR | 2 Comments »
Tags: Hampton Roads, Sense of Place, Virginia