Bruce Kendall visit

     Bruce Kendall, CEO of the Economic Development Board for Tacoma Pierce County visited UWT and lectured on April 25, 2012. As far as I understood, his business is to attract big companies to Pierce area in order to maximize money flow into this area and minimize the flow of the money out of it. I didn’t know such company exists. I think the idea is right. It turned out that they are interested only in big corporations, not in beginners, which is understandable from his point of view, but not from ours, people who didn’t even start a business, just thinking to do so. Not much of encouragement. Concerning Economic Development Board of Tacoma, in my opinion, first of all it is great that they are not 100% financed by the state, but get 50% of money from the companies they work with, which is around a half of a million dollars.

     Bruce addressed several major problems that need to be solved and they help companies who would try to solve any of those issues. Issues where such as clean water (how to use technology to preserve clean water so that next generations would not run out of clean water), cyber security, health care, and a couple of others. I see why these are still big issues. People do not tend to invest money into some technology that would not bring revenue right now but instead would be helpful for the next generations. That’s why EDB for Tacoma exists and is pretty successful.