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I spoke German to more people
this week than I did the week
that I was in Basel. |
Formula 1 racing has a ten-year contract with the City of Austin. Circuit of the Americas (COTA) received promises of $250 million ($25 million a year) from a State of Texas large event fund. This is supposed to be a reciprocal agreement based on the sales tax revenues. Texas has no income tax, which is one reason for our continued economic survival. Everything is funded from sales tax. (The City of Austin adds 1% for the CapMetro buses and trains.) Apparently, Formula 1 brought 250,000 people to town for the week, about 120,000 visitors and the same number of workers to make the show happen. Congress Avenue and the side streets were blocked off from 5th to 2nd. Other large events (South by Southwest and Austin City Limits) are traditional. A few years back, I published an article about the Great Fairs of medieval Champagne. This is like that, with one event growing into a seasonal calendar.
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| From Dusk til Dawn |
At the "Innotech" conference held on November 8 the 8:00 AM kickoff began with General Motors executive director for enterprise solutions Timothy Cox who outlined the new initiatives bringing this giant phoenix to Austin. Coming out of bankruptcy, GM's new IPO was the largest in Wall Street history. Insourcing and on-shoring are the parameters that define a new information infrastructure that includes supercomputers and virtual desktops for real time statistical process control. GM is bringing 1000 new jobs to Austin.
Automobiles are 19th century technology, but what is music? At SWSX computerist Stephen Wolfram received a "Best of Show" Award for his presentation. Both SWSX and ACL Live have film festivals as complements.
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11:00 PM on Sunday
as the cars were loaded on vans. |
Dressed for Encounters
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