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To: Anthony@Pacific who wrote (60651)	10/17/2000 10:20:17 AM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 122087

Chamber to help ParkerVision recruit 'very specialized employees' Tuesday, October 17, 2000 Story last updated at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, October 16, 2000 Chamber to help ParkerVision recruit 'very specialized employees' ParkerVision Inc., the Jacksonville-based maker of remote-control video camera systems and designer of a potentially breakthrough wireless technology, is sparking offers of assistance from the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce. The chamber recently met with ParkerVision executives and wants to help the company as it potentially adds 100 to 200 workers over the next year. ParkerVision wants to build engineering and design teams to help research and develop chips that could revolutionize wireless radio technology. "This is an exciting company that seems to have made it past the early developmental stage and is poised for tremendous opportunities," chamber Executive Vice President Jerry Mallot wrote in a memo after meeting with ParkerVision executives. Chamber executives met with ParkerVision officials in late September. "They've got some exciting things going on there, and we are helping them identify very specialized employees that they need that, for the most part, don't exist in our marketplace," Mallot said Monday. "We will help recruit for those specialized types of folks. They have some neat things happening, and we want to help them grow," he said. Mallot said that ParkerVision also represents the type of assistance the chamber would like to offer other companies that want to expand or add workers. The chamber has been launching efforts to recruit specialized workers and graduating college students to Jacksonville to help provide workers for local companies. The chamber reports that ParkerVision employs about 70 people in Jacksonville in the camera and television business and 15 more who are dedicated to research and wireless technology. It owns an Orlando firm with 30 workers and also has opened an office in Silicon Valley with several employees. However, the potential of adding up to 200 more people creates a problem, the chamber reports. "The problem is recruiting these new highly specialized people to Jacksonville is not easy," says a chamber memo from Mallot filed with the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission. That memo reports that ParkerVision has asked what help the chamber could provide, and the memo and a letter to ParkerVision Chairman Jeffrey Parker outline several areas: Chamber Existing Business Vice President Sally Patch will meet with ParkerVision representatives to complete a survey about the company's overall corporate needs with an emphasis on human resource needs. The chamber will start its recruitment program soon and put special emphasis on the need for wireless engineers in the chamber's national advertising campaign and its Web site efforts to attract workers to town. Patch has set up meetings with the University of Florida and Florida State University to discuss synergies between the universities' technical research capabilities and the company's product development and research needs. The chamber will start its campus recruitment program early next year and represent many companies, including ParkerVision and its need for wireless engineers. The chamber agreed to produce one or more personnel recruitment programs to assist ParkerVision and other companies to recruit technically oriented people. Those programs not only will focus on quality of life and other recruitment elements, but also will focus "on technology-based companies and the emerging technology industry, which will give more comfort to people they are trying to recruit," Mallot summarized. "Potential employees will experience a greater sense of security concerning their move if they know more about the city to which they are moving, in case things don't go well and they need to find other employment," the chamber wrote. And ParkerVision will be included in the Information Technology Florida Town Meeting by Gov. Jeb Bush scheduled in January. In the letter to Parker, Mallot wrote that "our No. 1 goal will be to help you develop the human resources necessary to add 100 to 200 people to your company and build a strong base from which to ingrain ParkerVision even more completely in Jacksonville as you launch your new product lines." The chamber memo states that ParkerVision has "delved into wireless radio technology." "This process has put them on a course for break-through technology that would take the nearly 200 parts currently used for wireless radio technology and bring it down to a single chip. This would reduce the size and cost dramatically and be revolutionary in this industry." That memo reports that the chips "could be used in a variety of things, especially cellular telephones and other wireless communications." In fact, ParkerVision has more information about its new technology at the Web site www.d2d.com. ParkerVision was founded in 1989 to produce remote control devices for video cameras and continues to develop new video technology. Parker and his family started the company after selling Parker Electronics to Carrier Corp. Parker Electronics developed control devices for heating and cooling systems. JEDC MEETINGS: The Jacksonville Economic Development Commission has resumed meeting monthly rather than every other month. The commission is scheduled to meet next on Nov. 2, and at this point, no workshop has been scheduled to precede it. Commission staff said the bi-monthly meeting schedule created project backlogs. As for the Nov. 2 meeting, Mallot said the chamber would talk about its work force development efforts, including training and recruiting for local companies. "We are in the process today of personally interviewing 400 companies and trying to define the work force needs that they have so we can better understand what training requirements our community needs to provide from both public and private sources and what kind of skills are unlikely to be developed that we would have to consider recruiting from outside," he said. The meeting is scheduled for 8 a.m. Nov. 2, but a location has not been determined. Karen Brune Mathis can be reached at 359-4305, by fax at 359-4090 or by e-mail at kmathis@jacksonville.com. jacksonville.com