Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 14, 1995 TAG: 9505160004
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But inside the diskette is a sort of Roanoke Valley encyclopedia that isn't so much read but played like a video game. It's for mailing to prospective new employers who, until now, have been courted by more mundane brochures and fact books.
"This is the high-tech version of a slide show," said Beth Doughty, the partnership's executive director.
Anyone with a copy of the 31/2 by 31/2-inch diskette, a 286 computer and basic knowledge of how it works can scroll through the Roanoke Valley for a look at its schools, health care system, taxes, living costs and land and industrial buildings.
Executives of the future looking to move or expand their companies are expected to shop with their computers, plugging in the promotional diskettes of communities under consideration.
The Roanoke Valley partnership, which takes delivery this month of 1,000 copies of its first disk, "is slightly ahead of the curve," said V. Lee Cobb, president of the Virginia Economic Developers Association and economic developer for Lynchburg.
Less than half of the economic development organizations with which Cobb is familiar own a diskette, he said. Most offer videos, slides or brochures or some combination of all three.
But striking keystrokes while watching a screen beats thumbing through a stack maps, charts and building specifications or watching a videotape or slides, proponents believe, because users can run short programs, or what the man who created the Roanoke diskette calls "what-if scenarios."
Videos, slides and charts lose their value as they fall out of date. Diskettes, on the other hand, readily accept new information.
To be sure, a diskette isn't cheap. This one cost slightly less than $30,000. But Doughty and her staff believe the expense was worth it.
Bernard LaFleur, who produced the Roanoke Valley diskette at his Pulaski software company, Quad Media, called diskettes the best means available today for transferring information computer to computer. The disks, which are easily mailed to users, take rudimentary computer knowledge to operate on basic computer equipment in most every office.
Although Internet-type networks eliminate diskettes, LaFleur said vast numbers of people do not know how to use the networks, lack the proper equipment or hesitate to delve fully into network communication because they fear loss of privacy.
"The Internet concept is a wonderful concept," he said. "It's a poor delivery platform right now."
He was hired to produce the Roanoke group's electronic brochure in part because he promised everything would fit on one disk. LaFleur said competitors have needed as many as 15 disks to do the same thing.
The disk opens with video footage of Roanoke Regional Airport and a freeway map of the Mid-Atlantic area showing Roanke's location. Users are then asked to fill in a request for more information that they can print at the end of the program and fax to the regional partnership.
Looking at the disk's menu, the viewer can push a virtual button for information about the area's land and buildings. It showed me a map of the Roanoke Centre for Industry and Technology with vacant and occupied sites highlighted in different colors. The business owner shopping for a new home would find quick answers to likely questions here.
The power feed is 34.5 kilovolts. Gas service is by four-inch line, water by a 12-inch line. It's six miles from the airport.
The next wave of such diskettes could contain extensive video footage of industrial parks - such as aerial shots and a look inside buildings - LaFleur said, but right now storage capacity is limited.
While much of the information such as tax rates, bank assets and student test scores appears in text, the segments on crime, living and construction costs and the labor force are interactive.
It is possible to build a hypothetical work force from a list of occupations accompanied by average wages and salaries for the Roanoke area. The system computes the weekly payroll and cost of benefits and unemployment insurance.
Someone curious about, say, crime, can create a bar graph using the most recent available number of violent crimes per 100,000 people in Roanoke and most any U.S. metropolitan area.
The folks at the partnership point out that Greensboro, N.C., against whom the Roanoke Valley compete for industry, has a crime rate of 690 incidents in the study quoted. Roanoke's rate of 332 incidents yields a stub of a bar dwarfed by that for Greensboro and many other areas.
by CNB