BCR's Daily Fishwrap Report for October 20, 2009

EMC Incentives Okayed: The City Council approved $1 million in incentives for Boston-area IT storage and services firm EMC, bringing the Durham governmental total to $2.2m along with $7.4m in state incentives for a $280 million investment and almost 300 jobs. One wrinkle: the firm doesn't publicly disclose workforce diversity numbers, which caused hemming and hawing from Howard Clement until he was assured he'd get to see the numbers in a closed Council session. (Herald-Sun, N&O)

Gangs Fuel Council Candidates Debate: Gang, youth and neighborhood issues dominated a Sunday afternoon municipal election candidates' forum. Among the highlights and lowlights: debates about rec centers, the war on gangs and drugs, and a revelation from Ward 1 challenger Donald Hughes that Cora Cole-McFadden had paid persons to help with a Southside neighborhoodclean-up that the neighborhood association president described as atypical. Matt Milliken has the full rundown; it's worth a read. (Herald-Sun)

You Know It's A Tough Job Market When: Durham's newest assistant D.A. is getting a salary that's not quite the golden egg one might expect for a law career. Make that a goose egg, in fact: Josephine Kerr's accepted a role helping out the office with at least one prosecution pro bono after a contract law position ended, with the sixth year professional taking the unpaid internship to gain deeper crim-law experience. (Herald-Sun)

Durham Symphony's New Maestro Bows: New Durham Symphony's conductor William Henry Curry -- the third person to hold the post since the organization's 1976 founding -- gets his first appearance in the permanent role this Sunday at the Carolina Theatre, bringing what Curry (also affiliated with the North Carolina Symphony) promises to be new approaches to 'well-known works.' (Herald-Sun)

Bad Year for VC Funds: While Durham's TransEnterix raked in $55 million recently in venture capital funding, the N&O notes that was more than all the other venture funding drawn by Triangle firms this year to date combined, in what's shaping up as one of the worst years for early-stages funding in a decade or so. (N&O)

Tha Thrilla' in Central Park-illa': Inspired by grainy web videos of Filipino prisoners impersonating the King of Pop? Like zombie action but can't wait for next week's Zombie Lurch? Join a World Record-attempt with citizens of the world, all trying to perform the dance from the Michael Jackson hit "Thriller" at the same time -- all organized online. Oh, Internet, where would our world be without you? (Herald-Sun)

Comments

[Tim C.]

I totally missed the 'giving EMC $9.6 million' story. Seeing as how NetApp is one of the oldest employers in RTP, and one with a very long and very solid commitment to the area, giving their primary (most would say only serious) competitor EMC just for expanding an operation that already exists - and most likely importing or hiring away talent from other employers to do it - seems a little shortsighted.

I don't work for NetApp, but I know plenty of people - would you believe, most of them also Durham city/county taxpayers - who do. I'm surprised this hasn't blown up yet, given the unfortunate Dell situation in WS. Hopefully one of the CC candidates will have the guts to bring it up.

PS to HC: it's not a diversity problem, these are highly-skilled jobs and there just aren't many people qualified to do them. Having worked in networking for many years, I wouldn't even expect EMC to hire very many of the ex-Nor/Vaya people into the high-dollar jobs, and that's about as close as you're going to get to an appropriate unemployed local labor pool. I'm all for asking questions, but please, on my behalf, ask the right ones.

PPS to the rest of the council: for shame!

[Bull City Rising]

@Tim: I understand where you're coming from, but not 100% sure I agree.

To geek out for a sec, I work for an organization where we use storage products from both NetApp and EMC. NetApp's filers are great for some things; they're relatively new in some parts of the market (though a neighbor and friend, and I think BCR reader, is very active in helping them march forward with new technologies.) We make extensive use of EMC products for some of our other storage needs -- and I also know a great EMC employee who lives in downtown and is very engaged with the local community, too.

NetApp's got a nice presence but EMC has had a long presence in the area. When we needed a Clariion earlier this year, we were able to get one from the plant EMC has down in Apex where they have been manufacturing these things since the Data General days.

I tend to think of EMC as a more-than-storage company these days, anyway, thanks to VMware in particular as well as their ITSM software portfolio, which actually looks fairly decent.

At any rate, I think one of the lessons from the Nortel days is that there's no one "powerhouse" to rule them all. I'd rather see the region have tentacles into multiple high-tech companies rather than a concentrated focus on one particular firm, like we had with the 9,000 or so Nortellians here for a while.