Naming Rights for Geospatial Lab in California Public School District

If I understand an article in California Watch correctly, the Santa Rosa City School District will soon have a gespatial tech center with corporate sponsorship. But the sponsor is not yet named.

In January, the district will finalize its first corporate partnership: a $1 million deal to name its new geospatial technology center. For students, the deal means more than just a name-brand building, Miller said. 

 

"We would hopefully want people from the industry to come in and speak to our students about career opportunities in the field in general, but also with their organization," she said. 

 

For the company, which Miller said she could not yet disclose, "it's the development of your next workforce." The company has asked to use the building during the summer, when school is not in session, as a training center for its employees. Local colleges also will use the facility for its observatory and weather station, she said. 

Autodesk Acquires Instructables

I guess the idea that every company should be a media company is coming true in more ways than I imagined. It seems Autodesk sees itself in the DIY space with its home-focused design and sketch tools. Thus, acquiring the hands-on, how-to site Instructables makes sense. It also put Autodesk in an interesting position with company leading the "Maker" movement: O'Reilly. I've used Instructables a few times with great success. In one case the effort seemed beyond my skills (and interest) and used the non-DIY solution (buying a new iPod shuffle). Autodesk is repositioning itself - respositioning itself further and further from geospatial technology.

- press release

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Updated: Autodesk Announces New Student Website - but not for Geo

Update 9/6:This from Kirsten Davidson, Brand Manager for ISD (Infrastructure Solutions Division) at Autodesk.

We will release an introduction to geospatial concepts course later this month which will provide our engineering students a path to tie CAD to GIS technologies.  For now, GIS and geospatial will live as a part of the Civil community, however it will likely have its own home down the road.

The press release titled “Autodesk Launches Global Community for University Engineers, Architects and Designers” makes it clear students of GIS and geospatial technology are not to get the same offer as those in other fields of study.

I’ve already pinged Autodesk as to why. Maybe since MapGuide Open Source is open source that’s enough? Maybe ISD thinks it does enough in edu? (I think not…) Maybe ISD doesn’t want to compete with other GIS companies already heavily invtested in education at the university level? Thoughts?