It appears that the latest Business Without Borders seminar was a big success. According to Pro8news, 20 "corporations" have opened across town bringing about 200 jobs. Although, KGNS scrimped on the details as usual, jobs are jobs so this is good news no matter how you look at it.
A little bit after watching this particular story, I couldn't help but wonder (once again) about a couple of things. 1) what is it that Laredo has an abundance of ? And, 2) How can we turn that abundance into jobs for out city? While I'm sure that some of us would come up with different ideas there are a few things that are universally recognized as being plentiful in our city.
First of all, we have plenty of heat and sun. We consistently have among the highest temperatures in the county. We have very little rain but plenty of sunny days. That was probably the reason we used to have an air force base here. How can we capitalize on so much sun and heat? Secondly, we have the highest concentration of Hispanics and Spanish speakers in the entire United States. Sadly, the third thing is that we have some of the worst performing schools in the state, if not the country. And last but not least, we have one of the youngest cities in the state as far as the median age goes. I believe that about half of Laredo's population is under 25 years of age.
The $64,000 question then is how do we use these things to turn the engine of our economy? I don't claim to have the answers (now he tells us) but I'll go out on a limb and do a little bit of free associating with the first one : Sun and heat. For starters, how about flying schools, solar farms, Mega-tanning parks or even some company doing sun/heat related research. OK, you can laugh now, but at least you get my drift. Who knows, maybe we can become the buckle of the entire Sun Belt.
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