Jane Larson
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 10, 2008 06:02 PM
ASU, Scottsdale collaboration ready to begin
The first Arizona State University personnel are moving into SkySong, Scottsdale's high-tech collaboration with ASU intended as a global portal of innovation.
From a moving van sitting on SkySong Boulevard, workers are busily delivering stacks of packed boxes to ASU's space on the second floor of the first completed building.
Staffers and students say they're eager for the promised collaboration between business and academia to begin.
"With all the technology and entrepreneurial programs, there's a lot of potential for us to get advice and knowledge," said Jonathan Cooper, a journalism major who is founding a green taxicab company as part of the Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative.
The first company moved in over the holidays. Eighteen American Solar Electric Inc. employees swapped their downtown Scottsdale space for nearly 5,000 square feet on the fourth floor.
Canon U.S.A. Inc.'s Phoenix sales office is to move more than 50 employees into SkySong by the end of the month. They will occupy part of the fourth floor and open a demonstration and showroom area on the first floor.
Mark Nichols stood amid unpacked boxes and chattering students in his new work space at SkySong.
Colleagues from ASU's Applied Learning Technologies Institute conferred in the office behind him at south Scottsdale's budding high-tech center.
Student-initiated ventures, ranging from Web portals to bill-payment services to non-profit organizations, visited next to the empty cubicles in front of Nichols.
Down the long hall, other ASU staffers set up space for programs to help entrepreneurs and fast-growing companies boost their chances of success.
The institute, which runs an e-learning platform for teachers statewide, plans to tap the interaction of businesses, educators and international visitors expected at SkySong, Nichols said.
"We have lots of opportunities to take things that are high tech and cool and take them out to the schools," said Nichols, director of strategic initiatives for the institute.
ASU began moving in this week on the second floor of the first building at SkySong, the ASU Scottsdale Innovation Center, southeast of McDowell and Scottsdale roads.
80 ASU faculty and staff
Nearly 80 ASU faculty and staff will be based at SkySong, and numerous other staffers and students will work part-time or visit the high-tech center's programs, said Nate Summer, director of strategic marketing for SkySong.
Construction workers in hard hats still hammer and drill on the first floor, destined to house shops and other services for the complex's workers, and the still-empty third floor, reserved for more corporate offices.
ASU is positioning the development as a global portal and hub for entrepreneurial technology companies that could benefit from working with ASU researchers.
Even the second floor's coffee lounge has taken on an entrepreneurial, international bent.
A team of four students whose majors range from molecular biology to business and design won an ASU competition to run the lounge, now dubbed Skycafe.
Damien Salamone and Mohamed Abdalla were unpacking boxes of juice and water and handing out samples of spiced East African tea, brewed for the traditional three hours.
The café's tea and coffee come from a factory Abdalla's uncle runs in Mombasa, Kenya. Salamone started a non-profit organization focused on East Africa after a volunteer trip there.
"We saw an opportunity to receive the coffee and sell it, and we're taking one-fourth of the profits to the communities," Salamone said.
Besides the café, the ASU space includes:
• A video conference center that will allow tenants to stream lectures and business and research presentations worldwide. It seats up to 50 people and has been a "heavily requested" feature so far, said Julia Rosen, assistant vice president for economic affairs at ASU.
• Cubicles and conference rooms available to visiting scholars, investors and others dropping in on SkySong.
• Glass-walled offices on the interior of the second floor, with cubicles and work spaces next to the large windows offering natural light and views of Camelback Mountain and the McDowell Mountains.
Focus on overseas firms
The Enterprise Arizona Venture Center, an ASU incubator for small foreign firms, will begin moving its 15 employees in next week, director Summer said. Employees from some six to eight foreign firms will join the center's space at SkySong over the next two months.
Technopolis, a coaching and mentoring program for innovative ventures, began moving its six employees in this week. Staffers are looking forward to the more diverse mix of tenants than what they had at their previous location in the Brickyard building on ASU's campus, director Terree Wasley said.
"It really adds the collaboration factor because there are lots of companies coming in," she said. "Entrepreneurs have lots of places to work and network."