>> from studio 3 in san francisco, welcome to "bloomberg west." every weekend we bring you the best of west, the top interviews of the powerful players in tech and media to our top story, it's one of the biggest events the mobile world congress in barcelona spain, among those in attendance, tom wheeler flew to barcelona days after f.c.c.'s decision to subject the internet to more regulation. brad stone caught up with the chairman.

>> the most interesting thing is how to learn exactly what the rules are about and how we structured them in such a way that they're built on the mobile model and we built them around what has worked the last 22 years in terms of regulating the wireless industry in the united states so that we could make sure that there was adequate investment that would continue to come by the fact there is no rate tariffing or the kinds of monopoly regulation you heard during the debate. the feeling i'm getting here in talking to people is well, as i understand it better, and it's significant. sprint has come out and said they support it t-mobile has said they'll continue investing under this google fiber said even though we're now entitled to a common carrier, we'll continue to investigate the

small wireless characters and they've said hey, this is something we can live with. you know, on and on and on there's been a list of people who have said the more we get past the rhetoric and the more we get to really what's going on here, then perhaps this is something we can make work. >> that said, will the road ahead be that easy? should we expect some litigation similar to what we saw with the 2010 proposal? the big dogs promised they'll litigate and one of the things they talk about is this 317-page quarter. the rules take up eight pages. and the other 309 pages of the explanation which in many case is talking to the court because we know the big dogs will take us to court. >> i'm interested in your personal journey to net neutrality. you're a lobbyist for the industry and headed the cipa

for many years. what was the epiphany for you at the f.c.c. that brought about last week's ruling? >> it's interesting. it was actually long before that and i've been a proponent of open networks before the terms net neutrality were ever invented because everyone talks to me wheeler, former lobbyist, what they leave out is former entrepreneur who started half a dozen companies, former venture capitalist who understood the importance of open internet and access to networks. so i walked into this job being a strong opponent of open networks. >> did the very public statement by the obama administration last november play a role in the new rules? >> we've been going through a whole process, i had proposed in february a set of rules that took a slightly different approach using what's called section 706 but also asked the question about should we use

title 2 and between that period in february -- or may to the middle of summer i met with a bunch of consumers and innovators and investors who all said there's a real problem in the approach you're looking at. >> with the f.c.c. chairman tom wheeler. we spoke with glenn lurie about net neutrality and the push. >> our vision is everything is connected, the industrial internet of things back here is all about, businesses wanting to be better, businesses wanting to be more productive. here you've got the car business which to us is one of the greatest opportunities. we see the car as the next great device in our lives and we announced in the third quarter we'll connect 50% of the cars in the united states this year and so here at the show we've got a few of our partners with us but really what it is is about putting l.t. in the vehicle and utilizing that to make the car a safer place, better place, more productive place and

hopefully about getting to vehicle to vehicle so they can talk to each other and hopefully reduce accidents a vehicle's infrastructure to make smart cities better. i can go on and on. >> why is at&t's network better suited for this market? >> well, first of all, we have a phenomenal network, the best network in the united states and this is more about the platforms you build around i.o.t. and what's really important is we started on this journey a long time ago. we were early in the game and invested early and actually built platforms and allowed us to be better partners than anybody else in the world. and i'm really excited about where we are and really excited about the partnerships we have and we are leading the space significantly. >> f.c.c. chairman tom wheeler is here in barcelona and of course last week the f.c.c. approved some new network neutrality rules that also, you know might govern wireless networks. what do you say to tom today when you see him and how do you react to those rules? >> it's tough to react to them at this point. we haven't seen the order yet,

obviously we know what's come out. the order is supposed to come out here in the next couple weeks and i think we'll react to that once we see it. it's very hard, at&t has said very clearly what our position is and that we are pro net neutrality. the question is the how and how you govern that. so, you know, we'll see what happens. we'll see what the order looks like. but at this point, we're optimistic we can all make it work. >> google is one of your big partners. >> absolutely. >> i was talking yesterday to a google executive who talked about perhaps introducing a google wireless network, a google branded wireless network , would that be competition for at&t? >> well, sure. obviously it depends on what he's going to do. i don't know all the details about what google and sindar are going to do. i think the key here is customers deserve choice. so if they come in and google wants to come in that's great. obviously we are a partner with them. but one of the things we have in our world of wireless is a

lot of fren miss, a lot of partners we compete with and that's perfectly fine and we'll see what they're working on and talk to them and see where that goes. >> wok o. -- ok. i'm hearing the term 5-g more at this year's event. frankly i was just getting used to 4-gmbing. what does 5-g bring to customers and when can we expect it? >> first of all, 4-g is great and doing well l.t. is phenomenal. what you're hearing is 5-g is coming and there's a lot of discussions. all of that hasn't been decided on exactly what it is going to be. but one of the things we're hearing a lot is, a real concern around we've got to do more for internet of things. we're just talking about cars, talking about connected home, talking about connecting everything. what we know 5-g will bring lower latency and faster speeds and all that. we also believe it will be a network which also has a layer built for i.o.t. which for us means lower power, longer battery life, and those types of things. so i'm actually very excited

about it. 4-g is here for a while, 5-g is further out and i think right now we've got all the capabilities in the world to do but it's exciting to start to see what's coming next. >> do you worry the new network neutrality rules make it to incentivize companies to invest in 5-g? >> at&t is pretty clear about our substance -- our stance and we put out a big blog last week that talked about some of those things and depending on what that order says, we'll see what it says and then react to it. >> ok. >> that was the very excited at&t mobility c.e.o. glenn lurie with brad stone. we'll be back with more on some of the gadgets unveiled at the mobile world congress.

>> this is the best of bloomberg west. blackberry, samsung, just a few of the companies showing off new cell phones. comes at crucial times for each of these companies. back bare trying to reclaim 209% market share they held since 2009. samsung, trying to keep a foothold in asia as phones are skyrocketing in china. htc hoping to rebound after three years of slowing sales. are new gadgets enough? i put that question to crawford. >> at the end of the day it's about iconic. and that's really where everyone is headed do of i have the iconic product that's going to oot tract that next generation user or attract someone off one platform to another platform. that's clearly what they're trying to do here. >> so let's get to specifics of the specifics. are consumers anywhere picking phones based on the quality of the picture or is that

something that the salesperson does in the store or happens with an online review? >> by and large it's socialized. by and large you're at a bar and someone takes a photo and someone says that's a nice photo. when do a survey you find the top five pictures people are looking for, you see image and you see quality of image or quality of screen in those kinds of features. but to your point it's not like it was in pc's where people would study. it's a much more social technology. that's a great picture, hmm, what kind of phone was that? that's how it tends to get socialized. people tend to learn about features. >> so samsung talking about an edge phone that's got an image on the side. this is at least the third time they've announced this device. they announced it c.e.s. and press conference in new york

and announcing it today in barcelona. at some point could we say it's announced? >> it's here. >> but does that matter? it looks different. is that the kind of thing that could actually drive sales to your point that is a social thing that people see out? >> i think that it's the start of a trend. we actually believe that by 2020 a fairly significant percent of smart phones will be using multiple surfaces. there's a product that is the yada phone that uses a o display and on the back a paper kindle display. they're using different sides for notification and reading. the edge and the back are blank space and space that can be used. so while people may think that the edge is a little bit silly or a little bit kitschy today, i actually think it's the start of a trend and i think you'll see people experimenting. >> so that suggests to me that the way that people buy phones is changes. in this country the way people

will buy phones is they'll make a decision about platform, android or i phone, and then go to a store to make the choice. is that the way it happens in the rest of the world? >> it is. in many ways it's a little bit less about the individual platform but that certainly plays in in terms of the number of aps you can get access to. but it also plays into another important feature which is cost. in my role we do business in 60 countries there's a reason why android has such a huge market share around the world. and that is that they're able to reach these low end points. >> because they're giving away the software. >> that's why you see microsoft moving in that direction. >> so trying to find a way in there here's what he had to say at the world congress. >> i'm determined to make software a difference and it's

different from the past and make sure everything is agnostic. if you look at a blackberry base it's niched, it's limited. i want to be able to serve in a higher spectrum. >> a cheaper phone. you know, i like john chen a lot but it's back to the direction of going cheap and broad which they said they'd get away from. >> again, i would argue that his first sentence is the one i agree with the most which is transitioning into a software and services company. when you look at the devices they're trying to go low end, trying to attract new users but i think you give the people what you want. they have loyal base of customers. they want keyboard based devices. and i think you want to focus on those users and retaining them and attracting other users that perhaps are on the android platform or i.o.s. platform with your services, more secure messaging, for example.

>> research officer crawford. and one introduced was the grand 3 forget thumbprints, it can see the whites of your eyes to verify the technology. i talked with the eye verify c.e.o. toby rush. >> looking at the device you can use the selfie camera to look at blood vessels in the whites of the eye, the eye print, and transform that to a key that logs you into your phone and applications, making your life more convenient and secure and yet very private. >> the whites of the eye is how most devices scan the iris and not the whites of the eye. >> the white is a beautiful biometric with interesting features and we're able to just do software and we use the selfie camera and see the blood vessels in the whites of the eye and other technology for the iris takes special software and there's no cameras that have hardware but selfie cameras are great for us. >> is the selfie a term of art?

i thought it was a four-letter word. >> the selfie camera sounds more fun. >> it certainly does. what are the requirements of the selfie camera. is that an evolution that made it possible and wouldn't have been before? >> cameras have gotten better and are amazing. the word of the year in 2014 was selfie. as a phone manufacturer, we love to take pictures of ourselves. they're putting beautiful cameras on the front facing as well as the back. the selfie cameras are five and eight mega pixel which allow us to operate at 16, 18, 20 inches away from the face and still be able to see enough resolution to get four nines of accuracy when they're authenticating. >> and four nines of course is 99.9999. >> yes. >> these are the kind of metrics that first came out in the power industry where they wanted reliability to many nines. what is the bear minimum that you think is necessary of

success in terms of the nines or whatever. >> we typically see three levels of accuracy, one is 99. 9, three nines, the other is 99.99, four nines and the other is .002% flip that around 99.998. so again, different levels of sensitivity towards types of applications but generally four nines are sufficient. >> toby rush, the eye verify c.e.o. we'll talk about global maps next.

>> this is the best of bloomberg west. uber, valued at more than $40 billion, is buying mapping and a search startup called decarta. it's a big deal, the details not disclosed but could be an

arms race in the art of mapping. they said a lot of the functionality that makes the app so affordable and seamless is based on mapping technologies with the acquisition, of decarta they can fine-tune the services that rely on maps and uber relied solely on google maps will implement a blend, a little bit of uber and apple but is the first acquisition it disclosed and made smaller purchases and never talked about those. i talked to the managing director of prelu advisors and worked at decarta for six years and said this is a big deal. >> i think what's really happened is, you know google maps are 10 years old. as they came out they developed a great opportunity and everyone sort of went to them by default but as a business need, especially big companies like uber, that really want to dominate their space, what they're finding is relying on the google maps interface and property which is essentially designed as a consumer

interface doesn't meet their needs as enterprises, so i think maybe the start of a trend you're going to see. >> so regarding those trends talk to me about what -- 10 years ago, the dominant forces in the world of mapping, garmin and tom-tom making maps and magellan and a few others had the maps. it's interesting these developments are all happening away from what was the cutting edge 10 years ago with new technology. >> yeah, and i think there are a couple things that go into that one is the maps themselves, the digital maps have become easier to collect and you have things like open street maps that are starting to drive that and technologies like you saw in waves where you have mobile devices starting to collect map data. that's changed. the other thing about map technology is that some of the technologies that are sort of under the covers there are not very sexy, not very glamorous, hard to build and very hard to

differentiate yourself positively on. so for instance, routing you can have a routing thing that sends you the right way 99 times but you'll remember the one time it didn't so it's hard to differentiate the positive but hard to build. when you see things like uber going out and buying decarta, what they're doing to a great degree is buying proven technology and getting to the market much sooner and having a technology they can really customize for their needs. i think that's the key thing porn cost or money that is really going to drive it at this local. >> it's interesting these two companies, uber and google which were business partners in the early days and later days investors and where google made a big investment to uber really seem like they're setting up to be direct competitors. >> yeah, they may be. and you'll hear a lot about that. i think on the mapping side, when uber started, they started using google maps, it's a great property and works well. but they've gone along with what they see as some of their

real differentiation would be in how precisely they tune theiral gore ith hims to dispatch drivers and find customers with their algorithms and couldn't do it with google maps so now it appears they'll take that inside and really put a big effort into it and develop a competitive advantage. interestingly, as pointed out to me on twitter this morning u.p.s. has 40 people working on routing algorithms, so for people in the logistics business this is big stuff and where you're different from anyone else. and i think that is a move now. that's what uber wants but i think you can extend that to other big players in the mobile and internet space who look around and say we want to do search different we want a different look. we want something different that's really atune to our business model and that's where you'll see those companies starting to make investments in geospatial and mapping technologies. >> there also seems to be a

trend, to paraphrase public enemy, is this fear of a google planet? all of these companies thinking i don't want to build my business where i'm dependent on google and i'll wake up one day and watch "bloomberg west" and see they're competing with me. >> right. one part is that and google has been aggressive in getting into the travel business and you're using google maps and scratch your head when google launches travel related products. the other part is google has done a great job on maps. they were the first to learn it wasn't just about pushing data to the user but about collecting where the user is, where they're going and what the traffic conditions are and that data becomes key to tuning whether it's your search or routing algorithms and google gets that data. but if you're using google maps, you might not. i think that's one of the things uber is really going to

benefit from is the ability to capture that data and really build it into a completely different product. >> this notion that the user is providing data to the company, google is tracking where you're going, is what you're saying is uber wants to track where i'm going and twitter wants to track where i'm tweeting and apple wants to know where i'm shopping, on some level to understand their uses, user data and control over that data is really what this is about? >> that's a key part of it they may not particularly want to know where you are i am going, my life is less interesting than that but aggregate stuff, where people are, where they're moving and one of the big industries you see growing is this understanding of user context and one of the key signals there is location. so that ability to access rips at user location is a huge asset and i think more companies will want to own that themselves. >> that was mark prileou, the

managing director. we'll be back to talk about snap chat and stripe right after this. . .

>> you are watching the best of "bloomberg west." where we focus on innovation, technology, and the future of business. i am cory johnson. here's a look at the stories that made headlines. apple delaying production of their larger screen. production of the big ipad is now scheduled to start in september. apple's been dealing with delays involved with the supply of display panels. ipad sales haven't falling for the last few quarters.

research team led by microsoft cofounder paul allen has found the wreckage of a massive japanese world war ii battle ship. it is considered one of the most technologically advanced ships in that war sunk off the co-of coast of the philippines by u.s. forces in october 1944 in the run-up to the battle of the lechi gulf. they've been searching for this ship for eight years. and there are a lot of ways to pay. i can swipe with square, click with scripe, wave with apple pay. how many of these options do consumers need? what this all means as the managing director, an investor in both stripe and snap chat. >> think about how payments used to be. it was much more complex process before stripe really arrived. today any developer that opens up a website and decides to sell, payments is merely an api

call so they be embed payments. >> so it used to be when someone would start a website, drug store.com. you would have to build an infrastructure to figure out how am i going to recognize the numbers that are going to come in? how am i going to verify those numbers? how am i going to suck the payment out of that account? how can i tell the consumer that the payment's been accepted? >> that's right. and wait for weeks of approval to get in business. today you create your website and within minutes you're able to accept payments. >> the interweb, which is a series of tubes, is at least 15 years old where you have had e-commerce websites. let's call it 20. amazon is about 20 years old now. is it really the entire time there hasn't been an a.p.i. for

that? >> absolutely not. it completely -- in today's world it looks like a broken stack. visa and mastercard serve a function. when you think about the interchange. >> a broken stack. lots of crummy technology that doesn't fit well together stacked on top of each other. >> absolutely. they're handling risk, they're handling fraud. today with everybody on line you have to rethink the payment stack from the ground up. how do you think about fraud the identity of the users? and therefore, a new contemporary stack that emerges and automates a lot of that for you. that's really what stripe does. >> in other words, in an era in which people are sharing all the names of their kids on facebook and they're tweeting out their both their thoughts and location and maybe when their birthday is on a regular basis, that suddenly the old rules rather than adapting need to be completely thrown out we have to have a new technology? >> absolutely. when you think about the purchasing experience today, what a lot of your social media types are doing, a lot of what

e-commerce is about -- in the early days you go to the store pick what you want to buy, then click that takes you to a payment page. today you want to be able to see a product, catches your eye in a twitter stream or your facebook stream that your friend is recommending, and you want to buy right there. that's what this is doing. it's the idea of payment is getting embedded in the concept of the product itself anywhere on the web. >> so evaluation wise i wouldn't understand why stripe would seem like the kind of company adjacent to a lot of money where they can get the money on a massive scale, but not talking just about valuations but about oversharing. you're invested in snapchat, a fascinating company, basically free revenue, which has achieved -- what round did you invest? >> pretty early. >> and this is now becoming an enormously successful service. it's also free.

it's achieved an incredible valuation, not unlike stripe and some other companies. to what do you attribute that valuation? >> i think it's really hard to create a large communities of people around communication. when you think when you think about what facebook did with what whatsapp did where there's hundreds of millions of people using that product on a monthly basis, that's a really rare occurrence. and what snap chat's been able to do is create a new communication, added on, now added on discover and all these products. it's a new way to communicate that users want to use in their tool chest. to communicate with their friends. >> is there a business model? you sell $1 for 50 cents -- there's not a business. >> thereby be a business model for sure. you have to be cognizant of the fact that this is a 3-year-old company.

it's gone from zero to a couple hundred people. but the growth is so stunning that it's not hard to understand that when you're doing this the kind of things that happen is experimenting with as you'll be able to scale revenue exceptionally fast, and that's why valuations are justified. >> that was general catalyst managing director hemant taneja. the best of "bloomberg west" will be right back. we'll be talking about space and a mysterious explosion of the secret satellite. we'll talk about that when we come back. ♪

>> i am cory johnson. this is the best of "bloomberg west." space is full of mysteries including this one. an aging defense satellite mysteriously exploded in orbit last month. what happened? power failure? space junk? investigators aren't telling us. i spoke about it with jennifer and author of "blank spots on the map" and videographer --

. >> the national reconnaissance office is like the secret version of nasa. so the u.s. actually has two space programs. there's the public one nasa, the space shuttle apollo all that kind of stuff. another space agency that builds secret satellites. they build classified reconnaissance satellites for themselves and serve the dia cia, national geospatial intelligence and the nsa. >> so the satellite that blew up a few weeks ago, space debris heading towards the earth. nerds with telescope saw it. what happened in early february, an air force satellite defense meteorological satellite program flight number 13, launched in

1995, and in early february something happened to it and it looks like it exploded. and this was seen by an amateur astronomer in the u.k. basically with a pair of binoculars. saying i think this thing blew up. about 20 days later, i think the air force finally fessed up and confirmed that this thing had indeed exploded. not really sure why. nobody's really saying if anybody knows at all. but it's actually not the first time that one of these space craft had blown up. there was another one an earlier one that something similar heabd end to in 2004. >> the existence of this secret program was a secret for a long time and then it wasn't. >> yeah. the n.r.o. was begun in 1960 when we first started building satellites and wanted to do it in secret. it was a compromise between the air force and cia, who were fighting over who would control secret intelligence assets in the space.

so the nao was formed and existed for 30 years as a black agency. in other words, the existence of the agency itself was a secret. and that was true until 1992. if you were in the air force in the 1980's and worked on spy satellites you said the word in public you would be breaking the law. national reconnaissance office. to this day most everything that they do is secret but the fact of the existence of the agency is no longer a secret. >> and the speculation is the technology is much more advanced than nasa but the size of the program is interesting. here's a quote from one of the generals who ran the organization up until recently. specifically what he talked about is sort of the size of this agency. they're undertaking probably the most aggressive launch scheduled that this organization has taken in the last 25 years. and there are a number of satellites that will go into orbit in the next year and the year-and-a-half.

so these guys are not only launching satellites but they're launching at a much more aggressive space. >> absolutely. historically it's had the largest budget of all the intelligence agencies. that's no longer true. the cia's budget has eclipsed them because it's very expensive to put things in space. but it seems there are a number of new programs that have been going up in the last few years the nro are trying to put up looking forward there's a new generation of synthetic imaging satellites called taupe as. -- topaz they're trying to build a new generation of photo imaging satellites. and of course they're also building and expanding the signals intelligence satellites that the n.s.a. uses to vacuum up electronic signals. >> so what you're doing on your phone, is that the thing they're sucking up? >> to a certain extent. the nsa does a lot of its sensor collection over fiber optic cables. so that's really where the bulk of the internet is in fiber optic cables moving across the continent and under the seas.

but they have dedicated space craft for doing signals intelligence service. -- satellites. and what they'll do that for is phones in the middle east for example would be a big thing that they would want to collect the signt. also military communications. so the nsa doesn't just spy on normal people. they do that as well, but obviously there are other foreign governments military is a big target. >> a lot of private industries probably benefit from this spending. >> yeah. absolutely. and this is another thing that's a little bit odd about the nro. something like 95% is made out of contractors at places like lockheed, boeing. so that's another thing when we're talking about civilian space agencies, is the n.r.o. even itself? oscar-winning cinematographer and geographer trevor paglen. we'll be right back talking about sony's push into virtual reality.

next. ♪

>> this is the best of "bloomberg west." i am cory johnson. the game developers conference was in town this past week. it's a big deal and the big topic was virtual reality. sony is showing everyone they are the vr player. they just revealed the proto type. they said they want to release this in the first half of 2016. i spoke with the guy who runs this unit for sony, dr. richard marks. >> we have a new headset. it's got new specifications much better than the old one.

we also announced the release in the first half of next year. >> how is it better than the older? >> it goes up to 120 frames per second, which is double than we had before. it has a new panel instead of lcd. >> faster? better? >> just much nicer on your eyes actually. a little wider field of view. ergonomics are better. so a lot of improvements. >> what are you finding? tell me about your expertise and why your degree in rocket science has you working in virtual reality. >> well, aeroastro engineering is basically systems engineering, and games are all about complex systems. there's hardware and software components. so it translates pretty well even though it doesn't seem -- >> what are the principle challenges?

-- at stanford university has written a lot about virtual reality. he thinks that games are not the best use of the technology. that you just get exhausted by the bombardment of the 3d experiment that it provides. obviously you think differently. >> when you're in virtual reality it feels like you're somewhere else. the more realistic the place is the less you are overwhelmed because it feels like you're just some place. >> you're chasing zombies through an abandoned mine it's not real. so you're saying that experience is not exhausting that the real experience of that would be exhausting. >> you can make it as exhausting as you choose. you could have an experience which is completely exhausting but you can kind of ramp that back. and we're seeing in virtual reality especially perhaps more traditional games it's not just about running through as fast as you can get through. it's more about enjoying the space where you are. so a lot of the ambiance is really important, more in virtual reality than in a traditional game. >> the trippiest things is just

sitting in a yurt and noticing that someone was behind me making soup as i turned my head and then they went away when i turned my head back. does that mean a totally different kind of game play that maybe first-person shooters, for example, will not be the same success that they will be in virtual reality? >> definitely different game play. some of the genres translate over. for example, driving games work pretty well, but others don't translate directly over. some of the world's people have already made come over but maybe the game play will be a little different. >> what does sony have over oculus and others? >> we have like 22.2 million playstation 4's already out there. so we have an installed base of our hardware platform and we can kind of control our own eco system.

the morpheus is made for playstation 4 and we have known people interested in this kind of stuff and we can deliver software to them new experiences to them. so we kind of control our own destiny. we have known controllers. and every single one of these units is the same. so when a game developers makes a game he knows exactly how -- the experience. because you don't worry about drivers or anything like that. for a person buying it they know they can buy it plug it in and it will work. they don't have to worry about the complexity. >> is the technology so unique that it can't be replicated? samsung tried to get some attention and continues to try to get attention with their oculus glasses made by samsung. you're going your own way completely. are there really essential differences in the two kinds of technology? >> there's a lot of commonality between some of the systems. sony has a lot of experience in a lot of the areas that makes sense for virtual reality. the display, audio, optics, and all these things. consumer devices in general. we're good at all those things. we are a natural fit.

other companies have elements of that as well. and the devices unfortunately, you know, on the prment c. side especially the devices range from maybe a piece of card board all the way up to a very high end system. whereas on the console it's kind of more there's one choice for the prn s 4. so there's no very not as much variability. >> we'll be right back and get an update on the growing tech scene in the sunshine state speaking with the mayor of orlando. ♪

>> i am cory johnson. this is the best of "bloomberg west."

could the home of disneyworld, universal studios be the next big hub for technology? orlando. the florida tech scene is growing fast there thanks to investment by google, apple, and electronic arts. i spoke with orlando's mayor buddy dyer. i asked him about the influence of e.a., which built the madden game in orlando for years. >> there's so many alumni that have started their own companies and been part of the fabric of the tech community in downtown orlando. and interestingly enough about eight years ago, ea came to us and said we want to expand here but the talent pool is not deep enough. so we got together the city and ucf, the university of central florida and created the florida interactive entertainment academy in one of our buildings and it's a graduate program for video gamers.

and it has been very successful. it's now the second leading program of its type in the country. >> fairly interesting. when you look across the country -- because there's a silicon valley of colorado, and there's a silicon valley of the desert and there's a silicon valley of the middle east. you name it everybody is trying to do a silicon valley. what is it that's so attractive to you in terms of economic development about technology? >> well, they're high-paying jobs in general. and it's -- we always want to look at the supplying our economy the session really emphasized that to us. two of our leading industries are tourism and home building and they were deeply affected during the recession. we have a great life sciences cluster, and we didn't lose a single job in that industry during the recession. >> how do you figure out city budgets are rough. you've got quite limited resources. how do you figure out where to put $100,000 grant here or $50,000 grant here, which are

drops in the bucket of any kind of technology budget? >> well, generally when attracting a company from somewhere else or growing jobs we have a tax credit that gives a little bump for every job that's created above the median in orlando. and that's really a state program. and then we have some other programs that emphasize targeted industries in our downtown. >> when you're attracting these workers, do you feel like you're pulling them from other places? they might have trouble finding the people they want there, they like what they can pay them in places like orlando. it's not as expensive as in silicon valley. do you feel like that is a great advantage? >> i think it is an advantage. what we're getting a lot of is people from our area who have moved to california and texas and moving back and returning with the experience they've gained in the other communities. >> are are there unique city planning? i have lifelong interest in city

planning probably because of disney world opening up. i'm wondering if that is different around a technology-based community, are they different than they would be around other industries such as home building and so on? >> we actually have a great opportunity in our downtown. we recently built a new arena, a new performing arts center and renovated our citrus bowl and that freed up about 70 acres. and we are in the midst of planning and developing something we call the creative village. so it has that florida interactive entertainment area as a base. we're going to instruct a ucf joint use facility there that will house between 10,000 and 15,000 students and on the surrounding acres we want to

develop a work live and play space. >> that does it for this edition of the best of "bloomberg west." we'll see you later. ♪

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