Weekend!!!

Cambridge, England

It's been a busy week in Cambridge, and it's not going to slow down anytime soon. I just finished a major project for school. In short, I finished a semester-long consulting project for a high-tech startup company in Cambridge. I was in a group of four, and we presented to the client today. They seemed to appreciate our insight. It's a relief to be finished with that, but now I've got to get on about 10,000 words worth of papers. Awesome.

I should update folks on my current research, or my research next term for my dissertation rather. It's important to note because I'll be in the US (Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Austin, San Francisco) from April 8-27. It will be nice to be in the States for a bit, especially since I'll be working on an exciting project. Exciting to me at least...

So the deal is that Louisiana passed a tax-credit program a while back that's targeted at the film industry. Basically film companies get tax-credits -- that they can actually sell for cash -- to produce movies in LA. Although the ROI on the tax-credit is tough to gauge, it is clear that there has been an increase in the industry. Ray (filmed in LA) just won some Academy Awards and All the King's Men (Jude Law, Sean Penn, Kate Winslett) just finished up in BR...as did Jessica Simpson and the Dukes of Hazard.

The BR Chamber of Commerce and Louisiana Technology Park are going to sponsor my dissertation at Cambridge, and I'll be researching this tax-credit issue for the video game industry. I'm excited about this, especially because my conclusions should have an impact on state policy. I'll be in BR for a week and a half, and also conduct a bunch of interviews in Austin and San Francisco. Will keep the blog posted.