First step in LI-Silicon Valley friendship

'Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship," Humphrey Bogart tells Claude Rains at the end of the 1942 megahit "Casablanca."

On Thursday, Carl Guardino, president of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which represents companies in the country's high-tech capital, said the same thing after a meeting with Long Island business and political leaders at CA Technologies in Islandia.

An overstatement? No, Guardino said. "We couldn't have asked for a better meeting because it wasn't a meeting that ended with, 'Let's have another immediate meeting.' "

The meeting, organized by Rep. Steve Israel (D-Dix Hills), included Long Island's high-tech elite: representatives from Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, the Long Island Power Authority, lawyers from some of the Island's top firms, as well as Brookhaven Town officials and people from the Rauch Foundation of Garden City.

The meeting was held to determine how Long Island's business, technology and academic organizations could form relationships with Silicon Valley companies. Guardino said both sides agreed to study energy efficiency and energy security as a first step.

Long Island Association president Kevin Law said, "This was the start of a relationship to begin learning what other places are doing to grow a new economy."

Israel said that when companies compete for technology contracts, Silicon Valley usually wins. "We want to collaborate with them instead," Israel said.

There will be a phone call between Law and Guardino in a few weeks, and another meeting perhaps in the fall.