Mayor hosts tech summit to help boost city's future industries
Bloomberg tech Credit: Mayor Bloomberg wants more tech companies to come to the city. (Mayor's Office)
The mayor held a summit Monday with some of the tech industry's giants to brainstorm ways to make the Big Apple a 21st Century tech powerhouse.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said companies like Google and Twitter are helping to make the city's economy soar, but the industry still needs an extra boost for the city to be as prominent as Silicon Valley.
"We want to keep our competitive advantage," he said during a news conference at the Chelsea offices of Boxee, a company that sells an online media streaming device.
A who's who of tech leaders, including Arianna Huffington, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Kickstarter co-founder Perry Chen, were on hand for the breakfast meeting at the office of Bloomberg's charity group, Bloomberg Philanthropies..
The mayor said the summit members worked on ways to attract more tech companies to the city by focusing on improving three areas.
They agreed that the city's digital infrastructure, such as its broadband access,requires faster upgrades, science education needs to be expanded to produce highly skilled employees, and that the industry must to be showcased to attract new companies and talent.
Schmidt commended the summit and encouraged other digital properties to consider setting up shop in Gotham.
"What I will tell you, speaking as a representative of a company that made a decision a long time ago to invest in New York City, we now have more than 3,000 people here and continue to invest, grow and buy companies here for the foreseeable future," he said.
