Sillicon Valley and Sophia will exchange students.

About fifteen students of Sophia Antipolis will go in California as trainees, while Telecom Valley members have opened about twenty training courses for students coming from the Silicon Valley.

How can we encourage exchanges between students of the Silicon Valley and those of Sophia Antipolis. A list of about ten training periods opened to French students and diffused by the French consulate in San Francisco has launched the movement. Isabelle Attali, responsible for the Job-Formation commission of the Telecom Valley organization, undertook to diffuse list to engineer schools of Sophia Antipolis…The Telecom Valley sets up the reciprocityAs well, Isabelle Attali has tried to set up the reciprocity. 'The consulate sent us an offer of about ten training periods opened to French students by Silicon Valley's companies (IBM San José, Cadence, Sprint, Bravo Brava, and Pagoo). We sent these offers to students from the ESINSA, the ESSI of Eurécom, the DESS Télécom and the ISIA. About four applicants have been ready for each offer. A selection will be made by the end of December. As for training periods, they last from 4 to 6 months, with wages from $2.500 to $4.000 a month. These training periods will start in the spring time. In the same time, we have tried to set up the reciprocity. So we have listed the training courses which could be proposed to students from the Silicon Valley. About twelve research oriented training periods have been proposed by I3S, the INRIA, Eurécom whereas eight other training periods in companies have been opened by Amadeus, Afos Origin, IBM, Andersen Consulting and Philips semi-conductors. Now we are going to send these offers back to the French consulate in San Francisco which will diffuse them towards American students.'The Foundation urges to broadenSenator Lafitte who has been militating in favour of a link between Sophia and the Silicon Valley for years did not keep out of things. The Sophia Antipolis Foundation made it its business to organize exchanges of students for management, communication and marketing activities, as well as biotechnological ones. A contest has been set up in Sophia, and students have to propose a working project and to explain how they would do to make relations between the Telecom and the Silicon Valley progress. A jury will decide on December 15th, then up to the Foundation to find training periods.The Sophia Antipolis Foundation wishes to extend this co-operation throughout the PACA region. ' Moreover the co-operation will deal with : relations between start-ups clubs; the research for reference customers; reinforced contacts between research centers and high teaching ones; package tour in France or in California'Senator Lafitte says in a press release.As for training periods in companies, it is proposed to set up two contests, one in the Silicon Valley, the other in Sophia Antipolis and in engineer schools of the region. These contests will select training course working projects on a specified theme regarding biotechnologies, the NICT, or materials. In France, the contest will be set up by the Sophia Antipolis Foundation with the support of the Conférence des Grandes Ecoles (Great schools conference) and of the PERSAN Club. In California, this contest will be set up by services of the San Francisco office which has links with Stanford and other structures.' Many people hope that it will be the beginning of a concrete co-operation between the two international poles for new technologies.