Hanna Wins Tri-State Event Handily Tri-State Tour / East Rutherford, NJ by InsidePOOL Staff Ra Hanna bested the Tri-State Tour’s 42-player field that showed up to play January 23, going undefeated to win over Tri Chau in the finals. The $500-added stop was hosted by Castle Billiards in East Rutherford, NJ, and also awarded the winner a Pechauer [...]

Demet Double-Dips Vaulkman Billiard Congress of Wisconsin Open 9-Ball Tour / Oshkosh, WI by Jonathan Demet Eight players braved the elements to come out and play at the January 24 installment of the Billiard Congress of Wisconsin Open 9-Ball Tour, with tour director Jonathan Demet walking away the ultimate winner. The event was hosted by the Varsity Club [...]

As the last bank was pocketed Sunday night at the Horseshoe Casino, the players looked to the Monday morning draw with anticipation. The Banks event saw some heavy matches as the Sunday action sent dozens more of the top professional bank pool aficionados packing. The highlight of the day saw two legendary past champions [...]

U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, said Friday that the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and local partners will receive $5 million in federal grant funding from the Department of Energy for the development of renewable energy technologies.

The funds were authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Matsui said the funds will go toward installation of California's first "solar highway," a co-digestion facility and three anaerobic digesters.

The nation's first solar highway made its debut in Oregon last year, with the installation of photovoltaic panels along roadside land in the Portland suburb of Tualatin. That highway is expected to generate about 128,000 kilowatt-hours a year.

Co-digestion is a process using food waste and sewage to produce biogas. Anaerobic digesters also produce biogas and can be fed with plant material.

Deborah Le Vine, ISO's director of system operations, checks monitors at the agency's control center in Folsom. The center tracks nearly 100 energy companies.

Critics of America's corporate culture insist that a glass ceiling still exists, but at the California Independent System Operator Corp. in Folsom, women wield considerable power in more ways than one.

The person in charge of the ISO power grid, which meets the energy needs of 30 million Californians and draws electricity from resources throughout western North America, is a woman.

Half the executive-level ISO staff is female.

That puts the ISO in the minority of employers with women in their top ranks. In November, a study released by the University of California, Davis, concluded that progress for women at the 400 largest public companies headquartered in California has improved little since the first UCD survey in 2005.

Among the study's key findings: Women hold just 10.6 percent of board seats and executive positions among the companies, and 118 out of the 400 firms have no female directors on their boards and no female executive officers.

That's no surprise to Deborah Le Vine, ISO's director of system operations, who recalled that not everyone was "tolerant of a woman in a man's field" when she was working her way up.

When she was getting her undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from San Diego State University in 1981, Le Vine was one of five women in a group of 125. In her first job at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, she was the only female engineer among 130.

Le Vine recalled that an instructor once told her that she couldn't possibly know the answer to a thermodynamics question because she was female.

Since then, Le Vine has spent nearly 30 years in the utility industry, including manager of power resources for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. She has been with ISO since its inception in 1997.

Since October, Le Vine has overseen the ISO power grid and market operations, with primary responsibility "to keep the lights on" and garner affordable power for California's considerable energy needs.

According to the ISO, Le Vine is the only woman in the nation to run an open market power grid.

Federal and state utility and power associations contacted by The Bee could not provide current demographic statistics on ISOs nationwide. But anecdotally, numerous power industry experts said the industry has moved away from the male-dominated domain of a generation ago.

"Generally, because of retirements and turnover, there's a real focus on diversity, more recruitment of women and minorities," said Janice Beecher, director of the Institute of Public Utilities at Michigan State University.

The focus of Le Vine's work world is the 17,000-square-foot ISO control center, stuffed with computers, digital information boards, large video screens and a map board as long as a city block. The map board displays the complex connection of electricity sources and power lines in the western United States, Canada and Mexico.

The control room – there's a second one in Southern California – is every bit as imposing as anything devised by NASA or the Pentagon, befitting a nerve center delivering more than 200 billion kilowatt hours of power annually and constantly monitoring nearly 100 energy companies on the wholesale transmission grid.

Le Vine said the qualifications for her job are gender-blind.

"This is a high-stress environment. Not everyone can do it," she said. " … And you have to think fast. You have to make decisions in minutes. Things change quickly, and you can miss out if you're not paying attention. … It's not just me. You have to work well with people. … Patience and perseverance help."

Le Vine said the job's most stressful times come in summer, when peak demand on hot days requires constant monitoring of operations, including power acquired outside California. Also, fires can create havoc with power lines and grid operations.

Because electric power is not a 9-to-5 business, the control center operates 24/7. Control center workers must check energy markets and constantly assess the power transmission system. With so much automation, information technology experts work in the control center night and day.

Le Vine said the daily routine involves six 10-person shifts.

In 2011, ISO is scheduled to move from its headquarters on Blue Ravine Road to a new $160 million office building on Iron Point Road. The move is expected to add perhaps 350 jobs. ISO currently employs 580.

The control center at the new ISO site will be larger and more complex than the current one.

Le Vine credits ISO President and CEO Yakout Mansour with creating an environment that fosters the advancement of talent, regardless of gender or cultural background.

Mansour doesn't see the big deal, saying an equal mix of genders and cultures in a workplace is "only natural … any other way is unnatural. How can you ignore half the population?"

Mansour added that "we're really not targeting anything. We simply want the best people for the job."

Mansour said that his early education in Egypt included significant participation by female students. He said he continued to advance in work environments where women played major roles in daily operations.

Brenda Thomas, named ISO's human resources vice president in October, said Mansour's management style has made her job easier.

Thomas holds multiple degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a human resources officer for Bank of America in San Francisco. Later, she began her own consulting business, where she established a working relationship with ISO.

As a consultant, Thomas said she saw all manner of business environments.

"I've seen both sides, frankly," she said. "I've seen organizations that have changed considerably and those that have just stood still in time."

When she looked at the ISO, she said, "I saw that it was focused on developing a world-class workplace environment … with core values of respect, teamwork and openness … and a focus on people."

"How can you ignore half the population? ... We're really not targeting anything. We simply want the best people for the job." - YAKOUT MANSOUR ISO president and CEO

Derby City Classic Billiards Event Rolling Forward The 12th Annual Derby City Classic continued on with play in the Bank Pool tournament. The event saw almost half of its 353 competitors knocked out at the end of the day. Several noteable matches highlighted the talk around the event as a star-studded field of competitors battled throughout the [...]

12th Annual Derby City Classic Kicks Off The 12th Annual Derby City Classic presented by the Horseshoe Casino kicked off Friday, January 22, 2009. The highly publicized professional billiards event is a combination of three events with an all-around winner being crowned on Saturday, January 30, 2009. The three tournaments making up the Derby City Classic are [...]

vMobileTech Chairman Dave Zabrowski, CEO Ray Lubeck and Vice President of Operations Tom Sykes, from left, are displayed live on their iPhones on Tuesday in Folsom. vMC's technology has drawn interest from firms looking to cut travel and other costs.

Imagine you are an engineer in Saudi Arabia, trying to reboot a water desalination plant costing its operators tens of thousands of dollars an hour while it is offline.

The component responsible for crashing the plant was manufactured in California and its inner workings have you stumped.

Solving the problem might entail a lengthy exchange of information with the home office over the Web, or possibly waiting a couple days for a California-based troubleshooter to fly in.

But now Sacramento startup company vMobileTech is offering a different solution.

The company has developed software it calls "visual mobile collaboration" – or vMC for short – that can simultaneously deliver live streaming video, photos, real-time audio and instant messaging from mobile phones to multiple users all over the world.

With vMC, you could initiate a live session from Saudi Arabia on your mobile phone. Experts from the California home office could communicate in real time as you provide photos or video of every inch of the disabled component. Experts around the world could join the live session to brainstorm, all receiving the same information instantly.

The result is a potentially huge savings of time and money, including millions that large international firms spend annually to send technicians, engineers, manufacturers and installers around the globe.

"There are so many possibilities. Think of the industries that could benefit from this … manufacturing, transportation, construction, security systems and utilities and more," said Ray Lubeck, who co-founded vMobileTech with Tom Sykes.

Sykes added: "This is something where people say, 'Why isn't somebody already doing this?' "

Company Chairman Dave Zabrowski, whose 25 years in the high-tech industry include 16 years at Hewlett-Packard, has the answer: "The technology to make this possible really didn't exist 10 years ago."

Zabrowski said vMC's benefits go beyond trimming business travel budgets. He said it will allow businesses to "drastically decrease their field costs by improving worker productivity, resolving service calls in one visit … and make better utilization of subject matter experts while increasing customer satisfaction."

Simply put: vMC brings a problem to the expert, as opposed to the pricier model of transporting the expert to the problem.

The software will operate over existing 3G-and-higher networks – mobile-to-mobile, or mobile-to-personal computer/laptop.

vMC is being tested by a handful of companies, including a major international airline and Sacramento Control Systems (SCS) in Rancho Cordova.

Bob Rice, chief operating officer of SCS, which installs, repairs and monitors complex security and fire alarm systems statewide, said his firm had a recent experience before it started testing vMC that would have been tailor-made for the software.

"We had a problem with a fire alarm system in Napa that we just couldn't figure out, so we had people drive all the way down there. They got down there, and in about two or three minutes, they said, 'Oh, we see, that's the problem.' So they wasted all day for something that we could have fixed quickly if we could have just seen what it was."

Rice said SCS serves 2,800 clients from Bakersfield to the Oregon-California border, and many of the company's systems are networked together.

"For us, the (vMC technology) could be big," he said.

vMobileTech started coming together a little more than two years ago, with some help from Gilles Attia, a Sacramento lawyer who specializes in assisting technology startups.

Lubeck and Sykes, each with two decades of experience building technology service and financial organizations, welcomed Zabrowski's high-tech experience, which included nurturing technology startups.

The complicated proposal that would become vMC was turned over to a group of local engineers with specific skills in telecommunications, wireless solutions and information technology. Zabrowski said the team put vMC together in about 18 months.

Last year, vMobileTech started talking up its technology. In November, a panel that included angel investors and venture capitalists selected vMobileTech as the "most promising venture" at the Innovation Showcase in Grass Valley.

vMobileTech expects to release vMC commercially in the second quarter this year.

The company plans to make money by charging for licenses to use the software. Costs of monthly subscriptions will vary by business practices.

Attia said technology similar to vMC is being used "for social media purposes," but not on the mass industrial scale envisioned by vMobileTech.

"I think it's all in the execution, and I think they have a really good opportunity to build a great company, because (vMC) complements what people in the field need to solve problems."

vMobileTech is currently a virtual company, listing temporary offices in downtown Sacramento. About a dozen workers are involved in daily operations. It plans to open its headquarters in the Sacramento area, initially expanding to 50 employees.

For additional information on vMobileTech, call (530) 613-8290 or visit www.vmobiletech.com.

Tower Records founder Russ Solomon was on hand last March when the 30-foot neon sign above the landmark Watt Avenue store – the first outlet in what grew into a global chain – came down.

Russ Solomon remains cheerfully old-school, running a brick-and-mortar record store in an age of digital downloads.

But even Solomon, the self-described "eternal optimist" who founded Sacramento's legendary Tower Records, acknowledges some doubts about the future of record stores. In a rare public appearance Sunday night, he indicated that R5 Records Video, the store he founded as an unofficial successor to Tower, is still trying to find its footing. He said he hopes – but isn't sure – that record stores can coexist with downloading.

"Maybe I'm believing in something that's drifting away," Solomon told a Sacramento audience.

The 84-year-old Solomon captivated an overflow crowd at Time Tested Books in midtown Sacramento with stories of the rise and fall of Tower and candid talk about the state of the music business.

Above all, he lamented the fact that big record stores are a thing of the past, supplanted by the Internet, big-box discounters and a sprinkling of independent stores like R5.

"It is a missing cultural thing," he said.

Solomon opened R5 in 2007, less than a year after Tower went out of business, at one of Tower's flagship locations – the store at Broadway and Land Park Drive. The store is across the street from the Tower Theatre, which housed the drugstore where Tower began.

"Now if I can only make it work," he said.

In an interview afterward, he said, "R5's doing OK. The record business today is tough. We've got our heads above water."

He said he expects to keep the store going even as the recession has made things more difficult.

R5 operates a Web site, but its focus is to draw people into the store. There's no e-commerce, no downloads.

"I don't know how to download and I'm not going to learn, either," Solomon told the audience.

He said his store appeals to "the collector mentality," the idea that consumers want to own the physical product instead of just a digital version. But he said "it's a good question" whether physical sales can thrive in an era increasingly dominated by downloading.

The short-term outlook isn't great, judging by national data. Sales of physical CDs dropped 21 percent through the first eight months of last year, according to Wall Street credit-rating firm Fitch Ratings. Digital album sales rose 18 percent during the same period and accounted for one of every five albums sold.

Tower was among the most spectacular victims of the rush to the Internet. Once a $1 billion-a-year global chain, it was unable to compete against a host of competitors that emerged in the mid- and late 1990s, including the Internet and big-box stores. It went out of business in December 2006 following a bankruptcy liquidation.

Yet Solomon said Tower contributed to its downfall by borrowing tens of millions of dollars it couldn't repay.

"We borrowed too much money," he said.

Much of the borrowed money was plowed into expensive overseas stores, including a five-story building in Buenos Aires that failed miserably, he said. The store generated only $100,000 a month in sales, one-tenth of what was expected, he said.

Solomon's 90-minute talk, the inaugural event of the Sacramento Living Library series, was moderated by David Watts Barton, a former Bee staff writer who is editor of the online news service Sacramento Press.