Silicon Hollow Association forms to promote information technology work in southeastern Ky.

For several years U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers of southeastern Kentucky's 5th District and others have promoted the idea of "Silicon Hollow," an Appalachian version of Silicon Valley, as a place for outsourcing information technology and computer science services. Now the effort has an organization, the Silicon Hollow Association, which says it will launch live on the Internet at 11 a.m. EDT Monday.

The broadcast will be available at this site  or the group's home page. In addition to the 30-minute introduction of the SHA, two discussion forums will also be broadcast live starting around 1:15 EDT. The keynote speaker for the luncheon will be Henry Torres, left, director of the Interactive Teaching and Technology Center at Arkansas State University. Torres was instrumental in the founding of Rural Sourcing Inc., a software outsourcing company on which the Silicon Hollow Association is modeled.