Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1907 First Mover Advantage
Zhou Zhi smiled and said, "You don't have to worry about the R&D expenses. We will leave professional matters to professionals."

Mai Xiaomiao thought about it and realized that she was worrying about nothing: "Indeed, all I can do is mental work. I really can't do anything else."

"Anyway, if you come to our group, the funding we can provide is definitely more than what the country provides." Zhou Zhi said, "At least it will start at tens of millions."

"Actually, whether it's the country or Clover, if you have financial difficulties, you don't have to consider my compensation for now..."

"That won't work. This is no longer the era of silent dedication." Zhou Zhi said, "But we appreciate your kindness."

The decision was made quickly in the capital. After all, Mai Xiaomiao was still an American citizen. After the Galaxy incident, relations between major powers began to change quietly. Zhou Zhi's suggestion was indeed the most reasonable. Mai Xiaomiao joined the laboratory prepared for her by the Clover Group as a hired scholar. This was the most commonly used headhunting method for international high-tech companies and was in line with convention.

Moreover, the Clover Group itself is quite strong, both in terms of technology and capital. However, Shu University still joined as a third party, mainly to supervise the progress of the laboratory. To put it bluntly, it still wants to share the technological achievements.

In order to make the matter concrete, Zhou Zhi also held an appointment unveiling ceremony. He and Mai Xiaomiao each held a corner of the appointment letter, and the two took their first photo together. They also cut the red ribbon of the "Cellular Neural Network Technology Laboratory" together.

CCTV also reported this, but it was only mixed in with a lot of news about scientific and technological achievements. The report was so low-key that there was only one sentence, that is, Clover Group established an advanced information computing laboratory, and even Mai Xiaomiao's name was not mentioned.

However, this matter still has a great impact in the domestic information technology academic circle. In addition to the initial investment in graph databases and several related projects, Clover Group has guaranteed an additional 30 million yuan in preparatory funds, with 7 million yuan directly in place in the first phase, to build a computing power cluster in advance.

You should know that even in China's now very developed Guangdong Province, the total cost of the province's INTERNET information transformation project is only 5 million US dollars, more than 30 million RMB. Just from the investment point of view, it is enough to see how much the Clover Group values ​​this laboratory.

However, Zhou Zhi knew that the 30 million yuan might not even make a splash. Cutting-edge research in modern information technology was not just a matter of academic investment and preparation. Without huge amounts of capital investment, it would be difficult to achieve results. His previous success was nothing more than the result of taking advantage of the times and the dividends of two lifetimes. Now this investment was a real effort.

In another ten years, even 300 billion might not be enough. Now, Zhou Zhi feels that he has made a fortune as he can get a few years of first-mover advantage by spending only 30 million.

Next came several preparatory meetings to finalize many terms such as equipment, venue, funding, human resources, etc. Fortunately, problems that could be solved with money were not a problem, and with the full and strong cooperation from ministries, governments, and colleges and universities from top to bottom, it was quickly finalized.

On the weekend, Zhou Zhi finally had time to visit Mr. Gu and report to him the progress of several tasks he had accepted from Mr. Gu. Except for the work of reconstructing the ancient Shu pronunciation which had not yet started, the rest of the work was progressing smoothly.

In particular, the nationwide field survey and collection of dialect phonetic symbols went very smoothly, and the forum and college students played an indispensable role in this.

The forum brought together a large group of like-minded young people from all over the world. They speak different dialects and know their own language best. For any liberal arts student who has studied field research and phonology, collecting and sorting out the dialects of their hometowns is not difficult. Moreover, this event was initiated by Zhouzhi through the Yu Tang Cultural Heritage Foundation. In addition to recruiting college students, it also directly connected with the local governments where the college students were located, asking for cooperation from the local governments.

For parents of college students, there are numerous benefits to having their children become special dialect researchers for the Yu Tang Cultural Heritage Foundation.

Because the investigation requires the cooperation of local governments, this is equivalent to one's own children having registered with the government in advance and showing their faces. Compared with ordinary college students, especially those who are considering returning to their hometown in the future, this is a huge advantage.

This is a serious matter. On a larger scale, it is what the country needs. On a medium scale, it is a contribution to my hometown. On a smaller scale, it is a great exercise for me as an individual. When I talk about this with friends and acquaintances on the street, it is a proud thing.

As for college students, they may not think so much, it is more of a passion to make money.

Although the compensation given to them by the Yu Tang Cultural Heritage Preservation Foundation was not particularly generous, the recording equipment was a relatively high-end four-leaf clover MP3, and the Yu Tang Cultural Heritage Preservation Foundation also said that if the work was done well, these devices would belong to the college students after the work was completed.

The price of MP3 players nowadays is still quite high, especially those with high-definition recording function. They are not popular overseas and are mostly used by professional journalists. You can use this thing for work and actually don't use up all the space. You can free up some space for recording songs. It's still very cool to walk around school with this thing on your waist.

This is the biggest reason why college students are so passionate about this job.

Of course, in order to prevent the laxity typical of college students, the Clover Group formulated a strict work progress schedule at the forum. This is the group's strong point in information technology engineering management. Zhou Zhi introduced the ISO standard into the college's project management, and the effect was very good.

Mr. Gu was very satisfied with the progress of Zhou Zhi's project. At least Zhou Zhi directly expanded the work across the country through the Yu Tang Cultural Relics Protection Foundation and online forums. After online interviews, more than 50 college students were finally selected, among whom a small half were graduate students and doctoral students. It can be said that the quality of the team is quite high.

These more than 50 researchers need to follow the requirements set by Zhou Zhi and Gu Lao, and be responsible for field surveys and audio collection of more than 30 dialects across the country, ultimately forming a standard library of Chinese dialect phonetics and rhymes audio, and using it as a basic library for inferring Middle Chinese sounds.

At first, Mr. Gu did not expect that the project would be so large and so efficient. According to his inner thoughts, as long as the standard library of Chinese dialect phonetics and rhymes audio was collected, Zhou Zhi's graduate project should get full marks. And extracting elements from the complete sample library of Chinese dialect pronunciations and piecing them together to complete the inference of Middle Chinese sounds should strictly speaking be the job of a doctorate, postdoctoral fellow, or even a researcher or professor.

However, he had no intention of revealing it at all. Since Elbow was very strict with himself and took the topics that only researchers and professors dared to tackle as his own graduate student topics, he was of course happy to see it succeed.

After all, he has a history of submitting university papers while still in high school!