Matthew Reinbold and I went down to the BYU campus in Provo, Utah for their eBusiness Day. Living in Utah now for about 18 months with no plans to move (hate moving, can’t stand the thought of doing that again) I certainly have an interest in seeing the tech community do well here. The schedule of events included to two keynotes and three panel discussions, focusing on Utah’s image as a tech center, training/education for a tech workforce and funding for companies.
The most interesting part of the event was listening to Josh James, CEO of Omniture. He had no problem bluntly talking about what things that he might do differently and convering what some would consider sensitive issues. The second keynote was from Matt Bowman of Novell, looking back at their history in Utah. This was hard to watch, because Novell’s glory days are long behind them.
The first panel was on “Does Utah’s image Limit Utah’s high-tech corridor?”. Lots of numbers thrown around, but little discussion about the question.
Next up was a panel about “Does Utah get a passing grade for high-tech workforce preparation?”. This one was more interesting because it has some specific give and take on ideas and techniques for educating the next generation of tech workers. Although none of them came out and said it, much of it danced around trade schools versus traditional college/universities.
The final panel covered “Show me the money! Is there enough capital to fund Utah’s high-tech industry?”. Both angel and traditional VC firms were represented on the panel, which helped give wider perspective of the current issues in getting and funding local Utah companies in the current economic conditions. This panel also did the best job in getting the audience questions involved early enough so that a real discussion could take place.
What I found interesting is that through out the whole event there was little (none?) discussion about the mass globalization that has been accelerating over the last 10 years. I can sympathize with the urge to only focus on things local, but there is so much more to the picture in todays world. For instance, I work from home and could live any where with a decent Internet connection. For a variety of reasons we now live in Utah. I didn’t hear a single person talk about attracting virtual office workers to the area. Perhaps that’s a harder section of the market to focus on.
In the end, it was good for me to hear what other people are thinking about; what they see as problems/challenges and how they’d like to solve them. Spending most days working out of my basement might make me a little too sheltered sometimes.