When I read her bio - "Business strategy & user experience diva"  - I had to follow Kathy Herrmann of Intellicore Design Consulting on Twitter @KathyHerrmann.

I recently asked her what her company did.  She replied:

Intellicore Design Consulting helps companies extend their business online through services centered on developing and implementing customer-facing and collaborative systems and the back-office systems heightening their value.  Our services are web design and development, Enterprise Web 2.0, Information Architecture (IA), business automation, and software development.   Another way of saying this is we build online solutions like website - and the supporting infrastructure needed to automate and integrate them.

A bit of a diva myself, I asked, "Would you be open to, well, telling me all about me?"

Graciously, Kathy replied:
 
Let's say you, Handshake Media, Incorporated, provide “Acme Company” a recommended digital media strategy to generate corporate buzz.  Then Intellicore teams with you to implement the technology solutions needed to support those recommendations.

For example, let’s say you recommend Acme implement a blog and a branded community to foster discussion among customers.  Additionally, you recommend they get cracking participating on Twitter and Facebook to help stimulate discussion among the general market.

That's where Intellicore Design Consulting would be of assistance.

Based on the company’s overall business requirements, we recommend which blog and community software solution Acme should use and then spearhead the configuration and launch of the community site.  This part includes ensuring the blog and community site matches or coordinates design-wise with the company’s corporate website (or has an alternate design).  Additionally, rather than run the Acme blog and community as standalones, we also integrate them back into Acme’s CRM solution so they can automatically capture member or opt-in information, or track and analyze visitor activity at the community site.

For Twitter and Facebook, we recommend and implement a software solution that allows the company to monitor and analyze discussions around their company, products, and customer service.  Maybe as part of the technology solution, we also provide a pathway to automatically generate content for knowledge base articles to accelerate customer service.

Acme goes hogwild because of the one-two wowsy of a great marketing and PR strategy (you) coupled with the right technology (us) to implement, automate, and manage the activities related to the strategy. Of course, we can provide any piece of our service set rather than the whole shebang.

***

I like "shebang."  Thank you, Kathy!

Thanks to Kathy Herrmann for writing a guest post for Handshake 2.0.

We would welcome you on Handshake 2.0, too.

From Aric H. Bopp, Executive Director,  New River Valley Economic Development Alliance, on the announcement that Cobham Sensor Systems will relocate its manufacturing, research and development operations from Roanoke, Virginia to the Technology Manufacturing Building in the Blacksburg Industrial Park, Blacksburg, Virginia:

"As stated in the press release, 'This expansion in the Greater Roanoke and New River Valley Regions will enable Cobham to retain all of their operations in the region and allow opportunities for future growth.'  Both the Roanoke and New River Valleys will continue to 'win' if we are able to work together to meet the needs of the dynamic, next-generation companies growing, expanding, forming, launching, and moving to the region."

Jeff Sturgeon covered the Cobham story in the Roanoke Times, High-tech firm moving to Blacksburg.

Another recent regional relocation includes Planet Care, Inc. (Eco-Pure), a manufacturer in the onsite/decentralized wastewater industry which is relocating its manufacturing facility from Fort Myers, Florida to Pulaski County, Virginia.  (Press release - .pdf)

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Handshake 2.0 was delighted to create a Facebook page for the New River Valley Economic Development Alliance, NRVEDA.  A gorgeous map of the New River Valley of Virginia is available from the NRVEDA and this video of the New River Valley was funded by NRVEDA:

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In our Building a Region series on regional economic development, are we asking the right questions?  What are better questions?  What are the answers to those better questions?  We welcome guests posts and comments.  With a guest post or an idea for one, please email us at contact@handshake20.com.

Greatly appreciating the conversation I was having with Ryan Hagan, Software Development Manager, Email & Apps, Rackspace Hosting, that began with The Really Interesting Conversations in the Technology Sector, I followed up with an email containing this question (edited for clarity):

I welcome help with deepening my understanding of your point point that "The really interesting conversations in the technology sector just aren't being had here, because there aren't more than one or two people who are interested in the latest and greatest, up and coming trends."
 
What are topics that participants in "interesting conversations in the technology sector" might have all read or have in common?
 
And if "one or two" isn't enough, how many conversationalists does it take to screw in a technology sector conversation light bulb - and make light?

With permission to quote him, Ryan Hagan replied:

I can give you one specific example that is a problem for me right now.  I've got one guy that is passionate about large-scale data storage and data retrieval.  A growing trend in this space is that people are moving away from SQL-based solutions and exploring schema-less or "nosql" based solutions.  My guy is very  involved in this movement, but there is hardly anyone else in this area (that we're aware of) that shares his knowledge and passion for the nosql movement.  In order for him to really be involved in this movement, he has to travel to NYC, San Fran, Austin, or some other far away locale.

It's these specialized communities that are hard to get started or get involved in around here.  Broad subjects are a little easier.  For instance, I co-run the NewVa Corridor Technology Council, NCTC Software Developer Peer Group Forum with Michele Wright at NetVentures.  We generally get anywhere between 10 - 30 developers, certainly a good turnout.  However, software development is an extremely broad topic, and it would be nice to narrow that down a little into specialties.  Nosql, language and compiler design, concurrency, software engineering, agile process management, etc. - these are all topics that fall within the realm of software development, but for which no specific groups exist here.

How do we define a group?  We first need people in the industry that share particular interests.  Then we need people who are willing to lead a group and create that spark that gets people involved.  Then we have to have enough people to keep the fire going.  The software developer peer group has a core of about 5 or 6 people that show up to every meeting, and also tend to be the ones that contribute the most.  Could we run that group with just those 5 or 6?  Yeah, probably, but when you look at the potential pool (every software developer in the New River and Roanoke Valleys), 5 or 6 isn't a great percentage.

On the other hand, if we could keep adding more software developers to the area, maybe we could reach a point where more and more (higher percentages) start joining these peer groups.  Kind of a critical mass type of reaction, where we tip the scales and let the momentum alone carry these communities.

***

Rackspace is a client of Handshake 2.0 and sponsors the Rackspace Tech Showcase.

The Really Interesting Conversations in the Technology Sector is part of Handshake 2.0's series on regional economic development, Building a Region.

***

In our Building a Region series, are we asking the right questions?  What are better questions?  What are the answers to those better questions?  We welcome guests posts and comments.  With a guest post or an idea for one, please email us at contact@handshake20.com.

Having met Ryan Hagan, Software Development Manager, Email & Apps, Rackspace Hosting, at a NewVa Corridor Technology Council, NCTC meeting, I emailed him this question:

Why would an IT professional or "knowledge worker" move to Roanoke, Virginia or Blacksburg, Virginia to live and work?
 
The context is that I'm very interested in regional economic development, we have a burgeoning technology economy, and we don't have enough qualified people to fill the positions.  We've got a "knowledge worker" shortage.
 
Since most people spend most of their time at work, the "where" seems to be less important than the work.  Amenities and incentives - bars, restaurants, culture, outdoor rec - most places have something or enough to do.  Roanoke does and Blacksburg does.
 
What, then, does a “knowledge worker” - someone in IT, engineering, biotech, physics - want from work?
 
I understand that one concern is multiple opportunities, i.e. if the gig at this place doesn't work out, I can move to another local gig, and not have to uproot myself and my family to move elsewhere.
 
The fundamental principle of sales is "Find the pain."  So if part of the question - and pain - is not, "What would make them come?"but "What would make them fear coming?", what conditions could exist or be created in a region to ease that fear?

With permission to quote him, Ryan Hagan replied:

Our recruiting efforts fall into two categories.  Sometimes we need students from Virginia Tech or other top notch Computer Science programs, and sometimes we need candidates with more real-world work experience.  The younger people usually want to know what there is to do in Blacksburg.  The more experienced people want to know what the local job market is like in case they lose their job with us for some reason.

We have a super hard time bringing the really experienced people here because of the lack of other options.  Honestly, though, we've gotten some great people lately with some good experience because they had spouses that were coming to work for Virginia Tech or had other family in the area.  Unfortunately, we can't rely on that for all the people we want / need.

Actually, our biggest problem right now is one of attrition.  We've got quite a few of our developers, some of the best in the company, that are wanting to leave Blacksburg.  This actually might be related to the lack of other, large technology companies in the area. 

It's the lack of community that comes with a large collection of technologists that people are missing here.  The really interesting conversations in the technology sector just aren't being had here, because there aren't more than one or two people who are interested in the latest and greatest, up and coming trends.  As someone who has run several different user groups in this area, I can attest to how hard it is to keep a group running with so few potential members.

***

Rackspace is a client of Handshake 2.0 and sponsors the Rackspace Tech Showcase.

"The Really Interesting Conversations in the Technology Sector" is part of Handshake 2.0's series on regional economic development, Building a Region.

***

In our Building a Region series, are we asking the right questions?  What are better questions?  What are the answers to those better questions?  We welcome guests posts and comments.  With a guest post or an idea for one, please email us at contact@handshake20.com.

In an age of information overload, when everyone can find everything that's possible to do all at once, wouldn’t it be nice to know what’s happening just in the next three days?

NextThreeDays.com is the brainchild of Jami Ryan, Senior Developer at Automation Creations, Inc. He and the Automation Creations team, located in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg, Virginia,  created the site under the leadership of Laureen Fleming, Operations Manager at ACI, who is heading up the web development division of Automation Creations, Inc. while the company’s president and founder, Henry Bass, is on a tour of duty in Iraq.

“Henry asked me and Dale Kipp, head of our MatWeb division of ACI, to hold down the fort while he was in Iraq,” said Fleming.  “To honor his sacrifice, we wanted to do more than that.”

NextThreeDays.com is a multi-function web resource featuring restaurant meal and drink specials, music, sports, and other special events in the Blacksburg, Virginia and New River Valley of Virginia areas, all in a scrolling format for today, tomorrow, and the next day.  Information from the site can be viewed, emailed, and sent to a mobile device.  "That's cool!" and "How'd you do that?" and "I didn't know they served that!" are frequent responses to the site.

Known for its innovative development of web user interfaces paired with complex backend databases, Automation Creations built NextThreeDays.com on SQL Server, ColdFusion, Flash Remoting, Web Services, Javascript and Adobe Flash.  Like the best entrepreneurial technology enterprises, it, of course, can be automated and scaled.  While still considered in beta, launching in other locales is in the plan.

“We’re working on lots of other features including a mobile version, full event searching, and the ability to limit the event display to a specific area in the New River Valley," said Jami Ryan.

“We created NextThreeDays because we knew there were things to do in the New River Valley, but we had trouble finding them," Ryan added.  "We talked to our family and friends and discovered they were having the same problem. Once we heard, 'There’s nothing to do in Blacksburg' repeatedly, we knew we had to create NextThreeDays and solve this problem.”

Connecting with things to do in the NRV through NextThreeDays.com can happen on Twitter at @Next3Days and on Facebook.

Pictured are Henry Bass, President, "Flat Henry," stand-in presence during Henry's absence, and Laureen Fleming.

All who know Henry Bass look forward to the time they can say, "We'll see Henry in the next three days!"  Welcome home, Henry, to a masterpiece of an enterprise created by your team while you were away.

***

Automation Creations, Inc. is a client of Handshake 2.0 and is featured in the Company Index.

***

The Rackspace Tech Showcase is sponsored by Rackspace (R) Hosting.  Rackspace Email and Apps is a division of Rackspace located in Blacksburg, Virginia. 

About Rackspace
As the leader and specialist in hosting services, Rackspace(R) Hosting is changing the way businesses worldwide buy IT. Rackspace delivers computing-as-a-service, integrating the industry's best technologies into a flexible service offering, making computing more reliable and affordable. A trusted partner to companies of all sizes, Rackspace enables IT departments to be more effective. Rackspace is distinguished by its award-winning Fanatical Support(R), furthering the company's mission to be one of the world's greatest service companies. Rackspace is recognized as one of FORTUNE Magazine's 100 Best companies to work for in the US, ranking number 43 on the list. Rackspace's portfolio of hosted IT services includes managed hosting (www.rackspace.com), email hosting (www.rackspace.com/apps) and cloud hosting (www.mosso.com). For more information on Rackspace Hosting, please visit www.rackspace.com.

For its series on regional economic development, Building a Region, Handshake 2.0 asked:

"In seeking to define the what and how of a regional social media initiative and best practices for the use of social media for regional economic development...to foster its regional economic development, what [does]...a rural region need in order to have a chance at attracting a high-tech Global 1000 company - or two or three - to establish headquarters, a division, a product development laboratory, or a research facility in its locale?"

Jaime Clark, Marketing Director of Premier Transfer and Storage, replied:

Imagine a Global 1000 company considering the Roanoke and New River Valleys of Virginia - the RNR - as a location to establish a division, headquarters, etc. (or perhaps a company that we are trying to woo into coming here).  The word spreads in the community. 

A healthy portion of the community is involved in social  media and understands the importance of economic development in our area and why it matters to them.  The chatter begins online with tweets, blog posts, etc., encouraging and excitedly expressing the hope that this company will come to the RNR.  If this Global 1000 company monitors these types of communications (which I expect they would) this could definitely have an impact on the company’s decision as it would truly feel that the entire community was behind them and ready to support them.

***

In our Building a Region series, are we asking the right questions?  What are better questions?  What are the answers to those better questions?  We welcome guests posts and comments.  With a guest post or an idea for one, please email us at contact@handshake20.com.

One of the challenges a rural locale faces in developing a local technology industry is attracting and retaining talent - sometimes termed knowledge workers - information technology professionals, software developers, and experts in engineering and science, such as biotechnology and physics. 

For its series on regional economic development, Building a Region, Handshake 2.0 asked:

"What do 'knowledge workers' want from where they work and live?"

An official of a leading software company, who asked to remain anonymous, replied:

I think that for knowledge workers, the role one plays has a significant effect on the desire to be attached to a particular office location. The vast majority of the developers who work for my organization work remotely. They are largely individual contributors, they do not directly interact with customers, and their success in the business is measured by their output and deliverables, so, for all practical purposes, their participation in the business as individuals is secondary: they can go be wherever they want, turn in their code, and not worry about talking to anyone. For junior people especially, this is appealing: live in a hip place, or in a great natural environment, or wherever strikes your fancy personally, escape the office politics, and just write good code.
 
For those whose major focus is customers (consultants, sales reps, etc.), they want to live where their customers do, to minimize travel. Hence, the best thing a community can have is a big account: a Boeing or a Toyota or a UPS or other major firm that requires a lot of services and attention, so that you can spend your time working with one big customer rather than running all around trying to meet the needs of many smaller customers.
 
For people in my role, whose primary responsibilities relate to advising others, the most important thing I can get from a community is a concentration of like-minded people in similar roles. Wherever my management or my peers live, I want to live, and the main thing that a location can provide me is a concentration of people in similar roles, whether in my company or in partner firms. Richard Florida explores some of this clustering phenomenon in his various books (Cities and the Creative Class, etc.)

Essentially, for knowledge workers whose primary economic value is in their interaction with other people, the presence of those other people becomes the determining factor of whether a community is a good place to work. So, the presence of a company headquarters, which has a large concentration of employees with similar roles, weighs heavily in choosing a city to reside in. And then you get the virtuous circle of multiple companies with similar strengths clustering together to compete for scarce talent that was already attracted by their predecessors, hence Boston gets lots of new biotech startups because Genentech is already there, and the new companies are hoping to poach talent from the more established firm.
 
I’m not sure there’s a thing in a city that attracts knowledge workers, rather, there is a sort of critical mass / gravitational attraction process that causes certain types of workers to cluster around each other.

***

In our Building a Region series, are we asking the right questions?  What are better questions?  What are the answers to those better questions?  We welcome guests posts and comments.  With a guest post or an idea for one, please email us at contact@handshake20.com.

I'm not a fan of unsolicited advice, but if someone has told you that, and you agree - or want to find out how it's done to decide whether or not you agree - here's a chance to learn how to start writing a business blog and start funding the purchase of a pottery kiln for the YMCA Pottery Studio at the same time.

What?
Business Blog Seminar - A Charity Fund-Raising Event for the Pottery Studio at the YMCA at Virginia Tech

When?
Monday, October 19, 2009, 6:00 - 8:00 PM

Where?
YMCA at Virginia Tech, Conference Room, 1000 North Main Street, Blacksburg, Virginia

Seminar speaker?
Anne Giles Clelland, President, Handshake Media, Incorporated

Who's attending?
Ten - and only ten - aspiring business bloggers

How much?
$100 per blogger

Hey, that's expensive!  10 x $100 = $1000!  How much does the speaker get?!
$0.  I'm not a fan of unsolicited advice, but I am a fan of start-up funding and we're going to seed the start-up fund for a pottery kiln.

Why a pottery wheel and a Pottery Studio at the YMCA?
From Gail Billingsley, Executive Director, YMCA at Virginia Tech:  "Our area is without a public access arts space.  We are building our own Pottery Studio to be able to offer classes year-round that will generate revenue to fund our community outreach programs."

See?  Revenue for quality of life for all.  That makes perfect business sense.

Here's how to register and pay for the Business Blog Seminar.

May I suggest clicking that link now?  Only 10 spots.  And you know I'm going to tweet this...

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Illustration by Daniel Yowell.

Handshake Media, Incorporated is a digital public relations agency specializing in online P.R. and social media publicity for regional businesses seeking national and international customers and partners.  The Business Blog Seminar is part of "A Hand Up," a series of community development projects sponsored by Handshake 2.0.

To the Help a Reporter (HARO) query service, Handshake 2.0 posted this question in anticipation of its Building a Region series:

"To foster its regional economic development, what are the three most important traits a rural region needs to develop in order to have a chance at attracting a high-tech Global 1000 company - or two or three - to establish headquarters, a division, a product development laboratory, or a research facility in its locale?"

John Sechrest, Economic Development Director for the Corvallis Benton Chamber Coalition, Oregon, replied:

In Economic Development, there are three choices:

1. Move a company to your area,
2. grow the companies you have, or
3. start new companies.

With the 25,000 Economic development agencies all chasing a much smaller number of opportunities, it makes sense to focus on the start and grow side of the equation instead of recruitment.

Economic Gardening is one of the names for this process of focusing on making existing companies more effective and growing new companies into the mix. Chris Gibbons of Littleton, Colorado has done significant work in Economic Gardening over the last twenty years.

The most effective creator of new jobs is to nurture companies that are in size between 10 and 50 people. They are the historical engines that have created new growth in an industry or a region.

Where we can leverage R+D and our university system to create innovative new opportunities, we can work with Global 1000 companies to make progress. However, it does not require the participation of the Global 1000 companies to make that progress.

Spending time creating a foundation to the local economy by growing local capacity for value creation has proven a worthwhile strategy.

Relying on incentives to attract Global 1000 companies who do not have a long term vested interest in the local community in the long run does not provide any kind of economic foundation. When you are able to create a critical mass of interconnected companies who create a local synergy, then you have a foundation for a stable local economic cluster.

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In our Building a Region series, are we asking the right questions?  What are better questions?  What are the answers to those better questions?  We welcome guests posts and comments.  With a guest post or an idea for one, please email us at contact@handshake20.com.

In our introduction to the Building a Region series on Handshake 2.0 - in which we're exploring the definitions of regional economic development and related issues - we asked several questions, one of which was:

"What is the relationship of the development of a local technology industry to regional economic development?"

Jim Flowers, Director of VT KnowledgeWorks answered:

High-tech companies produce top-of-the-food-chain jobs.  Their highly-educated workforce, producing high-value products and services, earns above-average wages, and fuels the local/regional economic engine by consuming the products and services of the various enterprises that involve less intellectual property, such as restaurants, specialty stores, remodeling shops, lawn services, etc. 

In addition, high-tech businesses are commonly green (no belching smokestacks); they have a long life-expectancy (being grounded in the latest stuff); and they sell principally to customers outside the region (the technology world is really flat), thereby creating  a positive balance of payments for the region as a whole.
 
So, it’s reasonable to emphasize high-tech as a catalyst for more general economic growth.  High-tech companies produce high-paying jobs.  They are green.  They are connected to the earliest stages of new markets, and thus have long life-expectancy.  They contribute positively to the regional  balance of payments.
 
Should all entrepreneurship be supported?  Of course, that’s why we have Small Business Development Centers, SBDCs and community incubators.  Each sub-sector of the overall economic “system” has unique challenges.  No one has demonstrated a successful one-size-fits-all approach to business acceleration.  In many respects, business is business, but there are very real market sector nuances to be addressed.  The metaphor is weak, but you might compare broader economic development and developing a technology industry to the practice of medicine - family practice versus specialists.

Photo credit:  Jennifer Greger

Jim Flowers and VT KnowledgeWorks were featured in the Tech Showcase on Handshake 2.0, sponsored by Rackspace.  VT KnowledgeWorks and Jim Flowers are clients of Handshake Media, Incorporated.

In our Building a Region series, are we asking the right questions?  What are better questions?  What are the answers to those better questions?  We welcome guests posts and comments.  With a guest post or an idea for one, please email us at contact@handshake20.com.