I’ve tried – for years – to figure out how to develop a tech biz with customers on Cape Cod.
In the course of meeting lots of IT people much smarter than I, a common pattern has emerged: they live here, but they don’t have clients here.
Tonight, one of my local customers called me – at quarter of ten. Please note the word “local” – this was not an international call.
A couple weeks ago, I showed up for a networking event for which I’d been promised exhibit space. I invested time and money in developing a spiffy demo app. I’d also solicited some nice swag from Microsoft, publicized the event to the User Group which I’ve nurtured along since 2002 and recruited a couple of other developers to demo their work.
The organizers of the event misspelled my company name in one place, omitted it in their press release, and expropriated my demo space for cheese dip, or some such delectable.
It’s funny in retrospect, but it’s also pretty pathetic, playing second-fiddle to melted cheese.
When I had a fit about this, I was told that it was important that I, as a woman, serve as a role model, something the organization strongly supports. After all, they managed to score a female speaker for their November – NOVEMBER – meeting.
This same organization has taken credit for a nice piece of server software which Microsoft donated – through my company (I’m a lower-tier MS partner) – as part of a non-profit seminar I gave last April and on which I’d labored for weeks.
Emails to the Executive Director of same organization go unanswered more often than not, and (I’m laughing now – really) in her last newsletter, she managed to misspell several words, including my name, in reference to a mini-career fair which I’ve organized for next week.
I’m not sure if this kind of self-absorbed bumptiousness is what turns tech people off about Cape Cod, but it wouldn’t surprise me. The fact that our local Chambers of Commerce seem incapable of getting their heads out of the tourist industry (which has been in a slump for the last two years, by the way, and as of Memorial Day was running at something like a 51% vacancy rate) probably doesn’t help, either.
Lest this seem unreasonably harsh, it could be because I got back from a fantastic developers conference in San Jose a week ago. The sponsoring organization, eBay, not only has a woman CEO, they have a woman CTO. They are successful, smart – and cheerful.
Happiness seems to be an elusive quality here. The overall lack of it certainly has to do with the high cost of living and the low number of opportunities to make a living.
Women in particular are caught in a trap because there is so little upward mobility for anyone – so those on the margin routinely get squeezed out.
I could go on and on, but you get the picture. And, good news: next week, I have 2 interviews for contract jobs – off-Cape.