Hello Boise. I may not be there physically but I’m there in spirit. I’ve been watching you guys for the last year and I have to say you’re doing just fine without me. Holli’s doing a great job with the site, the events are going great and IgniteBoise is growing like crazy. I still follow along on Twitter and read the blogs and still talk to quite a few of you electronically.

The last year hasn’t exactly been a turn around for anyone in the country, more like a slowing of the bleeding but I’m afraid Boise’s about to head into a second dip. HP just announced 9,000 layoffs and an “investment” of 6,000 jobs in Asia. Translation: Expect the declining sides of the hardware business to slowly be cut away while they build up more services business in India and China. By declining hardware businesses you better believe that printing will be included. Micron seems to be done with layoffs for now and even Supervalu has done some layoffs. These won’t be the last from any of these companies I’m sure.

Tech based startups are still Boise’s best chance for economic growth.

When I started TechBoise my goal was to help all tech businesses grow and flourish in Boise. We always kept the definition of tech very general because I felt Boise didn’t have enough tech to be too choosy. But my interest was always focused on web tech.Why? Web tech scales faster and reaches further than any other type of business. I think there is a bright future in Boise for clean tech and connected sensors given the rich engineering base we have with embedded systems but those will take years and big money to develop. There are hard costs involved that your average entrepreneur with a crazy idea isn’t going to be able to take on, unless you have a deep background in those spaces it’s probably not for you.

How many unemployed or underemployed people are there in Boise right now? I don’t know but thousands, tens of thousands (remember we’re counting underemployed)? Over the course of the last year I can’t tell you how many people have DM’d me or emailed me looking for a programmer who was willing to work for free or cheap. Let me save all of you the trouble right now: There are no programmers anywhere in the World willing to work for free to build your idea. They are either being paid good money to build other people’s ideas or have their own ideas they’re building. And let’s suppose there are one or two out there somewhere, there’s probably a reason they’re willing to work for free and you don’t want them anyway.

And in Boise you will be hard pressed to find an available programmer at all. There has been a shortage of programmers in Boise for as long as I can remember.

DIY

Now that we have that all cleared up what are you supposed to do? Get serious and get to work. Isn’t Boise supposed to be a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” self reliant kind of place?

If you have a Web based business idea everything you need to get your business up off the ground is free. I’m sure there are better resources but W3 Schools has free online tutorials for HTML, PHP, CSS, Javascript, AJAX, XML and more but those will get you everything you need to get going. Again these are just a few resources out there but there are probably free tutorials out there on the Interwebs, for anything you want to learn. And of course I mean free as in paying time instead of money.

Community

Now if I still lived in Boise and were running TechBoise (but anyone can do this) I wanted to really kick start this I’d go talk to the fine folks at the WaterCooler or any of the Valley’s other new incubators (heck I might even talk to all of them) and ask for a location to hold weekly classes. I’d then go talk to one of the several software groups in town, the PHP user group (or whatever’s serving that function), the Idaho Software Employers Alliance, or just talk to several programmers in town and get a handful of them to donate one hour a week to teach a programming class. I’d pick a free online resource that everyone could use and start holding weekly programming classes.

Web based startups will generate more jobs and more income into the local economy faster than anything else.

If you’re sitting around wondering what you’re going to do start programming. You don’t have to be a rocket surgeon to learn programming, they teach it some grade schools these days. If you have an idea or not. If you’re currently unemployed, underemployed or gainfully employed (today) but think you may have the need or desire to launch a startup *someday* start learning to program today. Think it can’t be done? Mark Solon and the boys at Highway 12 Ventures just funded a company, Everlater, who’s founders who learned programming just to build the startup idea they had. Brad Feld from the Foundry Group (another investor in the same company) has a great series of posts about how Everlater did this and a slew of resources to teach yourself how to program.

Talk to anyone about why they like Boise and everyone has the usual answers: the outdoors, the quality of life, the community, etc.. Dig deeper and there’s something else. Something that most people can’t put their finger on.

I think that something is Potential. Boise has a ton of potential. It’s there just waiting for people to take advantage of it. What are most people waiting for? I think it’s Opportunity. Most people seem to think that the right opportunity has to present itself. I think that is the main problem in the valley.

No one is going to give us an opportunity. The government isn’t going to buy us that opportunity. Some large company isn’t going to move hear and provide it for us. We will be lucky to keep the ones we have.

We need to make our opportunity. I have talked to increasing number of HP and Micron employees lately about their ‘Plan B’. Some people say that HP and Micron won’t be here in 5 years. Some people would disagree. I think we all hope that they stay, but I think we would be fooling ourselves to think that their presence here will ever be anything but a shadow of what it used to be.

So what do we do? Wait and watch them slowly dry up? Or do we get out there and create that opportunity? This is an open invitation to anyone at HP or Micron with a ‘Plan B’: Just do it.

Now is an exciting time to live in Boise. It?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢s also an exciting time to be involved in Tech. An axiom as true now as it has ever been, is that Boise is about two years behind the West Coast. With a thriving entrepreneurial community in the Treasure Valley, much of it focused on tech, I marvel at how little anyone inside or outside Boise knows about it. Equally frustrating, despite valiant efforts by some knee deep in the fray, is that very little is changing in regard to the awareness or perception of Boise?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢s tech community.

As I?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢ve networked around the Valley, talking, listening and waiting, two things have become painfully clear to me: 1) No one is going to help us (the tech community), and 2) There are several pockets of activity in town, none of which are working together.

TechBoise.com is an attempt to bring the multitude of voices together. We hope to provide a platform for the local tech community to talk, collaborate and, ultimately, raise awareness outside the state. There is more to Idaho than potatoes and real estate.

Our hope is that TechBoise.com will spotlight the people, companies and organizations making a difference.

This is an open invitation to anyone currently involved in the community to lend your voice (and your writing capabilities) to TechBoise.com. We are looking for individuals to provide content, news, events, and most importantly, opinions.

We are not reporters. TechBoise.com will not be a traditional ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ö‚Äúnews?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ǭù site. It is not a place for self promotion, nor a platform for self serving interests. We are looking for people who have something to say, and are passionate about tech in the Treasure Valley.

If you would like to be a regular contributor please contact me. If you want to be heard please submit a post to our Letters section. If you are a local company with news to share please make a submission to our Press Release section.

Tac Anderson
tac@techboise.com

Welcome to TechBoise

This site is dedicated to highlighting the what and who of the local tech scene in the greater Boise area.

We hope to spotlight the people and companies that are making a difference here in the Boise Valley. We are currently holding monthly meetups at the WaterCooler.

If you’re new to the site please consider subscribing to our feed via email or the RSS feed.

If you have some news to share email me at tac@techboise.com