TITLE: Growing a Tech Industry Instead of Corn
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: July 14, 2006  5:29 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
One of the enjoyable outreach activities I've been
involved with as department head this year has
been the state of Iowa's Information Technology
Council.  A few years back, the
<A HREF="http://www.iowalifechanging.com/">
   Iowa Department of Economic Development</A>
commissioned the Battelle corporation to study
the prospects for growing the state's economy in
the 21st century.  They focused on three areas:
bioscience, advanced manufacturing, and information
technology.  The first probably sounds reasonable
to most people, given Iowa's reputation as an
agriculture state, but what of the other two?  It
turns out that Iowa is much more of a manufacturing
state than many people realize.  Part of this relates
back to agriculture.  While John Deere is headquartered
in Moline, Illinois, most of its factories are in
Iowa.  We also have manufacturers such as Rockwell
Collins and Maytag (though that company has been
purchased by Whirlpool and will close most or all of
its Iowa locations soon).

But information technology?  Des Moines is home to
several major financial services companies or their
regional centers, such as Principal Financial Group
and Wells Fargo.  Cedar Rapids has a few such firms
as well, as well as other companies with a computing
focus such as NCR Pearson and ACT.

IDED created the IT Council to guide the state in
implementing the Information Technology Strategic
Roadmap developed by Battelle as a result of its
studies.  (You can see the report at this
<A HREF="http://www.iowalifechanging.com/studies.html">
   IDED web page</A>.)
The council consists of representatives from most of
Iowa's big IT firms and many of the medium-sized and
small IT firms that have grown up throughout the state.
Each of the three state universities has a representative
on the council, as does the community college system and
the consortium of Iowa's many, many private colleges and
universities.  I am UNI's representative.

The council has been meeting for only one year, and we
have spent most of our time really understanding the
report and mapping out some ideas to act on in the
coming year.  One of the big issues is, of course,
how Iowa can encourage IT professionals to make the
state their home, to work at existing companies and
to create innovative start-ups that will fuel economic
growth in the sector.  Another part of the challenge
is to encourage Iowa students to study computer science,
math, and other science and engineering disciplines --
and then to stay in Iowa, rather than taking attractive
job offers from the Twin Cities, Chicago, Kansas City,
and many other places with already-burgeoning IT
sectors.

To hear
<A HREF="http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html">
   Paul Graham tell it</A>,
we are running a fool's errand.  Iowa doesn't seem
to be a place where nerds and the exceedingly rich want
to live.  Indeed, Iowa is one of those red states that
he dismisses out of hand:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
Conversely, a town that gets praised for being "solid"
or representing "traditional values" may be a fine place
to live, but it's never going to succeed as a startup hub.
The 2004 presidential election ... conveniently supplied
us with a county-by-county
<A HREF="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/countymaplinearlarge.png">
   map</A>
of such places.
<A HREF="http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html#f6n">
   [6]</A>
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually, as I look at this map, Iowa is much more people
than red, so maybe we have a chance!  I do think that a
resourceful people that is willing to look forward can
guide its destiny.  And the homes of our three state
universities -- Iowa City, Ames, and Cedar Falls -- bear
the hallmark of most university towns: attracting and
accepting more odd ideas than the surrounding environment
tends to accept.  But Iowans are definitely stolid
Midwestern US stock, and it's not a state with grand
variation in geography or history or culture.  We have
to bank on solidity as a strength and hope that some
nerds might like to raise their families in a place
with nice bike trails and parks, a place where you
can let your kids play in the neighborhood with fearing
the worst.

We also don't have a truly great university, certainly
not of the caliber Graham expects.  Iowa and Iowa State
are solid universities, with very strong programs in
some areas.  UNI is routinely praised for its efficiency
and for its ability to deliver a solid education to its
students.  (Solid -- there's that word again!)  But none
of the schools has a top-ten CS program, and UNI has not
historically been a center of research.

I've sometimes wondered why Urbana-Champaign in Illinois
hasn't developed a higher-profile tech center.  UIUC has
a top-notch CS program and produces a lot of Ph.D., M.S.,
and B.S. graduates every year.
<A HREF="http://software.ericsink.com/">
   Eric Sink</A>
has blogged for a few years about the joys of starting
an independent software company amid the farmland
of eastern Illinois.  But then there is that solid,
traditional-values, boring reputation to overcome.
Chicago is only a few hours' drive away, but Chicago
just isn't a place nerds want to be near.

So Iowa is fighting an uphill battle, at least by most
people's reckoning.  I think that's okay, because I
think the battle is still winnable -- perhaps not on the
level of the original Silicon Valley but at least on the
scale needed to invigorate Iowa's economy.  And while
reputation can be an obstacle, it also means that
competitors may not be paying enough attention.  The
first step is to produce more tech-savvy graduates,
especially ones with an entrepreneurial bent, and then
convince them to stay home.  Those are steps we can
take.

One thing that has surprised me about my work with
the IT Council is that Iowa is much better off on another
of Graham's measures than I ever realized, or than most
people in this state know.  We have a fair amount of
venture capital and angel funding waiting for the right
projects to fund.  This is a mixture of old money derived
from stodgy old companies like Deere and new money from
the 1990s.  We need to find a way to connect this money
to entrepreneurs who are ready to launch start-ups, and
to educate folks with commercializable ideas on how to
make their ideas attractive to the folks with the money.

Here at UNI, we are blessed to have an existence proof
that it is possible to grow a tech start-up right here
in my own backyard:
<A HREF="http://www.teamnet.net/">
   TEAM Technologies</A>,
which among its many endeavors operates the premier
data center in the middle part of the USA.  A boring,
solid location with few people, little crime, and no
coastal weather turns out to be a good thing when you
want to store and serve data safely!  TEAM is headed
up by a UNI alumnus -- another great strength for our
department as we look for ways to expand our role in
the economic development of the state.
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