I think the biggest advantage Idaho has is that people want to live here. Good, smart people all over the country who know about all the lifestyle advantages Idaho has to offer would jump at the opportunity to move to Idaho — if only there was a job for them here.

This is a pattern I’ve noticed while living out of state, and while living here. When I would mention Idaho to other engineers I worked with, frequently the response is a great deal of excitement. Some of the best technical people in the country are also very interested in the world around them. They are into cycling, skiing, boating, hiking, camping and all sorts of things we take for granted here. Many of them have families, and would love to get out of big cities and live in a ‘family friendly’ area like this.

So while we may not have a huge supply of technology workers here to entice a large tech company, I wish the state would do more to promote the lifestyle benefits of Idaho (and specifically the Treasure Valley) to companies they are trying to attract. The modern business environment is one increasingly employee focused, and a company located here can and should use these natural resources as a recruiting tool. Back in the dotcom era I helped recruit college kids, and they were interested in more than just the job they’d be working on and how much they would make. They wanted to know about the culture of the city they would move to. They wanted to know what the crime stats were. I wasn’t trying to recruit them to Boise, but my job would have been much easier if I had.

My point is that promoting Idaho in general is good for the tech sector also. Promoting tourism in Idaho should have a secondary effect of bringing more interest in technology companies moving here.

I’d be really interested to hear the experiences of companies who are in Idaho recruiting technology professionals. Do you feel that ‘Idaho’ one of Idaho’s biggest tech advantages?

Update: Check out Ken Dey’s first post over at TechBoise, I think it’s relevant…

It was my first SBIR proposal I ever wrote as the prime, and it was sent to the US Army. The person who was a decision maker on the project knows me, and I felt I had a good idea what they needed. My proposal was technologically detailed, and my main goal was to convince the reader that I knew how to solve a specific technical problem.

I didn’t get the award, but I did have a chance to meet with the Army about it. I was shocked to hear that they didn’t think it was a strong proposal. They said they had no doubt we could do good things for them, but they felt we didn’t focus on solving the problem that was important to them. See, I focused on the technically difficult part of the RFP, and that was the less important thing to them.

They wanted to know that we would work with them to provide value to them. They didn’t need convincing that there was a good technological solution for them. They wanted a teammate.

As it happened I ended up teaming with one of the companies that did win that SBIR, and they shared the winning proposal with me (we’re all good friends even though we compete with each other at times).

The winning proposal had very little technical focus, but really hammered on the idea that they were going to help solve the customer’s problems.

I certainly felt I was trying to solve the customer’s problems too, but my proposal was centered around what my team could do, and what we knew. The winning proposal was focused on the customer!

After hearing I didn’t win the SBIR I read the book Powerful Proposals: How to Give Your Business the Winning Edge. One of the exercises in the book is to read how many times your proposal uses the words “we” and “our”, compared to how often it says “you” and “your”. Looking over my failed proposal I certainly got that part wrong.

So I’m trying to remind myself to be more customer focused. Rather than trying to sell my expertise or experience, I’m going to try to sell my interest in, and ability to help the customers. That might mean that I don’t get to propose some cool idea, but I’d rather have the customer than the idea anyway.

I went to grade school in Meridian, ID, and I went to Fairmont Jr. High after we moved to west Boise. After that I was home-schooled, and got a high school diploma through a correspondence school.

I had a lot of free time being home-schooled, and I was extremely interested in electronics and computers. I learned everything I could about both subjects by reading everything I could find at the Boise library, where I spent a lot of my youth.

So by the time I was about 16, I got a sort of internship job at a small computer repair shop, where I learned more and more.

I worked at several companies from there, in different capacities, always centered on IT and software. Feeling we needed to try and expand our horizons, my wife and I left Boise in 1998 for Ann Arbor, MI, where I worked on the video game Descent 3. After almost two years we really were not enjoying life in the midwest and felt we needed to be closer to some family. My wife’s parents had left Boise for Tucson, AZ, so we moved there.

I worked at a couple different places while in Tucson. In 2006, an opportunity allowed me to move back to Boise and work as a telecommuting consultant. After 8+ years away from Boise, we really appreciated it more and realized it really was the best place to live (by now we had two boys to raise).

So I’ve been working as a consultant on a government project in a far away state, travelling there as needed. It’s a good gig, and an interesting project. I know that this project won’t last forever though. And while I enjoy consulting, my real desire is to make software products, and build a company around them.

So I’m using my consulting contacts and experience to work on a couple of products in my ‘own’ time that I hope will turn into something big. In the meantime, the consulting is paying the bills, so I have to give that my full attention. And, since I don’t know how long it will take to build a company around software that is only now being designed, I need to keep the consulting pipeline primed.

You may have noticed from my little bio that I didn’t go to college after high school. At the time I thought: who needs college, I have a good job. And while that’s true, I have come to appreciate a good education, and that I missed out on a lot by skipping college. So for the past several years I’ve been working on a degree in my ’spare’ time. I started at a community college and now I’m taking as many credits as I can manage at BSU.

How does all of this relate to my blog? Well, I had grand plans of reconnecting with all my past aquaintances when I moved back to Boise. The reality has been that old friends are often busy, I haven’t made it a priority, and I have spent too much of the past two years in Boise working in isolation in my office. I need to get more involved in this community, and I need to expand my base of friends. Working alone in my office where my only interaction with people is over a telephone isn’t good for me or my business ambitions.

And, I have a lot of ideas, questions, worries, etc. I need someone to talk to about them. I’m hoping this blog makes it a bit easier to do.

My intent with this blog is to be all about other people giving advice. I’ll link to articles and blogs I see that I think will be interesting to like minded people, and I hope to get to know others better in the process. So thanks for reading, and please come back!

At the same time, I’ve tremendously benefited from other blogs, ranging from people’s personal opinions to business advice and even just news updates. What I realized was that I need a way to write down what I’m thinking, and when I need advice, I need a place to ask. Hopefully some of the great minds out there will be inspired to answer my questions and even give me unsolicited advice, either through posting on their own blog, or posting comments here.

This is a new experiment for me, and I appreciate everyone who contributes to what hopefully will be a good ongoing discussion.

For an explanation of the joke “In Russia, Blog Updates You”, see the wikipedia article Russian_reversal.