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Branding High-Tech in New Hampshire
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  New Hampshire already has a good amount of high tech companies, which make up one-third of the gross state product. But some, including the governor, are concerned the rest of the world hasn't been let in on this secret. That’s why the state's thrown down a challenge to begin a branding campaign to sell New Hampshire as a perfect place to set up a high tech businesses. Today we’ll look at this effort, what advantages New Hampshire has for the world of high tech and why others still don’t know about it. Guests
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Laura,
Sorry the cell phone died this morning. I work as an Oracle DBA in Marlborough Ma, but live in Goffstown NH. I work down here mainly because of the salary situation in NH. As a matter of fact Mr Vlacich's department made me a job opffer a couple of years ago, but it would have required me to take a 50% pay cut to take it. I've run into a number of similar situations where the job is great, the location better, but the salary is 50% or more less than Mass. The reply I often get is "this is NH, not Mass you know".
While I applaud the strategic initiative of Fred and Michael I would like to make an observation which contradict an assertion made during today's show. Business decisions are driven by economic factors: the cost of doing business and the return on the investment. The experienced, aging high tech workforce in NH is not an asset, in my opinion. I would go so far as to say it is a liability. In a drive to improve their return on invest and reduce costs, many companies are choosing to offshore high tech work to "low cost" countries like China, India and Brazil. While I may personally think it is an illusion, the belief exists that the ROI is greater from an off-shore employee who gets paid 1/3 the salary of a NH based veteran of high tech.
One thing that bothers me is the narrow view of what "tech" means. I worked for DEC for nearly a quarter of a century, and while it was known as a computer company, in New England it was as much of a manufacturing company as it was an engineering and services company. When DEC was no primarily a manufacturing company, its fortunes declined, and that was true for Compaq, the company that DEC merged with.
Two of the company names I heard, BAE and GT Solar (in Fred's email) are manufacturing companies. Both manufacture what I call "tech."
After being shed from Compaq, I decided to expand my experience from just computer systems because their manufacturing has largely moved out of New England. The first area I explored, robotics, isn't the next big thing, but in the process of looking to improve my skills, I found the welding and machine tool programs at NHCTC in Manchester and Nashua, as well as plastics at Umass Lowell. I was surprised to learn how high tech those fields are, and at the same time, low tech. Those are just three areas that require high technical skill levels, and that doesn't mean knowledge of IT or software or databases, but science and engineering technology in order to manufacture real goods.
As I took classes, I learned from instructors and fellow students, and as I opened my eyes, of the vast number of companies that are manufacturing goods that are highly technical, that require high skill levels, and that really need a robust tech climate to create the synergy for their growth.
New England, and New Hampshire, have been know for its high tech for hundreds of years, going back to the high tech mills that produced woven goods, that produced machinery, that produced forest products, and metal work. It was from the New England and New Hampshire high tech that both were the manufacturing centers of the Americas.
To ignore the key role of manufacturing as integral to high tech is to limit the number of high tech jobs that can be supported in the region and State of NH.
My brother is an executive with a cutting edge chip manufacturing organization out of San Jose. He let me know that UNH’s Interoperability Laboratory (IOL) is one of the key “stops” a new communications chip almost must make before it can go into standard production. In essence, the IOL provides a critical, non-affiliated proving ground to see that your device is compatible with internet and/or wireless operating standards. Basically, if you can’t get through the IOL with “passing grades”, for lack of a better phrase, the industry won’t take on your product as a component as it may not work with the rest of the world.
Regarding your subject this morning, the jaw-dropping thing is there seem to be only a handful of people in the entire State that even recognize this place exists just west of Route 4 about a half mile from the Whit. Amazing to me.
http://www.iol.unh.edu/
Overall, if I was McGrew, and I ran the UNH zoo, I’d be shouting this from the top of Mt. Washington that New Hampshire’s State University is home to a key service in high tech as part of the entire branding thing Fred and Mike were talking about this morning. That’s what I’d do (Compliments to Dr. Seuss).
Please share as appropriate.
Ken Rhodes
Auburn, NH
Thank you for this show. I was not able to listen live, but did so online. I love your "Exchange"! I am from Colebrook, in Northern Coos County, and was only able to listen to your broadcast because I live right in town. I have held off moving out of the town, into a farming area, because of the poor internet connections there. My farming friends pay high prices for dial up services if they are outside of the DSL lines in town. Some come to my house to connect to sites that they need to use for business. We can't move into the 21st century if we can't get broad band or DSL to our more "remote" areas. And satellite doesn't do it, because it is really spotty in the reception of services in the same places that can't get land lines.
I am starting a major economic initiative to connect farmers to local markets, and we need the high speed internet lines to do that. The farmers and some of the restaurants are remote enough that they have very slow dial up lines. This is detrimental to our communication needs for our marketing cooperative to operate at low cost.
The other issue I would like to expand upon is our Tourism industry. It is not current, and that hurts our competition for customers. High speed internet for our cabins, hotels, and lodges would dramatically improve our ability to attract tourists year-round. We have great outdoor opportunities, but the vacationers also want the ability to stay connected online at night. Our small hospitality businesses can't afford the high priced low speed services available, and I believe that if we had hi speed internet at reasonable prices, then we would be able to market our small hospitality businesses much better.
Again, thanks for your show!
There is another reason that a satellite internet connection is insufficient for some types of telecommuting, namely the so-called "latency problem." The type of software known as VPN (virtual private network) allows connections to be established from one computer (e.g. mine at home) to another (mine at work) in such a way that you are able to work at the remote system just as if you were physically there. The problem is that some work, such as typing a document, or making a mouse click, involves sending individual characters over the communication line as soon as they are typed, rather than sending a whole document at once. This means that the character you type must travel the 22,000 miles out into space to the satellite, 22,000 miles down to the other computer, then wait for the response to be sent 22,000 miles back up to the satellite, and 22,000 miles back down to you. This introduces a minimum delay of about half a second for each character typed. When sending the whole document at once, the transmission is very fast; but when sent piecemeal you are forced to work at a frustratingly slow pace.
I use VPN over a slow dial-up landline connection – it doesn't have that latency problem, but suffers from the overall slowness of the net. If a colleague sends me an email message containing elaborate graphics, I dread opening it, since I know my system will be locked up for long minutes waiting for it the transmission to complete.
Unlike the North Country, but like many other rural areas (I'm in Bradford), the problem is not the general lack of availability of DSL, but rather the "last mile problem" – I live up on a hill, just about a mile further up the road from friends who can get high speed connections; up here there's no cable, no DSL, and my provider doesn't seem to be in a hurry to make things better. I have sent more than one request to TDS Telecom for information on when they plan to upgrade the service, and each one has been met with thunderous silence.
My Thanks to Laura and Fred Kocher for the opportunity to talk about efforts we are working on. The feedback on this board is great too. We were able to cover quite a bit of ground, but, there is always more one wishes they said or addressed, I encourage those making comments today to continue this dialogue with me at mvlacich@dred.state.nh.us. We learn so much from your feedback, and the comments are quite helpful.
Laura,
One of my associates here at Keene State College mentioned your program that aired yesterday on “Branding High Tech in NH.” Thanks to you, Fred Kocher and Michael Vlacich for hosting such a timely conversation.
As Job Developer at Keene State College, I was interested to hear that companies are having problems recruiting for not only technical but even sales and marketing positions. As a resource for these businesses, I would like to offer our services here at Keene State College. As you know, the Monadnock area tends to get “overlooked” from time to time!
Keene State College has a student population of approximately 4,500 undergraduates with a graduate population of 1,000. Each year, our graduates are seeking entry-level jobs in a variety of fields. As the public liberal arts college of NH, we can also boast of our degrees in Computer Science, Management, Safety Studies and Architecture. KSC alumni are also reaching back to their alma mater for assistance with mid-career changes and form a talented pool of more experienced candidates.
As part of the University System of New Hampshire, we participate in the NHCUC Career Professionals group. As one of your guests mentioned, the NHCUC is about to launch a web posting board for Internships and Entry-Level positions which will serve companies across the state.
Thank you for your thoughtful programming.