02/24/2003- Daily Hampshire Gazette
By: JIM BALDERSTON, Staff Writer - Boston may be the heart of the state's information technology
sector, but the Pioneer Valley also has a significant share of
increasingly sophisticated companies in the field.
Taking advantage of the freedom of the Internet, these small companies choose to do business far from the Route 128 corridor.
While no one expects the Valley to supplant Route 128 any time soon,
the success of such firms here reflects the Internet's power to remove
geography from the where-to-work equation.
Quantifying the trend isn't easy. A study released in November by
Western Massachusetts Electric Co., called "The Valley and Its Hidden
Technology: At the Cutting Edge of the Global Internet Economy," sought
to measure the scope of small, entrepreneurial IT firms in the area,
but noted that identifying them is difficult.
The study canvassed 75 local firms involved in software and hardware
development, e-commerce, Web design, content provision, and IT training
and marketing specialists.
For the 51 firms reporting financial data, revenues totaled $10.6 million in the last year.
"Right now, the Hidden Tech is a hunch," said Timothy Brennan,
executive director of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, which
heard a presentation on the report recently. "Can you ferret it out? We
should not give up on it and we have a lot more work to do to identify
it ... it could become an industry cluster."
At the same time, Brennan warns that the region lacks some of the underpinnings for a thriving Internet sector.
"There is uneven access to the infrastructure needed for the new
economy, namely high-speed Internet access," he said. "There is a need
for the availability of affordable access to the infrastructure of the
21st century."
Nevertheless, the information technology sector has put down solid roots in the area
Jason Mark, a founder of Gravity Switch, a Web site and media
development firm in Northampton, teaches courses in Internet strategy
and has been involved in interactive media since the early 1990s.
Mark said Gravity Switch, a six-person outfit in a former neighborhood
grocery store on Market Street, competes with he biggest names in the
field, including IBM. And it often wins those competitions, he said.
Mark said that because his company is small and lean, it has weathered
the economic downturn better than most IT firms in metropolitan areas.
"We are in much better shape than Boston firms," he said. "We don't see the pain they are feeling."
Mark said locating in the Pioneer Valley was largely a quality-of-life
decision that has not hurt the firm's ability to find business or
employees.
"There is a good pool of talent in the area, largely because of the
quality of life," he said, as well as a constant stream of people
hoping to latch onto the mix of high-tech work and non-urban living.
"We get three or four resumes from Boston a week, people looking for work," he said.
Mark said Gravity Switch had a record year financially in 2002.
Internet technology is also spreading in the nonprofit sector.
Katrin Verclas of Amherst, a technology consultant for nonprofit
groups, said the Internet allows her to help clients, network in the
nonprofit arena and lead the life she prefers in the Valley.
"Because I am connected, I am free to do that here," she said. "Because
of the pervasiveness of the technology, it is possible to have a
virtual organization. You could be on the moon as long as you have
e-mail and instant messaging."
Verclas focuses on helping grass-roots political groups. "I am trying
to help organizations learn how to mobilize people online, organizing
people to engage and get off their butts and in the street," she said.
Verclas said weaving quality of life into one's work is especially
important in the non-profit sector, where pay is less than in the
business sector.
"There is a greater acknowledgment of the fact that you have a life in the nonprofit world," she said.
Verclas said the increasing availability of Internet technology has
created opportunities for those wishing to blend work and life more
seamlessly.
"The leverage point has moved, allowing people to work from home," she
said. "And around here, there is a more prevalent higher education
level, there are a lot of people who have both the skill to live here
and the ability to figure out how to do it."
Email Jim Balderston.
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