Cause and effect: Helping techies find common ground — over beers
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2/27/2009 - 2/26/09
Pulling New Mexico's techie types into a cohesive group has always been a bit like gripping a handful of sand.Each technology sector has its own gatherings, its own groups, its own cliques — and often they slip by each other like those sand grains, unaware that if they merged into a larger group, they could build a rock-solid foundation for economic growth, even in these dubious times.
There is one bit of common ground, though, that most technology folks can agree on.
They pretty much all like beer.
That much was evident Wednesday night at the Santa Fe Complex, when an old group with a new name relaunched itself to a packed house with a "Beer and Gear" party in the City Different.
The group, which was once the New Mexico Information Technology and Software Association, has been reborn as the New Mexico Technology Council.
And the name certainly is not the only thing that's changed. The group has a broader scope, a detailed plan and surprisingly, in this unsettling economy, more members than it's ever had before.
The original group, NMITSA, was formed about 10 years ago by Randy Burge, a well-known figure in economic-development circles both in Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
Burge — who has a baffling ability to remember the names of everybody he's ever met — created the association when the dot-com bubble was still inflating. He wanted to bring the state's software and IT junkies together in a format where they could share ideas, build new companies and, well, hang out and drink beer.
And it was widely successful, until 2001, when the wake of the exploded dot-come bubble washed over the state and much of the country. After that, NMITSA shrank, with a core of die-hards continuing to meet in Albuquerque.
Burge, however, has always had bigger dreams for his group. His hope was that one day he could get all of New Mexico's techie types together — especially in some of the state's strong areas like complexity, supercomputing, visualization, biotechnology, genetics and optics.
So he and other leaders of NMITSA started looking at the notion of technology councils as a way to build on that dream.
IT groups in many other states have already made that switch — and have created a national group called the Technology Councils of North America, of which NMTC is now a part.
And in a way, moving from an information-technology and software group to a broader group that encompasses all technologies is a pretty natural fit.
IT, after all, is a bit like juniper pollen in the New Mexico spring — it gets into everything and is impossible to kill.
The hope is you can use it to draw people out of their individual technology holes and into a larger community. Oh, and perhaps grow some new technology trees along the way.
Looking at the crowd of at least 70 people that had flooded into the Santa Fe Complex for the shindig, Burge said he was struck by the underlying theme of complexity in the group.
"We're standing here, in the Santa Fe Complex, which is based on complexity as an economic-development driver," Burge said. "The strength of complexity is that in diversity, there's strength. And there's a lot of diversity here. You have a lot of different ideas coming together."
The goals of the council, said Caren Shiozaki, president of the Northern New Mexico chapter, and Jeff Lunsford, the group's chairman, are to build community involvement, advocate for industry, increase educational opportunities in those fields for young New Mexicans and, of course, create more venues for networking.
Starting out, the northern chapter will meet once every other month, but the hope is to make those meetings more frequent as membership continues to grow, Shiozaki said.
And the best part for individuals is that membership is free. Companies and groups, such as Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories, TIG, New Horizons and Thornburg Mortgage, pay annual dues and get a bunch of promotional and networking bang for their buck — including their own sections on NMTC's Web site at nmtechcouncil.org.
Where the group will end up as an economic driver is anybody's guess. But Burge said that after seeing such a good turnout in Santa Fe he's hopeful that it can be a big help to the state.
"I would hate to go through this slumping economy without a group like this," Burge said. "One thing I like to say is that progress happens at the speed of conversation. That's what the association has always been about — stimulating conversations."
Contact Sue Vorenberg at svorenberg@sfnewmexican.com.
