Re-reading it, I guess it is a bit contradictory, eh?

To flesh that out a bit, it seems that the voters look to politicians and their campaign promises to "bring good jobs back to Buffalo" every November, which is troubling. The type of politician who says they can create jobs is usually one who has no idea how to do it. So, I guess I'm advocating against political charlatans and also advising people that WE can bring jobs to the community, if WE stop looking at the old economy and those who wish to restore it. Let's stop looking to the government to "fix" something and do it ourselves. Does that make any more sense or am I just reiterating what I said the first time? I think I'm having trouble elucidating this thought today.

So, it's more of a mindset about how the economy can improve and how we can make our region attractive to outside investors, entrepreneurs, and talent. There are cost certainties in Buffalo and WNY that don't exist in places like Boston, NYC, Toronto, Chicago, SF, and LA. Paired with the tremendous amount of talent UB, RIT, UofR, and other schools pump out each year, we have a convergence of factors which make it possible to develop our own mini-tech center. My general philosophy on things in Buffalo is to stop focusing on "fixing", "planning", "revitalizing" or "re-anything". We need to just DO.

If Buffalo is to grow, small business (especially tech) needs to flourish. If we want people to patronize The Wine Thief, or put their kids in The Vincennes Academy, or rent a loft at The Webb...we need to foster a community in which small business can start and grow. We need to stop looking to Albany to "fix upstate" and we need to stop electing politicians who promise to "bring back good jobs", they don't get it.

The companies featured at this event are the future of Buffalo. Local businesspeople who decided to start their own companies and leverage Buffalo's competitive advantages as opposed to bitching about what we don't have. They are investing in the community, hiring local talent, bringing national business back to Buffalo, and they are succeeding. Let's support them and learn from their success. Perhaps a few new opportunities and businesses will grow out of this event every year.

This is the future of Buffalo.

Geek - Your goals sound good. I've nothing against bikes, but it'd be nice if some day the goal of making Buffalo and WNY much more business friendly would get even 1% of the priority that making it "bike friendly" gets.

However, isn't it a little contradictory to say it's important for Buffalo to stop electing certain kinds of politicians while that the same time also saying to stop looking to Albany?

I agree Albany won't be changing much no matter what so expecting more of the same, and worse, from them sounds smart. What's the difference between making the best of the political environment as it is (i.e. - don't expect upstate to be fixed) vs. what you write "we need to foster a community in which small business can start and grow"? I take it you're referring to fostering non-political changes? Curious if you're advocating any specific actions, or does that refer to individual mind sets? Or did you mean specific political changes but nothing Albany-related?

It's a tough sell, frankly. Can Buffalo compete with similarly sized cities in more business friendly states when it comes to relocating companies? Perhaps, but I think we need to demonstrate a few things in order to get there.

First, we need to demonstrate that there are a number of local companies working in a particular industry vertical. Secondly, we need to demonstrate community amongst those companies. Thirdly, we need to work with our local VC and angel investment community to put a similar value on information economy companies as they do traditional manufacturing and bio-medical in order to continue the growth. Fourthly, we need those companies to develop close relationships with the local universities for internships, co-ops, mentoring, networking, and community building. Once all of that happens, I believe we'll have established an identity and our proximity to NYC and Toronto provides opportunities for revenue growth for those companies who started here.

Once we've established some credibility as a destination where information and knowledge economy is a valued part of the local business community, we can begin to look outward and recruit companies to join the community. It's a much larger boulder to push uphill when you're trying to convince a Google or Dell to relocate when there isn't a local competency built around their business model.

This event hopefully serves as a jumping off point for building community and as the event grows, we can bring some national eyes to the region and start changing the stereotype of Buffalo as a lunch bucket town. Perhaps we can even influence the politics at some point when we achieve critical mass, who knows?

In the interim, we can begin to build the mindshare necessary to build local companies, use overhead cost certainties to offer lower rates to lure national clients for those local companies, and work together to grow revenue and utilize our fantastic talent base and network efficiencies.

Cost comparisons vs. top-tier mega cities: advantage, Buffalo. Other mid-sized cities can say that too naturally. Besides Buffalo, the best 25% of low cost of living cities according to the 2008 Forbes look at top 100 U.S. metros are: Youngstown, Rochester, Dayton, Toledo, Syracuse, Wichita, Akron, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Omaha, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, Louisville, Columbus, Grand Rapids, Tulsa, Little Rock, Gary, McAllen, St. Louis, Memphis, Kansas City. While Buffalo is lowest cost among the 100, presumably there's not a big gap vs. others in the best fourth.

Forbes says 21 of those 24 other low-cost metros have better job growth than Buffalo (all except Detriot, Toledo, and Rochester). They don't say what period that measures. Probably muiti-year. (Yes, metro Buffalo had above average job growth last year. -cough-Seneca-cough- Happens sometimes for a year.)

What advantages does Buffalo have vs. those others for locating a company? Maybe for some being near Canada is important. Most won't care, some might. And some would consider important high speed Internet backbone access in Buffalo. I've no idea how those other cities compare for that, or for how many companies it's enough difference to choose location based on. Having UB here is very good. What else?

Analyzing competition, what are advantages of some of those other mid-sized cities have over Buffalo?

You're right, the "fixing", "revitalizing" etc. isn't going to happen. In fact, budgets and laws are getting even more anti-business in recent years. So it's worthwhile opposing people like Hoyt when they try to make anything even worse, but otherwise for the most part there's nothing to do other than accepting it all like the weather and move on.

I think we agree there.

Our advantages: Plethora of hot dog vendors, plans for skate parks. Disadvantages: Lack of bike racks. Duly noted.

Web application development, social media, multimedia production, and datacenter hosting are ones I think we can target and farm here. The kids coming out of RIT, UB, and other local schools are some of the best and brightest in the country. Matching them up with capital or getting them employment with local companies is a natural fit. Datacenter hosting is a solid choice due to the low cost of datacenter operations (power, cooling, real estate) in Buffalo as opposed to traditional centers like Chicago, NY, Houston, etc. As part of my day job, I design and develop datacenters for financial institutions.

The startups and local companies that I am talking with (BTEC participants) have told me they are glad an effort is underway to build community. IBC Digital, Seevast, Studio llc, and others are always looking for business development opportunities. This is an opportunity to share, network, and leverage each others strengths to bring more business back to Buffalo. My experience working in several startups in Chicago during the first .com boom taught me a lot about community. Having small networks of programmers, designers, and entrepreneurs helped foster increased business, training opportunities, and career options. Good for everyone.

Angels/VC in the region have a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to information economy companies. It's not their fault, they are all specialists in manufacturing, financial consulting, banking, etc. They really aren't in tune with how web and media startups work. I've joined the WNYVA and I'll be working with infoTech Niagara to help educate our locals VC's on assisting startups and how to smell out business plans which are flawed and how to help good ideas get started. Right now, they don't have the right criteria for evaluation and request too much equity for small investment stakes to mitigate risk. We need to educate and assist. We don't want all VC to be local, but it does help in the early stages to leverage resources that are already here. Once we've built a more formal arrangement amongst local web/IT companies, we can start appealing to out of town VC's who would rather see their money spent on development and product rather than overhead.

Internships and co-ops do happen, but by and large they are with the larger more established companies. We need to establish relationships, curriculum guidelines, job responsibilities, etc with the local schools to make sure we are helping these kids learn and not just using them for free labor.

Why isn't Al Jazeera covering these events? They should.

"it'd be nice if some day the goal of making Buffalo and WNY much more business friendly would get even 1% of the priority that making it "bike friendly" gets."

Aren't there already powerful and well-funded groups pushing that priority? Like the Partnership, for one? Effective or no, their strength dwarfs that of those who focus on bikes, or parks, or other "sense of place" stuff.

Geek - Re. your 'First', are there particular tech industry vertical(s) you're seeing or hoping to see? Re. secondly - I suppose the challenge is startups are so focused on survival maybe they don't make time for building communities amongst themselves. I wonder if such community demonstration was considered key in other cities who've seen more tech startup success? If so, that might help encourage the idea. If not, maybe the opposite.

Re. thirdly - why would angels/VCs not be doing that already, for the most effective reason of all (their own financial self interest) but only if and when proposed info economy startups sound like good bets? With low barriers to entry there's bound to be way more bad proposed ventures than good of course. Maybe local VCs and angels don't feel they have as much expertise to judge info economy startups compared to manufacturing. Another question is for Buffalo info economy proposed startups that are quality, is it all that important for the VC/angel investing to be local? Just asking.

Re. 'fourthly', Don't internships co-ops, etc. already happen a lot? Again one might expect these to happen for self interest without prodding - students wanting experience, firms wanting free work and recruitment edge, schools wanting to improve placement of graduates. Maybe that's one of those things there should always be more of.

The BNP focuses on regulatory reform, which is great. However, as with most things that require change here, a grassroots effort needs to be undertaken as well. Many people perceive that the BNP's reform message is tangled up in partisan politics and personal agendas which discourages widespread adoption.

However, a group of creative and information professionals coming together to network and build community can generate the buzz and mindshare needed to build business while the slow slog of regulatory reform efforts continue apace. Sense of place comes from people with jobs filling neighborhoods, restaurants, and bars while buying homes, renting apartments, and taking interest in their place of residence. So, these efforts to build up small business are critical to the saving of buildings, the buildout of cool service industries, and preservation efforts.

Colin - Yes, my wording was incomplete there. I meant among the majority of the BR crowd blogarati. The same crowd who complains a lot about so many, many side effects of this area's relatively poor business growth in recent decades, but you have to admit by far is much more in favor of bike friendliness than friendliness toward corporate businesses.

By 'nice', I should have written 'refreshing' or 'shocking'.

Also to the author, it's BTEC, not BETC. Thanks!