Silicon Slopes
For those of you unfamiliar with it, Silicon Slopes is a community site for the technology companies in Utah. It’s been spearheaded by Josh James and Omniture, and recently has added a chunk of other community sponsors and supporters.
A few months back, I realized I had talked with quite a few people that had various concerns about the project, so I condensed them into 3 main areas, and then started working with the Utah Technology Council to get them relayed to Josh and Omniture. They were: 1. What was Omniture’s plans for involvement and control as the project grew, i.e. what’s good for Omniture may/may not be good for other tech companies; 2. How does Silicon Slopes avoid competing for resources with other organizations/projects; and, 3. The brand Silicon Slopes, and especially the branding of Utah as “The next Silicon Valley.”
Then one day it hit me, and I thought, hey, I know Josh, I should just call him; that’s more my style. So eventually we connected late one night while I was driving home and he was in Japan waiting for a flight back to the US, and I’m glad we did. After 30 minutes of talking, I had insights to where the project was headed, and wanted to be involved to help out. Since I know others have had these exact concerns, I wanted to post about what I found out.
First, Josh did what most of us won’t, he grabbed the bull by the horns and committed time and money to get something going. Mad props to him for that. He definitely wants the community to own it and make it work over time, and realizes that ultimately it will have to have that level of support, so it will transition that way as it keeps going. You can see that to a great extent from the latest calendars sent out. The 2008 one was basically sponsored by Omniture. The 2009 calendar was sponsored by Omniture, Zions Bank, Hummer Winblad, Wilson Sonsini, UTC, Utah Fund of Funds, USTAR, Utah GOED, vSpring Capital, Insight Exhibits, Alphagraphics, Vox, and Cornerstone; so this transition to broader based community support is happening quickly.
Next, the community and aggregated information dynamic that the site provides is something other organizations couldn’t or wouldn’t do, so it’s not really that directly competitive with ‘the establishment.’ And since it’s been so scrappy, it probably is far leaner than if it’d have been born in other ways.
And on the brand, Josh’s point was, yeah, it’s not perfect, but it’s something. I think of all 3, my biggest concern was/is the brand. I’m cool with www.siliconslopes.com at this point. The tie to the outdoors is very important, as that’s probably the #1 thing Utah has going for it. I’m still bothered by the statement: “we’re going to be the next Silicon Valley.” That’s an impossibility. Silicon Valley is a physical place with certain characteristics we’ll never duplicate. How about we use our collective efforts to become “better than Silicon Valley” or at a minimum “different in cool ways than Silicon Valley”? I hope Silicon Slopes can help build community so we can support in some way the technology companies in Utah doing great and cool things.
Biggest takeaway for me is to reach out and get involved. So I’m going to help Silicon Slopes personally (this blog post is my first act), and find ways for Doba/9Aisle to help too.
What do you think? How can Silicon Slopes keep doing good for the greater Utah technology community?
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