Technology is still a mystery…

You know - technology is still a mystery to more people than we’d like to
believe.

As you may know, I have a computer company of my own located in Iowa City, Iowa.

Iowa City is actually a great place. With the University of Iowa, a liberal arts

college of 28,000+ students, I’ve always considered Iowa City to be a somewhat
Mecca-like place to which students from all over the world gravitate for a
higher education. It makes for a small city in which the population is fluid,
articulate and very diverse - albeit a bit loud and uncoordinated on any given
Friday night. That atmosphere, coupled with an incredible school system and, in
my estimation, world-class medical facilities also means that many who come for
an education never leave. They find local jobs in law firms, schools,
newspapers, and other great companies. In other words, if you cultivate a new
customer when they come to Iowa City for school, it’s possible that you’ll keep
that customer for life.

For all of that, Iowa City is still small and Midwestern. At times, I think
they’ve still not completely grasped the impact of the computer revolution. For
all the education and higher thinking, even the media in the area sometimes
misses the point when it comes to technology.

I’ll give you two prime examples from the recent history of my company. On June
18, our local paper, the Iowa City Press-Citizen ran a feature on my company. We are, in fact, a full-spectrum
technology house, providing outsourced services in areas ranging from building
custom computers to network security assessment and application development.
It’s an ambitious mission, trying to be everything technology-related to
everyone, but we’ve had some small measure of success.

So, in this town of intellectuals plugged into the higher-thinking world, what
was the first mention of our company in the article?

Tony Steidler-Dennison has tattoos up and down his arms and drives a motorcycle,

but he is a serious businessman and the programming brainpower behind Fullbrain
Technologies, whose experts will even drive out to a client’s home and teach
computer and Internet basics.

Ouch. It’s clearly not a public introduction that exhibits a grasp of our
mission. It did, however, mean that we got some biker-geek business we might
have missed out on.

The second example is actually even funnier. A week or so later, the Cedar Rapids Gazette was kind enough to give us the feature
story in the Sunday Money section - prime real estate, as it were, for those who

might be looking to invest in a small but growing company. This article came
about as the result of a press release I wrote, sent out and followed up on in
early March. In that release, I noted that my company had found a profitable
niche in a “slow technology sector.” As I expected, it drew the interest of
business editors - that was the whole point.

However, when the article was published, the headline read:

  I.C. company finds niche in ’slow tech’

Not a “slow technology sector,” mind you - “slow tech.” Slow as in a four-door
sedan as opposed to a Ferrari, a tortoise as opposed to a hare, a Schwinn as
opposed to a Yamaha, or a 233 PI as opposed to a 2 gig AMD. Not exactly the
message we wanted conveyed. There is an upside, though - we could, at some point

in the future, be credited with the creation of a whole new sector of technology

- slow tech. It’s good to be a pioneer. We just haven’t had too many interested
investors as the result of our groundbreaking philosophy.

The stories just point out (in the longest possible way, I think) that the ins
and outs of the technology revolution just don’t mean as much to some as they do

to us. Even in the US, where a tech story captures the media every single day,
business sometimes still means corn, soybeans, cattle, and hogs. As
techno-geeks, we’re still just seen as the “[person] behind the curtain,”
somehow integrated into the inner workings of a mystery many don’t understand.
Kinda puts our passion in perspective, doesn’t it?

Have a great Thursday.

See you in August