Partly Cloudy With A Chance of Jobs

This past week we caught a hint of fall in the air.  The temperatures quickly returned to highs in the upper 80’s but the humidity dropped off.  Another front is coming through this week and we’ll see lows back in the 60’s with highs in the low 80’s.  Other than a lot of rain the day the front passes us, it is going to be mostly dry.

Contrast this forecast with what we saw during September:  Daily rain, humidity, and heat.  Any more rain and Home Depot would have had a run on gopher wood.

Just like the weather is changing, so are things around town.  Week before last, I went to the first ever “Geek Breakfast” at Christina’s.  All I can say is:  “Wow!”  In addition to our growing geek community, we had visitors.  Folks who live nearby but drive south every day to work in overpriced offices in Hillsborough and Pinellas joined us for breakfast.  Mario Iezzoni, the city’s economic development director,  told them about the typical office rental prices here and the reaction was something akin to:  “You have got to be kidding, where do I sign up?”

It is true.  New Port Richey has some extremely affordable office space with all the Internet connectivity a growing tech firm could want.

City Manager Debbie Manns addressed the Greater New Port Richey Main Street group at lunch last Thursday.  She reported that change is in the air.  From a re-make of the city’s alcohol ordinance that will help the local bars and restaurants to a review of how to revive the sign and facade grant program, changes are coming and they are coming fast.  Not only is the city trying to get out of the way of businesses trying to grow, but it is actively trying to build a better business environment.

At my own business, Gulfcoast Networking, we took advantage of those dreary, rainy, September days to work on long term projects.  These included testing a set of virtual server configurations that form the foundation for a whole new set of services that we are about to start offering our clients.  The acid test came this past week when my partner, Tim, took a dead server belonging to one of our clients and spun it up as a virtual server on our hardware.

I’ve been working on changes to our websites.  Very few of those changes are apparent to a casual observer, but they are very real and provide me with experience using additional tools that will allow us to expand the services we are providing.   Interestingly enough, I found out about a couple of the tools I”m now using at the packed WordPress meetups across the alley in New Port Richey’s business incubator.

I also got to do an emergency drive replacement on a server this afternoon.  This is all stuff we do everyday and is pretty much second nature.  The folks in the incubator get that “deer in the headlights look” when it comes to the hardware stuff we don’t give a second thought to.    The folks over in the incubator are very good at what they do; and I’m enjoying learning from them.   I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of what they do looks like magic to me.  What is important is that we are building a tech community where different folks and their companies have different areas of expertise.  When those companies start collaborating, amazing things start to happen.

I am pretty sure that we are close to having the “critical mass” necessary for New Port Richey to take off as a tech center.  As more tech businesses call New Port Richey home, more good jobs will become available.

Let me know what you think.  Should we work on building our own little geek hotspot?

 

Rob Marlowe, Mayor

 

P.S.  My company hosts a website for a book called “The Infiltrator“.  The book made news this past week because it is going to be made into a major motion picture and much of the movie will be shot in Tampa.  Based on what I know from speaking with the title character, you are going to want to see the movie when it comes out.