Matt Dunne & Artur Adib: Connecting people to promote Vermont's tech economy

The two are planning to meet for the first time in person next week in Springfield to talk about how to work together and strengthen their platforms.

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MATT DUNNE & ARTUR ADIB: CONNECTING PEOPLE TO PROMOTE VERMONT’S TECH ECONOMY JUL. 17, 2017, 7:05 PM BY COMMENTARY 0 COMMENTS 0 Editor’s note: This commentary is by Artur Adib and Matt Dunne. Dunne has been a state senator and an executive at Vermont-based software company Logic Associates, and worked for nearly a decade for Google from an office he opened for the company in White River Junction. He is currently building an organization focused on rural economic development strategies and has an appointment at the MIT Media Lab. Adib worked remotely for Twitter, Firefox and the Google-funded startup Magic Leap for the last six years while living in the Burlington area. He left his remote jobs to help grow the tech scene in Vermont with AllYouCanTech. Odd though it may seem, we are writing this piece together having never actually met in person. What is particularly strange about the two of us not meeting is that we have in common the experience of working for a global internet company from the Green Mountain State. From there, our backgrounds are very different. One of us grew up in Vermont with roots going back in the state to 1800, the other moved to Vermont five years ago simply to keep his technology job and have a better quality of life in Burlington. And we might never have even known about each other had we not each launched, in the same week, new online tools to support forward looking economic development in Vermont. Call that timing serendipity, call it something in the air, call it what you will. The exciting part is that we came to the same conclusion: We need to take proactive steps to form a stronger, forward looking Vermont economy. And ironically enough, connecting people is what both of our projects are all about. We all know that rural economies are facing real challenges today. Populations are aging, investment capital is increasingly concentrated in urban areas, automation is hitting rural sectors first and hardest, and pursuit of higher education continues to lag in rural communities. And a big barrier to the growth of new forward looking industries to our state is simply the fact that our population is not geographically dense. Because of our sparser population, people in the field of computer science may not see Vermont as having a robust enough tech scene to find lifelong employment options, even though groundbreaking tech companies in Vermont are in great need of talent. Because of our sparser population, people in the field of computer science may not see Vermont as having a robust enough tech scene to find lifelong employment options, even though groundbreaking tech companies in Vermont are in great need of talent. But that’s where AllYouCanTech comes in — a new site devoted to to keeping people connected with jobs and businesses connected with talent. This site doesn’t just help employers and employees — reducing hiring friction helps build a reputation for our state as being tech-friendly and embracing this growing industry. Also due to our sparser population, it is harder for entrepreneurs and innovators to bounce ideas off each other, find collaborators, and have the kind of conversations crucial to getting a project off the ground. It’d be easier in a city to, say, find someone experienced in anything from starting a coworking space to debugging some lines of code to winning USDA grants. That’s where the Vermont Innovation Network can help. It is a user-fueled platform for Vermonters to help each other out and hone their ideas without geography getting in the way. The solutions we are piloting are not about throwing around big tax incentives to compete with other states to somehow convince big corporate companies to relocate their campuses to Vermont. And we’re not advocating for changes that would compromise our incredible environment, the key to our brand and quality of life. What we are doing is leveraging technology to allow Vermonters to do what we do best: collaborate to build a strong economic future. The two of us are planning to meet in person in Springfield next week to talk about how to work together and strengthen our platforms. After all, though technology can help forge connections like never before, there’s still nothing that beats meeting over a strong cup of coffee.