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Bay area tech? It's jammin'

Summer Tech Jam is a party again, instead of a gloomfest. Goodbye, dot-com bust. Adios, post-9/11 recession. IT's back.

By CHRISTINA REXRODE
Published August 19, 2006

TAMPA - Inside a club at Channelside, partygoers crowd under a disco ball, around the pool tables, at the bar. The cell phone cameras flash, the music plays loudly, and the conversations are seasoned with refrains like "Voice over IP" and "disaster recovery."

Almost 800 of the Tampa Bay area's tech-inclined, many clad in Hawaiian gear, turned up at Thursday evening's Summer Tech Jam, the fifth annual social fundraiser of the Tampa Bay Technology Forum. Last year, about 400 people came. The year before, it was 200.

Judging by the attendance, and the evening's buzz , the area's technology sector is a veritable optimists club in 2006.

A few years ago, these gatherings were more like unemployment fairs. Fritz Eichelberger, the CEO of HotSpaces.Net here and well known for hosting "pure and shameless" networking socials for area techies, didn't bother throwing his meet-and-greets in 2002 or 2003.

Alicia Welch remembers a tough welcome to the real world when she graduated from University of South Florida in 2003.

"The job market was horrible," said Welch, 26, who now is a marketing manager at Tampa's LM Management consulting firm. "A lot of my friends who were coming out of college couldn't find jobs."

Judging from the chatter at Tech Jam, it's looking more like the technology heyday of the late '90s. The bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000 is a fading memory. The post-9/11 recession is over. It's easy to meet other young tech professionals. Everyone, it seems, is growing - and hiring. There aren't enough good people to go around.

That hopeful energy suggests the Tampa Bay area is becoming more than just a stopover for bright young minds who take off for New York, D.C. or California after a few years.

"I'm never leaving," said Chris Evans, 31, who moved to Tampa from upstate New York in January. He now works for US LEC, a voice, data and Internet company whose merger with another corporation was announced this week.

What's bringing people like him to the state?

Companies are attracted to Florida because the employee pool is composed of people from all over the country, said Lina Yusim, 29, who is helping open a Tampa office for New York's CXtec, a global provider of computer networking and technology equipment.

People who have worked in Florida their whole lives don't realize it, said Evans, but clients and co-workers here are much easier to deal with.

"If you're in New York," he said, "talking to a guy at 4 or 5 o'clock in the winter, you're not going to get anything done. He's going to be in a bad mood because he's thinking, 'I've got to go scrape my car off and shovel the driveway for my wife.' "

But sunshine doesn't make up for a strong tech sector. Many bay area technology companies are small or startups, and the paucity of Fortune 500 companies is sometimes an obstacle to recruiting people to the area.

But not always.

"I've had opportunities to go to other areas that are more technologically affluent," said Rob Cash, 37, vice president of Telovations. "But things are about to take off here."

His company, a telecommunications provider, was founded in February.

Damon Shields moved to Tampa from Tulsa, Okla., a few months ago and is a computer programmer for Workflow Mobility. He interviewed with bigger companies elsewhere but wasn't impressed.

"A lot of people I know aren't looking to work for a Fortune 500 program," said Shields, 32, sitting on a bar stool after coming in third in a four-person bowling game. "I think people are afraid of the bureaucracy, of becoming Dilbert."

Salary is another obstacle where forum members see the glass as half-full. David Hagan, 24, a technical recruiter in Tampa for the staffing firm Spherion, thinks he could earn a higher salary elsewhere. But it's a minor issue, considering the atmosphere that Florida offers.

"You could go to New York, but it's highly competitive," he said, "and you've got a lot of people chasing pipe dreams."

Hagan and Len Terranova, an account manager in Tampa for Princeton Information, an IT consulting firm, both mentioned that the number of people entering the IT field has been dropping for four or five years. They don't see many applicants fresh out of college. But Terranova thinks that will change now that the tech job market is looking so enticing.

According to Tech Jam attendees, disaster recovery and security are catching tech companies' interest in the wake of two busy hurricane seasons and widely publicized data security breaches.

Voice over IP, or Internet Protocol, which offers phone service over the Internet, is also one of the next big things in the area's tech sector, TBTF members said. Its quality is improving, and it's being used by businesses instead of just in homes.

"I can be sitting in Starbucks, I can be out of town, and my office number will still ring to my computer," said Kimberly McCoskey, director of business development at LM Management.

Cash, the Telovations vice president, said his main challenge is getting people to understand how user-friendly and affordable technology has become.

"Only the big dogs in business used to get the latest technology," he said. "Now small businesses can get it, too."

Christina Rexrode can be reached at 727 893-8318 or crexrode@sptimes.com.

THE TECH FORUM

Since its inception in 2000, the Tampa Bay Technology Forum has grown to more than 400 members representing 40,000 employees. The forum is meant to serve as a hub between tech professionals, entrepreneurs, investors and representatives of education, government and economic development agencies. The ticket sales, silent auction and sponsorships at Thursday's Tech Jam will benefit the Tampa Bay Technology Forum Foundation, whose CompuTer-rific Program has opened 20 computer labs in area Boys & Girls Clubs in five years. The Tech Jam raised $65,000 for the foundation, in addition to a donation of software worth $35,000 from Persystent Technologies.

[Last modified August 18, 2006, 20:24:12]