The Rise of Innovation in the Hub

I've worked in technology in Silicon Valley and Boston and the environments are pretty different.  In Boston you often get the inferiority vibe...I guess now that our sports teams have won their share of national titles we have to keep the inferiority complex going somewhere.  From my perspective, having worked in both places, Bostonian technology people are simply less social.  In Silicon Valley, whether you are an engineer starting out or a tech executive who has been in the business 20 years, the weeks are filled with happy hours, launch parties, breakfast meetings, impromptu office parties and the like. In Boston you tend to go to work and go home. Breakfast meetings and launch parties happen occasionally but more often than not, they are intra-company affairs.  Networks in Boston take a long time to develop and are based primarily on who you have worked with in the past.  This may be partly geography - there are a few more logical hubs of activity in Silicon Valley, San Francisco's SOMA district, Palo Alto, & San Jose but that seems like a poor excuse since Waltham, Burlington, & Kendall Square in Cambridge now have significant critical mass.

Now that I am back in Boston and working in the social media world things seem to have changed and I wonder if we are at a tipping point - as least in this market.  The community has leaders - Chris Brogan, Laura Fitton, Doug Haslam, Todd Van Hoosear, Adam Zand, Maria Thurell, Alexa Scordato, Amanda Gravel, Aaron Strout, Jim Storer,  Steve Garfield, Beth Kanter, Adam Cohen,  Mike Langford, C.C. Chapman, and many others who are very active and instigate tweet-ups, conferences, rock climbing get togethers, dinners, apple picking trips, etc. sometimes formal and sometimes spontaneous. This is critical because while this crowd knows each other pretty well, they are also adept at pulling others into their vortex making new people feel welcome and growing the community - and they do not represent just one company or one discipline.  There are also enough local technology companies in this space. Mzinga, Communispace, Awareness, Lotus, Cymphony, MoCo Space, Sermo, ChoiceStream, Trip Advisor, and MatchMine are all local software companies working in the social media space in some capacity. Topaz Partners and Perkett PR also participate extensively from the marketing side of things.  This all rolls up to make Boston a real Hub in this particular market and to me, feels a lot more like what makes Silicon Valley so powerful - a critical mass of technology, business, and marketing professionals dedicated to the same vision.  To investors and potential employees who are interested in this market, it makes Boston the place to be.

Like the Red Sox, and the Patriots, Boston seems to be coming into its own in the software industry and taking a leading role in pushing innovation and adoption. Our challenge now - convincing all of those talented kids coming out of MIT, Harvard, BU, BC, Wellseley, Tufts, etc. to stick around and play. That, and we need some better cafes and restaurants to hang out at on the 128 loop so I encourage any of you who are thinking of starting your own business - we need a couple of cool, hip, unique places to hang out somewhere between Waltham and Burlington - essentially we need a Buck's of our own.

Comments

[Beth Dunn]

It does feel that way, doesn't it, like we have reached a tipping point here in Boston. I'm now in the city full-time, too, and it seems I run into somebody from the social media world at every turn -- or like I just missed them around the next corner.

I agree about the importance of attracting and retaining students -- I'm in the MBA program now at Simmons, and I talk to undergrads (and future MBAs) all the time about their future plans and preferred destinations.

There's a lot of fear in schools right now, about what sort of world and job market people are going to be emerging into when they graduate. Innovative, social media-driven start-ups in the area have a real opportunity to go in to these schools right now and get these kids thinking about alternatives to landing the Big Job With the Big Corporation -- since those jobs are pretty few these days, and getting scarcer.

If you are a local SM-focused business in the Boston area, now is the time to get in touch with Career Services at local colleges and universities, start planting the seeds and getting rising graduates excited about opportunities right here, doing interesting work, with some of the coolest people around (if I do say so).

The biggest selling point? That very thriving social media community you are talking about above. How can we draw in more new people, get them involved, encourage them to raise the stakes for all of us?

[Phil Fersht]

Rachel,

Very insightful piece - and you seem to be onto something here. The amount of "twitter-meets" I keep hearing about in Cambridge and the number of thought-provokers emanating from the techies, acadmic Bostonians, analysts etc seem to be polarizing the city as the new social media hub. Definitely seems more active that Silicon Valley in this area. Might also be something about the strange DNA of Bostonians who aren't the most social people, but stick them on a virtual network and all hell breaks loose -:)

Phil

[Rachel Happe]

Doh - Beth, Phil - I missed you guys in my post - see more people popping up all over!

Beth - absolutely agree - for those looking for fulfillment and impact, there is nothing better than a smallish company focused on a mission that is about something bigger than just making a buck. And there is nothing more exciting then that.

And Phil...I think you've hit on something...Bostonians are just a little more introverted but want to be social so online social media allows us to get to know each other before we have to actually talk to each other :) We finally found a tool to help us network!

Thanks for stopping by guys - here's to Boston!

[Joe Cascio]

Hi Rachel,
Having never worked in Silicon Valley, I've never experienced the tech culture there, but I'm guessing another factor in the relatively low activity in Boston is simply the difference between New England and California vis-a-vis strangers. New Englanders simply take longer to get to know people. Maybe it's because we experience society from a different vantage point; a longer view, you might say. We're typically surrounded by old friends and family that live within a few miles. We've no need to reach out constantly to strangers. We're in no hurry. We've been here a long time, and we're going to be here a long time, too. But friendships here, perhaps, are deeper and closer, and longer lasting.
When I lived in the Los Angeles area, the joke was if you struck up a conversation with someone in the checkout line at the supermarket, by the time you reached the register, you'd know all about their divorce and child custody battle. Not so in New England, typically.
But social media is helping to change that insularity. Through vlogging, blogging and Twitter, I know so many more great people now than I did 2 years ago. Maybe we're actually experiencing the best of both. We get to meet more people now, and we still get to know them better.

[Laura]

I'm glad you wrote this Rachel, it's true we need to keep momentum going on this. I've also been excited to see groups like MassTLC and RI's Business Innovation Factory reaching out to the social media community. I hope we can continue to connect the people who built this region's amazing technology history with those working on today's opportunities and innovation.

To anyone reading the post and not quite sure how to jump in, don't hesitate. You can be totally new on the scene and just dive in and start a lot of us named in this post are pretty new around here ourselves. Don't be shy!

[Josh Fialkoff]

Great post!
One great aspect of the Boston online community is the Web Innovators Group (http://www.webinnovatorsgroup.com/).
While it's not solely social-media related, it does provide a wonderful forum for social-networking "types" ;-) to meet.
Thanks,
Josh

[Rachel Happe]

Hi Joe, Laura, Josh - thanks for stopping by and yes, we should make sure we keep this all going. I forgot to mention events run by Mass TLC, Business Innovation Factory, the Berkman Center, Web Innovator's Group, MIT's Enterprise Institute, and Social Media Breakfast - all important in keeping us connected, active, and growing.

And I'll second Laura's comment - it is a very friendly bunch so don't be shy!

[Doug Haslam]

Hi Rachel-- thanks for the shoutout here! ("Leader?").

Boston is definitely a very parochial city, as mentioned above- old connections endure and rule, but that is a little less so in the social media groups here.

also, Boston is not built solely on tech (not that SV is "exclusive" but you catch my drift). I think that makes the vibrancy of the social media community all the more impressive.

Great, thoughtful post more thoughtful than my Tweet last week taunting n SF/SV as less of a social media town than Boston (I was not so explicit actually, but I did mean that ;P)

Last point-- I now work for SHIFT Communications, a PR agency that is also very active in the events
locally and beyond. I would have my pom-poms confiscated if I did not whine about our omission.

[Christine Perkett]

Rachel,

Thanks for including us in your post. PerkettPR has been very active in getting the Hub to be excited about its own successes, get together to celebrate them and to continually recognize all the fantastic innovation that happens in one of the greatest cities around.

Last year when we worked with TechCrunch to bring the MeetUps to Boston, we had a similar conversation with Mike Arrington, which you can see here: http://perkettprsuasion.com/2007/11/20/thanks-boston-techcrunch-meetup-success/

He talks about how Boston should self-organize more. As a community, we've improved over the last year but you are right - we need to continue to do more. The PerkettPR team looks forward to continuing to work with the Boston business community to market and promote our collective successes, rich history and innovative future. Thanks for the additional incentive!

[Christine Perkett]

PS - to Phil's point and your follow up, Boston is introverted and conservative in nature. We need to cut loose a bit more and show our confidence. I noticed this even last week at the New Marketing Summit. I spoke on a PR 2.0 panel and it was one of the only panels where we asked the questions "live" instead of on Twitter... and we received the least amount of questions. Many folks believed this was because no one wanted to raise their hands and speak out loud!

Come on, Boston, speak up!

[Rachel Happe]

Doug - of course you are a leader - and sorry for missing SHIFT...inevitably when you post lists you miss people and companies so apologies!

Christine - thanks for stopping by, and for helping Boston come out of its shell, there is indeed a lot of interesting stuff going on :)

[Todd Van Hoosear]

Thanks for including me on the list, Rachel!

I think Joe hit the New England psyche right on the head.

Boston is obviously not new to the technology craze. Many moons ago, we arguably were the hub, or at least one of the major hubs, of the technology universe. That's changed a bit, but what we see today is more than the mere ghost of greatness past.

What we see today is simply the mashup (sorry) of the puritan work ethic, New England sensibilities and Web 2.x. It's the difference between Web 2.0 (the primary conference of which is held on the Left Coast) and Enterprise 2.0 (held in Boston).

Not that there aren't a lot of pie-in-the-sky enterprise 2.0 ideas--it's just that we tend to be a little more grounded, practical, business-like. And not that Web 2.0 is all about crazy, way-out-there ideas.

Just that we are the yin to the West Coast's yang. We need each other to keep in balance.

[Moly Yim]

Mmm, yes, to expand on Todd's "yin & yang" comment — I spent my early childhood in Northern California but have spent more years growing up in New England. However, I still can't say with a straight face "I feel like a New Englander."

As an adult, I have been fortunate to have opportunities to spend time back in NorCal and this is what I have observed: Boston/New England and San Francisco/Silicon Valley are like twin cities to me: big enough to have the vibrancy of a major metropolis but still small enough to forgo the insanities of megacities like NYC or Milan. And beyond that (and above all), there's this intangible, indescribable similarity between the two cities' "vibage" — if you've been to both, I'm sure you may know what I mean.

But specifically regarding the history and community of technology in both cities/regions: while there's no dispute that both are major players in the tech game — I feel like Boston tends to be the "theorist" while SF is the "practitioner" — what is researched, discovered, and pontificated upon in Boston tends to get implemented and and executed in SF. We've all heard the many stories of geeks who have gone to Harvard and MIT and subsequently moved West to strike gold. A lot of VCs who are based on the West Coast also actively recruit from the best schools in Boston.

If you look at the social history of both regions, it starts to make sense: the socially conservative yet intellect-valuing Puritans settled New England whereas California (specifically Northern California) was settled (partly) by none other than the crazy, wide-eyed, dreaming Gold Rushers. Yet whoddathunk that both groups would end up giving birth to two major tech hubs?

I do feel like things are changing and that we are seeing more "practice" happening in Boston — reaching that critical mass, which certainly makes me proud to be a part of this community, but we've still got a bit of catching up to do. But who knows? Maybe it *is* better this way: two hands may both look and act alike, but one must be the left and the other, the right. Like Todd said: the yin and the yang.

[kare Anderson]

Re East vs West coach psyche - agreed & that may be why it is easier to move west than vice versa... yet most of my friends over here on the W. coast were raised in N.Y., Boston or Chicago area... appreciate deepening roots of friendship plus besotted by curiosity and innovation.

Fun & helpful posts, here - thanks!

From the many firms you know - including your own, have you seen one with the capacity to create a member-based contest where members could vote on top ten - choosing from a multitude of options - and able to see the choices they have already made as they view others and can change votes over the course of a contest period?

I have two clients seeking this capacity

Found you via Aaron, fyi?

[Beth Kanter]

Thanks for including me in the post ... although I have to admit that I might be moving west!

[Adam Cohen]

Hi Rachel,
Wow, I need to do a better job at listening in social media - thank you so much for including me in this list. I can speak first hand to how welcoming the Boston area social media community is, with my experience dating back to the EMC blogger dinner at the Rattlesnake a year ago. This is a fun and passionate community and I'm proud to be a part of it. Now if we can only keep members from moving to Austin, TX.

Thanks again and see you soon.

[steve Garfield]

Hi,

Anyone who is reading this is welcome to the Boston Media Makers meetings. They are on the first Sunday of each month at Doyle's in Jamaica Plain.

We mingle, then sit around a large group of tables and introduce ourselves and what we are doing, present a show and tell, or ask a question...

Here's the website:

http://bostonmediamakers.wordpress.com/

--Steve