Paula Routly: Why Seven Days publishes a Tech Issue

Credit: Photos And Illustration: Luke Awtry, Courtesy of Does' Leap Farm, Diana Bolton And Courtesy of Beta Technologies

The casual American greeting “What’s new?” is apropos in a country known for invention and problem solving. It’s no wonder so many tech companies have sprouted in this land, from California to the New York Island.

Vermont, too, has hosted its share of future-focused, cutting-edge enterprises since IBM set up shop in Essex Junction in 1957. A dozen years later, three local guys started the healthcare software company IDX and ran it successfully for almost four decades. In 2006, they sold to GE HealthCare for $1.2 billion. A year later, Apple released the iPhone.

I remember 2007 with some residual PTSD. By then the internet had changed the way people consumed news and information, and there was an online version of Seven Days — complete with web-only content including blogs and a video series — that at the time generated next-to-no additional revenue. Steve Jobs’ new invention meant we’d have to figure out how to deliver our content to yet another platform. Soon thereafter came the iPad.

Meanwhile, Craig Newmark was coming for our business model. Founded in San Francisco in 1995, the same year as Seven Days, his Craigslist grew from an email sent to friends into a for-profit free-for-all local bulletin board that expanded city by city across the country, summarily wiping out the classified advertising in newspapers that for centuries had relied on that revenue to fund their operations.

By some small miracle, Craigslist took 12 years to get to Vermont. Wracked with worry about what it would do to the paper, I came down with a disabling case of shingles. I vividly remember balancing my computer on the edge of an oatmeal bath and, even though it was winter, walking around the office with my shirt off one shoulder because for months I couldn’t tolerate the sensation of fabric on my skin.

I was right to be anxious. Half right, anyway. Craigslist slowly decimated our sale-by-owner listings but, amazingly, spared the help-wanted section. Some employers tried the free online service but didn’t stop using us. When seeking job applicants, I think business owners and HR professionals wanted to cast as wide a net as possible. Plus, our ads worked.

Around the same time, we noticed in the employment pages a growing number of local entities that we had never heard of. They were Vermont tech companies looking for skilled employees — and not finding enough — at a time when officials were warning that young people were leaving the state for jobs in cities such as Boston and Austin, Texas.

Seven Days teamed up with education, government and private-sector partners to create the Vermont Tech Jam, a job fair and tech showcase that brought these specialized local employers face-to-face with prospective hires. In the process of organizing the event and recruiting exhibitors for it, we discovered local companies with reputations that extended way beyond the state’s borders, in the fields of wind energy, robotics, bioscience, e-commerce. Outfits such as Burlington’s Soundtoys, which makes digital audio tools used by musicians and producers from Beck to Trent Reznor to Jad Abumrad of Radiolab; and Polhemus, a world leader in motion-tracking technology based in Colchester. That town is also home to employee-owned Vermont Information Processing, now VIP, which makes software used by breweries, wineries and all manner of beverage distributors.

The Vermont Tech Jam gathered up a vital part of the state’s economy and made it visible. Jammers, including schoolkids, got a good look at exciting employers they would never have known existed and might want to work for someday.

Our journalists took notice, too. Since the first Jam in January 2008, they’ve been reporting on Vermont’s tech industry in the issue of Seven Days that comes out in advance of the annual event. As technology has become a bigger part of our lives, the issue has also offered an opportunity to reflect on the changes — positive and negative. Every department, from news to visual art and food, discovers compelling stories.

In this week’s edition you’ll find: the latest on Beta Technologies and its new manufacturing facility at the Burlington airport from Derek Brouwer, who has covered the company’s wild ride in pursuit of electric aviation; a roundup of ag innovations, from digital fences to bovine Fitbits, being used on Vermont farms; a check-in with Vermont teachers about artificial intelligence in local schools — according to education reporter Alison Novak, their views on AI are evolving as quickly as the technology.

On the culture side: Mary Ann Lickteig writes about how sophisticated ticket scams are complicating the work of local arts organizations; Chris Farnsworth blows off some steam at an esports dojo in Essex. In food, Eat Vermont has a new app and the Lincoln General Store, new tech-funded owners. Dan Bolles pays a visit to the Church Street studio of Unnecessary Inventions and talks with founder Matty Benedetto to find out how he has amassed 15 million followers on social media. It’s a follow-up to Bolles’ 2019 cover profile of Benedetto and a preview of the unusual inventor’s noon talk at Saturday’s Vermont Tech Jam.

We hope this issue answers the perennial “What’s new?” question. But, considering how many tech startups have come and gone, grown and sold, changed names and left Vermont in the 16 years Seven Days has been paying attention, it may also be worth asking: “What has endured?”

Deputy publisher Cathy Resmer will pursue that line of inquiry with Roland Groeneveld, cofounder of the South Burlington company OnLogic, in a keynote sit-down interview on Saturday at 3 p.m. He and his wife, Lisa, a Barre native, started the now 21-year-old firm that has grown substantially in Vermont during the time that we have been reporting on this sector of the economy. They just constructed a sleek new headquarters that’s visible from Interstate 89. Lauren Lavallee, OnLogic’s vice president of HR, joins Groeneveld onstage to offer her perspective as one of those young people who stayed in Vermont and built a successful career at an innovative company here.

Other indicators that local tech is here to stay: The celebrated video game program at Champlain College is turning 20. So is the Vermont Technology Alliance, which began in 2004 as the Vermont Software Developers Alliance. On Tuesday, the media brand Inc. named the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies a “Power Partner” — one of 359 entities around the country with a proven record of helping entrepreneurs and their startups grow. The list, compiled by Inc. editors, also includes national companies such as Intuit QuickBooks, HubSpot and Slack.

Another positive sign for the sector: steady demand for “air desks” at Hula, Burlington’s busy coworking space and innovation campus, which hosts this year’s Tech Jam. Turns out being in the hot seat is still pretty cool.