EnzymePDX sat down with Matt Nees, president of the Software Association of Oregon (SAO), for an in-depth interview about Oregon’s software industry. The SAO is the largest professional software association in the Northwest. It is comprised of more than 350 companies in Oregon and Southwest Washington that are involved or affiliated with the software and technology industries.The second and final part of the interview will run tomorrow, August 26.
The SBA Grant
Q. Tell me about the SBA grant proposal that’s been taking up so much of your time.
NEES: So we got a real short timeframe notification about this SBA grant opportunity that focuses on cluster technology economic development in smaller, non-metro areas. In Oregon, there’s only one metro region, that’s Portland. And SAO, being a statewide association – we have chapters in Corvallis, central Oregon, and we’re restarting the chapter in the Eugene area, and we have a partnership with the Gorge Technology Alliance – this is perfect for us since we’ll be able to fund and provide resources to each of those chapters to start driving our charter missions, which are networking, getting people together, building connections. Our tagline is "connect to innovate”; that’s what each of those regions needs, is a central person to herd the cats.
People are busy, they’re doing their startup, they’re doing their growth company, but there isn’t one body trying to act as a ringleader to bring people together to share knowledge, share experience and honestly to build business partnerships or networking opportunities. This is going to give us that kind of opportunity to place a head in each of those regions. That head will basically own their territory of all the tech companies there, and design programs like networking events, educational opportunities, training opportunities, speaking opportunities, whatever it is, to start driving sharing of best-known methods, and building partnerships with people that they didn’t know before. If everyone can turn around and build off of one another, then the overall community will do better. This grant gives us that funding and resource opportunity to do it.
Q. So the timeframe is short. When do you think you’ll know if you got it?
NEES: We are expecting to hear – the SBA will be announcing I think around mid-September who gets it, and then they’re going to be doling out the money by end of September, Oct. 1.
Q. So this could go into effect by October.
NEES: Yep.
Q. What kind of events will you be featuring? Will it be mainly speaker-driven, discussion-driven, or maybe group projects?
NEES: It depends on the audience. If they’re technical, it’ll probably be more along the lines like our developers forum or QA forum where it’s topic-related and you either have a guest speaker or panel discussion of experts in that area. So the key point behind that is to get that interaction for your community and from your stakeholders by developing open communication about how they deal with certain situations, technical or otherwise, and to get people talking.
The hope is that this becomes self-sustainable. So what we need is for each community to be participating and make sure that they are receiving value as well as being a part of the ongoing solution that that region needs. And if they’re not communicating, then there’s not much one person can do.
Q. So that’s been the bulk of what you guys have been up to.
NEES: Last week. We did that in one week.
Q. OK, I take back that statement.
NEES: Yeah, that was an all-hands-on-deck effort from requesting board approval at the last minute in order to move forward, and they all jumped on – I’ve got 26 board members for SAO, and we got an immediate response and just resounding approval to go for it – "what do you guys need; let us know how we can help.” We needed a grant writer, we needed a tech writer, all in one week’s time to get this to D.C.
Q. So this happened in a week, and it could have immediate implications for the rest of the state.
NEES: That’s what blows me away, too. It’s how fast they’re going to be awarding money.
We’re looking out for the entire state. We are the only organization that looks at the entire state, so our goal is to, if you go back to the high level, put Oregon on the map, raise the flag – there are great pockets of technology development and innovative thinkers throughout this state, and there’s only one organization trying to gather the masses to raise us above the crowd.
#Head
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