Q. I volunteered at the annual SAO dinner last February handing out parking passes, just to see what the SAO was about, and one thing that occurred to me was that this is an organization for professionals – but is there anything being done for students or recent graduates? To first spread the word that the SAO exists, second show that there are resources to tap into, and third illustrate that you can build something there as opposed to running off to Silicon Valley or whatever else, that there’s actually a future here and you can be a part of it.
NEES: That is an ongoing challenge as well as an opportunity. So to go to the discussion with the university system, you’re right, the stars of the university go wherever, but most people don’t understand and just don’t see the amount of opportunity that’s available here in Oregon. And I’ll give you my own personal example. After graduating from OSU, I went right out to Intel for 12 years, went to a local engineering firm in Beaverton for almost a year, went to HP in Vancouver, went to Xerox in Wilsonville. Other than the engineering firm in Beaverton, there was only one world that I lived in – that was Intel’s world, HP’s world, Xerox’s world.
Then I landed at the SAO and discovered what is going on here and I kid you not, every day my eyes get opened wider and wider. And as I gain that knowledge of who’s doing what, why they’re doing that, how they’re going to do that, the amount of excitement and opportunity that’s here – our university students don’t know about it. So I’ve gone to most of the universities, including PSU, and said "Guys, I’d like to be able to do an internship program,” like facilitate one. We jumped on that, we partnered with OEN [Oregon Entrepreneurs Network] to do that, and it hasn’t been communicated out as well as it should have.
But the universities need to understand that they need to open their doors to find out that there’s more to Portland than the Standard, or Regence, or even Intel for that matter. Because I’ll guarantee you one thing: The Intels, HPs and Xeroxes and all the other big-box tech companies don’t go down to Oregon State to try to recruit their business graduates.
Q. They just sit back and let them come to them.
NEES: Yeah, and it’s not that I would go and say that I’m recruiting to HP, Xerox, Intel whatever – I’m going to tell them about this thriving community that we have going on down here, throughout the state – whether it’s at eROI, whether you’re interested in creative art design and advertising services like White Horse or Pop Art or Weiden + Kennedy or Edelman or Waggener Edstrom, or you want to be technical – well, you can go work at Regence and Standard and Northwest Natural and PGE – or you can go work for companies like Typethink, Urban Airship, Small Society, Monsoon, AboutUs.
I’ve knocked on the door at the universities, and it’s up to them to let us in.
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