By now you know that last month the SFTA announced a major campaign to strengthen and promote the high technology community in South Florida. I am writing to provide you additional details, and reiterate its significance for the South Florida region.
SFTA launched the campaign as an extension of our mission to promote the growth, success and awareness of the South Florida regional technology community. As a regional organization focused on “the business of technology,” our overall goal for the campaign is to help South Florida grow its technology community and be widely recognized as a great place for tech businesses and their employees to grow and prosper. Proof points lead to new jobs, investment and improved economic prosperity for everyone, as “a rising tide raises all boats.”
This campaign:
Is extremely collaborative in what it does and the spirit of how it goes about doing it. There are many organizations involved in building the region’s tech community, and this campaign hopes to serve and embrace each and every effort.
Is supported by the private sector exclusively without any government funding. Essentially, the private sector is betting on the outlook that the growth of the tech industry will ultimately benefit all businesses and the community as a whole.
Embraces all of South Florida, from Miami-Dade to the Treasure Coast, and will incorporate many of the sub-segments of the tech community into a critical mass that can challenge the acknowledged leading tech communities such as Silicon Valley, Research Triangle Park, and Northern Virginia.
Enhances the assets that make South Florida a viable place to live, learn, work, invest in, and stay.
The capabilities that evolve from this campaign are both aspirational and realistic. We envision a range of programs from exciting celebratory events to get-your-hands-dirty type of technology sharing and education. They will include capital-raising programs to provide ongoing scholarships and internship affiliations, and collaborative networking opportunities to strengthen existing community initiatives. There will be a steady rollout of new programs over a long period of time.
These programs will fall into two main groupings, supporting two main objectives:
Strengthen the regional technology community through communication and collaboration, to create a critical mass which can become a world-class center of excellence
Promote the success of that community to the region, itself, and to the wider world so everyone will be aware of what we are doing here, and what we have become.
The first of these programs, already underway, are:
Establishment of a virtual “Media Center” to inform and promote the regional community, to be a communications resource for SFTA and its collaborating partners
Release of a comprehensive informational website with links to community organizations and activities, an event calendar and a blog for comment and discussion.
Development of informal “Collaborative Partner” relationships with other organizations in the South Florida region that share SFTA’s desire to strengthen to community and promote it widely. The first of these will be announced shortly.
Under the leadership of Linda Gove, Executive Director, and with the endorsement of the Board of Directors, the SFTA engaged the services of Next Horizon Communications (NHC) who helped us formulate our ideas in a “Messaging Summit” and is assisting the SFTA in this campaign roll-out and the virtual media center. We will continue to work closely with NHC throughout this campaign.
The entire SFTA Board of Directors and I are confident that this campaign will have a great, positive impact on the lives of the technology community in South Florida and the economic well-being of the entire region. I hope you will join us in our efforts, and I welcome you to the campaign.
In closing, 2013 continues to be an unprecedented year for learning, connecting and growing in our South Florida community. We will continue our summer networking on July 24th, when the SFTA and FPL FiberNet are co-sponsoring the Neurons & Networking event brought to you by the LST Hub at the Max Plank Institute in Jupiter. I’m told it is already sold out, and there are 150 registered. The SFTA August program, on Wednesday, August 28th promises to target another outstanding topic, Cloud Compare, and will be held at the University of Miami Life Sciences Technology Park in Miami. In September, we are back in Broward and on September 26th, Citrix will host “What are the Next Big Innovations? Mobile, Big Data, Sensors” at their Ft. Lauderdale HQ.
It is evident that we are committed to broaden our presence – Miami to Jupiter – and our scope – Neurons to the Cloud.
The SFTA is here for you and so am I.
Thank you!
Best regards,
Lonnie Maier
President, South Florida Technology Alliance
Director, Enterprise Sales – Florida, FPL FiberNet