NEOSA Blog

Economic news continues to dominate the media as concerns are expressed about a so-called double-dip recession, new applications for unemployment increase, local housing sales continue to slow and some economists begin to express concerns over deflation. In fact, I recently saw an article on CNBC in which economist David Rosenberg with Gluskin Sheff posited that we’re actually in a depression at this point, drawing intriguing comparisons to 1929-1930.

These uncertainties appear to be affecting the regional tech sector as well as our most recent quarterly survey showed a slight reversal of some positive trends from the first quarter survey.

Question: What do you get when you mix about 40 Americans with about 40 Canadians who all have a passion for the tech industry in a beautiful North American city for three days?

Answer: You get a ton of great ideas and you build a huge community to support the tech industry here and across the border (and you also get to sample some pretty great Canadian beer and smoked salmon).

Last week I attended a gathering of technology associations from around North America at the semi-annual TecNA Conference held in Ottawa, Canada. TecNA, short for Technology Councils of North America, is an association of technology trade associations, like NEOSA, from around the continent. We currently have approximately 40 member associations, spanning the USA from Washington State to North Carolina, and we even have six associations from Canada.

At the NEOSA Best of Tech Awards this past May, we recognized FirstEnergy for their outstanding IT internship and co-op program. The company added IT co-ops as a focus area in 2006 and it’s been pretty successful. In the past four years, almost 80 students have gone through the program and 35 have been hired on as permanent staff.

I recently spent time with Bennett Gaines, CIO, to interview him for a NEOSA podcast and to learn more about the company’s internship program.