The JoCo Factor and Tech Growth

Take a look at Jonathan Coulton's list of tour dates:

• Boston, MA
• New York, NY
• Rochester, NY
• Toronto, ON
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Alexandria, VA
• Philadelphia, PA
• Ann Arbor, MI
• Chicago, IL
• Minneapolis, MN
• San Francisco, CA
• Portland, OR
• Seattle, WA
• Vancouver, BC

Notice anything? You might notice the big cities, but what about Rochester, Pittsburgh, and Ann Arbor? Not big cities, but all of these cities do have a common thread: they are the various centers of technology throughout the US and Canada. If your city/area is not on their, you probably don't have the tech talent pool you want to have.

Who is JoCo, you ask? He's an eccentric balladeer who writes music for geeks and nerds. He became famous among the overeducated and socially inept by spending an entire year creating and distributing free music on YouTube with his Thing-A-Week program, not only allowing free downloads and distribution, but encouraging users to create their own videos. He not only has a wiki, it contains data from a tool designed to count the number of times each song is played live. Sure, you may love your favorite band, you may talk about them on a forum, but how many of you have programmed for your favorite musician? If you haven't heard him, hit YouTube and/or his website. If you like it, buy some music and/or some swag (most of which was developed and is sold (possibly with licensing) by fans).

JoCo developed a loyal following from Thing-A-Week and writing the closing-credit songs for the games Portal and Portal 2. He hits on geek and nerd culture, with humorous songs devoted to topics like loneliness, mad science, Ikea, and fractals (his song "Mandelbrot Set" includes the Mandelbrot Set formula). He releases his music online and generally doesn't worry about copying. All of this makes him very popular with his target audience, the ones who get his jokes and approve of the postmodern capitalism that seems to sustain him just fine.

Unlike many artists, JoCo (mostly) determines his own tour cities. When his star was beginning to rise, he looked at data on the locations of people who bought his music, and played at venues in those cities. The result is what you see above. It's not the most complicated formula, but if you look at the cities and states involved, you'll see the big picture. Since geeks and nerds love JoCo, he goes to places where there are geeks and nerds.

If your city is not on here, you might just be missing something. Do you find it difficult to recruit and keep tech talent? Do you programmer/developer job postings languish? If you want to be the next Silicon Valley, what are you missing that is keeping the tech talent away? I'm going to post about VC and angel investing later, but money is secondary; to build a tech future for your city, you need the JoCo factor.

Now, how to get the JoCo factor, that's a tougher question...