Why and how to make Southeast Michigan a worldwide hub for web developers

I got a phone call a few weeks ago from a Detroit man who wanted us to help his e-commerce website get better placement in the search engines. He didn’t want to completely revamp the website; he just wanted advice on search engine marketing. I told him that while my company performs SEO services, they’re usually part of a total website overhaul. When I referred him to a few local companies who focus on only SEO/SEM, he said, “Gosh, Ann Arbor sure does have A LOT of web companies. That city is like a web design MECCA.”

I thought about that concept – that our city and surrounding region is actually becoming a hub for web companies – and decided that our local web development community should brand and promote the region as a web development mecca.

Here’s why:

1. Global business opportunities: We already have some stellar local web development companies from large to small, those who develop huge e-commerce sites to those of us who build online communities. We could pull together to highlight the local web development industry, call attention to our combined capabilities, and bolster our reputation as a national and global mecca for web development.

2. Diversify or die: Clearly Michigan needs to diversify. We all know that the auto industry is no longer sustaining us. The State is currently promoting other industries including advanced automotive and manufacturing, alternative energy, homeland security, and life sciences. But the State isn’t doing much to highlight our IT industry – which is odd because I can think of at least 25 web and software firms who are prospering. No, they’re not firms employing 500 people; they may have just 10, 20, or 50 people, but they’re growing- by taking advantage of business opportunities around the State, country, and across the world. The State could benefit by promoting and learning from the successes of these small, agile, entrepreneurial firms.

Fine, enough pontificating. So, how could we make Ann Arbor a web development hub? Here are some thoughts:

1. Bring us BRAINS!

We have a deep pool of talent coming from our local colleges and universities - University of Michigan, Eastern Michigan University, local colleges (Albion, Adrian, Sienna Heights, Concordia) and WCC’s Internet Professional program. When I say “talent pool,” I’m not just talking about software engineers and MBAs. I’m talking about people who can communicate, write, speak, and build relationships with other people. I’m talking about people with the skill set to become great project managers, production assistants, creative directors, multimedia developers, Ruby on Rails programmers, and IT sales experts. We need to keep these smart folks in Southeast Michigan with fun, rewarding JOBS and long, prosperous CAREER PATHS. How can we create the jobs? Between the larger web companies (Google, Organic, Fry Multimedia, Enlighten…) and the numerous smaller companies (web design firms, web-based application and database development companies, SEO/SEM consultants), I think we could and do create quite a few jobs. Our firm plans to expand from 6 to 8 team members this year, which doesn’t seem like much, but if every web firm is expanding by 20%, that’s substantial!

2. Keep those BRAINS!

The way we keep talented, creative professionals is provide them with fun, affordable places to live (I’ll save my thoughts on this for another post), and provide them with long, prosperous CAREER PATHS. No, they don’t expect to work at the same company for their entire career. But they do need stepping stones on their career path – which is what all those web companies I mentioned above can provide. For example, we may train someone as a production assistant; that person might go to Pure Visibility as a technical manager, and then on to Fry as their Director of Technical Sales. If we don’t provide young professionals with career paths, they will go to other cities and states that do. (And just so we’re clear, the project managers we train within our company have transferable skills that could be applied to all kinds of other industries – our project managers might leave our company to help some of those Michigan-based alternative energy companies manage their projects, and that would be A-OK with me.)

3. Local Companies Collaborate

You’ve probably heard the buzzword “open innovation” a few too many times in the past week, but I’m going to say it again. Open innovation, Web 2.0 development and collaboration instead of competition are the concepts that could help our companies develop quicker/cheaper/better web-based applications and allow us to compete on a global scale. The way we’ll become a global center for web development is by building our community, networking, sitting down for coffee, hosting national and international events, sharing our thoughts and ideas with each other, and teaming up to accomplish great things. They say in some cases “the sum is greater than the parts,” and in Ann Arbor’s case, our combined efforts could make our community the place where web experts reside and web companies grow.