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M O N D A Y · A U G U S T 6 , 2 0 0 1

South Florida

NETWORKING 2.0

To the Internet Coast and beyond: the story of the
high-impact support groups that realized South Florida's high-tech ambitions

By Christine Winter,
Business Writer, Sun-Sentinel

Margaret Grisdela, Founder
Technology Forum of South Florida

Back in the good old days of the Internet start-up boom, the Boca.coms would book a room at Gatsby's in Boca Raton after work once a month and "just show up and hang out."

They drank beer, exchanged business cards, and had fun. "It was very informal, we had no real agenda, no fees, no dues," said Scott Kurland, president of Windough.com in Boca Raton. Members' companies, some perhaps fishing for skilled workers in a shallow labor pool, took turns sponsoring the free food spread, in exchange for a 10-minute talk about themselves. The Boca.coms were a low-key version of what had become a regular part of the techie lifestyle in South Florida during the dot-com heyday: after-work groups designed to keep everybody, especially new entrepreneurs, plugged into the ever-changing technology landscape along the Internet Coast.

The large number of well-attended but casually organized support groups in the high-tech arena in South Florida has given fledgling entrepreneurs and companies a boost that more formal industry organizations don't provide. Members say the meetings helped them keep abreast of the rapidly changing high-tech scene, hook up with the local people and services they need, and even make deals.

But the impact goes beyond just social and professional networking. The founders of the Internet Coast, the granddaddy of all South Florida techie groups, have become a force in Tallahassee as well: They fought hard to get acceptance for the idea of the NAP, an Internet switching hub, in South Florida, and to improve educational facilities in the area. Smaller groups hold forums and panel discussions that explore new technologies and introduce outside business leaders to local players.

The networking groups work on many levels: Entrepreneurs find compatible technologies and partnerships among other members. Companies recruit, workers look for jobs, and everybody tries to figure out what the next big wave will be. Hordes of venture capitalists, public relations people, advertising agencies, lawyers and accountants attended the meetings during those heady dot-com days, cruising for business.

LET'S MAKE A DEAL
Mick Lopez, chief executive of eFiltro, a Coral Gables-based consulting firm that matches up high-tech start-ups and investors, describes himself as a "regular on the circuit" for high-tech networking.

He said he came away from one large conference organized by several local support groups with eight business leads. He later closed two deals.

"Recently, I was eating at a sushi restaurant in Coral Cables and a guy came up to me who remembered me from one of the many meetings I attend," Lopez said. He quickly recruited the former dot-commer, now with a large bank, to help organize eFiltro's angel investor network.

Among the most active groups in the tri-county area are the Technology Forum of South Florida, the Alliance of Internet Professionals, First Tuesday, Tuesday Network (soon to merge with the Miami Internet Alliance), Women in Technology and The South Florida Telecom Forum, along with less formal groups like the Boca.coms.

Organizers like Margaret Grisdela, founder of Technology Forum, say making business contacts is at the heart of every high-tech group. She pointed to the need for business and product alliances among hardware, software, networking and Internet companies.

"Strategic networking is the primary reason for the Tech Forum," she said. "So much changes -- the technology, the players -- there's a real need to keep up with what's going on."

SWEET SERENDIPITY
Why does high-tech lend itself to such nurturing organizations, more so than, say, banking or manufacturing or real estate?

The easy answer is that it is an industry populated by workers who are young and intense, work long hours and have little other social life. But organizers note that most of these groups attract few, if any, information technology workers, and are usually made up instead of executives, entrepreneurs, Web designers and investors, along with staff from marketing, sales and support departments.

"The industry just lends itself to these kind of groups," said Grisdela, the chief executive of Clientize.com, a Boca Raton-based Internet marketing company.

"For the real leaders and those becoming tomorrow's leaders, it is useful to get out into the fray because serendipitous things can happen," wrote Traver Gruen-Kennedy, chief strategist at Citrix Systems Inc., who was recently named president of the Technology Forum, in an e-mail interview.

"Sometimes the secretary's sister works for so-and-so that you've been trying to connect with; the tech nerd hears a conversation translating into a business need and a product is born; a marketing genius finds an engineer lacking street smarts but holding a valuable patent. This is how business happens today, one big Tupperware party!"

Bridgette King, who handles public relations for the South Florida Chapter of the Association of Internet Professionals, thinks high-tech workers tend to be less competitive with each other than professionals in other fields such as real estate and banking.

"I don't think people in other industries benefit from knowing each other the way you can in technology," said King, president of Fort Lauderdale-based GTS Communications, a high-tech public relations and marketing firm.

SEEKING THE MAGIC
In such a fast-moving business, members of these groups say they often come for the networking, but stay for the educational programs.

The Association of Internet Professionals has run educational programs on subjects like how to realistically value an Internet business, how to get funded and how to make money from your Web site. The Tech Forum recently had a program on the state of the wireless industry, and Tuesday Network even went so far as to throw a pink slip party, with speakers who warned others of the pratfalls they had taken.

"When we started in October 1999, everybody was bedazzled by magic Internet money," said Seth Gordon, managing partner of GDB and Partners, a Miami public relations and marketing firm, and the founder of Tuesday Network. "Everybody wanted in.

"Everybody wanted to know the deals, everybody wanted an opportunity to meet the people making the deals so they could emulate them. We would hold a program and afterward there would be feverish networking," he recalled.

"It was like everybody had two hours to meet as many people as they could because they never knew who would be the magic conduit," he added.

Michelle Beauchamp, president of Accelerated Strategies, Coral Gables, a high-tech marketing and advertising firm, said she had a feeling early on that the Internet was going to change her business.

"I joined Tuesday Network because I wanted to immerse myself in technology, I wanted to learn as much as I could," she said.

Tuesday Network was started by Gordon after he read about the First Tuesday group, based in London. He called the group's headquarters, but couldn't drum up much enthusiasm for opening a chapter in South Florida. "I figured there was no magic in throwing a cocktail party, so I started a group myself," he said. A few months after the first meeting of his Tuesday Network, which borrowed from the other Tuesday group's name, First Tuesday did open a chapter in Miami.

FOR THE LONG HAUL
But times have changed and Tuesday Network will soon fold into the Miami Internet Alliance, as the dot-com bust has definitely hurt attendance on the techie networking scene. The Boca.coms haven't held a meeting in several months. Even the more structured groups have seen attendance fall off sharply from the days in early 2000 when they would easily draw 800 people to a weekday evening event.

Yet the "core" members of these groups, many of whom attend the meetings of more than one organization, say the industry downturn may have hurt attendance, but it has made their groups better. Hangers-on, lured by the excitement of the dot-com boom, have mostly fallen by the wayside, and the focus now is less social and more business-oriented.

The tech industry in South Florida is not going to die, and technology will never get boring," said King. "I don't think the groups will ever go away."