An exchange with fellow members on the Jump-Starting Rochester Community site sparked my response that follows.  The article is titled Could a remote-work revolution spread tech outside its clusters?

Isn’t there a bit of a paradox at play? The article highlights the VCs actually taking their money and expertise to companies geographically located away from the traditional centers like Silicon Valley. This is happening at the same time as the trend/necessity for remote. There are a lot of other forces at play including reduced mobility. Some mix of the livable community, culture and business tech infrastructure (bandwidth, security, platforms,) will be  competitive advantages.

All of us have been sensing aspects of this, each through our own lens of perspective. Covid 19 almost overnight has made oil, real estate and travel industry near irrelevant and exposed the fault lines of existing inadequate systems like healthcare. Moreover, it has also uncovered, through necessity, the impact on our “air quality” overnight or within a few months. The photo’s of the before and after of the air quality in major cities are staggering.

The truth, sitting in plain sight is that we can choose to stop doing dumb, stupid stuff almost at warp speed. Why does it take a pandemic?

Never let a crisis go underutilized! There are many variations of that phrase.

I was reminded by a friend/colleague Wendy May, who is much more learned than me, that the Chinese word for “crisis” is often described by motivational speakers in English as “danger+opportunity” — — but it is more accurately translated as “the risk we face at this critical juncture”.

She goes on to refer to this time as an “incipient moment”. The early origins of the word incipient reflect a beginning with an action orientation.

Yes, this is a new beginning or incipient moment. What will we, you and me, choose to make of it?”

Thanks to Fred Beer, CEO of ITX and Bob Miller, CEO of Roc Group Software, and members of the Jump-Starting Rochester Community, for getting this conversation going.