Technology and Small Town America, Part 5

Associate Editor Rob Wright ventured to Nevada, Mo., and spent a week in the rural community of 8,600 residents this summer to find out what's really going on in small towns and small businesses. Click here for the full report, "Small Town, Giant Aspirations," and Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of Technology and Small Town America.

I don't want to go back. There, I said it. Are you happy, now, Nevada?

Of course I want to go back to my home in Boston. But I know now that it's back to pushy media relations and sanitized press briefings. It's back to Comdex and other glitzy trade shows that make E!'s "Wild On" look like "The Golden Girls." It's back to murky double-speak and marketing talk, back to dozens of PR agents that just want to "touch base," back to a world where people care more about stock prices than the true value of technology.

There's just something about Nevada that leaves me wanting more. I've seen a different view of the IT industry. I've been granted a glimpse of the impact of technology. I've seen a sliver of the potential become reality. It's my last day (and my last diary entry for this column series), but I have a feeling I'll be writing about Nevada's remarkable story again soon enough.

I wake up, pack my things, and grab some continental breakfast in a room adjacent to the lobby, right underneath the mantle that I decorated with miniature bails of hay just a day earlier. "You're leaving us already?" the kind women at the front ask me as I check out. "Yes, I'm afraid so," I say. "But anytime you need some hay moved around, you let me know."

On my last day, I visit Phil Vinyard, owner of Vinyard Farm and Home Supply. Phil has an interesting background. Before taking over the family business, he lived in Massachusetts where he attended the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and also worked at Opus Communications, which is part of HCPro's healthcare information services firm.

Phil's store is interesting as well. The family-run business started out selling strictly farm supplies but after Phil replaced his father as store manager, he jumped on the Digital Decade. He brought in a Radio Shack outlet and began selling computer parts, peripherals and cell phones. Vinyard Farm and Home Supply is known as "the little farm store that got way out of hand" and that's never been more true than today. "We're much more technology-intensive today," Phil says as he leads me through the store. "It was quite a culture change."

Vinyard also added technology to his own business: Unix servers, handheld computers and PCs now automate and organize the store's operations. He also has sound-editing software on his PC to produce his own radio commercials, which he then burns to CDs for the local station. "People come into the store all the time quoting those suckers," Vinyard says.

Phil explains how technology has made his business operations more accurate and efficient, how the Internet has become an indispensable tool, how great the Nevada TeleCenter (Part 3) is, and how badly the area needs high-speed Internet access. He estimates that he's spent about $4,000 to $5,000 on technology so far this year. He shows me his Compaq iPaq handheld and displays the loads of information he keeps on it. "I love this thing," he says as if it were a personal assistant.

We start talking about Compaq, and Phil pauses for a moment. "I have an interesting story about Compaq," he says. I lean forward, eagerly anticipating his story as if it were a Porterhouse steak. Phil tells he and his wife won a vacation to Maui from Radio Shack about three years ago for meeting sales goals. Because the former computer maker had an alliance with Radio Shack, several Compaq officials were also on the company-sponsored vacation as well. "Boy, did those guys party hard," Phil says, almost in disbelief. "They were high rollers, spending money like crazy." Phil tells me that the Compaq boys blew quite a bit of money on expensive food and beverages, along with other amenities.

"What else?" I ask curiously.

"I felt the private helicopter they used to hop from island to island was particularly pretentious," Phil says.

I'm beginning to think it was more than just Dell-envy that did in the former heavyweight champion of the PC.

Back to Nevada. I depart Phil's office and head to City Hall one last time. About 60 seconds after putting a call out for Mark Mitchell, Nevada's IT specialist, he shows up at the City Hall offices. I return the digital camera the city had loaned me (Part 2), despite the fact that I had come to love it dearly. Mark quickly downloads the photos, e-mails them to my work address and then burns the photo files on a CD, too. "A souvenir," he says with a smile.

Wrapping up my time in Nevada, I quickly jump over to Casa Azteca, the newest Mexican restaurant in town. Mary Reinert recommended it to me and told me that the owner used to work for Microsoft. I don't get a chance to meet him, but the food is spectacular. The place is crowded for lunch, and I notice immediately that instead of sports highlights or trashy daytime television shows, the big screen TV in the middle of restaurant is on CNBC, specifically the program "Innovation Day." People are actually watching the program as well as the stock tickers at the bottom of the screen. I'm surprised, even after a week in Nevada.

Ironically, the last thing I see before hopping in the car and heading back to Kansas City is a commercial on the big screen for DirecTV offering DSL service for $29.99. I shake my head, pay the bill, and head out.

Epilogue
Back in Boston, the story of Nevada just kept getting more interesting even weeks after I returned. I began a search for any VAR500 solution providers in the area of Nevada to see if they had done any work in the city. I called a few operating in the Kansas City metro area and in Southwest Missouri. Finally, I got in touch with Jack Henry and Associates, a Monett, Mo.-based firm that provides software solutions for banks and credit unions. While not a household name, Jack Henry and Associates has been a model of financial success--13 consecutive quarters or record revenue, nearly $400 million in revenue in the last fiscal year--and has more than 2,100 customers nationwide, including one of the four banks in Nevada.

I called up Kevin Williams, CFO at Jack Henry and Associates, told him about my assignment in Nevada and asked him if his company had done any work in the city. Williams seemed confused. See, he grew up in Nevada and lived there for 20 years. He tells me his mother and father worked at the now-defunct state mental hospital (Part 2). He hadn't been home in quite some time and remembers the quiet small town, down on its luck and behind the technology times, in the early 90s. "How the hell did you pick Nevada?" he asked, genuinely bewildered.

I quickly explain how I chose Nevada for my small town case study (Part 1) and mention the TeleCenter. "The Tele-what?" Williams asks, again sounding like he thinks I'm putting one over on him. "The TeleCenter," I say. "The state converted parts of the old hospital into computer labs and interactive classrooms and colleges and universities and other groups offer classes and IT training there now."

I slowly convince him that I'm sincere. We start talking about the small and medium business market and how towns like Nevada are underserved. Yet Williams says his company has seen more growth and spending in rural communities and small towns than larger urban areas. "You just don't have the economic decline and layoffs in the small towns," he says. "The cost of living is lower, the schools are often better, and the economy doesn't suffer as much during hard times. Eventually, people will start to see this and I think more IT resources will come to small towns."

Williams and I talk for a while longer about the advancements made by the Nevada city government and local business, as well as the TeleCenter. "That's unbelievable. I'll have to check it out," Williams says.

If you're a solution provider, maybe you should, too.

*****

Later, on the advice of some Nevada businessmen, I call SBC Communications, which owns the local telecommunications provider, Southwestern Bell, to see what the broadband status was for the city. First, I called the customer service line and ask if there's any DSL service available in Nevada. I speak to a polite young woman who tells me that DSL is currently not available for Nevada. I ask why, but all she could tell me is that is that I should try back in six months. "Will you offer DSL then?" I ask, to which the customer service agent tells me that there's no guarantee Nevada will get DSL at all.

There must be a reason, right? There must be a reason why a town with so many Internet surfers, Web sites and PC (or Mac) owners doesn't have broadband. The demand is there, so that can't be it. So what's holding it back? I called SBC's media relations department several times and despite speaking directly to at least one press relations official and explaining my assignment to him, I never get a call back.

Now, I know what you're thinking at this point. Big deal, right? Hundreds, thousands of small towns and rural communities don't have high-speed Internet access. Plenty of towns go on without attracted VARs or technology vendors. Why should I be complaining about some rural backwater in Missouri? What makes Nevada so special? Nothing and everything, I say.

Everything is special about Nevada because they've done so much on their own and without much help from the IT industry. The city's work ethic and take-charge mentality is exemplary. At the same time, nothing is special about Nevada because it's a typical rural city in the Midwest, a tight community of hardworking folks, small business owners, baseball (not soccer) moms and quiet neighborhoods. The size of its population--roughly 9,000--is barely a blip on the radar screen. Nothing is unique about its location--approximately 93 miles south of Kansas City and about an hour's drive for any other large metropolitan area. The landscape, while scenic with green fields and rows of corn, is flat and unremarkable. Nothing is special about Nevada on the surface. And that's the beauty of it all. There's hundreds or thousands of towns out there just like Nevada, waiting to embrace technology.

It's time to take a look closer.