1) Most of South Florida tends to lag in technology by 2-3 years. This is in huge contrast to Silicon Valley where early adopters are the norm and seemingly embraced. It’s not to say that there aren’t people using cutting edge tools but in my experience, it’s been the minority

2) The Internet development & social media communities are still disjointed. Refresh & Social Media Club, among others, are really helping in this but there is a HUGE difference in the level of collaboration & cooperation between the companies in the valley and here. I know this because I’ve been privy, due to my work w/ Mozilla, to what’s happening on the west coast. We need to trust each other more and openly share stuff as if it were ingrained in our nature.

3) Lowering the cost of rental space could be beneficial & I really think another Briklodge-type place that is more centralized would be a big win.

4) Companies need to stop trying to pay people in “Sun Dollars” and get in line with salaries in other places. Bottom line is that money talks & South Florida companies have been traditionally cheap. That needs to change. And telling someone to work for sweat equity ain’t gonna cut it.

I’m going to give this some more thought but these are just some immediate things that I’ve seen over the years and that are still abundantly apparent.

I agree 100% with you on the school issue about them both wanting to fill the cubicle farms of the big corporations and the brain drain issue (I left Miami for school too).

I was really using the grove as an example. but Midtown/design district are even more lacking in respect to public transportation. And ft.lauderdale really isn’t much cheaper, and it has fewer corporations up there. (plus we all know its inferior to dade county )

2. I’d like to throw in a word for public transportation. Making it easy for students without easy access to cars to get from their dorm rooms or apartments to an internship in The Grove is key.

3. The lack of cheap housing has pushed many young professionals north into Ft. Lauderdale and central Florida. It’ll be tough to reverse that with an oasis as small as The Grove. The long awaited revitalization of the midtown and design district areas would also help increase local housing stock, especially if we can turn all that extra condo development that’s sitting unused or unfinished after the real estate bust into affordable housing instead of seasonal timeshares for wealthy tourists.

4. Talented kids attend local high schools as well. Then they go to college out of state and never come back. It’s a source of brain drain that I don’t hear mentioned very often. We need to be able to pull them back with summer internships and jobs in places other than the aforementioned corporate IT departments.

I just don’t see the same big money venture capital coming into this area that I imagine went into Silicon Valley, New England, and the Research Triangle. We just can’t depend on angels anymore, especially in this economic climate. We should forge our own path with a combination of gov’t funding, university resources, and lots of private cooperation. More Voltron, less Ultraman.