All the economic development professionals can rest easy: Forbes magazine still favors Boise.
Earlier this month, a Forbes reporter was in town interviewing executives at tech companies for the company's annual Best Places for Business and Careers edition, which comes out in about a month.
Shane Vaughan, the marketing director at the Boise software company Balihoo, was interviewed. He said it looks as if Boise will make the top 5 of this year's list.
The story will focus on Boise's growing tech industry. The reporter interviewed other tech executives, including Kevin Benedict with MobileDataforce and Jason Crawforth, who recently sold his company Treetop Technologies to MobileDataforce.
It is always cool to see the tech industry get a little more national recognition. But it's too bad the article won't come out until after the Legislature leaves town.
Speaking of this session of the Legislature: Not much is happening for the tech industry.
Last year, the Governor's Tech Council had me somewhat excited about its $50 million package of incentives to help tech. But the governor soon put the kibosh on that.
The governor, however, did offer me a glimmer of hope when he named a tech guy as the new Commerce Director.
Jim Ellick, a former Silicon Valley executive with decades of tech-company experience, took over the job on July 1.
I think Ellick didn't make the best impression, partly because he wasn't that accessible at first, and he's not a very savvy politician.
But from my interview with him and from what others have told me, he did know what he was talking about.
I found it refreshing to hear from him that Idaho wasn't doing enough to compete with other states and that the state should do something to help Micron.
But I don't think our legislators found his views that refreshing. A month ago, Ellick took a sudden and unexplained leave of absence. I'll be surprised if he comes back.
His departure also left the fate of the governor's council up in the air. The governor disbanded it, and Ellick was tasked with coming up with something new to replace it.
When I first blogged on this, most people who commented weren't surprised.
"Idaho doesn't want Micron. Why wouldn't the guy in charge of trying to save tech in Idaho bail? He assumed that any state wouldn't want to lose a employer as large as Micron ... as anybody would. When he realized he was wrong, time to get out," said Idaho123.
Speaking of Micron: The company plans to unveil its plans for its image-sensor business at a media and analyst event Tuesday in San Jose . The company is pitching it as a new identity, but I'll be curious to see if it also involves bringing on a new partner.
Also mark your calendars for March 10, because that's when Aaron Stanton says he'll be releasing the big idea he pitched to Google more than a year ago.
Stanton, of Boise, is the one behind the Web site CanGoogleHearMe.com.
He launched the site after attempting to make an unsolicited visit to Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters to pitch his idea. He was turned away, but didn't give up. He kept posting on his Web site and blogging about the effort and finally caught the attention of Google. But the last year, he's been sworn to secrecy while he developed the idea.
His Web site is still up and running, so you can catch up with all that he's been up to over the last year.
One final thought on the Forbes article.
I'll probably write a story about this when the article comes out, but I'm still not sold on the benefit of all this national publicity. The Boise Valley Economic Partnership is driving a lot of this. It has been forking over big bucks to its New York public relations firm to pitch Idaho to the national media. The group says we've already had 44 print and broadcast stories this year. I'll feel a lot better about this flood of fluff if it finally leads to some meaningful jobs.
Ken Dey is the high-technology reporter at the Idaho Statesman. Read his TechIdaho blog at IdahoStatesman.com. Reach him at 672-6757 or kdey@idahostatesman.com.
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