Back to the Future

If Women's Wear Daily were covering the recent Future Forward 2001 in Vermont, the headline would likely read, "Vintage Values Back in Style for Techies!"

Those retro Yankee virtues -- frugality, maturity, discipline, and a steely grip on reality, even when it's harsh -- dominated the summit held in Woodstock late last month.

Future Forum 2001: The New England Techology Summit drew some 160 regional speakers and participants ranging from heavy hitters like John Cullinane to Adams, Harkness & Hill venture capitalists to young entrepreneurs like Gregg Favalora, a 27-year-old whiz kid eager to show off his 3-D imaging system to a group with the pocket change he needs to move from beta to launch. Inventor Dean Kamen, of "Ginger" fame, made a cameo appearance to talk about FIRST -- his project to get kids jazzed about careers in science and technology -- before a panel of robots and their creators closed the show.

Gregg Favalora of Actuality Systems demonstrates his 3-D imaging system.

Ben and Jerry, Meet Jed Bartlet

In an interesting political contest, rival governors Howard Dean from Vermont (world headquarters of Cherry Garcia) and Jeanne Shaheen from New Hampshire (fictional home state of The West Wing's favorite son) staged a point-counterpoint for conference attendees.

Fresh from a trip to New York, Dean opened the meeting by telling of a Manhattan transit cop who confided that he had recently begun fantasizing about Vermont. The governor speculated that shell-shocked urbanites may soon begin abandoning their besieged cities for the pastoral Green Mountain State. "Will our trickle of relocating New Yorkers become a stream?" he wondered hopefully. Should they come, he says, Manhattan refugees will find a well-wired state, an educated workforce, and lots of government help. But about those cell phones ... As conferees discovered, in the battle between digital signals and Vermont's granite peaks, the mountains always win.

Shaheen, who stopped just short of announcing a run for Senate, countered Dean's vows by touting her state's impressive record of tech accomplishments. New Hampshire boasts one of the highest concentrations of tech workers in the nation, and it is the only New England state to see an increase in manufacturing jobs over the past decade. But Shaheen did acknowledge that an obdurate legislature, phobic of consumer taxes, was making her life as an industry-friendly governor difficult. State representatives recently voted down her modest proposal for a 2.5% sales tax to fund education by passing the cost on to business once again.

"Businesses must be willing to lobby," she pleaded, "or the legislature will take the path of least resistance."

The summit's liveliest pol in the making was Craig Benson, founder of Cabletron Systems, who is running for New Hampshire governor as a moderate Republican. Benson hopes to jump-start state government by applying top-level management wizardry to the problem. He points to George W. Bush, the first MBA president, as a model.

"Bush has been criticized for being less intellectual than other presidents, but he's done a good job of hiring people smarter than himself," Benson said. "In a big organization, it's hard to know everything that's going on and to get people to own problems. Government now is a top-down organization, and it needs to be bottom up. That's the only way to get things done."

Benson said that terrorists exploited the federal government's siloed agencies and vowed that he would run things differently in his home state. "Because New Hampshire is small, we can do things quickly," he promised.

Don't tell that to Shaheen. "Getting things to move in state government is like turning the Titanic," she said during her fireside chat. "We haven't done well in bringing technology to government," but not for want of trying. Just getting fish and game licensing online, she said, was a major hurdle. Good luck, Craig!