Small town software economics
Every small town should have a software-development industry.
However, most rural towns, it has to be said, are not crying out for software developers.
Developers generally don't engage with local business communities. Not many small businesses can justify the expense of bespoke software. And if we developers are selling product, the focus tends to be global rather than local. So we tend to be invisible to the local business and government networks.
The flip side of that coin is this: developers represent pure export income for the local community. It's not just money sloshing around internally, it's new money coming in and being spent locally. So the broader community benefits - a rising tide lifts all boats.
There are social reasons why a software development community is attractive to small towns. Working from home in many cases, we don't clog up the roads. Our daily activities have very low environmental impact. But we spend as much as anybody else in the community and we generate demand for schools and hairdressers and hospitals like everybody else.
As each of us migrates out of the city that's one less car clogging the freeways and the school dropoff zones. If you have enough software professionals moving from the big population centers, their demand for services will ultimately flatten out many of the inequities of of service distribution that plague rural areas. Which will go some way to dissolving the metro-rural divide that exists in a country like Australia. So State and Federal bodies should be interested in this nascent social trend (and some are)
Much is made of how we need ever-faster internet to enable this kind of social movement. Whilst that may be true for specialist services like medical imaging and movie production, it's just not necessary for most developers. It's just has to be "fast enough". Sure, faster is kinda nice, but before the NBN came along I was doing just fine with a 7Mbps ADSL2 connection. Because when I'm actively building something, my network traffic consists of commits to my source-control system and Stack Overflow searches. When I'm hosting an app it's in a commercial datacenter and I use their bandwidth - I certainly don't do it from home. That would be prohibitively costly in terms of admin time and dangerous in terms of security. So as a rural software developer, the one time I need faster internet is when I'm watching a streaming movie with the kids.
So, as a rural leader looking to broaden your economic and social base, how do you attract developers to your community?
Be close to the city, but not too close. There's a geographic "Goldilocks zone". If you're close enough to the big smoke that commuting is uncomfortably possible, that's too close. If you're 800km away that's a step too far.
Be attractive. Natural attractions and lifestyle are pretty critical - climate, mountains, beaches. Naturally, holiday destinations are the first places we think of when we're planning a move from the city (although I can testify that horse people probably just need flat land, good fences and a vet). Don't be racist or run-down. Don't be one of those towns that shuns outsiders until they've lived there for two generations.
Generate local opportunities: This is one thing you can control: On those occasions when you need tech talent, search locally before turning to the big smoke. If you have big industries locally (e.g resource industries, a big local manufacturer) encourage them to do the same. Why not have a day where you (and your big local employers) lay out your business challenges to the local tech community and see what comes out of the woodwork. That stuff is like catnip to the tech elite.
