A while back, Jesse Stay (FriendFeed | blog) asked a question on Twitter (which I, of course, responded to on FriendFeed, as did many others). It was a simple question:
Just curious, if you had one city in the U.S to live, based on affordability and web 2.0 networking potential, where would you live?
I tossed in a second to the response of “Des Moines, IA” from fellow local tweep Andy Brudtkuhl (FriendFeed | blog). It was a knee-jerk response based almost entirely on the fact that I love living in the Des Moines area, and I feel as though there’s a lot of potential hidden here that no one has felt is worthy of tapping into because, well, it’s Des Moines, Iowa.
I thought the conversation was over until Jesse pinged me a reply on Twitter asking what web 2.0 businesses have come out of Des Moines.
Wait, what? You mean I actually have to qualify my answer? On the internet? I didn’t think we had to do that sort of thing these days. In fact, I don’t recall ever having to do that.
Jesse had me cornered. So, I naturally turned to my tweeps. I asked for a list of web 2.0 products and/or companies that got their start in Des Moines. We came up with the obvious SmartyPig.com. Someone mentioned offhand that the developer of the Jabber/XMPP protocol came from Iowa. Someone else asked if we get to count Chris Pirillo (FriendFeed | blog) since he’s an Iowan. Hmmmmm… We scratched our heads for a while. That was about all we could come up with. Nothing substantial had really had its roots in Des Moines. We were pretty much utterly devoid of interesting web 2.0 products.
I felt compelled to respond to Jesse. Even though the answer wasn’t necessarily what I would have liked to give, he deserved a response. The answer was, unfortunately, Des Moines had been the home to very little by way of web 2.0 products.
That’s when I realized: we may be short on product, but we make up for it with our people.
I have yet to find a more dedicated and engaged group of social media enthusiasts outside of the Iowa demographic. And while these people may not be creating web 2.0 startups out of their garages, they are definitely heavily involved in the web 2.0 universe – far more than I ever thought a remote village like Des Moines could ever possibly be.
We have a tweetup group that gets together periodically to talk shop. One of our tweeps has started an online business selling Twitter ID cards to other regional tweetup groups. We have people voraciously working with Iowa-based corporation to understand social media and begin to create an online identity and voice. Co-working? We’ve got that. Jelly? We’ve got that, too. An online-conscious patent and trademark lawyer? Sure! Someone posting their life online? You bet. Web consulting? There‘s several. Social media consulting? Only the best. There are hundreds of us on Twitter, FriendFeed, blogs – you name it. Maybe it has something to do with the vague feeling of being a million miles away from the epicenter of everything cool and interesting that forces us to co-exist online in these social communities. Maybe we’re all looking for the next best thing. Maybe we’re each secretly building the next best thing. But whatever the reason, there is a presence there that amazes me every time I dip my toe into one of our numerous social circles.
The fact is, despite the massive gravitational pull of tech talent towards Silicon Valley, the next big thing may not even come out of California. It might come out of Seattle, or Minneapolis, or Tempe, Arizona. It depends on where the focal point of talent, passion, and just plain luck manages to get drawn together, fire on all cylinders, and successfully strike online gold (I’m well aware of how atrocious a mix of metaphors that was).
It could happen in New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago. Or, it could happen in Des Moines, Iowa.