The fact that Charleston has a high tech community may well be one of our best kept secrets.  While we have several different organizations that are designed to help promote the Charleston high tech community, it seems as though everyone wants to “go solo”.   That has created a fragmented view of all that Charleston has to offer when it comes to establishing a technology business in the region.    That’s unfortunate for small businesses like Cyber Sprocket Labs because it leaves us with a very small talent pool to work with.   Sure there is some great talent here, just most of the talent is gainfully employed.   The rest are few and far between, which means you just have to be lucky with your timing to find the right people.

Maybe, someday, when we have all kinds of free time (what’s that?) on our hands, we’ll make a concerted effort to get all the disparate high tech teams working together.  In the meantime, if you are considering relocating either your business or yourself to Charleston and are firmly entrenched in the high tech marketplace, here are a few resources we use around town.

Regional Publications

• Charleston Regional Business Journal – a good publication for getting Charleston area news.   They even have an occasional news story about a local high tech success story.

Technical Organizations

• Charleston Digital Corridor – a group whose primary mission is to get high tech companies to relocate to specific (incorporated in the city) areas of Charleston.  They host various gatherings to talk business topics that may interest high tech companies.
• Charleston Inspired (CRDA) – this group promotes the Tri-county (Charleston, Berkley, Dorchester) area in an effort to attract big businesses.   We’ve not dealt with them much as our initial, though brief, encounter a few years back had the vibe that we were too small and too young to warrant attention.  Maybe we’ll check in with them again now that we’re older and bigger.

Notable Technology Companies

• Blackbaud – fundraising SaaS and software systems, the most recognizable and possibly the largest computer technology company in Charleston.  Almost anyone that writes code for a living and has been on the job market has interviewed here.
• Benefit Focus – human resources SaaS, another big player in the software community.   If you’ve not interviewed at Blackbaud may very well have been across the street on Daniel Island interviewing here.
• Google - while technically not part of Charleston (it is in Berkley County), Google’s data center opening in 2008 put it on the map and it is less than an hour from downtown Charleston. Not many tech job openings at the facility, but hey – it’s Google so it warrants mention here.

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0 Comment   |   Posted in Charleston SC,Company Info by lcleveland on January 21, 2010