Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Stand Up Paddleboarding with the Family
My kids (and wife) were hoping to document a river tragedy! I was testing my balance by running and jumping on the SUP board. Notice the cast on Caleb's arm... he has a little danger habit too :).
On the next attempt I made it just fine....
Rural Sourcing Update
As you may know, back in 2009 Unosquare helped get a company called Siletz Technologies off the ground. Our work was successful. Today, ST is a new rural sourcing provider of software testing. This is not nearshore or offshore outsourcing... but rather onshore outsourcing. New jobs right here in the US. The company has about 10 new employees and they're all working from a small office on the Central Oregon Coast, in a little city called Lincoln City. Almost all the employees are young tribal members with new training and, if they succeed, a new career in software testing.
Unosquare initially conceived the idea of putting a rural software testing center in Lincoln City. We needed a local entity to lead the way. Eventually, we began working with Dave Tovey from the Siletz Tribal Business Corporation. Dave is a champion and deeply experienced in setting up and building new businesses, especially Native American centric companies. He was one of the principles behind Cayuse Technologies located in Eastern Oregon. That company has over 500 employees today.
There are other examples of rural sourcing to be sure. In this Business Week article, a few other companies are mentioned that are on the leading edge of this new trend.
We think there is a future in rural sourcing. So Unosquare is gearing up to do it all over again. We have the consulting expertise, business model, and fund raising expertise to help rural agencies setup and run a small technology company. We think the most likely fit is an ERP (SAP or Oracle) support center - providing level 1 and level 2 support for larger companies that are not inclined to send these jobs overseas.
More on this later.
Unosquare initially conceived the idea of putting a rural software testing center in Lincoln City. We needed a local entity to lead the way. Eventually, we began working with Dave Tovey from the Siletz Tribal Business Corporation. Dave is a champion and deeply experienced in setting up and building new businesses, especially Native American centric companies. He was one of the principles behind Cayuse Technologies located in Eastern Oregon. That company has over 500 employees today.
There are other examples of rural sourcing to be sure. In this Business Week article, a few other companies are mentioned that are on the leading edge of this new trend.
We think there is a future in rural sourcing. So Unosquare is gearing up to do it all over again. We have the consulting expertise, business model, and fund raising expertise to help rural agencies setup and run a small technology company. We think the most likely fit is an ERP (SAP or Oracle) support center - providing level 1 and level 2 support for larger companies that are not inclined to send these jobs overseas.
Making Sense of Mexico's Violence
Back in September 2009 I wrote a story of Nearshore America's that tried to make sense of the violence in Mexico. Click here for the full story Unfortunately the content is becoming more and more relevant. The violence in Northern Mexico was increasing back then, rapidly, and beginning to heat up and consume prime time news casts. The attention is even worse today.
Rather than hide from it or pretend it doesn't exist, I acknowledged it and wrote about it in contrast with the safety of other IT destinations globally.
Rather than hide from it or pretend it doesn't exist, I acknowledged it and wrote about it in contrast with the safety of other IT destinations globally.
The H1B Visa versus the TN (Nafta) Visa
Industry periodicals are starting to explore the coming H1B crisis... or potential crisis... depending on who you read. Lou Dobbs used to try and make us all think our economic free fall started because of H1B's and illegal immigration. He didn't last too long. But he did notice a problem with the H1B's and the misuse and mistrust that swelled inside US corporations.
H1B's were intended to bring in highly skilled workers from outside the US only when a comparable US worker with that skill was not available. That makes perfect sense - still does. But US companies took advantage of the program and parachuted in tens of thousands of workers on the H1B, for less payroll cost, without considering that perfectly cabable US workers might also want those jobs. So Immigration Reform will incorporate some much needed changes to the H1B/L1 programs that have a negative effect on US employment trends.
The TN Visa is different. The traveling worker provisions built inside the NAFTA treaty give the US a powerful global advantage that only helps the US employment equation. In simple terms, the benefit of sourcing talent from Canada or Mexico is that as we help our neighbor... we help ourselves. NAFTA was setup in order to create a trading group that would effectively compete with the European Union. The alternative? If we can't effective compete on that level we will lose countless jobs in the US and that's fairly horrible news.
Also, Illegal immigration, in my opinion, will become less of an issue when Mexico's economy becomes less embattled. And the US can help in that fight by partnering more with Mexican and Canadian companies. Trading resources, sharing knowledge workers, collaborating on education and trade goals. That's my opinion.
My Biased View of Nearshore Location Selection
A recent article in Nearshore Americas ranked the top 5 cities in Latin America for IT sourcing. The judging criteria? Available IT resources and technical training. Oh brother! Guadalajara came in 3rd place behind Monterrey and Bogota, Columbia? Are you kidding me? Monterrey and Bogota?
For the record I like Nearshore Americas because nobody else is really diving into the Nearshore IT reporting world like they are. But to put Monterrey and Bogota above Guadalajara is... well, not right. Monterrey and Bogota are riddled with crime. Not so in GDL. With 7 million people and a very low crime rate, Guadalajara is one of the safest cities in all of Latin America. It ranked behind Chicago as having the strongest economic potential in a 2007 (FDI magazine study).
Heck, it's the home of the Mariachi bands and Chivas soccer team.
If for no other reason than there is no violent drug war blazing through the streets of Guadalajara it should have fared better. By contrast, Monterrey has recently become one of the most dangerous cities in Northern Mexico. In one recent incident, 50 armed men attacked a Holiday Inn at 3am to capture a few hostages. That kind of violence alone should eliminate Monterrey from any list of any kind... period!
Rankings like this should take in most of the relevant factors. I suggest they include things like crime rates, quality of life, cost of living, daily flights to and from the USA, climate, higher education system, and most important... quality of the Tequila (also made very close to Guadalajara).
For the record I like Nearshore Americas because nobody else is really diving into the Nearshore IT reporting world like they are. But to put Monterrey and Bogota above Guadalajara is... well, not right. Monterrey and Bogota are riddled with crime. Not so in GDL. With 7 million people and a very low crime rate, Guadalajara is one of the safest cities in all of Latin America. It ranked behind Chicago as having the strongest economic potential in a 2007 (FDI magazine study).
Heck, it's the home of the Mariachi bands and Chivas soccer team.
If for no other reason than there is no violent drug war blazing through the streets of Guadalajara it should have fared better. By contrast, Monterrey has recently become one of the most dangerous cities in Northern Mexico. In one recent incident, 50 armed men attacked a Holiday Inn at 3am to capture a few hostages. That kind of violence alone should eliminate Monterrey from any list of any kind... period!
Rankings like this should take in most of the relevant factors. I suggest they include things like crime rates, quality of life, cost of living, daily flights to and from the USA, climate, higher education system, and most important... quality of the Tequila (also made very close to Guadalajara).
End of a Good Year!
For two reasons May 2010 was special month for Unosquare. First, it marked the completion of our first full year of business operations. In that time we grew from 5 original employees to over 35 developers and didn't lose a single customer. Second, we presented an application for devices that we fully deployed in the cloud.
One of my business partners (I have two partners/co-owners in Mexico) had the chance to present this innovative work on stage in Mexico City... and he did it standing next to the General Manager of Microsoft in Mexico. We have uploaded the presentation to YouTube.
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| Unosquare's Juan Roman (center) presents with the General Manager of Microsoft in Mexico. |
In this presentation we showcased a set of educational/gaming applications that our team built for a client based in Mexico City. Our software engineers successfully deployed a series of web and mobile applications (for the iPhone, Blackberry, xBox, and Windows Mobile phones) all served up by Microsoft Azure. As a result, Unosquare has become one of the first companies to successfully build and deploy applications for the Cloud - well, Microsoft's part of the cloud anyway.
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