Building a tech community in rural Colorado
How a search for a few fellow technologists in Marble became a regional network of nearly 300 people.
How it started
In 2017 I bought a house in Marble, Colorado, a small town at the end of a valley road. I loved the life there, but professionally I felt like the only technologist for fifty miles. I was fairly sure I wasn't, so I started a group to find the others.
West Slope Technologists
It began as Roaring Fork Technologists, meeting at the GlenX coworking space in Carbondale. As it spread across western and southern Colorado, we renamed it West Slope Technologists. It grew to nearly 300 members.
We had three goals: support each other, support the communities we live in, and support local business.
In practice that meant organizing local communities and collaborating with neighboring ones, running meetups and a speaker series, organizing mentorship for high school students, giving local businesses tech advice, and mentoring startup founders and tech workers. Our speakers ranged from Gitcoin founder Kevin Owocki to a panel of women leading tech and open data work across Colorado.
"To have a community that's going to be inclusive … we're going to have to make room. Not leave room, but make room for those people."
The Rural Tech Retreat
The event I'm proudest of is the Rural Tech Retreat, a semi-off-grid tech conference in Marble for people building technology careers and companies outside the cities.
West Slope Startup Week
Since 2021 I've served as Technology Track Captain for West Slope Startup Week, which brings entrepreneurs, investors, and community leaders from across the Western Slope together for several days of free programming. I run the track end to end: community outreach, selecting speakers, supporting them through their talks, and making sure the in-person sessions run smoothly.
Working across the ecosystem
A tech community needs more than technologists. It needs founders, capital, and places to work. West Slope Technologists worked closely with Startup Colorado and the regional startup community; with rural-focused investors like Greater Colorado Venture Fund, now Howdy Partners, and Roaring Fork Angels; and with coworking spaces and partners like CoVenture and Aspen Entrepreneurs.
I continue to serve as a strategic advisor to CoVenture, the Carbondale incubator and coworking space that grew out of GlenX.
Where it stands
The regular in-person and virtual activities of West Slope Technologists is not as active as it once was, but the network it helped build is still a backbone to the rural Colorado tech community. I've since moved to Western Washington where I'm keen to get more involved in the local communities.