ROCs provide structure, infrastructure and social contact. All of these are important for most workers.

ROCs are fairly new, but represent nothing more than a paradigm shift.

There is a free web site that lists ROCs by location:

http://www.remoteofficecenters.com

Pennsylvania as a whole is not competitive when it comes to attracting tech businesses and talent for a number of reasons. The state also suffers from an extremely high-rate of brain-drain, creating even less appeal. Turning attention to modernizing PAs attitude, laws, taxes, and culture is where there’s tremendous opportunity for growth in the local tech community. Other areas of the country have done an excellent job with this. The DC-area has launched a number of initiatives to become “Silicon Valley East” and they’ve created momentum.

Central PA’s geography, the coworking/telecommuting movement, and people being priced out of nearby metro areas and the Bay Area add to local potential, but without infrastructure, community, and incentives, they’ll be other places that will continue to capitalize to PA’s detriment.

In just the past year, I’ve seen a big jump in local organization, using tools like Facebook and Twitter to find and connect the disconnected tech fragments in our area. As that movement spreads and grows, it’s up to this fledgling tech community to turn some attention to addressing these other issues and creating an environment of opportunity to attract others.

Lancaster is a prime location for telecommuters as well. It has a great culture, and more tech than one would expect. Mapquest is actually still headquartered in Granite run, plus there’s a quickly growing tech community. Good things to come i’m sure.

Part of it is connectivity, and although it’s greatly improved since AOL bought them, we still have a problem with that. We don’t even have good cellphone coverage, especially in the southern part of the county, where living costs are lowest, and our broadband isn’t the greatest. I keep hearing that Verizon is going to bring FIOS here, and yet they haven’t. I’ve decided to stop holding my breath.

I suspect another problem is that there’s not much of a high-tech community here. If you’re a geek, you want to associate with other geeks, so you’re more likely to accept a job in a community where there’s an engineering school.

I’m not saying that’s the whole story. The computer was invented at Penn, and Philadelphia squandered that advantage, letting Silicon Valley develop in California. On the other hand, I can’t think of a single community that’s seen their residents become more competitive internationally by building a stadium or a convention center.