October 17th, 2005
The techies of Broomfield County: Level 3's home county is U.S.' most "tech-savvy"
Love those stories that tie in technology adoption to consumer demographics and geographical regions.
Like for example, today’s USA Today piece entitled "Techies: They’re Everywhere," a study by USA Today and marketing firm Claritas of technologically advanced areas and sociodemographic groups likely to embrace advanced technologies such as VoIP and broadband Internet access.
The geographic data is quite interesting. The jurisdiction with the highest percentage of "early adopters" is Broomfield County, Col. with 56.86% of households. Howard County, Md., where the outer bands of high-income Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Md. suburbs overlap, was second with 51.72%.
A small but booming county northwest of Denver, Broomfield is the home base of VoIP infrastructure service provider Level 3 Communications. That’s their world HQ, in Broomfield
Still, I should point out a couple of embarrassing errors in this piece.
The article notes that Denver resident Scott Yates is a VoIP user, and as such is a "Telecommuting Techie."
Yet in the "Categorizing the adopters" section that immediately follows the main story, the "Behavior" of "Telecommuting Techies" is partially characterized by having "an ISDN line."
I don’t know anyone with an ISDN line, but given the citation of VoIP user Yates in the Telecommuting Techie" category, I’m betting article authors Mindy Fetterman and Barbara Hansen meant to write "VoIP." Or maybe they used an intern, andh/she was harried?
Also- and this matters little in the scheme of things- the "Cable-Conflicted Singles" segment is described as ones who "visit SDNet and CNet websites."
I actually went to this "SDNet,.." I don’t think sooo… but on the other hand take a look at the logo on top of this blog. Think USA Today might have meant , oh, um, ZDNet?
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
