It's Always Sunny on Silicon Beach

By Collin Willardson, Intern (@cwillardson)

This week at Fusion has been a bit harder and more challenging for me. This internship is not picking flowers in a field and giving awesome high fives to your best buddies; it’s hard work and very demanding. At school you learn about PR through a book, reading about crisis management in employee newsletters. In the field of PR, the job details go way beyond that. My bosses have me doing work all across the board.

Last week, I was contacting radio stations in Detroit to see if they run PSAs (public service announcements). Then, I was gathering information in order to twitter about "Silicon Beaches." It’s very hectic and fun, but hard and sometimes confusing. My favorite thing to do, currently, is this Silicon Beaches project. We are making a trend. Our whole purpose is to get the phrase “Silicon Beaches” to be associated with the booming tech business in Florida. Mike Vogel, editor of Florida Trend, wrote a great piece on Florida’s up-and-coming tech sector this past January.

I am really glad I took this internship at Fusion because it has taught me a lot. It has taught me about office life, working with people, having bosses and, most importantly, what PR is. It’s a definition that can only be understood by doing, not so much through a detailed explanation. I understand now why that PR firms and jobs want to know what you have done, not so much what you know. Doing PR is a lot different than studying PR.

Silicon Valley...On the Beach?

By Collin Willardson, Intern (@cwillardson)

This week has been very exciting for me; I have been working on a new project with Suzanne McGee, director at Fusion. We are researching the tech business in Florida to see what new businesses are up-and-coming, in what we like to call "Silicon Beaches." The term Silicon Beaches, coined by Suzanne, evolved out of the term Silicon Valley, an area in California where tech businesses boomed in the 1990s and is still running strong.

It has been a lot of fun and, in addition to researching tech, I am also learning a lot about Florida. To be honest, I don't know much about the state. Prior to this research project, I thought Florida was an overly-populated, humid, assisted-living state. In some ways, my initial thought is true but I've found out that there are a lot of companies emerging in the Sunshine State. There is even an alliance for southern Florida tech companies called South Florida Technology Alliance.

Suzanne and I have decided to start tackling a new major city in Florida each day and see what tech companies are already there and which ones are emerging. Silicon Beaches is becoming the new hot spot in the recession. If you're going to open a new business, why not do it on the beach?