[Hidden-tech] A HiddenTech thank you...

[Michael Giles]

I've been meaning to send out an email since July, but along with 
countless other items, it keeps failing to break out of my to-do list.  
As some folks know, I sold my business ( http://www.furl.net ) over the 
summer and along the path of building it, I got help from a bunch of 
people in the HiddenTech community.

I want to thank not only the people who helped, but also the larger pool 
of members who offered advice and services.  Although I haven't had much 
time to contribute to the effort over the past year, I still believe 
that bringing together the rich set of business service providers and 
consumers in a region such as Western Mass is a meaningful endeavor.

As I've said before, I think it would be highly useful both to the 
businesses and the region to create a browseable directory of businesses 
and services so that people who want to build a small enterprise can 
quickly see who offers the services they need (e.g. legal, financial, 
marketing, design, etc), what other business owners think of them (yes, 
reviews), and who has experience in the appropriate vertical domain 
(e.g. software, consumer goods, manufacturing, etc).

There are a lot of very talented people on this list and in the region 
and the more we can grease the skids of collaboration, the better off we 
all will be.  And if we could systematize the whole thing so that other 
regions could build their own...

I'd better stop dreaming up more work and just stick with saying, 
"Thanks."  Have a great holiday season!

-Mike