How tech innovation is revitalizing Adirondack communities

 Tech jobs create opportunities for remote workers and outdoor enthusiasts to live and work in the Adirondacks

By Tim Rowland

When Verplanck Colvin was charting his 19th century surveys of the Adirondacks, he became legend for his weatherbeaten slogs over the most difficult terrain imaginable.

But when Ezra Schwartzberg, owner of Adirondack Research in Saranac Lake, contracted to draw up maps for Farmington, Arkansas, his staff was able to do so without ever visiting Farmington, or for that matter, without ever leaving home.

Adirondack Research, which Schwartzberg, 46, founded in 2012 to map invasive species, is a business that sits at the intersection of technology, science, climate change and recreation.  While Schwartzberg’s business formed around scientific mapping, it now includes producing recreational trail maps and interpretive kiosks such as the ones at the Essex Quarry Nature Preserve.

So too has artificial intelligence erased the language barrier and the need for an extensive staff. A scenario in which a resident of Greece works for an Adirondack company doing an environmental study in Peru would scarcely raise an eyebrow in today’s tech world. More to the point, it’s not only possible, it’s essential.

“Growing a business here is challenging,” said Schwartzberg, who employs the equivalent of six full-time people in a hybrid work environment. “In order to scale up you have to have a way to network outside the Adirondacks.”

Moving from low to high tech

For two centuries, Adirondack employment was quintessentially low tech — rooting for minerals, waiting tables, cutting trees, plowing snow, growing potatoes, selling lift tickets.

 But tomorrow’s park economy might depend as much on keyboards as snowboards.

Technology advocates say that “with a roof and a broadband connection” anything is possible. 

“It’s not a myth, you can work from your place on the mountain,” said Garry Douglas, president of the North Country Chamber of Commerce. 

People are shifting more toward the technology sector, and the region is remarkably compatible. “Fifteen years ago there was virtually no broadband in the Adirondacks,” Douglas said. “Today the digital age has opened the door to people who want to make a lifestyle change.”

To varying degrees, advocates see tech also opening the door for outdoor lovers, climate refugees and native Adirondack families that don’t want their kids to have to leave home to find opportunity. It is clean, it is year-around work and its practitioners tend to be younger, well-educated and supportive of the local economy.

Svetlana Filipson, 39, a technology specialist for the Adirondack Foundation, estimates there are 1,000 remote tech workers in the greater Adirondack region. To be an effective agent in the park economy, the Adirondacks needs more of them, and they need to be connected.

To that end, the foundation is taking the lead on the Adirondack Innovation Initiative (A2I), which held its first formal meeting this month at The Carry, a remote work space in Saranac Lake. 

Present were a handful of tech workers, nonprofits and Craig Weatherup, a retired Pepsi CEO and founder of the initiative, which is a response to community erosion. (Weatherup is also an Adirondack Explorer board member.)

Driving past crowded trailheads and through tourist towns can give the impression that the Adirondacks are thriving, but Weatherup said beneath this veneer the bones of the communities are brittle.

School attendance is way down, wages are low, population is declining and housing and child care are scarce. “Unless we can find a way to create new, high-paying jobs, none of the rest of it matters,” Weatherup said.

When exploring Adirondack challenges and opportunities, technology keeps checking a lot of boxes. And, likewise, the Adirondack region checks boxes for tech workers who have relocated here: Those that like to hike, paddle and bicycle and appreciate the pace and feel of the mountains.

“The attraction is the place,” Weatherup said. “It’s more civil here. It’s small, it’s flexible, it’s adaptable.”

Understanding that tech workers are already here, the foundation’s mission involves finding ways to nourish and grow more of them.

Tech work is often dependent on networking or chance meetings — but those connections aren’t always likely in the park, where such workers might be isolated.

“We’re trying to build a tech ecosystem that will allow more people to live here full time with a good job and a sustainable lifestyle,” said Filipson, who administers a LinkedIn group for Adirondack-based tech workers.

Tech jobs include the obvious ones that involve coding and analytics, but also what are known as supporting, tech-adjacent jobs such as graphic design, cybersecurity, consulting, sales and project management.

By compiling data from the U.S. Census, LinkedIn profiles and private demographers, tech advocates are beginning to get a picture of the current technology landscape, Filipson said. In the near term, A2I will work to establish networks through professional and social gatherings that will allow these individuals to become greater than the sum of their parts.

The project can begin with something as simple as meeting at a coffee shop or at one of the five (with three more planned) remote-work sites in the region such as The Carry. From there, advocates hope to build a network rich with mentorships, training, funding resources and, eventually, a tech incubator.

While Adirondack tech proponents do not aspire to create another Silicon Valley, Filipson said similar initiatives have been successful in other outdoors-oriented communities such as Bend, Ore., and Jackson Hole, Wyo. “We’re not trying to change the Adirondacks, we’re trying to preserve what’s wonderful about it,” she said.

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Starting from the ground up

If tech workers from other parts of the country know they can get support, they can be lured by the lifestyle. And tech jobs are potentially an answer to a question that has vexed Adirondack advocates for decades: How do you get young people to move here and start families, and how do you give local graduates local opportunities for meaningful money and professional fulfillment?

Partnering with North Country Community College, Dan Priece founded UpNCoding, a 12-week boot camp that imparts a quick and multi-faceted training from front-end app development to back-end server software, along with the architecture that allows the two to talk to each other.

The courses are expensive, $12,500, and in the first year have attracted only a handful of students, but as the program gains critical mass, Priece expects costs will come down and stipends and scholarships will pay tuition.

Co-founder in 2012 of Health Recovery Solutions, a medical logistics company, Priece said there will be opportunities for graduates in tech, which due to industry quirks is facing a shortfall of 1.8 million entry-level workers. As this bottleneck clears, companies will need help, but won’t want to wait for four-year college grads.

Priece, 37, whose wife introduced him to Tupper Lake where they now live, sees the Adirondacks as fertile soil for tech development, which will meet the needs of both young people and older workers looking for greater reward. “We’re focused on bringing tech to the area and not just turning them loose (after graduation) but helping them build a career,” he said.

Other tech tools — most notably AI— can allow grads to take their career in any direction they want. “The region is interesting because of the amount of opportunities,” he said. “Health care, forestry, food and herbal lifestyles, trades — (technology) can be built on top of this Adirondack ecosystem.”

Nor are tech workers in any way confined by Colvin’s boundaries enveloping the Adirondacks.

Will Fortin, a Johnsburg data scientist for Hum.works, said tech is trending in a way that’s advantageous — or at least not disqualifying — to the park. If they can be thought of as “old” companies, concerns such as Facebook and Google have risen to power, and made their leaders wealthy, with a labor force of thousands. 

“There are a lot of different areas for tech growth — individuals are creating wildly successful businesses with a staff of one,” Fortin said. “There’s a lot of talk about who the first solo billionaire will be, someone who doesn’t have a company.”

But together, these individuals can be a powerful force. At a foundational meeting of A2I advocates and tech workers, Filipson recalled her own story, growing up in Au Sable Forks, leaving to make her imprint on the world. “It’s not easy being here, career-wise,” she said. “We all couldn’t wait to get out because we saw no opportunity here.”

Now, she said, tech can be that opportunity. And with a good, sustainable career, the Adirondacks are a delightful place to be.

Graphic at top created using Canva