ID

0

By SARA FISHER

Staff Reporter

Shakespeare once asked, “What’s in a name?” For the Los Angeles technology industry, the answer appears to be a headache.

To raise national awareness for L.A.’s burgeoning technology industry and to bring more jobs and venture capital here, several groups are promoting catchy monikers as part of broad marketing campaigns. The goal is to create an identity to rival Silicon Valley in Northern California and Silicon Alley in New York.

But establishing a coherent identity for Los Angeles has always been tough, and the area’s diverse tech industry is no exception.

A mayoral group recently dubbed L.A.’s new-media industry the “Digital Coast.” But the name is now being misused by many to refer to the entire local technology industry. Simultaneously, the phrase “Tech Coast” also has been bandied about to promote the general technology industry. Now, another group has come forward with yet another alternative name.

Confusion on all sides is ensuing, and some areas of the industry feel left out.

L.A.’s tech community has a strong collection of specific trade organizations. The Software Council of Southern California, the Southern California Biomedical Council and Lawnmower, a group dedicated to promoting the new-media industry, have been working for the last several years to further awareness and capital investment.

Those groups, while somewhat successful, did not bring a coherent identity to the entire industry which led to the Digital Coast and Tech Coast monikers.

There’s also the Southern California Technology Corridor the name a 5-month-old Glendale-based organization has given to an eight-mile-wide, 200-mile-long “corridor” that follows the 10, 210, 134 and 101 freeways. It encompasses Pasadena’s California Institute of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, EarthLink Network Inc. and IdeaLab!.

“We don’t consider ourselves a subset of the Tech Coast or the Digital Coast,” said William Lyte, co-founder of the Southern California Technology Corridor. “Most of the companies and universities along this corridor are not anywhere near the coast, which means that when people hear the other names (like Tech Coast), they’re going to exclude us.”

Lyte estimates that about 500 tech companies and universities are located within the corridor. The group’s current membership, however, is fewer than 50 businesses.

“We’re not really worried about increasing the confusion over multiple names to identify the tech industry,” Lyte said. “The (Tech Coast and Digital Coast) are the coast corridor, we’re the freeway corridor. Creating an identity based on infrastructure is effective and easily memorable.”

Not so, said Rohit Shukla, director of the 4-year-old Los Angeles Regional Technology Alliance, the first industry-wide tech coalition in the area.

“Tech Coast is an umbrella name intended to embrace a variety of local areas that stretch from San Diego to Santa Barbara,” Shukla said. “The Southern California Technology Corridor is showing a parochialism that will keep it from being recognized in a serious vein by outsiders.”

L.A.’s efforts to be perceived as a serious technology center have already been undermined by the confusion between the two “Coast” monikers. Although media reports had Digital Coast beating out Tech Coast as the official nickname for L.A’s technology industry, the two names are intended to co-exist and describe distinctly different groups.

Riordan’s New Media Roundtable announced Digital Coast in mid-February as the chosen moniker to describe the local new-media industry. Tech Coast, for which copyrights are held by a couple of Orange County businessmen, is intended to refer to Southern California’s entire technology industry.

Popular usage, however, is confusing the issue.

“We are very concerned about the confusion between the two names,” said Gabrielle Greene, director of marketing at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., an organization devoted to promoting and tracking local business growth. “There is a perception that Digital Coast overrules the Tech Coast, and unfortunately, the distinction is not being conveyed clearly.”

Another group, the Southern California Biomedical Council, is displeased with both monikers. “Digital Coast doesn’t reflect the entire (tech) industry, (including the biomed sector). It seems as if the mayor’s group is putting all its eggs behind the new-media and entertainment industries,” said Ahmed Enany, executive director of the council.

“It is not helpful for L.A. or to the Digital Coast movement to set itself up as a rival or replacement for the Tech Coast name,” Shukla said. “It creates an amorphous identity problem that confirms a negative perception that the rest of the nation already has about us.”

Joel Kotkin, senior fellow at the Pepperdine University Institute for Public Policy, said one reason for the rival monikers is that L.A has not yet had a strong figurehead company or individual throwing financial support behind any particular initiative.

“Without someone writing checks, you get into this situation of multiple grassroots movements,” Kotkin said. “Look at New York, where you had a real estate figure drive their name; or up north, where you had a very determined company (Hewlett-Packard) using the term Silicon Valley. Without strong monetary support, we have yet to see a group successfully figure out how to knit the local industry together.”

The bottom line, according to industry members, is a nickname’s marketing viability. Jim Jonassen, founder of Lawnmower and a member of the mayor’s New Media Roundtable, emphasized that the Digital Coast name is just a first step. Next come the marketing efforts, the Web page, the stationery and even the map.

“The media across the nation have already taken their best shot (at mocking the Digital Coast name),” said Jonassen. “Now let’s get through the year and see what name and what image sticks.”

No posts to display