PANAMA CITY — Local college professor and technology company founder Rick Hurst is working to battle Bay County’s “chicken or the egg” dilemma.
“The resources that graduate from (local colleges), they leave ... the tech companies, they don’t come because there are no resources,” said Hurst, a technology professor at Florida State University Panama City. “It goes back to the chicken or the egg syndrome, and we’re stuck.”
In an effort to combat the situation, Hurst recently founded Hive Technologies, a company with an initiative to organically grow technology resources in the Bay County area.
“My ultimate dream for here is to try to build what I call a tech hive — where the community comes together to build that tech industry.” Hurst said. “There are too many isolated initiatives, and the problem is there’s no bridges between those. The only way we’re going to make it is — we’re going to have to hive together and build it.”
To help guide the area through its crossroad, Hurst recently launched a series of free technology classes through a partnership with CareerSource Gulf Coast, where students will learn software programming skills through Java and other platforms.
The class, which meets every Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the CareerSource Gulf Coast Job Center in Panama City, has been well received so far, and space is still available as students move to tackle new subjects.
“We’re now in the Java programming, and to me that is the money course,” Hurst said. “If you learn JAVA, you open up several doors.”
As a company, Hive Technologies focuses on business development, including software and data, device integration and research and development.
Hurst said he hopes to use technology to solve problems, like the epidemic of children dying in hot cars last summer.
“My hopes are, when we create those projects, we will populate those projects with the resources from this area, not from outside of this area,” said Hurst, noting that outsourcing may be necessary in the company’s early stages. “That’s my goal... to get away from that.”
CareerSource Gulf Coast Executive Director Kim Bodine also acknowledged the need for technology jobs and overall economic diversity in the area.
“We are heavy in tourism-related jobs,” Bodine said. “Some other sectors are stable or growing, but we are certainly lagging in terms of technology-based employment opportunities.”