Jeff Roach likes the fact that he so frequently runs into his lawyer when he leaves his office.

Not to mention his accountant or other advisers and peers in the tech community.

Roach works in Uptown Saint John, and revels in the fact that his office is dead centre of the greatest concentration of information technology companies in the region. Within a few blocks – and blocks adorned with wonderful Victorian architecture – he can find 30 tech companies and a vast array of intermediaries. In fact, he says he can’t leave the office without running into them.

The tech community in Uptown Saint John is the product of several fascinating cross-currents, all of which have impacted each other. It’s difficult to identify cause and effect, or even to say which was the prime motivator. But what is obvious is that decades of clever planning, hard work and good fortune have left the city once famed for its pulp mill and refinery with one of the most exciting tech communities in the country.

Roach – who is a Strategic Connector and a former executive director of Propel ICT – believes the key to Saint John’s success is the people who have eked out a living in its lofty-ceilinged offices. And he is not alone.

“Saint John (and New Brunswick) is head and shoulders above all other provinces in Atlantic Canada,” said Todd Murphy, a Dartmouth, N.S., native who’s now CEO of Saint John-based eprescription company MedRunner. `` Why? It's quite simple: the ability to embrace entrepreneurship, foster new and creative thinking, and individuals and companies that personally and financially back home run ideas.’’

The individuals include IT guru Gerry Pond and the people who worked with him at NBTel before the merger that created Aliant. They were always thought to be more entrepreneurial and creative than their peers in PEI and Nova Scotia, and they have continued to help young tech entrepreneurs develop their companies. 

“There is some real IT leadership here,” said Roach in an interview. “We have an entire workforce here that has built its entire career in IT. . . .  We’re now in our second or third generation of IT workforce.”

The fact that NBTel was headquartered in Saint John has indeed left an indelible imprint on the city, and not just in human capital. For example, the city has not one but two complete fiber optics networks.

What’s more those magnificent old buildings themselves have played a part in attracting this cluster of geeks.

Roach notes that whenever another jurisdiction tries to replicate the tech community that grew indigenously in Saint John, the first thing they do is fund a business park. They pay for buildings. Saint John doesn’t need to do that, he said. The buildings are already there. They’re spectacular and offer reasonable rents. So there is an urban environment that spawns creativity unlike few centres in the world.

``Look at Silicon Valley,’’ said Roach, referring to all the techies working in Menlo Park or Sunnyvale. ``They’d be in downtown San Francisco if they could but they can’t because the rents are too high.”

He also noted that Propel ICT, the province’s IT umbrella group, began life as PropelSJ, a Saint John concern that incubated 32 companies in its first three years. The buildings were already there, said Roach, so what Propel spent its development money on was in nurturing entrepreneurs. It focused on people.  

The 30 companies that now work in Uptown include a few that are gaining traction and clients, such as Murphy’s MedRunner and carbon-capture enterprise Enovex, both backed by Pond. There’s also Pond’s own Mariner Partners, and IT services company T4G.

It’s not a coincidence that Saint John was named to the Smart21, a club of cities and towns from around the world dedicated to the "broadband economy", by the New York-based Intelligent Community Forum.

And to further emphasize its position in the IT world, a group of Saint Johners led by Roach has launched the new thethinkcity.ca website. It includes a map showing precisely where all 30 of these ICT companies are located. But even more than that it includes a social networking component with blogs and discussions.

Why?

Because, Roach explained, Saint John’s tech community has always focused on people. “`We didn’t need an electronic brochure,” he said. “We needed a means for people to communicate and learn from each other.”