energy & technology

moving forward, regardless of the ability to move around their community.

“If people are unable to access broadband, there could be vulnerabilities in cases such as a pandemic, or if a road was wiped out in a flood,” Michelson said. “We are figuring out where broadband is lacking and building tools that help communities see where it would be beneficial. Communities are then able to request grants to help install that broadband accessibility for their residents.” what applied research should be doing,” he said. “I’d love for our program to spawn 10 Fernleafs.”

The Human Side of Technology Businesses

Founding member of Hatch Innovation Hub and CEO and Co-Founder of Anthroware Jon Jones has a front-row seat at the table of growth in tech businesses in Asheville.

resilience plans. Michelson said Asheville was one of the first cities they worked with, and at that time nearly 10 years ago, not many people knew or understood what that meant. They co-developed the ‘Steps to Resilience’ process with NOAA and applied it with the Land of Sky Regional Council and the Triangle Regional Resilience Partnership with six jurisdictions across the Research Triangle, and realized the process is repeatable.

“At that point, it is technically no longer ‘applied research’; this is something another business can do,” Michelson said. “Other businesses began doing similar work, and our program could not compete with that. Fernleaf is a local startup business born out of NEMAC that developed this idea of creating resilience plans for many municipalities across the Southeast region.”

While a major part of NEMAC’s focus is climate-related, that is not always the case. Michelson said resilience applies to many aspects, and one of those is access to broadband for individuals and businesses which allows people to keep

More than developing resilience plans, NEMAC also uses data and science to help clients tell their story. “A lot of scientists use a bunch of acronyms and industry jargon which can sometimes unknowingly alienate people who don’t ‘speak that language’,” Michelson said. “We help our clients translate complicated data and information into layman’s terms so that they can share their information in a usable, understandable, and conversational way. This is tremendously helpful for many situations, including when organizations are looking for grants and funding.”

As a program of UNCA, NEMAC has worked with approximately 200 student interns since its beginning. Michelson said the budget of each project is built to include the hiring of paid interns who have ranged over a variety of majors, and they are doing more than just inputting data. “They are actively working with us on each project, interviewing people and doing usability studies and making software codes,” Michelson said. “This really helps to jumpstart their career. Almost everyone who works at Fernleaf now was one of our interns at one time. Our hope is they will find what they like to do and learn what they don’t like to do before they even leave college.”

Recently moving a NEMAC office into Hatchworks Coworking in Asheville, Michelson said his personal goal is to develop partnerships with other entrepreneurs in the area. “This is really

Jones said for a town as small as Asheville, there are so many companies that have big ideas and the guts to pursue them. “The town attracts a lot of talent,” he said. “People are moving here with experience in big tech jobs and being pulled into mentor and advisor programs. They are helping connect the dots — they’re active in the community and turning into investors, helping to create a ‘San Francisco bar of excellence’ in Western North Carolina.”

Working as a mentor with both Hatch Innovation Hub and Venture Asheville, Jones said both help high-growth and rapidly growing businesses, many in the technology industry. Many of these growing businesses are creating jobs in the tech sector, and when they work with organizations like Venture and Hatch, it can buffer the impacts of being a single entity who, working alone, would have a high likelihood of failure.

These partner startups are moving and growing faster, thereby creating more jobs by working with support organizations, according to Jones. When startups don’t work out, that provides options to the ecosystem of tech companies which are constantly looking for talent. He said this is really good for other tech companies, and personally he would rather hire someone that was part of a startup that didn’t work because they have already learned “bloody, messy lessons” from failure that they can’t learn anywhere else.

“That creates a highly desirable background and skill set,” Jones said. “A