http://www.pressherald.com/news/Clues_emerging_about_mystery...
The OP is a much better article (The Press Herald is garbage).
My original guess for the barge-building in Portland was a ocean-based prison facility for the government to use for interrogations. But it's seeming like the floating data center idea is much more likely.
Not a bad guess at all, since it really does look like a modern prison ship: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vernon_C_Bain_Correctional...
If you want to raise capital and build a startup here, don't. Or, at least, do so but with your "real" headquarters in Boston, NY or CA.
There's a strong effort to try and get things going, but there's a definite lack of capital and the capital you can find in other places will send you a consistent message: "We don't want you in Maine, move here instead."
There are some opportunities around maritime businesses (logistics, mostly) and lots of incentives for trying to build small manufacturing and renewable energy businesses... but the school closest to Portland is looking to close its physics department and the state officials responsible for managing the incentive programs have proven multiple times that they cannot be trusted to develop long-term programs.
If you have or can develop a remote-work type position, it's a great place to live and work from (as long as you can get good, reliable bandwidth).
But if you want to start a software-focused startup ... honestly ... it's an uphill battle.
>If you want to raise capital and build a startup here, don't. Or, at least, do so but with your "real" headquarters in Boston, NY or CA.
Ah, yeah. I'm in NYC now. I figured that if I started something in Maine, I'd be on the Noreaster on a semi-regular basis. I wouldn't be looking for an angel investor and would be bootstrapping instead.
>but the school closest to Portland is looking to close its physics department
Physics isn't Comp Sci, but I get your point. USM was my first school before transferring, so ouch.
>If you have or can develop a remote-work type position, it's a great place to live and work from (as long as you can get good, reliable bandwidth).
That's sort of what I'm thinking for at least a few years. I'd be looking to buy a place on the West End and then start my own shop when it's reasonably paid down (3-5 years).
>But if you want to start a software-focused startup ... honestly ... it's an uphill battle.
Thank you for the thoughtful response. It definitely helped me put some things back into perspective.
I'd be looking to do something similar actually (I'm in NYC too). What kind of work is it predominantly? You mentioned web boutiques and that's sort of what I was expecting.
But I do get the sense that things have improved a bit since then.
That's what I'd be doing at first. It's such a nice city, but business just can't seem to stick.
>I worked for a smallish company back in the mid-2000s, and it's likely that things have changed, but back then the tech-related investors wanted you to move to Boston
Ha! My first job was at GWI.net. I didn't realize how lowly paid Maine tech was until I moved.
It could be a floating prison, filled with a giant data-center! The NSA+Google tie could mean that they both needed an interrogation free zone, one for torture, the other for stealing data. Both would benefit form letting prisoners generate the energy. They could even argue, that it's good for health to breath sea air and do regular "workout". Then they could offer the unused crunching power as an OSaaS – Overseas Sofware as a Service that is similar to AWS and Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Aside from that, isn't it illegal to systematically heat the water of the ocean with hot waste water?? Can't something be done against that?
Why are such prison ships even allowed to be built from tax-money, isn't it illegal?