Moon: "If you’re going to go looking for the inside scoop on Utah’s high-tech business, Salt Lake’s Red Rock Brewing Company seems a likely place to find workers from the local dot-com and other tech offices, maybe kicking back to trade ideas, or network over career opportunities. But the manager told me they don’t seem to get together like that around here.

Which is precisely what concerns Scott Crawford at Internet provider Ikano Communications. Back in San Francisco, he says, they partied all the time – in a productive kind of way:"

Crawford: "You know, one or two or three a week, you’d go to them, you’d network, you’d meet other people. Here those things don’t really exist. The culture in Utah is very much one of living in the suburbs, driving in, working hard, and getting out as soon as you can to go back to your family."

Moon: "It begs the question: How compatible is a 9-to-5 culture with the 24-7 demands of a 'live fast or die' marketplace?"

Crawford: "Sure, I think there are solutions. I think they come at the cost of the culture and what makes Utah...Utah for a lot of people. That’s not an easy riddle to solve."

Moon: "It’s a challenge Governor Mike Leavitt understands:"

Leavitt: "It’s a, in many ways, an emerging large market with a small-town atmosphere. Sometimes that’s seen as being too small-a-town atmosphere."

Moon: "And it’s not just Utah’s homogenous image. Brad Bertoch heads the Wayne Brown Institute, promoting venture capital investment. He sees a Catch-22 ‘til the industry here gets big enough for recruits to walk across the street and find another job:"

Bertoch: "What if I get unemployed, where do I go? If I come out of Silicon Valley and I come to Utah, do this startup and this startup just isn’t what we thought it was gonna be and it tanks, well, you know, two years of my life are gone. And in Silicon Valley time that’s probably equal to ten years. And so, I’m out of the loop. So what do I do here?"

Moon: "Tech companies ARE Utah’s biggest employer. Revenues jumped from a billion to 12 billion dollars in the last decade. Some leading stars – Word Perfect, Novell – have faded, but the governor’s convinced Utah’s well positioned for a comeback, and he’s been working hard to lure new stars. At Brigham Young University, political economist John Griffin thinks the focus should be on something close-knit Utah has had trouble with: attracting venture capital."

Griffin: "Help all of these start-ups kind of move to the next stages of growth and help Utah grow its own stars."

Moon: "One of those stars has been Iomega, but its once-popular Zip drive has been battered recently by compact disk recorders. At a Las Vegas trade show, the firm’s Guy Sahatjian assured me it’ll find a new niche:"

Iomega: "‘Is Iomega a setting star, or is it a rising star still?’ ‘It is a rising star. This year will be a very great year for Iomega.’"

Moon: "The day after that interview, Iomega warned of sudden sales declines. Which is not to say things can’t turn around for the company, and Utah in general. BYU’s John Griffin:"

Griffen: "Yeah, if you take a freeze-frame picture of Utah today, things don’t look good. But that’s natural in an area where it seems like the cycle is today we have a star, tomorrow we might not, the next day we could."

Moon: "From Salt Lake City, I’m Bob Moon for Marketplace."