Colorado tech shaky but still standing.

• Position: E-buzz

No IT'S NOT A ROSY PICTURE, insists Luanne Williams, executive director of the AeA Mountain States Council, the regional chapter of the American Electronics Association. The state's high tech industry was static in 2001 ,while the rest of the country was growing, albeit slightly.

And since Colorado traditionally has been a high-tech leader nationally, no growth means the state should be concerned, not complacent.

Cyberstates 2002, AeA's annual, and oft-cited report that ranks the SO states' high-tech performance over the years, showed that Colorado, despite the rampant collapse of its Internet and telecommunications industries last year, lost only a net 86 tech jobs during 2001. With a projected 1 83,559 jobs in place, the state still could claim 10th place among cyberstates for that year.

The report said Colorado also held steady as No. 1 nationally for its percentage of high-tech workers. It still claims 98 tech workers among every 1,000 private-sector employees.

Williams said the report, released in June, sparked some incredulity among laid-off members of the state's tech community. She pointed out, however, that Colorado's loss of new jobs in 2001, compared with a gain of 1 7,000 new tech jobs in 2000, shows how badly the state fared at the hands of the cyber industry last year.

AeA's final figures, she said, which won't really come from the states until next year's report, might show Colorado in a much deeper predicament than the 2002 report reflects.

William "Trip" Carter, who did five years worth of "missile mothering" for Lockheed Martin before. becoming the western sales rep for advanced tech projects for the Harris Corp., was named last month as the states new space advocate.

Missile mothering, Carter says, involves taking a launch vehicle to its launch pad and making sure everything arrives with it and is installed properly to send it into space. Harris Corp., where Carter spent the past three years, is a Florida aerospace company that does many things, including manufacturing space antenna, the 200-foot-wide butterfly wings that fold out of...