Technology Junction.

• Author: WIESNER, PAT

LOOK AROUND COLORADO, YOU ARE LIVING WHERE IT WILL ALL COME TOGETHER! THE FUN IS JUST BEGINNING, AND IT'S BEGINNING HERE.

Frank grew up in Muncie, Ind., and had a degree in computer science from the University of Chicago. He had become a whiz at computer programming but in the process discovered digital systems design, and he was hooked. He had found his life's work. While in college he met Annie, a marketing major, they got married, he took a job with IBM as a systems designer, and they started a family in Chicago. When his two daughters, Amy and Beth, were 4 and 2 years old, the couple began to think about just where they wanted to be as their kids grew up. Annie thought that it didn't really matter, as long as they kept their family values intact. But Frank worried about the effect of the big city on his girls growing up.

When he was a kid, Frank's family had vacationed in Colorado a few times, skiing in the winter and spending one summer at Crested Butte. These childhood experiences had stuck with him, and Frank thought that Colorado would be a great place to bring up a family. They thought long and hard about putting in for a job at IBM in Colorado, but Frank was really worried about what would happen if for some reason things didn't work out. What would he do? He was a systems engineer after all, and it took a big, specialized company to provide good potential for a future.

Concerned about being a big fish caught in a little pond (that might dry up), Frank and Annie eventually moved to Raleigh-Durham, N.C., where he still works happily for a telecom equipment company. Annie sells advertising for a local business magazine.

Sadly, a lot of people who might have come to Colorado don't because they don't realize what we really have.

If Frank and Annie had really investigated, they would have discovered, among other things, that the Colorado Front Range:

* has more software jobs than Atlanta or Orange County, Calif.;

* has more biomed jobs than either San Francisco or Seattle;

* has more computer storage jobs than Oakland or Salt Lake City; and

* for Frank, has more...