Friday, March 6, 2009

Net Gains

Mass. attracts Stream Global Services, digital politics campaign movers

By Galen Moore

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For a company that employs thousands across the globe, Stream Global Services Inc. (AMEX: OOO) made a quiet entrance in genteel Wellesley in December.

After three private-equity buyouts and a four-year sojourn in Texas, the call center outsourcing firm has returned to Massachusetts, locating in new headquarters at the Wellesley Office Park. Stream employs 15,000 workers in multilingual call centers that serve software and telecom companies from locations stateside and abroad. CEO Scott Murray, who ran the company when it was based in Canton and was owned by Bain Capital from 1999 to 2002, has returned to lead the firm.

The company counts among its customers Sirius XM Radio Inc. (Nasdaq: SIRI) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ). Murray could not be reached in time for this column, but local officials in Watertown, N.Y., report that his company last month landed a major contract with satellite TV provider DISH Network Corp. (Nasdaq: DISH).

In February, Stream announced it had appointed Arno Millenaar, a former executive at Flextronics International Ltd. (Nasdaq: FLEX), as vice president of business development in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region.

Kendall Square has a Posse
It just had its first formal meeting last week, and the Kendall Square Association already has 74 member organizations.

The new association is not a high-tech trade association, said board member Sarah Gallop, co-director of government and community relations at MIT.  It will work on issues affecting business tenants and residents alike. “One thing we’re really interested in is nightlife,” Gallop said. “Kendall Square, it’s often been argued, shuts down at five.” (Here’s an open invitation to those arguers: Let’s take up the conversation over drinks at Hungry Mother.)

One of the initiatives the association is already considering is to blanket Kendall Square with wi-fi.

“Kendall Square draws tens of thousands of visitors each year, many of whom are from overseas, who pay high roaming charges on their smartphones,” said association president Timothy Rowe, CEO at the Cambridge Innovation Center. “Let’s welcome them, sending the message that Kendall Square is a good home base for them in the United States, by lighting up their devices when they are here.”

Stimulating Technology
President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill is expected to bring jobs and money to Massachusetts. But long before the stimulus package was thought of, the former junior senator from Illinois brought a wave of business to the Bay State — just by getting elected.

Labor unions, political organizations and candidates worldwide have shown interest in two Massachusetts companies that were among the architects of Obama’s digital campaign strategy. Blue State Digital LLC of Boston and Voter Activation Network Inc. of Somerville built the systems that allowed millions of grass-roots Obama supporters to organize and take action without top-down support.

The strategy turned the tables on Republicans, who had long held the advantage in voter mobilization, and now other political organizations want to duplicate that success. The Obama strategy may signal the future for political campaigns worldwide, but for Mark Sullivan, co-founder of the Voter Activation Network, the possibilities for web-based popular involvement with government are even more exciting.

“We’ve never seen a political campaign use the same tools to govern that they used to get elected,” he said last Thursday in a forum with Blue State Digital CTO Jascha Franklin-Hodge and other digital media leaders, sponsored by the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange (MITX). He pointed to new administration websites like change.gov and recovery.gov, in addition to the existing whitehouse.gov. “I think you’re starting to see every indication this president might do it.”