I wouldn’t complain any initiative in Nashville, because frankly, at least they are trying to do something.

I would also say that the developer community in Nashville (broad brush here) generally lacks any entrepreneurial experience/understanding away from what they have seen in TechCrunch and really have no clue how to approach startups, how they are governed, and how to align with them. This is something I’d personally love to address by getting the developer community more involved in the nascent startup ecosystem we have.

The paragraph on the coding schools felt particularly out of place. I have my reservation about the gold-rush on teaching to code (I fear it could go the route of places like the Art Institute), but that is an entirely separate conversation.

I think your over-arching theme is that there is a gulf between the business community and the development community. That’s true, but remember that, generally speaking, the two communities have different goals, different heroes, different ideals, etc. The overlap between the two is entrepreneurial developers – of which we have a few. This is a complicated problem (which you allude to in your title) for which I have little advice.

You mention the NashDev Slack group in passing, but I think it deserves more attention. It has certainly served to unite factions of the development community in a fantastic way (something I was hoping to do when I started the monthly NashDev breakfast in 2014).

If you’re gripe is with the EC, I have to ask: have you volunteered your time there? When my company was headquartered there it was clear that the leadership had a desire to reach out to the development community but they didn’t know how. They serve, primarily, the business community and they seem to be doing that pretty well. Their stated mission is to raise “the quality of resources available to Nashville’s entrepreneurial and small business communities.” You might argue that encouraging the growth of the software dev community falls under that, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle.

In short, I hear a lot of complaints in the local dev community about how this or that organization isn’t doing enough, but I don’t see a whole lot of boots on the ground changing that. I’d like to see more action, less screeds.

Bingo. The EC has always been about keeping the “deal flow” concentrated within a self-selected cadre of established operators. Actual innovation is a by product, not the mission.

This is perhaps the most cogent analysis of Nashville’s tech/startup scene that I’ve encounerd. Good job, and look forward to more.