Shore thing: City's profile as tech hub on the rise

The Greater St. Petersburg Area Economic Corp. wants to help position the Sunshine City as the nation’s next tech mecca. To get there, it recently unveiled a marketing campaign, Become St. Pete, aimed at luring New York- and New Jersey-based tech, data and financial services firms and workers to the area.

The first salvo is a video series that dubs St. Pete “Silicon Shores” — a play on San Francisco’s Silicon Valley, Seattle’s Silicon Forest and Denver’s Silicon Mountain tech communities. The first episode dropped Feb. 12 and features fast-growing St. Pete tech startups InsideOut, The Penny Hoarder, Intrinio and Station House. (Not to be outdone on the silicon strategy, late last year a group of tech companies in the Sarasota-Bradenton market launched a networking group, Silicon Beach SRQ, for the region's beaches and its airport call letters.)