In the last year Perry County has had up to 25% unemployment. Perry County is one of those rural counties that in recent years depended on a few major factories to survive. When the last factory shut down, so did the county.

But Perry County did not give up. If a new factory would come to Perry County (or at least not quickly enough to avoid the disruption – and no such factory HAS come), some forward thinking folks asked, “well what COULD work here?”

The answer was to create a “Digital Factory”.

The internet is no stranger to Perry County and people there could be trained to provide a variety of tech support and other jobs that can be done digitally and remotely.

Participants for the training are screened for their computer skills, customer service skills, and general knowledge through a variety of assessments provided through the South Central TN Career Center. They are then trained to perform the kind of tasks for companies willing to use remote workers. This work can range from “digital piecework” to programming depending on the participant’s skill level.

Graduates of the program usually become 1099 employees working for a number of companies who value the fact that these workers – in addition to their proven skills – have English as their first language.

Thus far, participants average $9 – $13 per hour upon completion of the program. One participant though is earning $25 per hour. The cost of living in Perry County is well below the national average and 20% below the Nashville area.

Thus far the Digital Factory has not replaced the loss of local factories, but the program does allow area youth to realize they can find “high tech” work without leaving the county and be paid for their skills.

A NEW KIND OF FACTORY IN PERRY COUNTY

VisionPerry, in collaboration with cTechnology, Inc. of Nashville, South Central TN Workforce Alliance, the Town of Linden, the City of Lobelville and Perry County Government, will be implementing a pilot training program to develop a ‘Digital Factory’ in Perry County. A recently published report prepared for the county by Strategic Development Group of South Carolina, portrayed an uphill battle in attracting a new traditional manufacturing facility to Perry County. The report cited the lack of a 4 lane highway and the remoteness of the area as being major obstacles. The ‘Digital Factory’ however, will take advantage of the Internet and is not affected be these obstacles. The program will be divided into various production lines requiring increasing skills, similar to a standard factory concept.

The Digital Factory will initially be housed at the VisionPerry headquarters, located 200 Main Street, Linden. VisionPerry has been outfitted with high-speed internet and has the technical capabilities to be utilized as both a training and work-center facility. Training programs are expected to roll out sometime in January and will initially place an emphasis on the development of customer service representatives. The self-paced training program will develop a skilled, certified workforce who will be in a position to support nationally-based companies with call center services. In addition to the customer service line, a digital ‘piecework’ line and a more highly skilled program line will also be developed over the next few months.

A basic ‘digital piecework’ trial with cTechnology partner Bizooki.com was tested with the VisionPerry staff involved in the testing. The digital piecework task was quite simple:find the required email address on a specific web site and paste it into a window on another screen. For each email address copied, the worker was paid 15 cents. Virtually anyone could be trained to do this type of work which the lowest skilled ‘line’ in the Digital Factory. At the high point of the project, the fastest staffers were between $8 to $19/hr. depending on personal speed. This type of work is suited for entry-level digital workers who may have little or no online experience and is project-based, not steady work. Like actual low-skilled factory work, virtual piecework can get monotonous but it can provide needed confidence to a non-technical worker that they are capable of online work. It also provides a test bed for gauging the workers ability to work in a Digital Factory environment where quiet and concentration are required.

A more highly skilled Digital Factory line will also be developed to be known as LAMP Programmers. LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PhP/PERL which are the most popular open source programming languages in the world. Tennessee has a large shortage of programming talent in LAMP and the Nashville market in particular is making every effort to encourage its growth. cTechnology has partnered with the Enterprise LAMP group in Nashville and is developing a strategy to train and place rural, LAMP-trained persons in these advanced, well paid positions. These workers will require approximately 6 months of training and internship with Nashville-based companies and will then be qualified for low level programming. However, this work in the programming world pays a competitive $15-$25 an hour! For larger shops, this type of work can be contracted. The plan is to develop a relationship with a Nashville-based software firm contracting our LAMP line at the Vision Perry Digital Factory for this type of work. Given the close proximity to Nashville, we expect the LAMP trainees to travel to Nashville 2-3 times a month to link into the LAMP User Group community for training and connection to their employers. This is currently the highest skilled ‘line’ in the Digital Factory.

This concept was proposed by cTechnology, Inc. to the TN Department of Economic Development and the research is funded through the states Rural Technology Assistance Grant program and the City of Linden through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). VisionPerry was chosen as a first launch site due to the major progress already made to create a community-based center for new economic development and has been instrumental in testing and further developing the concept. Beyond the online job training, business contacts and partnerships are being developed to outsource the newlabor force. Long term plans include the development of a large technology-savvy, regional digital workforce who can work remotely from centralized work-centers. The presence of such a workforce in the region will act as an attractor for new companies to the area.

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