Roger Jacobs stands outside the Island School in Puhi, where he works as a technology consultant. Jacobs, president of the Kauai Macintosh User Group, says the Garden Isle is a hotbed of Internet activity.
Photo by Chris Cook, Special to the Star-Bulletin
Today the emergence of the Internet is breaking that pattern.
Webmaster, digital publisher and other previously unheard of job titles are popping up at Internet-focused Kauai businesses. The businesses are making Internet home pages, publishing digital magazines for the local market and providing technical expertise.
Some are drawing income from other islands and states, competing with urban businesses in an industry where location is becoming less and less important.
Graphic designer Robert Rekward, co-owner of Kalaheo-based Graphic Communication, lives and works on Kauai while he builds up a national clientele.
"We've extended our client base beyond Hawaii's volatile economy and increased our receivables by about 150-200 percent per year for the last four years," Rekward said. "About one third of our work comes from off island, but we now have clients in Canada, Chicago, Texas, Florida and we've got bids out to several companies in Japan and Europe."
Rekward is hiring as the sugar industry and retail sector on Kauai retrench.
"There were only two of us before the Internet 'went big' and now there are six of us working full time with help from several free-lancers," he said.
Rekward said making a working connection with the mainland takes extra effort: "You've got to be exceptionally talented and service oriented to succeed in working with mainland companies. The cost of doing business in Hawaii automatically makes us a little more expensive than similar mainland agencies. You've really got to work hard to prove to your clients that they're getting a good value."
Roger Jacobs' business cards read "Technology consultant and Internet Facilitator." The catchall job titles barely fit around the tall, curly-haired Internet expert's mix of work on Kauai.
"I originally came to Kauai in 1989 from Pasadena," Jacobs said, "on the premise that I could live on a geographically isolated island and remain networked with the world via communications technology."
Jacobs apparently directed his career toward the right industry. Besides consulting and creating digital content for a wide variety of clients here, he manages a local area network for Ameritech Cellular in Lihue, is a technology consultant for Island School in Puhi, and serves as president of the Kauai Macintosh User Group.
Jacobs is also a musician. In addition to performing, he applied his computer skills in preproduction and engineer work on Buffy Saint-Marie's recent Kauai-recorded album "Up Where We Belong" for EMI records. Jacobs played a role in the development of Hawaii OnLine, a leading Internet provider service in Hawaii founded by Thayne and Lynne Taylor on Kauai in the early 1990s.
Jacobs sees Kauai as a leading player in Hawaii's world of digital communications.
"I am hearing that Kauai is very wired in comparison to other communities as far as Internet use per capita. It also appears that Kauai is a leader as far as web representation for tourism. We have the advantage of being a highly desirable resort destination that is networked to the world."
Judy Drosd, Kauai County's Film Commissioner, is also a visionary whose dream of making Kauai a creative center for digital communicators is coming true.
Drosd founded the Kauai Institute for Communications Media in 1993. She hopes to set up the institute at a campus on Kauai where students, instructors and speakers from across the globe would gather.
"There would be a focus on art and technology," Drosd said. "Hopefully we'll have a campus one day which would also help promote the film industry on Kauai, providing facilities to aid filmmakers on location here in post-production and in creating special visual effects."
Drosd served as the county's liason with director Steven Spielberg's production firm during the filming of Jurassic Park in 1992.
She founded the institute and has since held three world-class conferences on Kauai that have drawn many leading figures in the emerging field of digital communications. The most recent conference, Storytelling for the New Millennium, was held in April on Kauai and was co-sponsored by the computer graphics software company Adobe Systems Inc. and the County of Kauai
James Moriarty, owner of Media & Message in Kalaheo has been working from home for 18 months on Internet-based projects. Moriarty said he was working as an ad salesmen at Kapaa's H & S Publishing when he became drawn into the world of the Internet.
"It caught my interest, and I introduced the idea of publishing on the Internet," he said.
Gary Hooser, co-owner of H & S, gave him the go ahead and today the mostly print-based publishing company digitally publishes Kauai's leading real estate and vacation information web sites.
"This type of job didn't exist a few years ago," Moriarty said. "I guess you'd call me a digital publisher."
Moriarty runs his company from home with his wife Danna doing the accounting and bookkeeping. "Working at home is by far the best experience I've had," Moriarty said. "It allows me to enjoy paradise, and still get things done, on my own schedule. Being locked in an office hours scenario just isn't how things are done when it comes to computers."
Moriarty is taking the portability of the Internet a step further. He plans to move his business to Hilo in October to attend graduate classes at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. He says he'll continue to work on Kauai through interisland phone lines.