🔒Peter Van Allen: Face to face with Mainers

I've only lived in Maine a few short weeks now, but I've already made some observations.

One is that, in business, face-to-face contact still means a lot in Maine.

At two recent Mainebiz events, I met business leaders who had traveled up to three hours to get there.

At our Business Leaders of the Year event, I asked Curtis Simard, president and CEO of Bar Harbor Bank & Trust, if he had set up other meetings in Portland.

“No,” he said. “I came down for this.”

It was important, he added, to get out there and meet clients and prospective clients. A phone call would not do. And I'm guessing texting or posting a picture on Facebook would be a poor substitute for being there.

For our issue with a focus on Northern Maine, getting out to meet people was equally important.

In his story on Plum Creek, senior writer Jim McCarthy made the two-hour trek to Solon, then joined company officials for a tour of forestlands in Concord Township, Bingham and surrounding Somerset County.

As is often the case with big companies, reputation is often based on initial impressions or one or two instances.

Before doing the story, “Plum Creek uses mixed-use forestry in North Woods” (Cover), Jim says much of what he knew about Plum Creek dated back to when it first came into Maine, when some worried it was a threat to the future of the North Woods, and then from its legal battle over its proposed luxury-housing development near Moosehead Lake.

“Frankly, I fell into the notion that they're just out to grab what they can,” Jim says.

His perspective changed after meeting Plum Creek representatives face to face seeing what they're working on. He said his mind was also changed by reading a third-party audit report of the company's forestry practices and by the Forest Society of Maine's report on sustainability.

While the watch-dog reports helped shape his understanding of Plum Creek, his own first-hand observations, gained by making the drive north, were invaluable.

Elsewhere in Northern Maine, Craig Idlebrook, a correspondent for Mainebiz, sheds light on an international trade agreement that could help stabilize the price of potatoes (“Southern comfort,” Page 16). As if it weren't hard enough to be a potato farmer, Maine's growers recently agreed to cut their prices. A ray of light, as Craig's story points out, may be a possible trade deal between the United States and Mexico that could mean more potatoes heading south of the border and, it is hoped, creating more overall demand for potatoes, including those grown in Maine.

For our lead cover story, “Homegrown technology,” senior writer Lori Valigra ventured out to meet with some of the state's most innovative companies, including some unknown to many Mainers. She found companies making a range of products, from noise-canceling headphones to “waffle cards” that help clean out everyday technology.

The companies she profiles are not necessarily household names, but their products reflect Maine ingenuity and are sold worldwide. Lori spent a few days on the road checking out products and interviewing innovators for her cover story.

“I was surprised by the breadth of products, taking something that might have been out there and improving it and making it a million-dollar product,” she says. “There's an element of Yankee ingenuity and bootstrapping, but also high quality and global sales … They're razor blade-type businesses, things everyone needs.”

It should be added that photographer Amber Waterman, who is based in Lewiston, did a great job bringing a visual element to Lori's story. Her cover image of Peter Klein, president and CEO of KICTeam Inc., brings to life both the executive and the technology. And of course you can't shoot a picture from your desk.