Why I Love Columbus Ohio

First of all, let me thank Allen for giving us a chance to show off our cities and tell the world why our specific city is a great place for technology. So far, the cities of Pittsburgh, Portland, Los Angeles (and again), Auckland, St. Louis, Boulder, and Omaha have been represented. Now, it’s my turn to brag about the amazing Columbus, Ohio.

Let’s first talk tech, shall we?

Columbus is an extremely wired technological city. It has been recently ranked by Forbes as the #1 most up and coming technological city in the United States. Many companies, including giants like AOL and Microsoft, either had significant starts in Columbus or maintain large regional headquarters in the city.

The city’s top known technology outfit is probably the Battelle Memorial Institute, a private nonprofit technological research and development company, started back in 1929 by the industrialist Gordan Battelle. It was at Battelle that the concept of dry copying was developed, leading to the commercial development of xerography equipment as well as the company Xerox itself. Battelle was also behind the algorithms behind the first optical digital recorder as well as numerous advances in Engineering research.

Columbus has a vibrant startup culture too! Since 2002, the organization TechColumbus has been organizing, helping, and supporting the local tech startups and established companies alike, with an extensive membership directory.

Yet, there’s also a lot of fun things to do around time too! To be perfectly honest, I initially didn’t like this city but over the course of a few years, I started falling in love with it.

At its heart, Columbus is best described as a diverse city, and quite different from the rest of Ohio. Over the course of its history, the city has been represented as the “typical” American city, due to the fact that its population prominently includes a mix of races and income levels. It is for that reason that. So, in a way, when you visit or live in Columbus, you’re living in a little slice of land that represents America, with its great mixture of people from all races, genders, backgrounds, occupations, and income levels. It is for that reason that whenever a company or restaurant chain wants to test out a new product, out of all the American cities, they come to Columbus, Ohio to get access to that amazing sample population.

The city has its fair share of entertainment and sports venues too. The country’s greatest sports rivalry, Ohio State & Michigan, is located here (being a Columbusian, as we are affectionately called, you would be on the right winning side of that rivarly), with the annual big game played here in Columbus every other year. They city’s also home to soccer (MLS winning Columbus Crew), hockey (NHL’s Blue Jackets), and baseball (Minor League’s Columbus Clippers). Moreover, Columbus is extremely close to both Cincinnati and Cleveland, with their NFL and MLB teams within a short distance of driving. The city also has a very strong artistic community, with a strong performing arts and Broadway presence within the city.

On top of all that, the greatest thing about Columbus is perhaps its location. The city’s situated in a great position and is located within 550 miles of half the population of the United States. Virtually all major cities, minus the West Coast, are within a day’s drive at most.

What I personally love about Columbus is that it’s this important well-located big city that has that nice small town feel to it. Its nice established business sectors, in virtually every industry, as well its beaming diversity make it a great place to work and live. Take a visit sometime and if you do, definitely feel free to get in touch with me and I would be more than glad to show you around.

Hany Rashwan is a 19-year old Ohio State student who’s been involved with technology since 2000. He’s currently the founder/CEO of Hany, Inc, which is working on a stealth video aggregator, as well as an adviser to a few technology companies. He can be reached via his Blog, Facebook, or Twitter.