Jove telecommuter lands in downtown Ann Arbor

Wednesday, July 21, 2010 | Source: Concentrate

Jove shouldn't have anything to do with downtown Ann Arbor, but the Massachusetts-based firm does so because of the city's high quality of urban life.

Jove stands for Journal of Visualized Experiments. The start-up creates and hosts video journals for biological research, meaning it shows how experiments are done in a peer-reviewed, YouTube-style Internet video. It draws top talent from across North America to its staff, one of whom landed in Michigan and choose downtown Ann Arbor.

Mark Shalinsky, one of Jove's first employees, moved to Ann Arbor with his wife when she took a job at the University of Michigan. They choose to live in downtown Ann Arbor because it provided a quality urban experience where they could live practically car-free. As Mark puts it, "not having a vehicle is awesome."

"That's why Ann Arbor," Shalinsky says. "We like being in the center of things."

This also helps him telecommute for his job from various downtown hotspots. The close proximity to Metro Airport allows him to be anywhere in the world within a matter of hours, and also enables him to pitch Jove's products and attributes at a number of Ann Arbor's entrepreneurial meetings, such as those hosted by Ann Arbor SPARK. That helps the local entrepreneurial ecosystem make one more connection to one of the world's hottest economies, and all because the city created a dense, vibrant city center that new economy workers wanted to be a part of.

Source: Mark Shalinsky, Science Editor for Jove
Writer: Jon Zemke