It is late on a Wednesday evening. Jay Chaudhry is still in his office, trying to clear his desk. It is close to eight, and the phone hasn’t stopped ringing. He ducks a call but takes another, and draws comfort from the fact that he is not alone. Many of his staff is still there, too. Home is still a couple of hours away and as Chaudhry thinks of the drive back, his biggest fear is being caught in a traffic snarl, even at this late hour.
“You need to do this, everybody is doing this, time to market is critical,” says Chaudhry, echoing views that were until recently held only in technology outposts such as Silicon Valley.
Welcome to Atlanta, the new Atlanta, gateway to the south.
One of the hottest growth regions in the nation, Atlanta is playing catch-up with the world of high technology, and simultaneously transforming the lifestyles of its citizens. And it is doing it on Internet time, if the pace of growth and the pace of life are any indication.
Most people trace the torrid growth in the city back to the early 1990s when Atlanta won the bid to stage the 1996 Summer Olympics. The world’s biggest sporting event, whose cost now runs into billions of dollars, was a big spur to growth. Buildings rose almost overnight, and businesses grew likewise. Coincidentally, when about the same time the Internet became a big buzz, Atlanta just kept growing, beyond recognition now.
Sea Change