Missoula, Montana tech companies Lumenad and Submittable host Lolo middle school students

The three dozen Lolo Middle School students who toured two fast-growing tech companies in Missoula on Friday are familiar with the internet, technology, digital advertising and software.

What they aren’t so familiar with – and what they learned on the tour – is that there are good-paying jobs at companies right here in town that might be desperate to hire them a few years down the road.

June Noel, an experienced digital coder and local chapter director of ChickTech Missoula, brought the kids to her new place of employment, Lumenad https://lumenad.com/ , to give them a taste of some possible careers in the tech field. Lumenad is a digital advertising technology company that has roughly 30 employees and is growing so fast it’s in the process of remodeling new office space in the Florence Building downtown.

Michael FitzGerald, a co-founder of Missoula tech company Submittable http://www.submittable.com, also gave the students a tour of his company’s office and products. The company makes a cloud-based platform that makes it easy for people to accept and review digital content. His message to the kids was that tech companies like Submittable are trying to prevent the best and brightest high school and college graduates from leaving Montana to seek careers elsewhere.

"We hope to have around 500 employees by the time you all graduate high school," FitzGerald told the kids. "You can stay in Montana and share with the world based on the architecture of the Internet."

DAVID ERICKSON [email protected]

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/news/local/local-tech-companies-host-lolo-middle-school-students/article_9131e1fb-a2fa-5819-aeda-3769cf6bb4b4.html