11:26 a.m. Tues., 01.19.10 - These two economic trends seem evident: The labor market remains in flux (see the December jobs report), and interest in high-tech innovation remains high (see the throngs of smartphone apps that come onto the market each week).

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there’s an increasing effort in St. Louis to bring tech-savvy job hunters together with likeminded people, some of whom are at various stages of starting a company or who are looking to expand. Events like the Start-up Connection and the Gateway to Innovation Conference, both of which I’ve written about in this space, provide a venue for mingling and skills training. 

Now comes a gathering called the St. Louis Innovation Camp that is intended to advance entrepreneurship in the region and help advance the careers of displaced technicians. The idea, simply put, is to teach people how to start high-tech companies, give them feedback about their ideas and reward the teams whose plans for information technology-related products or services are deemed the most promising.

Engineers, software developers and others in the IT field will join representatives from area marketing firms and other business executives at the three-day conference, which runs from Feb. 26-28 at the JC Penney building on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis. It costs $50 to attend, though some scholarships are available. The target attendance is 400 people.

Topics at the conference include how to find initial funding and manage company finances, how to create a detailed business plan and then move from concepts to functional products in the marketplace, and how to use social networking to get the word out about a new company.

Well in advance of this event, I spoke with Brian Blanchard, chairman of the Innovation Camp and a consultant with experience in the high-tech world, and Alex Miller, organizer of the Strange Loop conference for area software developers, who is helping to organize the conference. On this Beacon audiocast, Blanchard and Miller speak about their conference, the state of the St. Louis high-tech sector and why more people here don’t think about starting their own business. Among the issues Blanchard discusses is the hesitance of established companies to try the new products or services being offered by entrepreneurial startups.