Salt Lake City is not exactly Silicon Valley. But Utah is all about high tech, right? Last I heard, Gov. Jon Huntsman has made it clear that economic development is riding on cutting-edge, hyper-clean, high-paying, high technology businesses.

You wouldn't have known it at Salt Lake's largest annual business networking fest. The Salt Lake Chamber's Business-to-Business Expo (B2B for you biz types) has 4,000 attendees and a couple of hundred vendors trying to scheme ways to make more bucks, hire more people, yadda, yadda. But no complementary Wi-Fi.

Sure, face to face is great, but unless you pay the SL Convention Center a daily or hourly fee for Wi-Fi — you leave behind 21st Century biz things like checking your email. People with broadband wireless modems and Blackberries are OK, of course, but most of the attendees I spoke to were mid-range in tech savvy — and cut off from the outside world. Nancy Dahill, a member of Chamber East, said, "That's criminal," when she learned Wi-Fi wasn't provided. She opined that it could partially explain why the B2B has been "shrinking" in recent years.

Chamber President Lane Beatty could have popped $4,500 (the equivalent of three vendor fees) for free Wi-Fi and gone first class. Or, hey, he could have thought outside the box and cut a B2B deal with the taxpayer subsidized Convention Center and/or one of the city's high-tech companies.