I would need my European/Asian food.....(especially great sushi and some Michelin caliber restaurants), easy beach access, good weather most of the year, and some tech meetups to go to.
I just want a decent electronic music scene (anything with regular non-house non-edm events) but that alone means i have to stick to pretty big cities :(
I wouldn't be so sure about that. There was a decent sized EDM festival a couple of years ago in bum-fuck Lolo Hot Springs, Montana (Lolo Hot Springs is basically the last stop in MT on US Rte 12 headed towards Idaho - it's about 40-60 minutes from Lolo proper. It's only claims to fame are the hot springs and Lewis & Clark stopped there. I'm not even sure the population is in the triple digits). Hell, if I'd known about it before hand, I'd have used it as an excuse to visit my parents in Lolo. A couple of my favorite US based d'n'b DJs played that event. Alas, I didn't know about it until well after the fact.
Granted, you said decent scene, and I wouldn't necessarily qualify a single "large" event (for the region) a decent scene, but it doesn't mean there has to be nothing.
edit: Also, some of the regional small cities can attract a lot of shows. Boise, ID is particularly good at it, even with a pop < 250k. Boise also has a pretty decent tech drawing, but that's more on the hardware side, I think, Boise is Micron's headquarters. Boise is also a great city to live in. My parents were there for a while when I was in college. Quite a fun city for its size. Ethnic foods are somewhat limited, but you can get very good Mexican and Basque food there (loved the Basque food in particular).
To be honest, Boise is a gem of a city for it's size. I wouldn't say it has a great EDM scene, but it's got a decent live music scene. Treefort is coming up next month.