Alvin "Wyliemac" Borromeo and Rocky "RocksOn" VanBrimmer on Central Ohio's #1 hit live call in podcast "Connector!"To successfully express your “self” you must be authentic. Your team has to immediately recognize what you are saying as your own words—and not a speech you’ve assumed from those above.
In all things be authentic—as you work to continue the culture that Dave has established (at Progressive Medical), to hold true to the principles and practices that set us apart from other organizations, you have to be yourself. Genuinely and unabashedly, you.
To do this requires deliberate thought and choice. You have to determine what matters to you and how you can best express it in your own words and ways.
Then go out and live it—matching your words with your deeds and Modeling The Way.
Personal Audit
What have your communications with your team in the last week sounded like? Are your words in alignment with our philosophy as an organization?
If not, why? If so, how and how can you demonstrate this to an even greater extent?
The rub about authenticity is that no one can teach you to be you. You have to discover your voice on your own. Thinking about last week is a good start, now think about what you are planning to communicate tomorrow.
What happened when the Columbus high tech community intersected with the low impact mission of the Columbus biking community?COLUMBUS, Ohio -- June 22, 2009 -- SCI Engineered Materials, Inc. (SCI) (OTC Bulletin Board: SCIA), a manufacturer of ceramics and metals for advanced applications using physical vapor deposition, today announced it received a $1 million order for Thin Film Solar products, which are expected to be manufactured and shipped during the second half of 2009.
SCI began developing additional products for Thin Film Solar in 2006 following several years as a materials supplier to that growing market. During the past two years the Company accelerated the acquisition of manufacturing equipment to scale its operations and also hired additional engineering and sales staff to specifically focus on Thin Film Solar. Currently, SCI is actively involved in the qualification process with several customers and has received a number of trial orders in 2009.
Dan Rooney, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, stated, “We are pleased to receive this significant order for Thin Film Solar products. It underscores the progress we are making in this strategic market that exhibits exciting long-term growth potential. We are continuing to scale SCI’s manufacturing and service capabilities to capture a larger share of the global Thin Film Solar market.”
About SCI Engineered Materials, Inc.
SCI Engineered Materials, Inc. manufactures ceramics and metals for advanced applications such as photonics, thin film solar, thin film batteries, and semiconductors. SCI Engineered Materials is a global materials supplier with clients in more than 40 countries. For additional information, click here.
The list, now in its sixth year, ranks the top 25 small and top 25 medium-sized companies using “best practice” people management strategies to develop successful organizations with highly productive and satisfied workforces. Organizations range in size from 50 to 999 employees and the GPTW selects the winners based on a randomly-distributed, employee-opinion survey. Each company evaluated was given a score based on employees’ responses to a detailed questionnaire about the organizations’ workplace cultures.
“We ask our employees to pursue remarkably high standards of performance on their consulting engagements,” Navigator Management Partners CEO David Schoettmer said. “Part of our strategy to recruit and retain those able to deliver to these standards is to offer a truly great employment experience. We are happy and honored to have achieved this recognition from SHRM / GPTW, but we are even happier about the caliber of our workforce.”
“Small and medium-sized companies make up the majority of the American economy and workforce,” SHRM President and CEO Laurence O’Neil said. “These 50 winning organizations demonstrate that investing in people is critical to their success, and we are proud to recognize their accomplishments.”
“These companies stand out because their employees find them to be places where they can trust the management, take pride in their work and have fun,” GPTW co-founder Robert Levering said. “Other companies have much to learn about how to be productive and do right by their people.”
Articles and profiles of the winners will appear in the June issue of Fortune Small Business, in the July issue of HR Magazine, and on CNNMoney.com. The winning organizations will also be listed on the SHRM (www.shrm.org) and GPTW (www.greatplacetowork.com) web sites.
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About Navigator Management Partners, LLC
Now in its 11th year, the Inner City 100 list provides unmatched original data on the fastest growing inner-city businesses in the U.S. For the 2009 list, over 5,000 nominations were received. The 2009 Inner City 100 winners grew at a compound annual growth rate of 40 percent and an average rate of 324 percent between 2003 and 2007. Collectively, the top 100 inner city businesses have employed nearly 17,000 people and created nearly 10,000 new jobs over the past five years.
Fifty-three percent of companies expect steady growth, 11 percent expect their revenues to double, six percent expect their revenues to triple, and a mere four percent expect their revenues to decline in 2009. Individually, the average Inner City 100 Company’s revenues were $23 million.
“We are delighted to celebrate businesses like Navigator that are playing a critical role to revitalize distressed urban communities throughout America,” said Michael Porter, founder and CEO of ICIC. “By creating jobs, income, and wealth for local residents, these high-growth businesses are vivid proof that the most effective way to address economic inequality in America is to equip every community to prosper in the market system. Inner City 100 companies also provide a window into the future where all companies will need to learn to address diverse customers and mobilize diverse workforces.”
With offices in Columbus, Baltimore, Phoenix and Raleigh, Navigator Management Partners is a consultancy specializing in Project Management, Business Process Design, Packaged Software Implementation, Organizational Change Management and Enterprise Technology Strategy services. Navigator provides the Fortune 1,000 and public-sector institutions a local alternative to larger firms. Their project teams are comprised of top-banded talent formerly of the world’s market-leading consulting firms. The company boasts client and consultant retention rates of over 90% since inception and was named “The Best Place to Work” for small businesses in Central Ohio in 2008. Navigator has been consistently placed on “Fast 50” and Inc. 5,000 lists recognizing rapidly growing private companies and was recently the recipient of a “Corporate Caring Award” recognizing the firm’s dedication to Health & Human Services causes in their local communities.
The 2009 Inner City 100 winners operate from 55 cities in 31 states. Fifteen companies on the list are based in California and eight are from Massachusetts. Texas, New York and Colorado each have seven companies on the list. Pennsylvania has six companies on the list and Ohio has five. Three states (Florida, Missouri and Indiana) have four companies on the list. Among the top cities represented in the 2009 list Denver has seven winning companies and Boston, Philadelphia, Oakland, and San Francisco each have four companies listed on the Inner City 100.
The list is proof of concept that doing business in an inner city area holds a distinct competitive advantage. ICIC has been studying the economic condition of the largest 100 American cities for more than a decade and is working to revitalize inner cities across the country.
The 2009 Inner City 100 winners attended the Inner City 100 Summit in Boston for a two-day event featuring seminars for Inner City 100 owners and managers at Harvard Business School, a reception at the Harvard Club of Boston, and a gala awards dinner at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center that is expected to draw more than 800 guests.
Highlights of the 2009 Inner City 100 list include:
For more information about the 2009 Inner City 100 list, please contact Julia Ely at (617) 292-2383. The entire list can be found at www.icic.org
According to the latest estimates by the National Business Incubator Association (NBIA), in 2005 alone, North American incubators assisted more than 27,000 startup companies. Here are 10 of them that caught our eyes and might help you get your business started.
June 25, 2009 - TechWeek
In its first public outing, Central Ohio startup Toobla received the highest ratings from a San Francisco technology group for its product demo. Toobla is a widget platform that lets users discover, save and share all of the most interesting bits of the Web. Users can find embeddable content such as videos, images, music, games and apps any where on the Web, save it on Toobla and then create a live channel on Toobla that they can share with others on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.
Toobla presented to the San Francisco technology community during an event called “Widgets up the Wazoo Smackdown III” sponsored by the SFNewTech meetup group. Toobla was picked by the audience as the best demo at the June 17th event, beating out widget industry leaders such as Clearspring, Gigya, iWidgets and others.
Toobla has received funding from the TechColumbus TechGenesis fund, the TechColumbus Pre-Seed Fund (formerly the Regional Commercialization Fund) and investments from Ohio TechAngels.
For more information, click here
Read the reviews as reported in The Wall Street Journal here
To view Toobla’s demo from the event, click here.
June 25, 2009 - TechWeek
Columbus-based Clearsaleing, an advertising analytics software provider, participated last week in the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition and reported to The Wall Street Journal that despite the recession, it has seen revenue growth every month since it launched three years ago.
“Good economy, bad economy, we have a great story to tell,” says Adam Goldberg, Clearsaleing co-founder and chief innovation officer.
Clearsaleing chose the conference as the site to launch its newest offering, Clearsaleing Purchase Path Technology. The solution provides attribution management capabilities that allow e-tailers to more precisely identify which online marketing activities are leading to conversions. Internet retailers can more accurately measure, compare and optimize ROI across their online advertising portfolio. In addition, marketers can now configure ClearSaleing to assign a cost to organic traffic for each search engine, providing for the first time a legitimate basis of comparison to paid advertising alternatives. The company has also developed industry-focused versions of the software to address the needs of advertisers within various industries including financial services, insurance, travel, pharmaceutical, automotive and retail.
Clearsaleing is backed by local venture fund NCT Ventures and the Ohio TechAngels.
To read the story in the Wall Street Journal, click here
For more information on Clearsaleing Purchase Path Technology, see the release from the company
Generating small wins is a significant aspect of the practice of Challenge The Process.
The same feeling a consumer gets from endowed progress can be realized through a leader that utilizes the power of small wins. It is important to note that endowed progress uses artificial advancement towards a goal—as authentic leaders there should be nothing artificial in our work. However, the general concept is nonetheless applicable.
When we create the opportunity for small wins for our teams we form the basis for a consistent pattern of winning. These small wins build people’s confidence and reinforce their natural desire to feel successful. Small wins also deter opposition—it is hard to argue against success. (especially important as we challenge the status quo)
Small wins make the project or goal seem doable within existing skill sets and resource levels—minimizing the risk of trying something new. Once these small wins are accomplished natural forces are set in motion that favor stepping out toward the next small win on the path to the larger objective.
If your team members see you as asking them to achieve that which they are quite capable of doing, they feel some assurance that they can be successful at the task. Their energy is directed into getting the job done; rather than wondering “how will we ever solve that problem?”
And in this they find heightened interest in continuing with the journey.
What small wins are you generating for your team?
What do the services Pixelpipe.com, Etherpad.com, Tr.im and namechk.com have in common? All four are tools that I can’t live without these days and didn’t even know existed a few months ago. That is how fast the Internets are changing. I suggest you give each of the four a quick try out and see if you agree that you can save yourself a lot of time with each of them.
Pixelpipe is a service much like Ping.fm. It allows you to post the same piece of content to multiple sites. Whether it is a status update (which is just what Ping does), a blog entry, a video, or a series of photos, it is a very useful service and handles more than 80 different sites. Look for a review to come soon in Computerworld next month. The downside is that you have to store your authentication credentials with the service for each site, which may make you nervous if you care. And if you mess up, your typos will be immediately sent out to the world for many of your correspondents to see, because there is no easy way to recall the messages without visiting each site individually. I like it mainly because I post my blog entries to multiple platforms, part for redundancy’s sake, part because I don’t trust WordPress to be the sole repository of my work product.
Next is Etherpad, a service that allows multiple people to concurrently edit a document using just a Web browser. You create an unique URL and then send that to your collaborators via email. Once someone knows the URL, they can make changes to your document, and each author’s changes can be tracked with different colored highlights. I used this today with a client – even though we were sitting around a conference table in the same room, we were able to agree on the edits of a document within a few minutes, it was incredibly productive.
Tr.im is a URL shortening service with a twist: you can post the shortened link directly to your Twitter account. And while that is convenient, wait there is something that I really like. It will track all the people who have clicked on the shortened link and show you which client (browser, Twitter third party app, or service) was used in the process, along with time-series data on the clicks. You can really see the immediacy of Twitter, but you can also use it to track referrals on other services too.
Namechk is a very simple service that will lookup a particular username on more than 120 different social networking, blog and video sharing sites. It will see if it is taken or available. This is a very useful tool that you can show your clients how tuned in you are to that scene.
Let me know what you think about each of these services, and if you have others that you have recently found that could be useful.
Governor Strickland proposes to fill Ohio's $3.2 billion shortfall in the
state budget by eliminating $200+ million from the Public Library Fund over
the next two years. His proposal will have a drastic impact on all 251 public
libraries in Ohio and on Columbus Metropolitan Library in particular.
This proposal by the Governor cuts library funding by 50% beginning July 1,
2009.
We only have days to have an impact.
1. Today, contact your legislators. We've made it easy to do. Go to:
http://columbuslibrary.org.
2. Call Governor Strickland's office at 614-466-3555.
The Governor's proposed funding cuts come at a time when Ohio's public
libraries are experiencing unprecedented increases in demands for services. In
every community throughout the state, Ohioans are turning to their public
library for free job help, children and teens are beginning summer reading
programs and people of all ages are turning to the library for information and
assistance during this economic downturn. That is no truer than here at CML.
We cannot allow these cuts to succeed, cuts which will drastically reduce
services and access. Act now.
LOCATION:
Our firm needs to add a HIGHLY SELF-MOTIVATED recruiter or candidate sourcer who can deliver potential candidates to fill both consulting (90%) and direct hire (10%) positions for our clients.
We are a growing and successful IT Consulting and Technical Recruiting firm with more than thirteen years of experience in the Technical (IT) Consulting Services and Technical (IT) Recruiting Services business. As a result of our strong client relationships and ability to consistently deliver best-of-breed candidates, we must add another recruiter to satisfy our clients’ demands.
We have a very capable sales team that has strong relationships with our clients. The positions that you will be working on are all “real” and well-qualified opportunities.
We have been listed in the “Fast 50” for Columbus for three years (2004, 2005 & 2007 fiscal years), are now over 150 associates, have operations in Columbus, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan, have consultants billing in 8 states, and have proven our ability to satisfy the needs of Fortune 50 clients as a preferred vendor.
We are either preferred or approved vendor at some of the largest healthcare, information services, software, finance, insurance, retail, and specialty services companies in the
Our web site is a great place to go to understand the culture of our firm.
Most important to us is that you have a desire to do direct recruiting, not simply scan resume databases and respond to resumes submitted through our web sites.
Experience in the IT sector is mandatory.
Of particular interest to us would be a less-experienced but highly self-motivated IT recruiter with experience in the Columbus market who feels they are not being compensated fairly, or do not have enough open positions to fill to earn a six-figure total compensation package (base + commission).
Our compensation plan is structured to pay you “annuity” commissions from your consulting placements, as well as one-time commissions from consulting placements and direct hire searches successfully completed.
Expect to work from our offices in
Reply by e-mail with a resume to:
mark_pukita@fastswitch.com
June 24, 2009 Columbus, Ohio – Search engine optimization company, Real Estate’s SEO, LLC optimizes Realtors’ individual websites while donating some of their proceeds to Bittersweet Ministries, a non-profit organization that builds houses for families living in a landfill in Tijuana, Mexico.
The owners of Real Estate’s SEO felt compelled to give back to the community in a way related to their core business. Since the need for housing outweighs the necessity for search engine optimization, the Internet, or even computers, they began to look for those who were most in need of housing. Karen Schneider, a founding partner, decided to donate to Bittersweet Ministries, a non-profit organization operating in Tijuana, Mexico. Homeless families in Tijuana are living in a landfill, scavenging for food and shelter in the waste. Bittersweet Ministries solicits the help of missionaries to build houses and distribute food and clothing to these families. They also provide daycare services, supply scholarships for children to attend school, and teach Bible studies and English classes for children and adults.
Real Estate’s SEO, LLC optimizes Realtors’ websites by performing on-page and off-page SEO and offering monthly status reports to show Realtors how their website is ranking for relevant keywords. After having their website optimized, Realtors will notice their site on the first page of the search engine results for the keywords related to their location and market niche, allowing buyers and sellers to find their future home or real estate agent online. With almost 90% of buyers looking for homes online Realtors must change their focus from print to online marketing and advertising if they want their business to survive. A study from The National Association of Realtors found that traditional Realtors earn an average of $36,700 annually while Internet Realtors average over $100,000 with 70% or more of their leads and sales coming from their website.
Real Estate’s SEO, LLC is currently seeking new clients. They are looking for Realtors who understand the importance of having a prominent web presence to promote their listings and services. Now through August 31, 2009 Realtors who want to understand how their website currently ranks can mention this news article to receive 50% off a website analysis report. For more information please visit http://realestatesseo.com or contact Karen Schneider at k.schneider@realestatesseo.com.
OPERATIONS MANAGER - Retail/Branch Operations Leadership Opportunity!
Responsible for leadership over multiple retail stores in a health-related industry.
The Operations Director will directly manage office-level managers in multiple locations throughout the Midwest. Responsibilities include hiring, training, mentorship, and store performance. This position requires travel (primarily day trips) to impact retail staff. Core responsibility includes mentorship and motivation to foster and maintain a positive & productive staff.
Requirements:
• Strong Leadership Experience Required
• 5+ years total experience, with at least 2+ years of management over multiple levels of staff
• Degree required - preferred in business or related
• Retail and/or healthcare experience a plus
Salary range: $60,000 - $90,000 /Year
Travel: Up to 50%
-This posting represents a Full time / direct hire / Columbus, OH / salaried position
-Relocation assistance is not available
-Work Visa Sponsorship is not available
For prompt consideration submit resume to jowens@dawsoncareers.com.
TECHNICAL PROJECT MANAGER - Are you a Project Manager with a passion for technology?
Our client is seeking an experienced Project Manager to assist in the development, delivery, and support of development projects, including business requirements, functional requirements, resources, schedules and delivery milestones, and overall quality.
The ideal candidate will be IT-centric and lean towards the technical development side. This position requires the ability to direct and balance a variety of diverse requests, priorities, and activities. The Project Manager must have a thorough understanding of both the business needs and the technologies being utilized to implement the business solution.
This is a great opportunity for someone who wants to be a part of an organization where they're treated like family versus a commodity.
Requirements:
Strongly prefer:
· Project Management Certification (PMP)
-This posting represents a Full time / direct hire / Columbus, OH / salaried position
-Relocation assistance is not available
-Work Visa Sponsorship is not available
Salary range: $65,000 - $85,000 /Year
Travel: Negligible
For prompt consideration submit resume to jowens@dawsoncareers.com.
Microblogging platform Twitter has 32 million users, an increase from about 2 million a year ago, according to research mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. Some Internet measurement services show that figure increasing 50% to 100% month over month. While it is not clear that Twitter will become as large as social networks MySpace and Facebook or video-sharing site YouTube, the company could certainly have 50 million visitors by the end of the year. View the 10 ways Twitter Will Change American Business here.
Because Twitter can be used with ease on both PCs and mobile devices, and because it limits users to very short messages of 140 characters or fewer, it has become one of the largest platforms in the world for sharing real-time data. A number of large businesses and celebrities have hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. This includes personalities like Oprah and Ashton Kutcher. JetBlue (JBLU), Whole Foods (WFMI) and Dell (DELL), along with other multinational corporations, are among the most followed names on the service. (See the top 10 celebrity Twitter feeds.)
As Twitter grows, it will increasingly become a place where companies build brands, do research, send information to customers, conduct e-commerce and create communities for their users. Some industries, like local retail, could be transformed by Twitter — both at one-store operations that cater to customers within a few blocks of their locations and at the individual stores of giant retail operations like Wal-Mart (WMT). In either case, having the opportunity to tell customers about attractive sales and new products can be done at remarkably low cost while providing for greater geographic accuracy.
For Twitter to be a part of a company's efforts to communicate with customers, the customers must be willing to "follow" the company on Twitter. That allows the individual consumer to choose which firms he is willing to get messages directly from. It may not be surprising that "new age" brands like Whole Foods and JetBlue have large followings and older and much larger brands like Kroger (KR) and American Airlines (AMR) do not. Whole Foods and JetBlue have successfully marketed themselves as being "customer-centric" — the kind of companies that would not misuse the access to a customer's private Twitter information. (Read Ashton Kutcher's take on why the Twitter founders made the TIME 100.)
While there may be commercial value for using Twitter to communicate with customers, the danger is that the Twitter community could turn against a marketer viewed as being too crass by being relentlessly self-promoting. Twitter users have set up their own rules of conduct when using the service, not unlike those with MySpace and Facebook. These rules were not put together by Twitter itself, which mandates only rules of use. Like many social-network sites, Twitter is self-governed by its members, and companies must take that into account as they join the service.
Twitter is still in the early stages of developing a plan for making money as a company, but plenty of large corporations like Starbucks (SBUX) are already using it as a marketing tool. Twitter will probably evolve into both a community of individuals and a community of companies that provide goods and services for those individuals.
24/7 Wall St. has come up with 10 ways in which Twitter will permanently change American business within the next two to three years, based on an examination of Twitter's model, the way that corporations and small businesses are currently using the service and some of the logical extensions of how companies will use Twitter in the future. Some of these firms are already using Twitter, but their efforts are in the earliest stages of development. 24/7 Wall St. evaluated other sensible and potentially highly profitable ways Twitter's real-time, multiplatform presence is likely to be exploited — in the best use of that word — to expand businesses both large and small.
— Douglas A. McIntyre
Vic Cleary and Geno Arce from 2Checkout will be featured speakers at the Internet Dating Conference (iDate) in Beverly Hills, California Friday, June 26.
Cleary and Arce will provide internet dating executives and entrepreneurs a product demonstration of 2Checkout’s features and benefits explaining why 2CO is an excellent value for businesses competing in the online dating space.
iDate, the largest Internet Dating and Social Networking business management conference of its kind, is held twice in the U.S. and at least once internationally each year. Event topics include internet dating business strategies, payments, mobile technologies and marketing, social networks, and a number of legal and consumer safety issues.
In addition to Friday’s product demonstration, 2Checkout will also be compared to a variety of e-commerce options used by online dating companies in a discussion led by Courtland Brooks’ Director of Strategy, Glenn Millar at 9:00 a.m. the same day, titled “Removing the Veil: Payment Processor Rates and Options for Dating Companies”. Attendees interested in learning more can also speak to a 2Checkout representative at the company’s booth during the event’s Expo starting Thursday, June 24.
I think as an SBDC business consultant I am supposed to tell people that they need to write a "business plan". I guess I'm breaking the rules because I'm going to tell you Not To Write Business Plan! Many entrepreneurs think writing a business plan is an exercise to engage in only when seeking a loan or investors. There is so much focus on the development of a 40 page, 12 point font plan that the true purpose of a plan, to guide the operation of the business, is missed. I've seen plans where the narrative and the financials did not relate to each other, as a matter of fact looked like two separate businesses. Other plans I've seen are full of Gartner references but contained no real guidance on execution of the business. The worst plans I seen are the ones that are sitting on the shelf in the founder's office covered with dust. More than likely all of these plans were written for the banker with no real thought as to using this as a document to drive the business. The problem with that is if a loan is made it is based in part on the plan. If the plan is not followed and the business does not meet it's milestones the bank will be less likely to extend further credit in the future...or worse.
My advice is to forget about writing a plan and focus on the "Process of Planning". Start with a blank pad of paper or flip charts. Write something that you can embrace and use to drive your business, not as a paperweight or a doorstop. You should develop a working, living document that will allow your business to reach the levels that you desire. It should clearly articulate the steps you need to take as you grow the business. I've heard that the keys to running a business are knowing "Who's out there to buy your product." and "How are you going to get them to buy it." Maybe there is a little more involved than that but if you don't have the answers to those two questions down cold it's going to be a struggle.
Here are some steps to consider in your planning process:
Let's be clear, you can start/run a business without doing all of this. The difference is the level of control over the outcomes of the business that you gain by going through a planning~implementation process. I often have entrepreneurs come to me after being in business for awhile and want to "get serious" about moving their business forward. This allows you to do that. It also makes it easy to create a "business plan" for financing because you have all of the information needed, all you have to do is drop it into the right format.
Did I miss anything? Let me know your thoughts.
Agile has gone from buzzword to mainstream industry practice, which all started one wintery weekend back in 2001 with a simple manifesto. At the time, it was considered only a ‘light-weight’ approach to software development - until its current, famously well-known name, was identified at that meeting.
Agile comes to Columbus Wednesday morning (6/24) with Elizabethe Kramer at Platform Lab for a discussion about bringing Agility to Business Analysts. Register to hear Elizabethe, an Agile Business Analysis Coach from Athens, Ohio, talk through the coaching and training she developed as part of her practice at Atticus Scribe LLC.
Then Wednesday afternoon, the Columbus XP User Group brings Dr. Martha Lindeman, President of Agile Interactions, to OCLC for a discussion about User Modeling. RSVP to understand how user modeling starts early in a project, by identifying users’ access points, roles, and goals - and the advantages of detailing them into task sequences on an as-needed basis.
Friday (6/26) morning, at Three Nationwide Plaza, Dustin Potts gives a guided tour of Nationwide Financial’s Agile Development Center. Ony 15 registered guests are going to be taken through the development center team space, witness an actual stand-up meeting, and be able to ask questions.
And finally, next Tuesday (6/30) morning, TechColumbus hosts a panel discussion about Agile Enterprise Transformation, with some local heavy-hitters: Linda Farrenkopf (Sophisticated Systems), Jay M. Johnson (Nationwide), Gene Johnson (Fairhaven Solutions), and Matt Van Vleet (Pillar Technologies). Register to share your Agile stories, objections, questions, and challenges.
Stay Agile!
Aaron Vronko An Apple iPhone 3G S separated from its back panel.By now, we know that the “S” in the name of the new iPhone stands for speed.
But what exactly does that mean?
Aaron Vronko, co-founder of Rapid Repair, an online repair shop for portable electronics based in Kalamazoo, Mich., flew to Paris to find out. Mr. Vronko scooped up the iPhone 3G S shortly after it was released there and took the device to a nearby shop to take it apart. (You can see the step-by-step process at his Web site.)
“The construction of it is almost exactly the same as the iPhone 3G, so it feels the same in your hands,” he said. “But more than half of the actual components inside the phone have been tweaked or changed.”
Most notable, he said, was the upgrade of the main processor. Both the original iPhone 2G and the 3G used a design with a 412-megahertz central processing unit. But the iPhone 3G S is outfitted with an amped-up processor running at 600 megahertz. That and other upgrades allow the phone to work twice as fast as previous models. Applications that normally take 10 or 12 seconds to open on older phones were up and running in half the time.
Another big hardware improvement, Mr. Vronko said, is the system memory (not to be confused with the storage space for things like music files). The 3G S was upgraded from 128 megabytes to 256 megabytes, which allows the phone to manage more of everything at the same time. Previously, larger Web pages could crash the system, but with the additional memory space, those can be handled without a problem, he said.
Mr. Vronko pointed out that with the beefed-up processor and bigger memory, the iPhone 3G S rivaled the new handset developed by Palm, the Pre.
“The main processor and system memory are completely equivalent to what’s in the Palm Pre, which allows for multitasking in a robust environment,” Mr. Vronko said. “This could also potentially open the door for true multitasking on the iPhone.”
For now, Apple allows iPhone owners to have only one application open at a time. But if the company were ever to relent on that restriction and allow multiple applications to run simultaneously, the iPhone 3G S’s new hardware should be able to keep up.
Perhaps more significantly, Mr. Vronko said, was what the juiced-up capabilities would enable developers of games and other applications to do with the device.
“Right now, Apple has only added a small list of new things that you can do on the 3G S,” he said. “But the capabilities are there to do much more.”
For example, the iPhone 3G S now integrates a PowerVR SGX graphics chip that can handle 3-D rendering, opening the doors to much more complex games design, Mr. Vronko said.
But these new capabilities could potentially cause Apple to run into difficulties down the line, he said. The different generations of the iPhone and iPod Touch, equipped with varying processor speeds, mean that applications could run unevenly across the various devices. Or iPhone 3G S users might have access to a different catalog of applications than owners of the iPhone 3G or iPod Touch.
“Right now, Apple wants their developers to make apps compatible across the various processors,” Mr. Vronko said. “Developers are going to want to push the limits of the device.”
If some apps only work on some phones, that could threaten the simplicity that is an important part of the iPhone’s success, he said.The Progressive Medical IS Team during our recent celebration luau. What a great place to work. We work hard, do great things, and have a heck of a good time doing it.
Seriously - Sometimes we spend an awful lot of time at work. I don't think that it's a coincidence that high performance and fun correlate highly here at Progressive Medical.
Services Make It Easier to Buy via Cellphone - NYTimes.comSAN FRANCISCO — On a PC, having to fill out a form and type in a credit card number to buy something is only mildly annoying. On a cellphone, it could make you want to skip the purchase entirely.
This is why investors, start-ups and major corporations are pouring money into services that make it easier to use cellphones to buy goods and transfer money.
The aim is to turn phones into virtual credit cards or checkbooks, enabling the kind of click-and-buy commerce and online banking that people have come to expect on their PCs. But shrinking down those services to fit onto cellphones presents serious challenges.
The services must work on many different phones and through many cellphone service providers, which usually control the billing relationships with customers. That adds complexity to the already tricky business of safely and securely transferring funds among financial institutions and merchants.
Mobile payment systems have been tried before, with only modest success. Driving a new flurry of deal making, industry analysts and executives say, is the success of the iPhone, BlackBerry and other sophisticated devices. These phones make complex interactions easier, and they have shown that people on the go are willing to spend on music, games and virtual goods, like a $2 costume for a character in a video game.
Now the race is on to develop new payment systems — and to get several percentage points in fees from each transaction.
“A lot of big players with big bucks are investing a lot of money in this,” said J. Gerry Purdy, an industry analyst for Frost & Sullivan, a market research firm. “They’re seeing that returns could be so huge.”
“We know it’s going to be there,” he said of the technology. “The question is how to make it easy for people.”Well, a day away and it looks like things are jelling to make for another great Ignite Columbus.
Speakers? Check.
Sponsors? Check. Sandbox Columbus and ELEVATE thinking are brining in food from Z Pizza. Avitae Energy Water, which is a sponsor of PodCamp Ohio will be providing their caffinated water.
After Party? Check. We’ll be heading to Park Street Patio after Ignite. Park Street has generously provided us two cabanas from 9 - 10 pm, beer and pizza (limited quatity). You’ll definitely want to come and continue the conversation and talk about the talks.
Audience? Check. Thanks to those who have registered. And to those that haven’t yet, what are you waiting for. Look at all the stuff we’re providing. And the ticket is free.
We say we’ll open the doors at 6 PM. But make sure to come early so you can mingle and meet people. Also, remember the 315 construction. I have no idea what it’s like, so you’ll definitely want to account for plan for the delay.
Detailed driving and parking instructions can be found on the PodCamp Ohio site.
See everyone tomorrow.
Jane Poynter tells her story of living two years and 20 minutes in Biosphere 2 -- an experience that provoked her to explore how we might sustain life in the harshest of environments. This is the first TED talk drawn from an independently organized TEDx event, held at the University of Southern California.
After weathering two years in Biosphere 2, Jane Poynter is trying to create technologies that allow us to live in hostile environments -- like outer space. Full bio and more links
http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_poynter_life_in_biosphere_2.html
New Albany and TechColumbus have created a business incubator in the village that will widen the organization’s reach in fostering tech development in the region and satisfy the village’s push to step up economic development.
The New Albany Business Development Center opened this week at the New Albany Business Park off West Campus Oval. The goal of the center is to turn ideas into jobs, said Stephen Anderson, a business development professional for TechColumbus, which runs the area’s biggest incubator off Kinnear Road in Columbus.
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“We wanted to assist them (New Albany) in their endeavors to create a tech economy,” he said Thursday.
Jennifer Chrysler , community development director for the village of New Albany, hopes the center will help bolster the village’s economy.
“We wanted to be able to attract small businesses as well as large corporations to the region,” she said.
The center will provide a variety of services to business developers and entrepreneurs, Anderson said, including business coaching, and access to investment capital and a small-business development center. Consulting services and attorneys also will be available to the entrepreneurs.
“The hope is to bring in all these resources and layer them in to help these businesses,” Anderson said.
The New Albany Business Development Center parallels a similar endeavor by TechColumbus across town, where it helped to open the Dublin Entrepreneurial Center this year. Both suburban incubators have been in the works for almost two years. Though the two have similar concepts, the centers will “have their own identity and their own purpose,” Anderson said.
The new center also will house a TechColumbus office, the New Albany Chamber of Commerce and Platform Labs, a company that helps businesses conduct information technology test projects. Anderson said having companies such as Platform Labs at the center will give the nascent businesses direct access to certain services.
Creation of the New Albany Business Development Center and the Dublin Entrepreneurial Center were funded by state grants and private investments. New Albany contributed $750,000 toward its project, which was complemented by $1.5 million from the state’s Third Frontier technology development program.
Can you shop anywhere today and not use a loyalty card? Kroger, Giant Eagle, CVS, Best Buy, Staples and many others use these cards to encourage consumers to shop in their stores.
So what can we learn from loyalty cards?
Many of these cards use a theory known in the marketing world as “endowed progress.” A retailer may require 8 purchases to achieve a point value that equates to a reward of some type. Rather than establishing the
program using an 8 purchase model, the stores will require 10 purchases and give the consumer credit for 2 purchases at enrollment.
Why?
This immediate progress results in a sense of having embarked on the larger goal and provides a feeling of accomplishment that increases commitment and the likelihood of task completion. In fact, it even decreases the average completion time.
In short, when shoppers can see they have successfully made progress, they are more likely to see it through and feel better about their effort along the way.
PodCamp Ohio is the media community UnConference that helps connect people interested in blogging, social networks, podcasting and new media to learn, share, and grow their new media skills. Whether you’re just interested in new media or an experienced veteran, PodCamp Ohio is for you!
PodCamp Ohio is structured with everyone in mind. Each session time segment provides 5-7 concurrent sessions for guests to pick from. There are a number of sessions that will be organized as ‘tracks’ for those who are new to blogging and podcasting.
Click here for more info about PodCamp OhioIt's usually difficult for me to participate in the Summit sessions because I'm usually running around working on some aspect of the event but this year I was able to actually attend some of the sessions so I'm going to reflect on what I saw and heard at the Summit.
The Tweet-up on June 9 went very well. Mike Figliuolo of thoughtLEADERS gave a great presentation on personal and professional leadership. I missed the beginning of the presentation as I was picking up Chris Brogan from the airport (his flight was delayed twice and canceled once, glad he made it). We did finally make it and I was very happy to see over 100 people there to kick off the Summit.
More than half of the students at Ohio colleges surveyed by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute plan to leave the state after graduation, the organization said Monday.
The institute conducted an online survey of 811 sophomores, juniors and seniors in February and March, along with three focus groups. The students were from Case Western Reserve, Kent State University, Miami University, Oberlin College, Ohio State University, Ohio University and the University of Dayton.
The result: 58 percent – 51 percent of in-state students and 79 percent of out-of-staters – said they will look elsewhere for jobs after graduation. Among the study's findings:
• 89 percent said they want to live in a place where good jobs are available, but only 11 percent rated Ohio’s job prospects as excellent.
• Those expecting to leave the state after graduation also cited cultural and leisure activities as important factors in where they will choose to live.
• 74 percent want a job with good opportunities for pay and promotion, while 53 percent thought a job that offered ongoing new challenges was more important.
• 61 percent want a job with good retirement benefits, while 14 percent said a union job would be a deciding factor.
The survey also asked students what incentives might persuade them to stay in the state:
• 60 percent liked the idea of a cash grant for a down payment on a house.
• Most said job experience like internships (60 percent), co-op programs (53 percent) and opportunities to meet with Ohio companies (52 percent) would help keep them at home.
• 65 percent said Ohio should offer a 10-year state income tax credit to remain in the state.
“We need our best and brightest to invest their energy and future in Ohio to generate the economic vigor, new technologies and other economic developments that will spur the progress we need to modernize and prosper,” said Terry Ryan, the institute’s vice president for Ohio programs and policy, in a news release.
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute is an education policy think tank with offices in Dayton and Washington, D.C.
SAN FRANCISCO — These days, every skin lotion and dish detergent on store shelves gloats about how green it is. How do shoppers know which are good for them and good for the earth?
It was a similar question that hit Dara O’Rourke, a professor of environmental and labor policy at the University of California, Berkeley, one morning when he was applying sunscreen to his young daughter’s face.
He realized he did not know what was in the lotion. He went to his office and quickly discovered that it contained a carcinogen activated by sunlight. It also contained an endocrine disruptor and two skin irritants. He also discovered that her soap included a kind of dioxane, a carcinogen, and then found that one of her brand-name toys was made with lead.
And in looking for the answer, he hatched the idea for a company that used his esoteric research on supply chain management. “All I do is study this, and I know nothing about the products I’m bringing into our house and putting in, on and around our family,” Mr. O’Rourke said. But when he wanted to find that information, he could. Most consumers would struggle to do so.
Hence GoodGuide, a Web site and iPhone application that lets consumers dig past the package’s marketing spiel by entering a product’s name and discovering its health, environmental and social impacts.
“What we’re trying to do is flip the whole marketing world on its head,” said Mr. O’Rourke. “Instead of companies telling you what to believe, customers are making the statements to the marketers about what they care about.”
A few years ago, Mr. O’Rourke noticed that at the end of his lectures, audience members were raising their hands to ask which kind of laptop or sneaker or lotion to buy. Americans are becoming increasingly interested in what is in the stuff they buy. (Mr. O’Rourke’s research caught mainstream interest once before when, in 1997, his report on Nike’s factories in Vietnam led to an uproar over that company’s labor conditions.)
Although the GoodGuide Web site, which started in September, had only 110,000 unique visitors in April, Mr. O’Rourke is encouraged that it is growing about 25 percent a month. Lately, interest in GoodGuide has begun to extend beyond techies and the Whole Foods crowd to the Wal-Mart crowd, as Mr. O’Rourke put it. One sign of that broader appeal: Apple recently featured the app in its iPhone ads.
GoodGuide’s office, in San Francisco, has 12 full-time and 12 part-time employees, half scientists and half engineers. They have scored 75,000 products with data from nearly 200 sources, including government databases, studies by nonprofits and academics, and the research by scientists on the GoodGuide staff. There are still holes in the data that GoodGuide seeks to fill.
Users enter a product’s name to get scores. For instance, Tom’s of Maine deodorant gets an 8.6 in part because it has no carcinogens, while Arrid XX antiperspirant rates a 3.8 because it contains known carcinogens. Another click leads to information behind the scores, like whether an ingredient causes reproductive problems or produces toxic waste, or whether the company has women and racial minorities in executive positions or faces labor lawsuits.
Mr. O’Rourke began gathering data in 2005 with the help of computer science graduate students at Berkeley and $300,000 from foundations. The do-gooder in Mr. O’Rourke, however, did not prevent him from seeing the commercial possibilities of what was being compiled.
Persuading venture capitalists to finance his idea was trickier. In 2007, he was rejected by dozens of firms over six months. The green tech investors were not interested in a start-up that did not make alternative energy. The Web investors were not interested in one that was not going to get 50 million users overnight and sell ads.
One of the most prominent Internet investors in Silicon Valley walked out of the room after snidely dismissing GoodGuide with: “Hmm, a noble cause.” GoodGuide eventually raised $3.7 million from New Enterprise Associates and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
GoodGuide does not sell ads and does not plan to, in part because Mr. O’Rourke will not take money from a company whose product is rated on the site. It makes a small fee if customers click on links to Amazon.com or TheFind and buy the product.
The basic site will always be free, he says, but GoodGuide may someday charge subscription fees for personalized versions. It also plans to license data to governments and retailers. It could help a state avoid buying paper cups with ingredients from a certain country, for example, or enable a drugstore chain to list a product’s GoodGuide score next to the price tag.
This summer, GoodGuide will add a deeper database for users who want more detail by, for example, reading the academic studies on which ratings may be based. The next version of the iPhone will enable people to scan bar codes to get scores, rather than type in the product’s name.
Some companies, including Clorox and SC Johnson, have agreed in recent months to reveal more about the ingredients in their products because of gathering consumer concern. That will enable GoodGuide to fill gaps in its data. Federal law does not require makers of household products to list all ingredients.
“What we think of now as green is a marketing mirage,” usually based on a single environmentally friendly practice, said Daniel Goleman, author of “Ecological Intelligence,” who switched deodorants and shampoos because of GoodGuide. The site could potentially “have a revolutionary effect on industry and commerce,” he said, by educating shoppers about the ramifications of buying a particular product.
That could also be the problem with GoodGuide, said John R. Ehrenfeld, executive director of the International Society for Industrial Ecology. He worries that by collapsing dozens of data points into a single number, GoodGuide does not adequately inform consumers about each consequence of each ingredient.
“Consumers need to be very carefully educated as to what these scores mean if it’s going to serve the purpose GoodGuide says it does,” he said.Federal stimulus dollars are picking up where a nearly $20 million state program aimed at cutting diesel engine emissions left off.
U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson stopped in Columbus this week to announce $6.1 million in stimulus funding headed to Ohio projects as part of the National Clean Diesel Funding Assistance Program. Of that amount, at least $1 million is headed to projects in Central Ohio.
The funding comes on the heels of the state’s Diesel Emissions Reduction grant program, which awarded $19.8 million to projects around the state after being earmarked in the state capital budget passed last year. The first round sent nearly $7.3 million to 10 organizations, including regional bus operator Central Ohio Transit Authority, while a more than $12 million round announced last month sent nearly $1.4 million to the city of Dublin and Columbus City Schools for the replacement of trucks or buses with lower-emission alternatives.
The stimulus funding announced this week is sending $279,500 to the Columbus school district for six school-bus replacements on top of the district’s $918,020 state grant last month. The Coshocton-based Ohio Central Railroad System, which railroad operator Genesee & Wyoming Inc. (NYSE:GWR) bought last year, also was awarded $809,934 in stimulus dollars for rail engine work in Licking County.
Most of the 14 awards the EPA announced this week are headed elsewhere in the state, though the Ohio Department of Transportation won a $572,000 grant for construction equipment diesel filters in a number of unspecified counties.
Federal officials said the stimulus dollars announced this week will enable private- and public-sector entities to retrofit or replace more than 280 highway and locomotive diesel engines. The allocation is the first in several expected awards in the coming months.
The stimulus-funded clean-diesel program is a part of the National Clean Diesel Campaign, which is backed by $300 million in stimulus dollars.
Biologist Robert Full studies the amazing gecko, with its supersticky feet and tenacious climbing skill. But high-speed footage reveals that the gecko's tail harbors perhaps the most surprising talents of all.
Columbus, OH (PRWEB) June 12, 2009 — Brand Thunder LLC, the custom browser specialists, today announced an agreement with the Indianapolis Colts to bring its fans the first custom browser for an NFL team. The customization is delivered through a small download called a Boom! and is expected to arrive in time for July training camp.
Brand Thunder’s browser Boom! is unlike other browser-based tools with its visual immersion of the browser, in addition to integrated content and functionality. The energy and team spirit is fully captured in the entire browser theme. Links to the team site are included as is breaking news delivered within the Boom!’s toolbar and sidebar. Colts fans will enjoy instant access to team news, photo galleries and videos, plus a whole lot more.
“Each year, the Colts try to add something new that will keep us ahead in the NFL,” said Tom Zupancic, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing of the Indianapolis Colts. “This browser Boom! From Brand Thunder gives Colts fans something unique and powerful that we are excited to offer to our fans.”
“The Colts have a very progressive and active team in the area of new media and sports marketing,” said Patrick Murphy, founder and CEO of Brand Thunder. “It’s not surprising they are the first NFL team to offer a Boom! to their fans, and we’re thrilled to be working with them.”
Brand Thunder’s browser Booms! are free, lightweight active customizations that can include themes, toolbars, sidebars and other content or functionality. Users can switch real-time between any installed Booms!, or change from a full Boom! view to a small Boom! (toolbar only), all without restarting the browser.
About Brand Thunder:
Formed in April 2007, Brand Thunder creates custom-browser experiences. Brands enjoy a more persistent connection to their Internet consumer through the custom browser Boom!, which increases website visits and revenue. Through a software installation, end users change the look and feel of their Internet browser into an immersive experience from their favorite sports team, entertainment franchise or Internet site. The custom browser Booms! feature official logos, colors, content and functionality, but can also extend capabilities including video, music players or other Internet widgets. Current business partners and clients include the Huffington Post, Major League Soccer, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA, NHL, Universal Music and Yahoo!. Samples found at http://brandthunder.com/gallery/.
The future belongs to innovators that can turn ideas into action...in other words small business owners and entrepreneurs. The Ohio Growth Summit is a celebration of your spirit and "make it happen" attitude. The Summit is designed to stimulate actions that will lead to increased growth of your business by providing unparalleled networking, connections and content target directly at increasing your business' bottom line.
In it's fifth year the Ohio Growth Summit has been hailed as the most powerful gathering of small business insiders in Ohio. The Summit features national authors and speakers sharing their secrets to success. In between these stellar speakers are a number of business growth breakout tracks designed to allow you to customize the experience to maximize the value to your business. Here is a rundown of what to expect this year:
Opening Keynote ~ Jim Canterucci, author of Personal Brilliance: Jim will help you bring out your brilliance in everything you do. Jim will discuss the four catalyst of Personal Brilliance: Awareness, Curiosity, Focus and Initiative and show how successful entrepreneurs have harnessed the four catalysts to take them and their business to a new level. Also, everyone in attendance will receive a complementary copy of his best seller "Personal Brilliance". Be sure to visit My Personal Brilliance to learn more about Jim.
Business Growth Breakout Tracks: This is your opportunity to customize the Ohio Growth Summit to your needs. Each track will include two, one hour sessions on a specific topic area. The tracks include:
* Social Media ~ Your Customers Are There, Are You?
* How To Successfully Take Your Company Global.
* Invent, Build, Go To Market ~ Successful Product Commercialization Strategies.
* An Entrepreneurs Guide ~ How To Get The Bank To Say "YES".
Closing Keynote ~ Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs: Chris Brogan is one of the country's foremost authorities on Social Media and its applications for business and branding. Chris will show you strategies to reach your customers and others that need your product. Be sure to check out Chris' incredible blog, www.chrisbrogan.com to learn more about the power of social media and networks to build relationships and deliver value.
You may be saying this looks great but much is it to attend...$200, $500? Why would we charge you that much? It's all about you...we want you to succeed and to succeed you need to be here. Registration is only $75 ($50 if you register by April 30). This includes a copy of Personal Brilliance, cutting edge business content, unparalleled networking and connections as well as breakfast and lunch (I know it's really all about the food).
Click here for more information or to register for the Ohio Growth Summit 2009.
June 5, 2009
CIO Magazine has announced its 2009 CIO 100 Award winners and among those projects honored for creating new business value by innovating with technology, is a project from OhioHealth. OhioHealth was recognized for a virtualization project that implemented voice-recognition software in order to eliminate the need for manual transcription of radiology reports. The system learns radiologists’ voices, constantly improving transcription accuracy to reduce edits. The system allows patient results to be reported in minutes rather than days which has led to improved patient care and saved the healthcare system $434,378 in transcription costs in 2008. Congratulations to the IT team at OhioHealth.
For the full list of CIO Top 100 Award winners see: http://www.cio.com/cio100/2009/1?sortBy=companyName#cio100_tbl
By
Kevin Welker is the product/software development manager at 2Checkout.com. The Columbus-based company, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, offers a turn-key solution for small businesses to sell products online by accepting the most popular payment methods as efficiently as possible.
In his role at 2CO, Kevin has broad responsibilities, including assisting with architecture, product direction, project management, working with vendors and managing a team of developers.
Before joining 2CO almost nine months ago, Kevin spent more than a decade at the
“After leaving AOL, I was thrilled to find a local spot with a company with such strong ecommerce and social Web 2.0 credentials,” he said.
A key advantage 2CO offers clients that they can start doing business on the same day they sign up, Kevin said. There are no merchant account fees or contracts, making it easy to sell online. Because of its ease of use, 2CO is ideal for business owners who want to focus on marketing and selling their products. 2CO charges a one-time setup fee and then earns a small percentage of each transaction. According to the company’s web site, 2CO serviced more than 2.6 million buyers for a total of $213 million in sales in 2008.
His experience at AOL was the reason Kevin was hired at 2CO, said Vic Cleary, ecommerce product manager. The company was looking to provide a layer of leadership to the product staff, he said, and they needed someone to be able to manage the programmers on the floor.
“A lot of the skills Kevin learned at AOL carried over into our small business. A lot of what he’s brought from his experience at AOL helps to ensure 2CO continues to improve from a user experience perspective.”
A lot of times in smaller businesses you’re in charge of everything, Cleary said. Applying best practices is hard to do because you’re managing people while at the same time doing some of the technical work yourself.
“Kevin is very approachable, and he brings a friendly attitude to an area that can be stressful. That is very important in his role,” Cleary said. “He does a good job of making sure the managers fully understand the expectations and keeping everyone on track and keeping expectations in check.”
Kevin grew up in the
Kevin has seen a lot of changes in technology in the past 10 years. The Internet has changed things dramatically, from ordering online, to the social media side and reconnecting with friends and former coworkers.
Kevin has been a member of the
“I’m psyched about changes in
People starting technology careers today have a huge advantage, he said. “The barrier to entry is such that there is an opportunity to write and market your own software applications, such as iPhone apps.” He advises people to pursue what they want to do, whether on their own or with a company in that space.
Outside of work, Kevin enjoys family time and volunteering. He and his wife live in Bexley with their two children. He also is a member of the Bexley Technology Commission, an organization designed to provide the City of
Kevin Welker: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinwelker
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Wingsuit jumping is the leading edge of extreme sports -- an exhilarating feat of almost unbelievable daring, where skydivers soar through canyons at over 100MPH. Ueli Gegenschatz talks about how (and why) he does it, and shows jawdropping film.
Ueli Gegenschatz takes flight just about every way a human can: paragliding, skydiving, BASE jumping (from the Eiffel Tower), and most breathtakingly: by donning a wingsuit and soaring. Full bio and more links
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/502
GENERAL SUMMARY
Provides day-to-day administration and support of information systems and processes; trains and supports staff in use of all PC-based data processing, office automation, networking and communications processes; directs the work of IT consultants/specialists as needed in support of company systems operations.
ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS
JOB REQUIREMENTS
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
Note: To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
Summary Education & Experience Required
1. Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent combination of education and related job experience or training preferred.
Click here to hear the speech -http://bit.ly/hJ5OT
President E. Gordon Gee spoke with faculty members Monday about the state of the university.
The meeting was sponsored by The University Staff Advisory Committee, and took place in a Nationwide & Ohio Farm Bureau 4-H Center Auditorium in front of a large audience. The meeting was also streamed live on osu.edu to regional campuses and those unable to attend.
Gee thanked the faculty and staff for their support, hard work and insight they give into the university.
"I do not experience the university like any of you. I have my own parking space, my own office and subsidized public housing," Gee said. "I joke the only reason I became university president is so I didn't have to mow the damn lawn anymore."
Gee said he hopes to make OSU the first public university to be listed as one of the 100 best places to work. While chancellor of
Gee also spoke of the hard economic times and how he believes OSU can prosper with the support of Gov. Ted Strickland and the General Assembly.
"We are maybe the single most important economic machine in
Gee used a number of analogies to demonstrate how the university has to change to survive trying times.
He likened the university in its current state to an elephant, "large, ponderous and bureaucratic," he said. But the university must transform from an elephant into a ballerina who is "agile, lively, dances with everyone and thinks of relationships and partnerships."
"The other option is to become a dinosaur, and we all know what happened to the dinosaurs," Gee said.
Gee fielded questions about the new dean of the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences, Joseph E. Steinmetz, praising him as a world class scholar and a great leader.
"I'm very confident about where we are and the opportunities that we have," Gee said.
Gee's speech to the faculty can be found online at usac.osu.edu.
05.27.2009 | Columbus, OH | With ever-increasing healthcare costs, more and more companies are creating incentive programs that encourage employees to live better and stay well. Minds On, Inc., a full-service creative agency, has helped private businesses and government agencies, such as the Ohio Department of Administrative Services (ODAS), extend the support and benefits of their population health management programs to employees through innovative communications programs.
One recent example of a very successful wellness program that has caught the attention of The White House is the 'Take Charge! Live Well!' initiative created by ODAS and the Joint Health Care Committee, and developed in partnership with Minds On. During a mid-May meeting between President Obama and representatives of several other well-known organizations, Dr. Alvin Jackson of the Ohio Department of Health shared how successful the 'Take Charge! Live Well!' program has been with state employees.
“After researching data, the State of Ohio realized that an effective health program had to be about more than just disease management,” said Mary Brutovski, marketing communications manager for ODAS. “Our program focuses on prevention by offering online and paper health assessments, health coaching, on-site health screenings, and a central Web site developed by Minds On to tie it all together. The ‘Take Charge! Live Well!’ initiative also offers monetary incentives for employees and their spouses, which has led to the participation of more than 50 percent of eligible participants to date.”
“The State of Ohio has undertaken a tremendous goal not only in offering a comprehensive health incentive program, but fostering an environment of support for its employees to ensure their success,” said Tom Augustine, president and founder of Minds On, Inc. “We were honored that they selected us to translate that goal into an integrated marketing campaign that elevates the importance of the ‘Take Charge! Live Well!’ initiative.”
The “Take Charge! Live Well!” program includes a Web site that features a health assessment tool, helpful wellness resources, and video success stories from state employees who are reaching their goals and changing their lives. The site was designed to make it easy for employees to enroll, navigate, and find inspiration to achieve better health.
In addition to the development of the ODAS campaign, Minds On was also contracted by The Ohio State University to create similar resources to drive their “Your Plan for Health” program. “Your Plan for Health was launched in 2006 with the intent to provide faculty and staff with tools and resources that empower them to make educated health care decisions.” said Gretchen Feldmann, OSU's Your Plan for Health communications manager. “We are looking forward to working with Minds On over the course of the next few years to develop and implement communication and engagement strategies that involve and educate our employees as they aspire to become greater advocates of healthy lifestyles."
“We see this type of partnership with OSU, ODAS, and any organization who is developing a health management program as an incredible opportunity to do something much bigger than just driving down healthcare costs,” Augustine said. “When we are all healthier, everybody wins.”
About Minds On
Minds On, Inc. (www.MindsOn.com) is a web and marketing communications agency dedicated to delivering marketing, sales, and interactive tools to help foster sustainable growth for its clients. Located in Lewis Center, Ohio, Minds On has developed brand, integrated marketing campaigns and interactive tools for a diverse set of clients, such as the Ohio Department of Administrative Services, The Ohio State University, Hatteras Networks, Ohio Dominican University, Dominion Homes, Netsmart Technologies, Purepay, and Donatos Pizza.
For more information, please contact
Nancy Speicher
Minds On, Inc.
740.548.1645, X112
nancy@mindson.com
COLUMBUS – Governor Ted Strickland, Eric Fingerhut, Chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents and Chair of the Ohio Third Frontier Commission, and Lisa Patt-McDaniel, Interim Director of the Ohio Department of Development and Commission member, today announced that the Commission recommended nearly $8 million in grants through the Ohio Third Frontier Success and Pre-Seed Fund Initiative to seven Ohio early-stage capital and entrepreneurial assistance organizations. Today was also Chancellor Fingerhut’s first meeting as the newly designated Chair of the Ohio Third Frontier Commission. The awards are contingent upon State Controlling Board approval.
“Ohio Third Frontier investments like these both build on already productive partnerships and forge new relationships that will continue to expand opportunities in Ohio communities,” Fingerhut said.
“Ohio’s network of entrepreneurial businesses play a significant role in a wide range of emerging technology areas from biomedical and information technology to advanced energy and materials," Patt-McDaniel said.
The Success and Pre-Seed Fund Initiative supports existing and new regionally based organizations that provide critical pre-seed capital and associated business assistance to nurture the growth of early-stage technology-based companies.
Fiscal Year 2009 Ohio Third Frontier Success and Pre-Seed Fund Awards
Ohio TechAngels, located in the City of Columbus (Franklin County), was awarded $1.6 million for its Ohio TechAngels Fund III project. The TechAngels project will enable continued funding for Ohio’s most promising technology companies and, through participation of fund members, provide the mentoring necessary to help these companies perform to their potential while creating jobs in Ohio and attracting follow-on capital.
JumpStart, Inc., located in the City of Cleveland (Cuyahoga County), was awarded $2 million for its Existing Pre-Seed Fund project. The JumpStart pre-seed fund will enable the organization to continue to set the stage for the creation of high-paying jobs by investing in innovative imagining and incubation stage high-tech, potentially venture-ready companies that will help to accelerate the growth of the Northeast Ohio economy. Jumpstart was also awarded funding totaling $575,000 for its Entrepreneurial Assistance Organization Success Fund 2009, which will continue to provide the highest standard of entrepreneurial innovation and leadership with its nationally recognized best practices, services, and national network of deal flow contacts.
Lorain County Community College, located in the City of Elyria (Lorain County), was awarded $1.5 million for its Innovation Fund project. Funding for this project will help meet the funding gap for pre-seed support in the Northeast Ohio region, fill the investment pipeline with strong technology-based businesses to make the region an attractive place for angel and venture capital investors, and accelerate opportunities by connecting them to regional and state economic development and educational resources.
BioEnterprise, located in the City of Cleveland (Cuyahoga County), was awarded $600,000 for its Accelerating Biomedical Start-ups in Northeast Ohio Fund III project. The effort will allow continuance of Entrepreneurial Assistance programs for emerging biomedical companies in Northeast Ohio. BioEnterprise will support its existing and new clients at the Imaging, Incubating, or Demonstrating phases of development.
Cleveland Clinic, located in the City of Cleveland (Cuyahoga County), was awarded $800,000 for its BioValidation Fund II project, which will build on the Ohio BioValidation Fund I and leverage the Cleveland Clinic’s highly integrated system of scientific research, clinical care, innovation, investment, and commercial application.
TechColumbus, located in the City of Columbus (Franklin County), was awarded $900,000 for its Pre-Seed Fund II project. The project will provide pre-seed capital to late imagining, incubating, and early demonstrating phase technology-based start-ups in the 15-county Central Ohio region, and bridge the period between when limited founder resources run out and angel investors and venture capitalists are willing to invest.
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