CVG goes to the Blackfriars

On June 29, CVG takes to the road for an evening with the American Shakespeare Center at the Blackfriars Theater in Staunton.

Seating is limited for this networking event, so registration closes June 15.
There is a fee for non-members.

This performance of MacBeth is a Preview Performance (pay-what-you-will) that includes a TALK BACK with the actors immediately following the performance.

Technorati Tags: Blackfriars, CVG, American Shakespeare Center

Service Mark "Web 2.0"

Tim O'Reilly has a long post on the controversy surrounding the registration of a Service Mark for "Web 2.0 Conference". His article, and the comments that followed, are a good real-life example of the issues surrounding service marks.
A must-read for entrepreneurs.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0, service mark, O'Reilly Radar, entrepreneurs

The BGN Entrepreneur's Minute May 26

(Less than 2 minutes)

Joel Erb, the SBA's Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and the award winning PocketDoc team.

Follow Erb's journey at INetNetwork , and the VCU software team at VCU IC 2006.

The BGN Entrepreneur's Minute is made possible by the Robins School of Business.

Technorati Tags: Inetnetwork, VCU, PocketDoc, Richmond, Robins School

Innovation and Competitions

Competitions to be ready for in 2007:

The Wall Street Journal's (International) Innovation Award, June deadlines.

The World of Difference award, sponsored by the Small Business Technology Institute and Intel, winners announced in January.

The Global Life Science Competition announced their first winners in April.

We'll post more information about competitions over the summer.

Technorati Tags: competitions, entrepreneurs

VCU Team's Winning Streak

For the second year in a row, a VCU Software Team is the U.S. winner of the Microsoft Imagine Cup Software Design Invitational.

Team PocketDoc members are graduate students William Calder, Brandon Saunders, Joanne Cunningham and A. Brooks Hollar, all computer science graduate students in the VCU School of Engineering.

With PocketDoc, patients using hand-held devices running Windows Mobile software can communicate with doctors, explained team member William Calder. He added "India is just the next phase of this competition, we are definitely looking at seeing how this is going to work in a real market." Snippet from The Times Dispatch article of May 9, 2006


Technorati Tags: VCU, PocketDoc, Richmond

Guy Kawasaki on Start-ups

Guy Kawasaki's description of After the Honeymoon includes some sound advice like
"Remember: Founder status affords a person equity, not immunity."
And "... generally speaking, there are more lousy clients than lousy [marketing] agencies. It’s your job to understand how to be a good client."
And finally, "I have never seen a company fail because it couldn’t expand fast enough. I have seen many companies die because they “invested in the future” and “spent ahead” to avoid missing an opportunity."


Technorati Tags: entrepreneur, start-up, Kawasaki

The BGN Entrepreneur's Minute May 19

(About one minute)

Highlighting two recent Tech Award winners.

The BGN Entrepreneur's Minute is made possible by the Robins School of Business.

Technorati Tags: Intelliject, Everdrive, Richmond, The Venture Forum, GRTC

GRTC 2006 Tech Awards

The winners of the Greater Richmond Technology Council's 2006 Tech Awards are as follows:

EverDrive LLC is the winner of the Emerging Company Award, sponsored by Cherry Bekaert & Holland.

IndigeTech is the winner of the IT Builders Award, sponsored by Strategic Staffing Solutions.

Dominion Foundation is the winner of the Community Support Award, sponsored by SmartBox Portable Storage.

Intelliject LLC is the winner of the Innovation Award, sponsored by Qimonda.

Robert J. Mattauch, dean and professor at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Engineering, is the winner of the Leadership Award sponsored by IBM.

Appomattox Regional Governor's School is the winner of the Technology SkillBuilder Award sponsored by Computer Resource Team.


Technorati Tags: GRTC, VCU, Richmond, Tech Awards

Science Stars and Entrepreneurship

Paul Kedrosky has a great map of scientific stars in America.

"The number of stars in a U.S. region or in one of the top-25 science and technology countries has a consistently significant and quantitatively large positive effect on the probability of firm entry in the same area of science and technology. Thus the stars themselves rather than their potentially disembodied discoveries play a key role in the formation or transformation of high-tech industries. Other measures of academic knowledge stocks have weaker and less consistent effects.

... Stars become more concentrated over time, moving from areas with relatively few peers to those with many in their discipline. A special counter-flow operating on the U.S. versus the other 24 countries is the tendency of foreign-born American stars to return to their homeland when it develops sufficient strength in their area of science and technology. In contrast high impact articles and university articles and patents all tend to diffuse, becoming more equally distributed over time." from the abstract

See the National Bureau of Economic Research for information about the paper by Lynne C. Zucker and Michael R. Darby.

Technorati Tags: science stars, entrepreneurs, NBER, Kedrosky

Dr. George Gillies 2006 Inventor of the Year

The University of Virginia Patent Foundation has named George T. Gillies, a research professor in mechanical and biomedical engineering at U.Va., as the recipient of its top award, the 2006 Edlich-Henderson Inventor of the Year Award. (more)


Technorati Tags: Gillies, UVA, Charlottesville

Virtual Collaboration

Gerard P. Learmonth Sr., CEO of Broadband Network Services Inc. in Charlottesville, discussed virtual collaboration this morning with CVG members.

Sponsored by UVA Virginia Gateway and Hantzmon Wiebel,Inc. his talk focused on best practice in the integration of technology into collaborative group processes.

Download the ppt slides at Virtual Collaboration.


Technorati Tags: BNSI, CVG, virtual collaboration

Guy Kawasaki on Corporate Partners

Guy Kawasaki says: The target of this posting is “corporate partners” and the lies they tell.

Lie # 3:
“We can move really fast.” This means that so far very few people in the organization have been exposed to the idea.

Lie #8:
“We’d like your servers to host most of the code and functionality.” This isn’t a lie, per se. It’s more a frightening admission that the large company’s product is held together by baling wire, duct tape, and chewing gum, so making any changes could make it blow up. Welcome to corporate partnering: one of the things that you’ll learn is that the emperor has no code.

His Top Ten Lies of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, engineers and marketers are all available on his blog, Signum sine tinnitu.

Technorati Tags: Kawasaki, corporate partners, entrepreneurs

The BGN Entrepreneur's Minute May 12

The winners of the 2006 VPTC Tech Awards.
(Approximately 2 minutes)

The BGN Entrepreneur's Minute is made possible by the generous support of the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond.


Technorati Tags: CVG, VPTC, Robins School, Charlottesville, entrepreneurs

VPTC Tech Award Winners 2006

Our own Jim Lansing was honored with the Navigator Award, for his role in CVG, as a founder of the Business Growth Network, and the creator of the Boys and Girls Club Keystone project with Sammy Snacks.

The Community Award went to Category 4, an impressive web design firm that has helped many local nonprofits develop their web presence. You can see an example of their work at The American Shakespeare Center.

PBM Products was the winner of the Spotlight Award.

PocketSonics, Inc. received the Breakthrough Award.

Respiratory Research Inc. was the winner of the Rocket Award for bringing their Aeriflux diagnostic tool from conception to patient use in lkess than 16 months.

Emily Linkins, of Unionville Elementary School, was the winner of the Red Apple Award, for doing the most to excite young students about technology.

The Chairman’s Award, for extraordinary volunteer contribution to the organization, went to Renst Leesemann, of Tall Oaks Capital Partners, in recognition for his work leading the Tech Awards committee for the past five years.

Technorati Tags: CVG, Category4, PBMProducts, Pocketsonics, Respiratory Research Inc, Unionville elementary school, Tall Oaks Capital Partners, entrepreneurs, VPTC

CVG Partners with Boys and Girls Club

The young entrepreneurs of the Keystone program at the Boys and Girls Club of Charlottesville are launching a new business, selling Sammy Snacks. The Keystone Diplomats have a goal of $1,000 by June 30th to pay for attendance at a National Conference in Washington DC.

There's more about this collaborative project between CVG and the Boys and Girls Club, and a pdf Order Form to download.

For more information about this and other CVG programs, please see CVG, where you can also download a pdf order form for Sammy Snacks.


Technorati Tags: entrepreneurs, youth, Boys and Girls Club, Sammy Snacks, CVG, Charlottesville

Virginia's Fantastic Fifty

The Virginia Chamber of Commerce recently announced the Virginia Fantastic Fifty. Several companies from the rest of Virginia made the list, including Adaptive Technologies, Inc. of Blacksburg.

Virginia Business comments on the newcomers to the list.

Congratulations to the winners, and to the Chamber for their 11th year recognizing the highest growth companies throughout Virginia.

Technorati Tags: Fantastic 50, ATI, Virginia Chamber

Entrepreneurial Breeds - Old and New

From Signal vs Noise

Jason Fried of 37 Signals posts: "For 1/2 of the cover shot Crain’s chose Robert Bernard, former CEO of the 10,000 pink-slip MarchFirst, as the poster child for the old guard that’s back again with “the sequel” (this time betting on $40 million in VC). On the other half you’ll find my mug representing people building companies with a different set of investors: paying customers."

Full article on the new face of technology entrepreneurs at Crains Chicago Business

Technorati Tags: entrepreneurs, 37 Signals, Crains

Cyberstates

The new Southern Compass points to a new report on high-tech employment, Cyberstates 2006, just released by the AeA (formerly, the American Electronics Association).

One nugget from the report:
California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Virginia led the nation in high tech employment in 2004.

Technorati Tags: Cyberstates, Southern Compass, Virginia, AeA

The BGN Entrepreneur's Minute

Introducing Jerry MacLean of VPTC, and some of the nominees for the Tech Awards to be announced next week.

The BGN Entrepreneur's Minute is made possible by the generous support of the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond.

Technorati Tags: Robins School of Business. VPTC, CVG, Charlottesville

VF: Financing a Business

The Venture Forum of Richmond presents Trends in Financing A Growing Business at their monthly luncheon at the Virginia Historical Society on Wednesday, May 10, 2006.

Register with the Venture Forum.

Technorati Tags: The Venture Forum, Richmond, business financing

Web 2.0 Business Model

The funniest Web 2.0 Business Model to date.
Many thanks to George, the first Internet Employee, at MonthlyDollar.com.

Technorati Tags: web 2.0, business model

Virtual Collaboration

The Charlottesville Venture Group presents Gerard Learmonth of BNSI, speaking on the role of technology in support of collaborative team work. Dr. Learmonth holds an adjunct academic appointment with the Department of Systems and Information Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia.

The presentation is scheduled for May 16 at 7:30 AM; register at CVG.

This event is made possible by the generous support of Hantzmon Wiebel and the UVA Virginia Gateway.

Technorati Tags: virtual collaboration, CVG, Gerard Learmonth

LinkedIn and HumanPages

From Christian Mayaud, a well-connected member of LinkedIn, comes a comparison between LinkedIn and the new HumanPages.
Snippets from his blog follow:

As it turns out, there is now more than one way to run a SPAM-Proof Online People Directory and Referral Service.

While hardly a competitive threat to LinkedIn’s massive “resume database”, HumanPages takes an entirely different approach to solving the inherent SPAM problem of Online People Directories.

LinkedIn’s clever “authenticated one-to-one human referral chain” looks a whole lot like networking (even using networking terminology). So it’s hardly surprising that many people (including LinkedIn management) often confuse online activities on LinkedIn as “actual networking” among “connections” — rather than just “manual human SPAM filtering.”

LinkedIN is NOT a network and is NOT a networking platform. LinkedIn is an application to find, or be found by, other LinkedIn members. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. And it works well.

Note: The BGN LinkedIn Group membership is available to all BGN Chapter members.

Just like LinkedIn, HumanPages starts as a People Directory — except it has a much simpler solution to the SPAM risk: Make people pay to contact you.

However, the contact fees are directed to a favorite charity.



Technorati Tags: online directories, LinkedIn, HumanPages

Wilson Center Social Entrepreneur

The Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Pace University, founded in 2005, has announced that Charles Best, Founder and CEO of New York City-based DonorsChoose, will serve as its Social Entrepreneur in Residence for the Spring 2006 term.

Best founded DonorsChoose in the spring of 2000 at Wings Academy, an alternative public high school in the Bronx where he taught social studies for five years. Since 2000, DonorsChoose has grown from an experiment at a Bronx public school to a thriving organization serving thousands of public schools. Fueled at first by word of mouth, DonorsChoose has achieved exponential growth, quadrupling the resources delivered to classrooms for each of the last four years.

Technorati Tags: DonorsChoose, entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurship

Nominations for World Challenge 2006

" World Challenge 2006, in association with Shell , is a competition aimed at finding individuals or groups from around the world who have shown enterprise and innovation at a grass roots level. We want to hear from our viewers and readers about the entrepreneurs who are making a difference without costing the earth." Deadline: June 4, 2006

Technorati Tags: world challenge, entrepreneurs