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January 27, 2005
Coming Soon to a Lab Near You
A Fairport High School student is named 'Junior Nobel' finalist in the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search.
Bruce Brewington sounds like one talented kid. Read the article and see what the next generation is able to do!
Posted by Kurt at 05:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
What Makes a Good Opportunity?
An article at Inc.com called What Makes a Good Opportunity? has an interesting approach to looking at ideas for new buinesses that might be called the "Three M's approach" (not to be confused with 3M the company). The "Three M's" are Me, Market, and Money. All three are related, and if any of them are missing, it's likely the concept is not worth developing.
Posted by Kurt at 11:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 24, 2005
Model innovation "hot spot" for optics
This article says that the U.S. Council on Competitiveness, the Infotonics Technology Center Inc. and Greater Rochester Enterprise Inc. have named the Rochester, N.Y., region as a model innovation "hot spot" for optics.
I have a hard time figuring out how we can be a "hot spot" for optics. Sure we have the optics, but don't we need a little sunshine, too, in order to make a "hot spot"?
Posted by Kurt at 07:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
MSNBC - Buffalo a tough sell for women's startups
This article is mostly about women doing business in Buffalo, but it does expand to western New York, including this comment about Rochester:
This area's women-owned businesses had total sales of $1.9 billion in 1997, working out to $105,090 per business. That also ranked 59th out of 60. Only Rochester did worse.
In spite of what you might think, this article does have an optimistic conclusion.
Posted by Kurt at 06:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 20, 2005
Society of Reliability Engineers (Rochester, New York Chapter)
Forwarded by Anthony P. Caraglio
Since 2001, the Rochester Chapter of the Society of Reliability Engineers has been formed and membership has steadily grown to 44 members in 2004. It consists of group of Reliability interested people, who want to learn, share and deploy on the use of reliability tools. The chapter membership varies from certified black belts, certified reliability engineers, maintenance personnel, technicians, and other disciplines that are interested in reliability body of knowledge.
Monthly meetings feature guest speakers/members presenting a variety of topics (ex. Design of Experiments, Reliability Centered Maintenance, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis, Reliability Testing Methods, Concurrent Engineering, Systems Thinking, Root Cause Analysis and other reliability tools/processes.
Some past activities included black belt training, summer picnic seminars, change management joint society meetings and community support programs.
We would like to encourage people to attend one of our monthly meetings and be part of a growing effort to enhance skills, learn new tools, and network with our diverse and multi-disciplined membership. Membership fee is $25.00/year.
For any further questions or information on organization and meetings, please contact:
Joe Wille, Vice President or Tony Caraglio, Program Director - sre_rochester@yahoo.com.
Posted by Kurt at 03:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Writing Things Down
I once wrote an article for my Ducks In Order newsletter called The Power of Writing Things Down.
I mention this because it's an example of why you should be submitting articles to the Rochester Entrepreneurs Resource.
- It's a way for people to become familiar with you without your having to meet them face-to-face. Face-to-face will always give you a higher quality connection, but successful marketing depends on multiple types of connections.
- It's a more efficient use of your time than face-to-face meetings. Sure, it takes you longer to write something than it does to say it. But once you've written it down, it doesn't take any more of your time to communicate that same message to dozens or thousands of people.
- It allows you to leverage your marketing activities. A good article written in a blog can easily become a PR piece in the newspaper and a brochure given out at trade shows. It can even become a chapter in a book or an article in a magazine.
The whole point of this is that you should be making use of every chance you get to let people know about yourself and your business, and the Rochester Entrepreneurs Resource is one such mechanism that is begging to be used!
P.S. I intend to make use of this idea myself, so don't be surprised to see a version of this note on my own blog and on several networking forums that I belong to!
Posted by Kurt at 01:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 14, 2005
U of R Patents New 'Pure Light' Technology
University of Rochester researchers have patented a new class of optical materials that efficiently create "pure polarized light," which uses far less energy than conventional flat-panel displays to produce the same images. The new technology promises brighter displays, longer battery life for portable devices like cell phones and laptops, and commercial avilability of 3-D displays.
You can read more about it in this University of Rochester Press Release.
Posted by Kurt at 09:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 12, 2005
SCORE Rochester's January Workshops
SCORE Rochester has two workshops coming up in January:
Jan. 12, 2005 - Prepare Your Own Business Plan
Jan. 13, 2005 - Small Business Start-Up & Survival (four sessions)
If you know of any other workshops or seminars coming up in the next month, please let me know.
Posted by Kurt at 08:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Small Business Know-How Brown Bag Breakfast
The Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at Finger Lakes Community College (FLCC) is presenting a "Small Business Know-How Brown Bag Breakfast" workshop on January 12, 2005. The workshop "Small Business Marketing Strategies" will run from 7:30-9:30 A.M. The workshop will be held at the FLCC’s Institute building, located at 4340 Lakeshore Drive in Canandaigua. Sponsored by the Small Business Development Centers at Finger Lakes Community College and SUNY Brockport, the workshop is designed to provide small business owners with essential skills and information. The workshop is free for Chamber of Commerce members, and just $5.00 per person for non-members. Pre-registration is required. Please call the SBDC at (585) 394-3500, ext. 7660 to register.
Posted by Kurt at 07:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 10, 2005
Inventors - The Odds Are Against You
Inventors take note: According to Bob Shaver's article An Inventor's Chance of Success, your invention has a 2-3% chance of being successful. Success, by the way, is defined as either growing the invention into a successful single-product company, or licensing it to a larger company.
When you factor in the $5,000 to $10,000 it costs to obtain a patent, you need a $250,000 minimum profit projection before patenting becomes a worthwhile gamble.
Also, be prepared to wait 18 to 24 months before you receive your patent. That's the typical amount of time between starting the patent search and receiving the patent. Add in any additional time for marketing and selling your product or license.
Are you ready to take the plunge? Can you afford it?
Posted by Kurt at 09:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 06, 2005
Rochester Most Entrepreneurial City in NY
According to Entrepreneur.com, Rochester ranks 25th in the list of Top 50 Entrepreneurial Cities in the nation. This makes it the most entrepreneurial in New York, ahead of Buffalo (at #33) and New York City (#46).
The rankings are based on the average number of new business licenses and DBA registrations, and the number of utility patents, issued in the Metropolitan Statistical Areas.
Posted by Kurt at 11:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Lab for Social Computing
My discovery of this morning is RIT's Lab for Social Computing (LSC).
"The purpose of the LSC is to engage in research, technology development, and education related to social computing--the use of technology to facilitate social and collaborative activities."
This means blogs (like this one), message boards, webinars, wikis, and all those other tools that are popping up on the Internet that either a) help people collaborate toward common goals despite being on opposite sides of the world, or b) cause people to spend countless hours in front of their computer when they should be doing something constructive like watching reruns of Friends.
Towards this end, the LSC is hosting Seminar: Weblogs and Wikis and Friendsters (Oh, My!) on Friday, January 7th, in the Golisano College auditorium (70-1400) from 3-4:30pm.
Posted by Kurt at 01:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 04, 2005
Mars Rover Still Going Strong
I'm sure you've already heard that the Mars Rovers are still working (far longer than had been planned), but even so this article on LinuxInsider should be an inspiration, especially for those of us who like Space stories.
I seem to recall an issue being raised about nine months ago - NASA hadn't budgeted to continue the mission, and were going to shut it down. Fortunately they didn't!
How about you? Are you able to handle success that lasts longer than expected?
Posted by Kurt at 02:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Watch Out Where Those Huskies Go!
This post is inspired by a brief article on Inc.com called From Mushing to Management. The article itself isn't so great, but it suggested the title of this post to me, which I had to use!
Then, in the interest of fact-checking, I had to track down where the title came from. Frank Zappa, of course! His website is pretty cool for a dead guy!
Posted by Kurt at 08:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 03, 2005
Will HP Buy Kodak?
An interesting speculation discovered in this article on SFGate.com: "Forrester Research analyst Ted Schadler, in a new study by the Cambridge, Mass., firm, makes a case for such cross-industry acquisitions as Hewlett-Packard Co. buying Eastman Kodak Co."
The article is a warm-up to the Consumer Electronics Show being held starting Wednesday in Las Vegas, which seems this year to be focusing on technology mergers.
On a related note, Investor's Business Daily has a press release from Kodak about a reception they're hosting on Thursday for members of the investment community who will be attending the show. The press release includes access information for a conference call during the reception, which will be recorded and available for later listening.
Should HP buy Kodak? What do you think?
Posted by Kurt at 09:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Creating The Right Team
While I'm on organizational issues, here's an article on How To Create The Right Team For Your Company which I found on Ecademy. What do you think?
Posted by Kurt at 03:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Ways to Structure a Company
I came across an article at SCORE titled There Are a Variety of Ways to Structure a Corporation or LLC. This is a useful overview of the options available to someone setting up a company or organization. (Seeing as how the group sponsoring this blog is going through some restructuring, I felt it was rather timely!)
Posted by Kurt at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 02, 2005
The Envelopes, Please
Rochester needs some awards, don't you think? How about a few like these found in the New York Times?
What awards should be given out for 2004, and to whom?
Posted by Kurt at 03:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 01, 2005
Rochester 2005 Growth Forecast
The Democrat & Chronicle is not terribly optimistic about Rochester's growth prospects for this next year, according to this article. The concensus among the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Center for Governmental Research, and the Rochester Business Alliance is that economic growth in 2005 will be flat, due in part to more job cuts at Kodak and other manufacturing firms, and offset by growth in eduction and health care.
Posted by Kurt at 10:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack