1384_ 5/15/13 -
The 40th annual World Trade Day features technology from some of the world’s most innovative firms like Google, IBM, IHS Global, Microsoft, SAP, SDL, aWhere, and eCustoms. More than 400 expected participants will also have the opportunity to hear high-profile speakers—like Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide's Chief Information Officer Yuri Aguiar and Visa's Global Head of Network Processing Judson Reed—who work at the apex of international business and technology, as well as other Colorado-based thought leaders, like the professional hackers at One World Labs. International business experts from top global companies like Jeppesen, Arrow, MWH, and Hitachi will also be on hand to share how they're using new technology to better their sales and increase their profits. Thursday, May 16, 2013
RELATED LINKS:
World Trade Center - Denver, CO ||
17 April 2013
JumpStart 2013 Denver's economic development strategy continues 1376_ 4.17.13 -
There are more than 25,000 Denver businesses and enterprises, approximately 420 of which have more than 100 employees. However, the 420 firms with more than 100 employees represent nearly 50 percent of the total jobs in Denver. Compared to the U.S. economy, Denver has a significantly higher concentration of persons employed in the energy, healthcare, information technology, finance and professional/business services fields. These firms generally produce high-value products and services. Employees of these firms tend to receive higher wages and are required to hold advanced educational training. Top concerns of Denver’s employers include a strong educated workforce, safe and energetic business areas, and reasonable operating costs as compared to other parts of the state and country. In 2013, OED will continue to focus on retaining three groups of businesses: (1) the largest private and nonprofit employers; (2) high-growth sector companies; and (3) firms with soon-to-be expiring leases. A continuous outreach campaign to owners and C-level executives will demonstrate the city’s commitment to the business community while identifying issues and highlighting the benefits of operating a company in Denver. We are setting focus on the best strategies to advance economic prosperity for the city, its neighborhoods, residents and businesses. The 2013 JumpStart strategy provides a clear signal to the community as to how we are working to build a stronger Denver, with jobs and housing opportunities for all. And, JumpStart 2013 is a road map for our staff — it drives the work plans and priorities for all OED staff divisions. Because economic development is a continuous, multi-year task, this year’s strategic plan also includes a separate longer-term plan that sets forth our strategic direction for the next three years. You’ll see that our 2013 initiatives relate directly to this broader three-year plan. Similarly, our future annual plans will also support the long-term strategy. JumpStart 2013 clearly builds upon our successes from last year. We again have seven main sections, or what I refer to as “pillars” of economic development. Each of our pillars for 2013 includes a series of bold, forward-thinking strategic initiatives to help us accomplish our important mission. The OED will continue to engage in partnerships with business industry groups, including better support for renewable and traditional energy companies located in downtown Denver. This heightened focus will result in more business leaders choosing to live, work, play and stay in Denver.
RELATED LINKS:
Denver OED ||
JumpStart 2013 Denver ||
Greenprint Denver ||
Entrepreneurs ||
KEYWORDS: Paul Washington, Denver, Office of Economic Development, Jump Start 2012, Business Retention, Small Business Advocacy, Business Recruitment, Sustainable Neighborhood Development, Business Lending, Workforce Development, Key Strategic Projects, bytes=6260927
LISTEN TO: Paul Washington, Executive Director, OED, City & County Denver
Penny Lewandowski Second Stage Development and Growth 1373_ 4/10/13 -
We're here with keynote speaker, at the ACG Denver's April Luncheon, Penny Lewandowski director of entrepreneurship development for the Edward Lowe Foundation. Lewandowski works with entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs) as they develop creative ways to grow their communities by serving second-stage businesses. She is a frequent speaker on the topics of building an entrepreneurial culture, as well as the importance of working with growth companies. She also directs the foundation’s Entrepreneurship Team and manages the technology services for the organization. It's been six months since Lewandowski was in Denver, Larry asked for an update on what's happening with Colorado Companies to Watch. Penny said, "Tomorrow evening we will be at the Governor's Residence with all of the finalists - and I think we have 184 finalists. We had a record number of nominations this year. Colorado is always out front when it comes to nominations. Then on Thursday we're going to be judging those companies, and they go through a pretty intensive process with that. We'll probably make an announcement in the next several weeks after we do the judging."
ACG Denver’s David Sloan Scholarship Program. Set your goal to become an ACG Scholar! Each year the Denver Chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) awards one scholarship to a promising 1st or 2ndyear student at each of five area graduate business programs, in the amount of $2,500 annually. The scholarship is renewable for a second year based on both the academic performance and the career ambition of the student. To be eligible for the award, the recipient must be currently enrolled in one of five programs with a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or better...Listen for much more...
RELATED LINKS:
ACG Denver ||
M&A Channel ||
ACG Denver's David Sloan Scholarship Program ||
Colorado Companies to Watch ||
ACG Photo ||
KEYWORDS: Penny Lewandowski, Entrepreneurship, Second Stage Companies, Edward Lowe
Foundation, Colorado Companies to Watch, ACG Denver, David Sloan Scholarship, University of Denver, bytes=2751741
LISTEN TO: Penny Lewandowski, Director of Entrepreneurship, Edward Lowe Foundation
CTA represents Colorado’s technology industry, one of the fastest growing segments of Colorado’s economy. Their focus on advancing the industry, to be a globally competitive nucleus for innovation, technology and economic growth -
to foster growth and opportunity for the technology industry, encompassing technology organizations and professionals in Colorado. PHOTO Event:
March 21, 2013 C-Level @ A Mile High 2013, to Meet CIO's; Learn what they need; Share your solution, the potential is endless... RELATED LINKS: C-Level Home || C-Level Agenda || Software Channel || Colorado Technology Association || Check out these photos || KEYWORDS: CTA, Colorado Technology Assoc., CIO, C-Level @ A Mile High, Steve Foster,
auction, Go To: Photo Album for C-Level @ A Mile High 2013
Dave Leonard the first ever in North America 1313_ 3/21/13 -
As the senior vice president of data center operations, Dave Leonard directs all of ViaWest's day-to-day facility operations and procedures, as well as expansion projects and future data center builds. We're at ViaWest headquarters, to get the skinny on the expansion at this dynamic Colorado icon. Very unique and, another company that launched in 1999 (like w3w3.com and Defrag...) We are talking with Dave Leonard, ViaWest Senior Vice President of Data Center Operations - well known to Frontier, United and Southwest Airlines - as he visits all the ViaWest Data Centers so often. Dave has two separate teams, one that operates the data centers (there are 23 data centers). The second team builds data centers and they are building a new, very large data center in north Las Vegas to compliment their two existing data centers in Las Vegas. So, the expansion is very aggressive and keeps happening throughout our service territory - and coming soon, outside of our service territory. But, Las Vegas is a great example where we are very successful in Las Vegas filling up the existing data centers that we had and demand led us to build a large new data center which will be going online at the end of December. Larry wondered what challenges ViaWest faces in this expansion? "You read about organizations like Facebook and Google building data centers out in the middle of nowhere, where there is very cheap power and very good conditions for free cooling, for instance. We don't site data centers that way. We put data centers where we believe our customers are going to be. There are two things happening in the data center industry, if Dave were wearing his construction hat, that building new data centers have been a good opportunity for ViaWest in two aspects, the green aspect, and the other is the quality of the data centers... Listen for more... RELATED LINKS:
ViaWest ||
Tier IV Design First in N. America ||
Uptime Institute ||
Software Channel ||
Data Center Communities ||
Blog ||
KEYWORDS: Dave Leonard, ViaWest, Uptime Institute, Tier IV, Las Vegas, Data Centers, Green, Lone Mountain, Marketplace, Data Center Operations, Local Partner, Service Territory, bytes=4014814
LISTEN TO: Dave Leonard, Sr. VP, Data Center Operations, ViaWest
Leonard Nimoy and Star Trek come to Colorado 3/20/2013 [832_ 4/26/10] - At the 26th National Space Symposium, Larry and Pat had an opportunity to have a discussion with Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek fame. But Nimoy is so much more than that. They decided to talk about other topics that help us learn more about him and what has shaped his character over the past 79 years as well as understanding his hot buttons. We started out by reflecting on some poetry Leonard read as 'whale song' was heard in the background...that was decades ago but it opened up insights to his current interests and concerns. When asked, Is there something businesses can do to motivate children?" His reply was an ouch. "I'm not a sociologist, I'm not a businessman, I can't speak intelligently about that. I'll tell you what I am concerned about; I'm concerned about how much television kids watch that is not uplifting, or educational or inspiring in any way. It's all about celebrity, and if you're celebrity, come and tell us about your celebrity. What have you accomplished? I'm a celebrity - I'm famous for having a lot of children, so I want a TV show - It's crazy. What we have descended to in our education, it's crazy! It's really sad, I could go on about that, I'm not going to." He had a great deal to say about advice he would give to someone following his career path. "The biggest fantasy, myth about my work, about being an actor is people who think a look will get you somewhere, be at the right place and time, that kind of thing - luck plays a big role, but I never believed that, not even as a teenager ...Education, it's all about education. Learn, learn, learn and devote yourself to a profession. Be professional about it." Larry asked, "Do you feel the U.S. is losing its position in terms of space?" Leonard replied, "Yes, I don't know to what degree this is true. I don't want to be an alarmist about this, but I do think we've got some work to do." We did end with a Vulcan salute. Listen for much, much more... April 8th Begins 29th National Space Symposium... Related Links:
29th National Space Symposium ||
Space Technology Hall of Fame® || National Space Symposium ||
Space Foundation ||
More About Nimoy || Keywords: Leonard Nimoy, Star Trek, Spock, Vulcan, National Space Symposium, Space Foundation, Education, Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach Award 4/26/10 Chnl: News bytes: 5458968 LISTEN to Leonard Nimoy, aka Mr. Spock
Ed von Bleichert, it's time to get rid of the pests 1365_ 3/15/13 -
We are back with Edward von Bleichert, Manager Environmental Operations, for the Department of Facilities Management at the University of Colorado Boulder, a demanding responsibility where Ed almost plays different roles to accomplish these varied and important services, from capturing Brown Bears and Mountain Lions that wander onto campus, to solving the huge issues of providing solutions to recycling options. Today we're going to talk about Integrated Pest Management [IPM]. First an overview of what that means. IPM similar to Zero Waste [ZW] has many definitions but for our purposes, it is essentially a focus on safe and effective long-term control and prevention of pests. Whatever you want to determine as a pest. The point is, pesticides are a part of that tool kit we use, but they're not the first tool that we reach for. Any time we use pesticides, we're very careful, specifically speaking to indoor structures, not to impact indoor air quality, not to expose people to pesticides. Which essentially means the majority of our pesticide applications are in the form of a gel base or granulers or some type of pheromone. We do not do aerosol sprays, liquid sprays, crack and crevice treatments, perimeter treatments, we don't fog or bombs. The point is you really need to know a lot about your pests. The biology, the physiology, its behaviors and patterns. And if you can answer a few questions about what is attracting that pest in the first place, you can likely eliminate that attraction. It could be a leaky pipe, it could be poor sanitation, a broken screen, a missing door sweep. A lot of it is relying on the other shops and trades we have here at Facilities to do the structural work needed to seal up the building and roof. That's a really a big part of it. Ed answered a number of interesting questions such as, "What are some of the pests you deal with here at CU? You don't use pesticides etc. What is the alternative that you use? What could an average person or a business learn that would have to do with pests? ...Listen for more helpful ideas...
RELATED LINKS:
CU wins EPA Challenge ||
Ralphie’s Green Stampede ||
Single Stream in Housing ||
PodCasting Directory ||
KEYWORDS: Ed von Bleichert, CU, Environmental Operations, Integrated Pest Management,
IPM, Department of Facilities Management, University of Colorado Boulder, Pesticides, bytes=6589861
LISTEN TO: Ed Von Bleichert, Manager, Environmental Operations, CU
Tom Smerdon, success in marketing new ideas 1364_ 3/13/13 -
From a business person's point of view, the Technology Transfer Office is one of the most important things that the university provides, for business, individual professors and students, with everything from awards and recognition but most importantly really helping them along when they come up with an idea. Larry is with Tom Smerdon, Interim Associate Vice President of the University of Colorado Technology Transfer Office in Boulder. Tom said, "There are a couple of the things I'd like to bring to the listeners attention. One, which we're really excited about, is the recent acquisition of a CU startup. F5 Networks has acquired LineRate Systems, a Colorado startup that’s developing technologies around what’s called software define networking. F5 noted that the networking technologies will help bring superior service agility, application intelligence, and programmability to software defined data centers. The thing that is exciting about this is, not only was this a startup basically out of Computer Sciences and Electrical Engineering here on the CU Boulder campus, but the company was also an early recipient of the Proof-of-Concept investment from the Tech Transfer Office. This was the first money into the company which really helped it acquire some critical equipment early on and facilitated the development of the technology that was later further developed in its Louisville office and ultimately the subject of the sale to F5. This is one of the success stories for Tech Transfer and we're really excited for the company and the founders. A couple of events that are coming up; we are doing our Tech Transfer Awards a little differently this year. Previously there had been a single awards event covering the system campuses held in Denver. This year we're going to have campus focused events, so we have the Boulder Awards event which is scheduled for April 1st. This is in conjunction with the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship. The program, Entrepreneurship Under the Microscope, is an evening event with a keynote speaker and we will be awarding the Inventor of the Year, New Inventor of the Year, and Company of the Year during a fun networking event with CU-Boulder faculty and students, and members of the Boulder entrepreneurial community. We have the second awards event planned... there's more...
RELATED LINKS:
CU Technology Transfer Office ||
CU TTO Channel ||
TTO Blog ||
LineRate Systems || KEYWORDS: Tom Smerdon, Interim Associate Vice President, Tech Transfer Office,
University of Colorado, Technology Transfer, LineRate Systems, F5, Awards, bytes=4401426
LISTEN TO: Tom Smerdon, Interim Associate Vice President. Tech Transfer, University of Colorado
Tom Smerdon First to Invent Rule under the America Invents Act 1360_ 3/6/13 -
Larry is in Boulder with Tom Smerdon, Interim Associate Vice President of University of Colorado Technology Transfer Office. "There are several interesting events that we're keeping an eye on. One is the upcoming implementation of 'The First to Invent Rule under the America Invents Act. This goes into effect on March the 16th. So this has required us to look at some of the provisional applications that are pending and accelerate the filing of the U.S. Utility Applications. We've been doing that as well as setting up some informational and outreach efforts to inform the faculty of this change. One of the exciting legislative initiatives that Tom and his team are keeping an eye on is the Advanced Industries Acceleration Act. This was recently introduced in the House as HB1001 and basically it would expand the current Bioscience Discovery and Evaluation Grant Program [the BDEG] which currently provides for state grant funding / proof-of-concept funding for bioscience technologies as well as grants for early stage bioscience companies. It would expand that to six other advanced industries in Colorado. These are advanced manufacturing, aerospace, electronics, cleantech energy and natural resources, infrastructure engineering and information technology. While we make some changes to the basic BDEG funding, the basic structure is preserved. So there would continue to be proof-of-concept grants that would go to research institutions - that definition has been expanded somewhat, but it would include the state research institutions, University of Colorado. It would also provide some company matching grant funding, although the match would now be one dollar from the state to two dollars from the company and it will also provide infrastructure funding as is currently provided under the BDEG program. There are some caps on those funding amounts but in the case of proposals that would involve more than one advanced industry, those caps are removed. But again, it's pending and we'll have to see what the final legislation looks like. we've been working closely with the Office of Economic Development and International Trade on some related advanced... there's more...
RELATED LINKS:
CU Technology Transfer Office ||
CU TTO Channel ||
TTO Blog ||
CID4 ||
CBSA ||
KEYWORDS: Tom Smerdon, Interim Associate Vice President, Tech Transfer Office,
University of Colorado, Technology Transfer, The First to Invent Rule America Invents Act., Biotech Technologies, Bio Science Discovery,
Office of Economic Development and International Trade, Bioscience Discovery and Evaluation Grant Program - bytes=5151245
LISTEN TO: Tom Smerdon, Interim Assoc. Vice President, Tech Transfer Office, University of Colorado
Ed von Bleichert Zero Waste & Ralphie's Green Stampede 1359_ 3/5/13 -
"Here at CU we have one of the oldest college and university recycling programs in the country, going back to 1976." We're talking with Edward von Bleichert, Manager Environmental Operations, Department of Facilities Management, University of Colorado Boulder. Ed tells us, "Our program has some rich history as a recycling program. The term Zero Waste [ZW] is a relatively new term and tries to redefine the approach we're taking." To explain, recycling is somewhat reactive. You take the waste you're given and you try to find an outlet for it. Zero waste is really more proactive where you're looking at the inputs, throughputs, outputs, and trying to minimize waste at all of those stages. As it relates to us here on campus, it's still mostly a waste focus in terms of municipal solid waste, what would be going to the landfill as trash. But we're still being proactive in that we're going upstream, into that waste stream, and we're redesigning the waste from the beginning to make sure it's recyclable, compostable or reusable. Our biggest foray into Zero Waste started with Ralphie's Green Stampede which was the Athletic Department's initiative. It includes other initiatives in sustainability like energy and water conservation. But probably the area that's gotten the most attention is the waste elimination and the Zero Waste effort. As part of that, we literally sort through all the waste of every single home football game [the waste of 53,000 people]. Mostly to identify what is in that waste stream, and be able to design it out or find a market for it, whichever the case may be, to ultimately keep it out of a landfill. The simple definition of Zero Waste, and there are many, but for our purposes we're talking about achieving a minimum of a 90% landfill diversion rate. The campus is currently about 41% conversion rate for municipal solid waste. That doesn't include... Listen for more...
RELATED LINKS:
CU wins EPA Challenge ||
Ralphie’s Green Stampede ||
Single Stream in Housing ||
PodCasting Directory ||
KEYWORDS: Ed von Bleichert, CU, Environmental Operations, Department of Facilities
Management, University of Colorado Boulder, Zero Waste, Ralphie's Green Stampede, bytes=4874556
LISTEN TO: Ed Von Bleichert, Manager, Environmental Operations, CU