w3w3.com

From Scholarship Funds to 2nd Stage Growth...

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

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Uptime Institute - ViaWest - First Tier IV Design in N America

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

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29th National Space Symposium...

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

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Silicon Flatirons Center 13th Anniversary

Telecommunications and policy issues for entrepreneurs
1266_ 9/2/12 - You know what teenagers are like? Especially the first, ah, 13th year? "Basically an adolescent, little rambunctious, looking to do things differently." Well that's how Phil Weiser sees the Silicon Flatirons Center - growing up on the Boulder Campus, part of the University of Colorado is the Center for Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship. Larry interviewed Phil Weiser, Dean of the University of Colorado Law School, and Executive Director and Founder of the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship at CU and Brad Bernthal Associate Professor of Law Silicon Flatirons Entrepreneurship Initiative Director at CU. Well that's how Phil Weiser sees the Silicon Flatirons Center - growing up on the Boulder Campus, part of the University of Colorado is the Center for Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship. "This is interdisciplinary engagement - which means we're on the Law campus but it's much more than law, it’s technology, business and campus community engagement, bringing community to the campus. Give people a chance to see their ideas in a little broader perspective. Give them a chance to develop young talent. That's a very important part of our overall community. And also do a good job of raising the debates overall for national so we can elevate our local community, raise the debate nationally, support entrepreneurship and encourage our students." That's what Silicon Flatirons Center is about and they're celebrating their 13th Anniversary in January 2013. We're going to kick this off with a fabulous calendar of events. Brad Bernthal "People come to Silicon Flatirons to ideally see around the corner. The 13th anniversary is coming up, but between now and the end of the year, here are some of the things coming up. Phil says, "We kick it off on September 4th, the day after Labor Day, with the 'Future and Dynamics of Video Programming'. "We're going to have the CEO of Aereo, which is the definition of the destructive technology..."
Related Links: Silicon Flatirons Center || Startup Colorado || Startup America || Grow Denver || Venture Capital Channel || Changing Dynamics of Video Programming 9/4/12 || Keywords: Phil Weiser, Brad Bernthal, Silicon Flatirons Center, Startup Colorado, Startup America, Venture Capital, Telecommunications, Policy Issues, Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins. > bytes=7660672
LISTEN TO: Phil Weiser, Brad Bernthal Silicon Flatirons Center 13th year

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The cloud is just a computing platform

The cloud, apps, security and legacy in business today
1258_ 8/15/12 - We've got questions, - 1. Everyone is talking about the cloud now days, and there is so much out there – Why all the buzz? What is the cloud? - 2. Are there security concerns around the cloud? - 3. What recommendations do you have for companies looking to the cloud?
      Today we're going to be talking about a 'cloudy issue' that's really big in the Internet and Web world. If you were to ask ten business people to define Cloud, you'll get ten definitions. We're with Monte Robertson, President of Cloud Computing Consulting, with over 10 years of providing leading edge security solutions. So we asked the expert for a definition. Monte said, "The cloud is just a computing platform and essentially it's been around for a long time because it's really just another word for the Internet. We used to use the symbol of a cloud to describe the Internet when we showed, in technical drawings, how to connect one office or one computer through the Internet to another. The Cloud is basically the Internet. There are a lot of different products and services offered as cloud services or Internet based services, but they've been doing it a long time. For example if you had an old Yahoo or Hot Mail Internet mail account, that's Internet based or Cloud based email. It's an old concept that's been made shinny and new." Security issues? That's a big barrel. There are public clouds, private clouds and hybrid clouds which will probably become the main portion of the architecture. But, it goes back to what we've been telling people all along about computer security. You have to identify what's important to you - Know where it is - Who has access to it. You have to understand what it is you're trying to protect and then decide how to deploy that. Public Cloud is just that, it's public, probably not very secure. There are a lot of questions you have to ask the provider.... LISTEN for more!
Related Links: Getting to the cloud - Securely || Software Channel || Mastering Change || PodCast Directory || Keywords: Monte Robertson, Cloud Computing Consulting, Internet, Web, The Cloud, Email, Security, Network Integration Companies, Cloud Brokers, Public Cloud, bytes=8264205
LISTEN TO: Monte Robertson, Cloud Computing Consulting

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Cyber crime exceeds illegal drug trade costs to global economy

Phishing. Will you be a victim?
1241_ 7/17/12 - A stunning statistic, "Last year, the cost to the global economy of cyber crime exceeded that of the global cost of the illegal drug trade" said John Bennett, Ph.D., P.E., the Institute Director of the Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society (ATLAS) Institute at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Archuleta Professor of Computer Science. The number, including lost time, is $334 Billion, so it's not an insignificant figure. You know we all receive the spam which is just irritating by virtue of the volume. Some of what we get is phishing, trying to get your personal information... your name, social security number, your birth date, credit card numbers - those kinds of things. That kind of information is used to steal your identity, your digital identity. When that's done someone can go get credit cards in your name, loans, basically spend money they don't have.” John has actually had his identity stolen by some person in Florida. He got a call from a credit card company asking why he'd made all these charges in Florida. John hadn't been there and it turned out that someone had obtained John's credit card number and used that to obtain other information. These people are pretty good at this. The odds of this happening, of having your identity stolen in your lifetime, in the U.S. are about 1 in 100, and about 1 in 10,000 this year. Larry asked, “Logging in, is that a dangerous thing?” John says it can be. "I think we've all learned not to enter your user name and password on the internet if you don't see that URL beginning with https, which indicates it is a secure link between the browser [the software running on your machine and the server that is serving up this page ." Listen for much more...
Related Links: ATLAS Institute, CU || Software Channel || NCWIT Heroes || PodCast Directory || National Cyber Security Partnership || FBI Cyber Crime || Keywords: John Bennett, ATLAS Institute, University of Colorado, Boulder, Cyber Crime, Phishing, Credit Cards, Social Security Number, User Name, Password, > bytes=5176741
LISTEN TO: John K. Bennett, Institute Director, ATLAS Institute

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Cloud, a definition

You don't have to be a geek to use the cloud. But...
1239_ 7/13/12 - It's been two years since we last interviewed David Jiilk, Founder and CEO of Standing Cloud a Boulder based company. Standing Cloud offers a service that helps people manage applications on top of this new thing called Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). Amazon didn't invent the idea but they were the first to successfully promote the idea of renting computer servers on the Internet by the hour. This is at least one definition of 'cloud computing'. And, this is one of the things that created this idea of cloud where you can actually rent servers. The thing is if you do rent servers from Amazon or one of the many other providers out there, all you get is a computer server and most people don't really know what to do with that. What most people want is an application, a piece of software running on that server that they can actually use for some business or personal purposes. So, anything from storing photos to a Customer Relation Management system to a blog, to a web site. Those kinds of things are what you want to put on computer servers and use them for. What Standing Cloud does is make it really easy for anyone, including end users to manage their infrastructure as a service... cloud servers, but with an application on top of it. Standing Cloud initially tried to be a consumer web site where they would sell this online service to everyone - and they have a fair number of customers using it that way. But, they found that they didn't understand their various markets that well and were not particularly skilled at selling that way. So, Standing Cloud changed their business model to be one of selling through resellers. These resellers understand their individual markets very well. Now Standing Cloud's service is used by people in a wide range of company sizes and types - but Standing Cloud interacts with the companies selling services to them. You won't see Standing Cloud's name on these web sites but that's what is driving it behind the scenes. Standing Cloud has grown since the last time we spoke when Dave had 8 to 10 people, about 50/50 gender ratio. There's more here from Boulder...
Related Links: Standing Cloud || Foundry Group || TechStars || FeldThoughts || Entrepreneur Channel || Keywords: Dave Jilk, Standing Cloud, Infrastructure-as-a-Service, IaaS, Amazon, Customer Relation Management, Cloud, Software Providers, Independent Software Vendors - bytes= 5741403
LISTEN to Dave Jilk, Founder/CEO, Standing Cloud

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Cloud - Security?

Cloud-based log management and analytics for security
1231_ 6/27/12 - A big question surrounding Cloud services and applications has to do with security. We've asked Christian Beedgen, founder and CTO of Sumo Logic to help us understand. Sumo Logic is a cloud-based log management and analytics service that leverages Big Data to deliver real-time IT insights, headquartered in Mountain View, California, we met Christian at Glue Con 2012. A cloud-based log management service eliminates the operational overhead and complexity of today's on-premise log management solutions. On-premise solutions quickly run into scaleability issues with increasing log volumes, and logs are voluminous. A cloud native solution with its elastic scaleability enables you to process all your log data with zero extra overhead. Sumo Logic was founded in April 2010 by Kumar Saurabh and Christian Beedgen, and received funding from Greylock Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures and angel investor Shlomo Kramer. The round of series B funding announced in January 2012 brings the company’s total venture capital backing to $20.5 million. . Sumo Logic modeled its approach on that of Google, according to Christian Beedgen, the company’s CTO and one of its Cofounders. Sumo Logic uses advanced machine learning algorithms to whittle down mountains of log file data into common groupings...
Related Links: Sumo || Glue 2012 || Foundry Group || TechStars || PodCast Directory || Keywords: Christian Beedgen, Sumo Logic, Glue Conference, Greylock Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures, GlueCon, bytes=3816701
LISTEN TO: Christian Beedgen, Founder & CTO, Sumo Logic

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Webinar, TODAY - How to Cloud with Confidence, Strategy,

Critical to serving the small - mid sized business segment
1203_ 5/01/12 - Quite a milestone in the company's history! Here at the ViaWest new offices in Greenwood Village, with Governor Hickenlooper and his Secretary of Technology and CIO of the State, Kristin Russell, coming down to mark the special occasion and help with the ribbon cutting. Nancy Philips, COO and Cofounder, said, "We were very honored to have them join us in celebration of what is obviously a great milestone for ViaWest." As we've all witnessed, ViaWest has been growing - right out of the spaces they had downtown [in various locations]. Nancy said, the Greenwood Village offices have given them the opportunity to consolidate their staff, kind of bring them together. ViaWest started business back in 1999 and w3w3 attended the ViaWest Grand opening downtown Denver. Today ViaWest is at 22 data centers, in 5 states / 6 major markets, so they've been busy since that ribbon cutting we attended June 5th, 2002. Nancy said it a testament to being in a great industry and they give a lot of credit to the employees they've attracted who've really helped grow this organization to where it is today. As a matter of fact, they are now recognized as the largest privately held company in the collocation and cloud services space. Nancy and Roy are very proud of their long tenured staff, very like-minded in terms of the vision for the organization, people that are really committed to the community and the customers that they serve. But they've also been bringing on a lot of new talent from all over the country. Back in November of 2011, at the DefragCon, w3w3 introduced you, the listeners, to Jason Carolan, ViaWest's new CTO who is leading a lot of the cloud initiatives. ViaWest carries a continuum of technology whether it is pure collocation requirements all the way to fully out sourced managed capabilities which is critical to serving the small - mid sized business segment they focus on. Nancy said, "We are very in tune with our customer base and therefore they become the best basis for where we should be developing our technology and product sets. With such an expansion around IT, web presence, the capabilities for flexibility and expansion within not weeks or months, but minutes, the cloud serves the purpose..." Larry asked about the new product offers from ViaWest. Nancy explained, "As we've moved into the virtualized space we're seeing storage and data replication as critical components in terms of what companies are looking for - greater availability, looking for ways to protect their data and being sure it is always available. That's been driven by...There's much more, listen now...
Related Links: ViaWest Home || Cloud with Confidence Webinar 5/1/2012 1:00-2:00 pm || NCWIT Home || Photos Ribbon Cutting || Software Channel || Keywords: Nancy Phillips, Via West, Cloud, Hosting, Governor Hickenlooper, Kristin Russell, Jason Carolan, NetApp, VMware, VW Talk Cloud, National Center for Women and Information Technology, NCWIT, Technology - bytes=12414598
LISTEN to Nancy Phillips, COO, ViaWest

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SEO is the preferred route

Websites that are search engine optimized
1201_ 4/23/12 - Everyone is doing business on the Internet now days, right? So people want to be found if someone is looking for them. And their choices are to have their website either search engine optimized or to pay for ads with Google. The ads with Google, that's an effective way but it's become very expensive. People paying $6 to $9 per click - that can run up quickly and be very expensive. For people who have the right kind of business, SEO is the preferred route and that's what Ray Hutchins does - founder of DenverSEOservices.com So Ray helps someone with one or more web sites associated with their business rank high. What that means is they want to be on the first page of search results for various search terms related to their business. And that is search engine optimization. Ray points out, with his own domain name, Denver SEO Services - notice the keywords built into the domain name. "That's a nice SEO strategy for any of the listeners, building your keywords into your domain name will make your SEO process so much easier and more effective" said Ray. Larry asked, "When you work with a client, do you help them select these words, define which are the best words to use?" Ray replied, "Yes, these are called Keywords. You have to identify what are the terms being used by the customer when the customer is trying to find you, your product, your service. Trying to find your website, what are the keywords they're using? Ray has quite a few attorney clients. For an example we'll take a criminal defense attorney. Well, keywords for him might be DUI, Denver DUI. Because someone gets in trouble with a DUI, the first thing they do is hit Google with that search engine. They go to Google and they type in Denver DUI attorney or Denver DUI lawyer... Well my client wants to rank very high on that, he wants to be on the first page, for sure, and ideally in the top three search results. So we have to find the best keywords for a client, the terms used most often by searchers / customers looking to find you. And then we have to get them ranked, and that's a complex process involving lots of different steps. Essentially it all revolves around 'gaming search engines'. You are trying to, without violating the rules, without violating their parameters, you're trying to help your client rank higher than the competition.
Related Links: Denver SEO Services || Denver Cyber Security || TiE Rockies || TiE Charter Membership || Keywords:Ray Hutchins, Denver SEO Services, Denver Cyber Security, Keywords, Search Engines, Google, Gaming Search Engines, Domain Name, SEO Strategy, TiE Rockies - bytes=4615421
LISTEN TO: Ray Hutchins, Denver SEO Services

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