Council Newswire
Meeting Planning’s Newest Tool
Nashville Tech Story (3/11/10)
With millions of restaurants and venues to choose from, www.lunchwalla.com just made meeting planning much easier. Lunchwalla combines restaurants from both Yelp and Open Table, and can be connected through the contact information or your preference, including Facebook, LinkedIn, GMail and Outlook. All you have to to do is pick which friends you would like to have lunch with, choose a few restaurants, and send the invitation. Invitees get to vote and comment on which restaurant they would like to go. Check out the demonstration video below:
Tags: lunchwalla
Spring into Promotional Opportunities
Nashville Tech Story (3/10/10)
Spring calls for cleaning up the office and blooming new business opportunities. Whether it’s sponsoring an event or being featured in a member spotlight story, the Nashville Technology Council offers a wide variety of ways to market your business. This Spring is jam-packed with technology community events, each one with different sponsorship opportunities, whether it’s simply exhibiting or being a Title Sponsor. If you are interested in a particular sponsorship, and would like more information regarding benefits, contact Leah Magee at lmagee@technologycouncil.com.
April 1: Mobile Devices, Platforms & Applications: click here for sponsorship details
Premier Sponsor: $3000
Lunch Sponsor: sold out: Sprint
Breakfast Sponsor: $1500
Exhibitor: $500
April 17: TechNet: click here for event details
Premier Sponsor: sold out: Teknetex
University Exhibitor: $50
Company Exhibitor: $150
May 5: Cinco de Mayo Margarita Mixer: click here for event details
Premier Sponsor: $2000
May 7: Technology Nashville Conference: click here for sponsorship details
Platinum Sponsor: Zycron
Gold Sponsors: sold out: Ciber, Cook Systems International, Alltech, Nexus Group, eMids Technologies
Silver Sponsors: $2000 – (7 remaining) XO Communications, LBMC Technologies, Microsoft
Exhibitor: $500
Lanyards: sold out: Hiscall
Bags: $1000
Bus: sold out: Career Builder
We also offer a number of ways to promote your business for absolutely FREE.
Member Spotlight Story: Each week, we send out an e-Newsletter to a distribution list of 7,000+ individuals. If you are interested in being the featured spotlight company, contact Emily Armstrong at earmstrong@technologycouncil.com
Blog Postings: Be a thought leader! The Tech Council offers the unique feature of allowing member companies to be “guest writers” on our daily blog. If you have a topic that you think our audience would be interested in, submit a blog posting to earmstrong@technologycouncil.com. Your name and company will be mentioned as the guest writer.
Member News: Make sure you add us to your press lists. We love promoting your great news! Member news stories are posted on our website, on our e-Newsletter, and on all of our social media sites.
Coupons: Take advantage of our member-to-member coupons on the Members Only section of our website. You can offer your products or services at a discounted rate.
Job Board: If you are hiring this Spring, don’t forget to utilize our job board. This is consistently one of the most visited pages on our site, and new postings and resumes are added daily.
Tags: coupons, job boards, news, press release, promotion, sponsorship
A New Generation of Bar Codes
Nashville Tech Story (3/9/10)
A new company is being launched at SXSW this week and it promises to help us locate, label, and share everyday objects. The company is called StickyBits (http://www.stickybits.com) and it works by peeling a sticker, placing it on an object you want to track, scanning the code, and then uploading a video, a photo, a voice message or a text message.
“Every place and object in the world has a secret past: who lived there, who passed by, who touched it. The secret lives of objects are filled with such details. If only you could make them talk.”
This seems to be a pretty interesting location based service (LBS) and probably only the first of several new apps that will be launched this week at SXSW as we move into Web 3.0 – The Semantic Web. If you aren’t paying attention to the location and heuristics focus of investors, then you are about to miss another whole wave of the Internet that will make Social Media look like child’s play.
Tags: sticky bits, sxsw, web 3.0
Recovery brings efficiency, virtualization & cloud computing
Nashville Tech Story (3/5/10)
Efficiency, Virtualization, and Cloud Computing were common themes at last night’s roundtable event, titled “The Impact of the Recession on IT Operations and Management.” The event was hosted by Bass, Berry, & Sims (www.bassberry.com) and took place in their conference center in the new Pinnacle Building. Scott Thomas and Bob Brewer, both practicing attorneys at Bass, Berry & Sims, moderated the discussion. Panel members included three enterprise CIO’s: Andy Flatt, Healthspring; Scott Blanchette, Healthways; and Rick Proctor, Thomas Nelson.
Scott Thomas kicked off the session by taking us through a number of graphs, which illustrated the effect of the economic downturn over several industries, health care and information technology in particular. In addition, he showed us the average IT Budget by percentage in revenue and a graph which showed the .com meltdown in comparison to last year’s downturn, which was had a much bigger impact.
The first panel question took us through how the recession affected the acquisition and use of software, hardware and telecom. Proctor mentioned stretching out the lifespan of non-mission critical application deployment, while Flatt and Blanchette implied that the health care industry has not reduced spending, but has not increased it either.
Proctor was then asked, “Do you think the economic downturn is driving or hampering the transition of digital book sales?” Proctor mentioned that the digital business is growing, but it’s not big. Instead of driving digital, it is more about improving the efficiency of delivery by more on-demand printing and shorter runs. In addition, Proctor mentioned Thomas Nelson, while they are providing digital for the Kindle, Sony Reader, and Apple’s iPad, their focus is more about content delivery — the mechanism in which they provide the content is not really what’s important, it’s more about getting the content in front of the readers.
When Flatt was asked if HealthSpring has to be more efficient because of the downturn, he mentioned his company is investing in technology because it is what makes business more efficient, especially in the virtualization space. Proctor mentioned Thomas Nelson has been investing in the virtualization space for about three years, focusing on outsourcing things that are not their core competency.
Later the group as asked if Senior Management views IT as a cost or an investment, and what participation do they ask from CIOs in their strategic spending? Proctor alluded that IT budgets have been flat over the past few years, but as expenses have decreased, the level of investments have increased. Blanchette mentioned their focus is to take new and innovative technologies, and apply them in new ways that in turn reduce costs — the CEO asks how can Healthways wrap technology around problems and find a solution to reduce expenses. Flatt encouraged the group that IT needs to stop segregating itself, and to get out of the business of bridge building and back to building the foundation.
In regards to talent acquisition, the three panelists agreed they have been hoarding their staff over the past couple of years because employees have been staying put. This year, their worry is that people are going to be looking places they would not have thought of looking during the downturn, and some companies even have a significant budget allocated to staff retention. In preparation for the recovery, there has not been much change except for the staffing aspect.
When asked about purchasing new technologies, cloud computing resounded across all three panelists. Flatt mentioned three things, which all add to efficiency, virtualization, record retention, and real estate.
In closing, the group discussed vendor relationships. Advice to vendors from the panelists:
- Understand more about the challenges each company is facing and focus on recommending solutions
- Focus on reducing revenue or marginal improvements for businesses
- Come forward with your changes, and make recommendations on how your changes can improve business
Special thanks to Bass, Berry & Sims for hosting the event.
Tags: Bass Berry Sims, cloud computing, efficiency, healthspring, healthways, recession, thomas nelson, virtualization
Tech Council Adds VP, Business Development
Nashville Tech Story (3/3/10)
This week we welcomed a new staff member to the Nashville Technology Council family, Leah Magee. Leah will be serving as our Vice-President of Business Development. Leah is responsible for new sponsorships, renewal of sponsorships, membership, event sponsorship, and product sales.
Leah brings to the Nashville Technology Council over ten years of experience in sales, sales management, marketing, business development, and fundraising. As a seasoned sales professional with a focus on practical business application of technology, Leah has delivered solutions, business negotiation, team leadership, and commitment to a variety of IT and healthcare technology companies in Nashville.
Leah’s commitment to success and her willingness to build from the ground up has lead her from startups to business support roles and even to her own entrepreneurial efforts — a variety of experience that helps her better serve the Nashville technology community. Prior to joining the Nashville Technology Council Leah served as Sales Manager for web-based benefits education startup Fontis Healthcare. Additionally, Leah has been a critical part of teams at Sprint PCS, The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, Programming Resources, and LBMC Technologies. Recently, she forged her own entrepreneurial venture with Bella Concreti.
Leah is a Nashville native, and attended Aquinas College and Belmont University. She is a member of the Young Leaders Council and currently serves on the Board of Directors for The Amun Ra Theatre where she helps lead citywide fundraising efforts, as well as a building fund initiative with which she helped organize a National “Make a Difference Day” event. Leah enjoys spending time with her two daughters and volunteering in the Nashville community.
Follow Leah: @leahmagee, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Nashville takes over Atlanta
HMS launches CONNEX at HIMSS 2010
The theme of HIMSS 2010 is definitely interoperability and meaningful use. I give it to HIMSS that they were on the interoperability train years ago and started the interoperability showcase. The difference this year is that every company is now taking about how they will work nice with others.
On Wednesday, we will do a complete wrap-up of the show first hand. Until, here is a nugget of information out today from our very own HMS here in Nashville. HMS announced today the launch of a new interoperability product for customers that will enable the exchange of clinical data between third party systems, health information exchanges, and public registries. The new product will assist clients in qualifying for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act HITECH stimulus funds. HMS ConnexSM is built around Mirth Corporation’s technology platform and customized for the HMS product suite. Mirth provides the leading open source solution for healthcare interoperability.
HMS Connex is designed to help customers achieve Stage 1 Meaningful Use interoperability requirements, specifically reporting hospital quality measures to CMS, exchanging key clinical information among providers of care (Continuity of Care Document standards), submitting lab results to public health agencies, and submitting data to immunization registries.
HMS has provided a nice matrix to help hospitals determine their position in regards to these new standards. (http://www.hmstn.com/technologies/Meaningful_Use_Matrix.pdf)
The care goals of ARRA have been clearly established and in order to effectively achieve data exchange requirements, an interoperability solution is required.
“HMS understands the challenge that each community hospital will face not only in purchasing and implementing new software, but the workflow and process changes that will be necessary to maximize the technology, gain user acceptance and ultimately achieve meaningful use. That is why we are doing everything we can to ready our systems, expand our implementation teams and add products like HMS Connex that will aid them in this process,” said Tom Stephenson, president and CEO.
Tags: connexSM, himss, hms, hms connex
Go East Young Man
Nashville Tech Story (3/1/10)
On Wednesday of this past week, we took our Road Trippin Wednesday to Oak Ridge. We started the day in a very open, collaborative session with Tech2020 Technology Council which represents Oak Ridge and Knoxville and the Chattanooga Technology Council. Our focus was on how to do work together more effectively to promote the state’s technology companies and create a stronger workforce. We are hopeful this will be one of several meetings in the months to come.
At lunch, I was able to attend their monthly meeting which featured Grady Vanderhoofven, Fund Manager for Meritus Ventures and the Southern Appalachian Fund.
Mr. Vanderhoofven spoke on the topic of venture capital in Tennessee and the Innovation Valley. Meritus and Southern Appalachian Fund (SAF) have been among the most active venture capital investors in Tennessee during the past six years, and they have made more investments in East Tennessee than any other institutional investor over that period of time. Grady’s venture funds have invested in seed-stage, early-sage, expansion-stage, and late-stage companies throughout the southeastern United States, including companies spun-out of or working with The University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. East Tennessee companies in the Meritus and SAF portfolios include: Protein Discovery, Eonstreams, Tricycle, Smart Furniture, and Aldis.
Grady Vanderhoofven commented on the state of the venture capital industry in the United States, the southeastern portion of the country, Tennessee, and East Tennessee and provided a comparative overview of how venture capital activity “here at home” compared to traditional centers of venture capital activity like Silicon Valley and New England. Great statistics and research. A lot of it was discouraging, but there is hope with the new TNVestcos.
Following the luncheon, I was lucky enough to get a few minutes with Tom Rogers, Director, Industrial and Economic Development Partnerships at Oak Ridge National Laboratories. I have never been on the campus and I was quite impressed by the research agenda being pursued in Tennessee. From nanotechnology to nuclear to clean energy, it is quite expansive.
One group of researchers are working toward a low-cost DNA sequencing tool have proposed a microfluidic device that uses a nanotube as a conduit to feed a single strand of DNA from one reservoir to another, analyzing and sequencing the DNA in the process.
On the tour, we were able to stop by the High Flux Isotope Reactor. Not sure which one was more impressive. Being in the same building with two of the top three fastest computers in the world or thinking about neutrons being disassembled below me. Wow!
In the end, the real opportunity is bringing this vast wealth of technology to the companies in Middle Tennessee. There are opportunities to collaborate on research, license research, sponsor research, start a new company, and use the facilities. If you would like to connect, drop us a line.
Tags: chattanooga technology council, Meritus Ventures, oakridge national lab, SAF, southern applichian fund, Tech2020
Steve Ballmer’s Nashville Presentation
Nashville Tech Story (2/26/10)
In case you missed our January 20th Membership Breakfast, featuring Steve Ballmer, or if you just want a recap, Microsoft has provided his full speech word-for-word below:
STEVE BALLMER: It’s a real honor to have a chance to be with you today. I hope we provoke just a little bit of thought. There’s always a way to kind of capture people’s imagination about what will be possible, and I think in general in the short run people probably over-estimate what’s going to happen, and in the long run people almost always underestimate the amount of creativity and vision and innovation and how that’s going to wind up changing the world quite dramatically.
Take a look at a video like the one I just showed you, and you’d say, hmm, what’s he trying to say? They could do good videos, that might be No. 1, which of course we all can with the right budget. No. 2, we’re really talking about something that’s coming tomorrow, or No. 3, we really are talking about something that is real and practical over the course of the next five, six, seven years. And really that’s the case, and I think people would still underestimate just how far we can go over a very short period of time.
It’s interesting, I look out in the room here, and I get a chance to do a digital assessment from the stage. And you might say, hey, look, this is the National Technology Council, we’re really digitally on the forefront, and I think that’s probably right. And yet I look at even the two Microsoft guys sitting here that I know in the front row, and they’ve got paper and pencil out in front of them. They don’t look like they’re living in the video that we just showed you.
And so we see the opportunity to really change the technology, to make the hardware, the software easy enough, flexible enough, light enough, valuable enough, that people can really move and embrace new things.
I want to thank the technology council here in Nashville for inviting me to give this talk. It’s a pleasure to have a chance to be here with you. I think it’s been basically since I was a young kid probably sometime in the ’60s that I was here. So it’s a pleasure for me to get a chance to come back and for some refresh acquaintances, as Todd was talking about, and a chance to get to hear what a lot of folks involved and using technology here in Nashville are really thinking about.
I want to start kind of with a fundamental view of kind of the basic things that are going to evolve and change in information technology over the next several years. And as Todd was saying, yes, Steve’s been at Microsoft 30 years. I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to bring my cane up on stage with me or give you sort of the “long and winding road” history of information technology or some combination of both.
But probably the most important thing is to remind people that essentially, at least as long as we can look back, and probably as long as we can look forward in any reasonable way, we see in about a five, six, seven year, maybe eight year cycle, we see these massive generational shifts that happen in information technology; the kind of shifts that everybody, not just people in our industry, everybody wakes up and groks and understands and falls in love with.
Click Here for More: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/2010/01-20ntc.mspx
25 VCs pledge $3.5 Billion in tech start-ups
Nashville Tech Story (2/25/10)
Tuesday, 25 Venture Capital firms pledged to invest a total of $3.5 billion in technology start-ups over the next two years. The group who formed this pledge is a part of the Invest in America Alliance, headed by Intel, consisting of 25 venture capital firms as well as 17 high tech companies. Intel suggested this figure includes a $200 million Intel Capital Investment, which will target clean technology, information technology and biotechnology. Venture capital firms the new alliance include Braemar Energy Ventures, Canaan Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Institutional Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Menlo Ventures, Mohr Davidow Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Sevin Rosen Funds, U.S. Venture Partners, Venrock and Walden International.
In addition to the billions of dollars promised, the 17 enterprise companies promised to hire 10,500 college graduates during the next two years, meaning some companies will be doubling their hiring of grads. These high tech companies include: Accenture, Adobe Systems, Autodesk, Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Dell, eBay, EMC Corp., GE, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Marvell Semiconductor, Microsoft, and Yahoo.
Find out more here: http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=223100356
Find out more about Invest in America Alliance here: http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/InvestinAmerica/
Tags: Entrepreneur, intel, investment, new hires, Venture Capital
Mobile Apps and Augmented Identity
Nashville Tech Story (2/23/10)
Computer vision, cloud computing, facial recognition, social networking, and augmented reality are just a few of buzz words surrounding today’s mobile application industry. New applications are coming out by the second, and each one seems to push innovation to the next level. Take a look at our top picks for phone applications below:
Augmented Identity: Whoever thought you could point your phone at a complete stranger, and instantly know about them? The Astonishing Tribe, a phone application shop out of Sweden, released this application last week. Augmented ID is a TAT concept that visualizes the digital identities of people you meet in real life. This application uses a combination of facial recognition software and a 5 megapixel camera to detect the subjects identity. If the person has chosen to opt-in, you instantly have access to their facebook and twitter profile. Find out more here: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/24639/?a=f
Guitar Toolkit: Created by Agile Partners, this application is perfect for the aspiring musician. It features a chromatic tuner, scales, a cord library, metronome, and custom tuning system. Take a look at the demo below to find out more:
Ocarina: Smule turns the world into your stage with this application, which basically turns your phone into a musical instrument. Ocarina recognizes your breath, touch, and movements, and it has the ability to connect with other users around the world. Find out more about this application here: http://ocarina.smule.com/
As the innovation in mobile applications continues to grow, we hope to discuss what’s going on in the Nashville arena this April. Join us at Rocketown, as we discuss mobile application and development options, mobile operating systems and the variations of the most popular mobile platforms. View a panel of application developers discussing the innovation and creativity that is necessary to keep up with today’s fast-changing mobile technology, while making applications accessible across multiple platforms. This event will include demonstrations from Nashville grown applications such as Local Eats and GPS Assassins, as well as displays from out most popular wireless providers including Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T. Ticket price includes breakfast and lunch. Click here to find out more.
Tags: application development, augmented reality, innovation, mobile
