Posts Tagged ‘Nashville’
Technology Nashville Afternoon Festivities
Join us after the conference for an afternoon of connecting and enjoying Nashville’s Summer weather.
The Bus, sponsored by Career Builder, will serve as a shuttle between Gaylord Opryland Convention Center and the Gaylord Springs Pavilion. The shuttle will be running from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. and is free to ride on. A happy hour reception will take place at the Gaylord Springs Pavilion, where those participating in the golf outing, will be warming up on the driving range.
Continue your afternoon at the Technology Nashville Golf Outing. The group will have a shotgun start of 2:00 p.m., and will compete for prizes such as closest to the pin and longest drive. Purchase a Technology Nashville Conference and Golf Outing package, and enjoy the a full day of festivities for only $135. Other options include: Team of 4 Conference & Golf Outing Package, Table of 10 Individuals & Golf Outing Package, or if you can’t make the morning conference and only want to golf, then you can purchase an Individual Golfer Spot.
Tags: conference, Golf, Nashville, party bus, technology
Nashville Technology Council is on the News Tonight
Nashville Technology Council is on the News Tonight
Tune in at 5:00 p.m. to WKRN Channel 2 News tonight to hear Tod Fetherling, Nashville Technology Council President & CEO, discuss the Wireless Network planned for downtown Nashville. In its pilot phase, the system should provide a free outdoor signal within a 0.9-mile radius of the system’s main transmitter, which would be located at the Tech Council’s headquarters at Third Avenue and Commerce Street. This area will be the area east of Interstate 65, Interstate 40 West, Bicentennial Mall to the north and south past Korean Veterans Boulevard. The pilot phase should be beginning soon, and businesses interested in participating will only have to pay a one-time $200 fee to receive wireless access indefinitely.
This wireless mesh network will be implemented from networking company Meraki. Why Meraki? Not only is it trusted by 13,000 organizations worldwide, but this program has already been proven a success in a number of other cities just like Nashville. Tune in at 5:00 p.m. to find out more.
Tags: downtown, meraki, Nashville, wireless
SOLD OUT!
The Nashville Tech Story (1/17/2010)
The Annual Membership Breakfast is sold out! We are excited to have Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft and Abbie Lundberg, longtime Editor & Chief of CIO Magazine join us to kick off the new year. Attendees will be receiving information in the mail this week. Check back here tomorrow for more updates. Thank you from the staff at the Nashville Technology Council.
Tags: Ballmer, Lundberg, Mayor, Microsoft, MSFT, Nashville, technology
State of CIO
Nashville Tech Story (12/23/09)
If you haven’t noticed, the role of the CIO is changing rapidly. Spurred by the recession, IT shops are being asked to do more with less, like everyone else, but they are also taking on more business processes than before. These are the results from the recent 2010 State of the CIO report from CIO Magazine.
CIOs reported their Top Priorities of 2010 to be following:
- Aligning IT and business goals
- Controlling IT costs
- IT governance and portfolio management
- Business process redesign
- Leadership development/staff training
- Marketing IT’s business contribution
- Rationalizing or centralizing the application portfolio
- Protecting customer data privacy
- Scaling IT globally
- Regulatory compliance
Most CIOs are thinking today about how are they going to get the job done with less resources? The answer so far has come from outsourcing and contract service providers. “21% is the average percentage of IT labor provided by outsourcers or contract service providers,” according to CIO Magazine. In Nashville, this industry has continued to grow with local leaders like Emids, Wipro, Zycron, and Syntel leading the way. In addition, the contract labor market is strong with companies like Vaco, Teknetex, and Tek Systems.
One of the more interesting statistics is the decrease in average salaries. Average salaries are dropping 10-20% in certain industries. Below is the average salary data for CIOs.
’06 . . . . $185,863
’07 . . . . $185,240
’08 . . . . $237,360
’09 . . . . $247,900
’10 . . . . $219,300
Of local interest, the percentage of IT spend of Total Revenues in Healthcare is 3.9%. The overall national average across all industries is 5.7%.
For more information, click here.
-Abbie Lundberg, former Editor & Chief of CIO Magazine will be with on January 19th and 20th to discuss trends for the technology industry. Click here to register.
Tags: cio, healthcare, HIT, Nashville, Salaries
Nashville Medical Trade Center Plan Unveiled
Nashville Tech Story (12/1/09)
“Having spent 20 years in hospitals and health technology, the Nashville Medical Trade Center represents an opportunity to substantially cut costs in healthcare by bringing products and technologies together in one place for buyers to compare and contrast,” said J. Tod Fetherling, President, Nashville Technology Council. “Equally important is the opportunity to have technology demonstration projects that are based here in Nashville that represent the best of digital healthcare.”
EMRs and EHRs will converge over the next 10 years. Some elements will come quicker, but Healthcare IT is poised to be a leading sector for many years. Nashville should be leading way in community demonstration projects and in consumer directed value-based healthcare. This project is another opportunity for us to lead the country in healthcare innovation, not reform. The city, state, and country need our leadership, now.
Market Center Management Company (MCMC), the management company of leading international trade centers and trade events around the world, today announced the location for its $250 million Nashville Medical Trade Center project: the site of the current Nashville Convention Center at 601 Commerce Street in downtown Nashville.
“This project will create a large number of new jobs in our city right when we need them most,” said Nashville Mayor Karl Dean. “In addition to building on Nashville’s preeminence in the health care industry, the reuse of the Convention Center and the proposed improvements to the center’s physical structure will be a significant contribution to our vital and robust downtown.”
The Nashville Medical Trade Center, the world’s first global health care marketplace, will meet the changing needs of the international medical community by featuring permanent manufacturer showrooms, temporary exhibition space, and conference facilities within a 2 million square foot complex.
“Nashville is the perfect home for this dynamic marketplace,” said Bill Winsor, president and CEO, MCMC. “Its pro-business environment, a convenient location, and leadership in health care are unmatched. Health care suppliers and providers from around the world will travel to Nashville to access the latest medical technology and services.”
Market Center Management Company will begin construction as early as mid-2010 on a new 12-story tower on top of the existing convention center site, as well as develop a new plaza across the street from the historic Ryman Auditorium. In addition, the Broadway-facing side of the property will undergo a redesign.
“This announcement means Tennessee will be home to an important new concept in the marketing and procurement of medical equipment, technology and services,” said Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen. “The health care industry is a significant economic engine for our state and this project expands that footprint, representing a major investment in our state’s health care economy.”
Custom space for more than 600 medical companies will be available at the Nashville Medical Trade Center, creating an efficient, transparent marketplace for health care providers and attracting more than 150,000 estimated annual visitors to Nashville.
The project is being designed by Nashville-based Gresham, Smith and Partners, a leading multi-disciplinary design and consulting firm. Construction will be managed by the Nashville office of Turner.
Tags: greGresham, Health Care, healthcare, healthcare it, healthcare technology, market center management company, medical mart, medical trade center, Nashville, nashville convention center, Smith and Partners
Intel’s New Technologies
Nashville Tech Story (11/19/09)
Last week, Intel’s Roadshow made a stop in Music City. I thought it a bit strange to have their roadshow following CMA’s at the Sommet, but come to find out it was a genius move. They coupled their CMA tickets for clients and got to see some great country music as well as tout their new technologies.
The event itself was interesting. Intel is really pushing the envelope on chip speed and size. I learned about ticks and tocks. Ticks are minor processor improvements, whereas tocks are large scale changes in size and momentum.
Some of their new healthcare technologies pique my interest. They are working on bedside monitoring and clinician input modules to feed the electronic health record.
The average data center cost $1,000/square foot to build. For every dollar spent on the data center it requires $8 for maintenance. For every dollar spent on hardware, it requires $.50 in power and cooling. Wow!
The Intel chip of today is the Nehalem EX and the future is the Westmere EX – Expandable. Both are built on the Boxboro Platform. It will continue to change the data center environment. I was most impressed by their energy efficiencies in their new chip. They are talking about 90% energy cost reductions and an 8 month payback as an ROI. That is planning tough to beat. If you are planning a tech refresh, you may want to check with the local Intel rep and have them provide you with their Excel tools to help you plan the refresh.
For more information or to download the presentations, click here.
Tags: intel, Nashville, processor, roadshow, ticks, tocks
Tennessee back on top in Supercomputer Race
Nashville Tech Story (11/17/09)
A Cray supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has regained the title of the world’s most powerful supercomputer, overtaking the installation that was ranked at the top in June, while China entered the Top 10 with a hybrid Intel-AMD system.
The upgraded Jaguar supercomputer at Oak Ridge, in Tennessee, now boasts a speed of 1.759 petaflops per second from its 224,162 cores, while the IBM Roadrunner system at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico slowed slightly to 1.042 petaflops per second after it was repartitioned. A petaflop is one thousand trillion calculations per second.
The list of the Top 500 supercomputers, set to be released on Monday during the SC09 supercomputing conference in Portland, Oregon, is compiled twice a year and is now in its 34th installment. The total capacity of the systems on the new list is 27.6 petaflops, up from 22.6 petaflops on the previous list in June.
Jaguar has been upgraded since June with new processors and surged ahead to take the lead. It is based on the Cray XT5 Linux supercomputer platform, which uses Advanced Micro Devices Opteron (AMD) processors. Its total peak capability is 2.3 petaflops per second.
The No. 3 system is Kraken, at the National Institute for Computational Sciences at the University of Tennessee, which performs at 832 teraflops per second. This Cray XT5 supercomputer was ranked No. 6 in June, when it was rated at just 463 teraflops per second.
Intel processors power 402 of the systems on the list, or 80.4 percent, up slightly from 399 in June. The IBM Power architecture is the second most commonly used, with 52 systems, down from 55. AMD’s Opteron family appears in 42 of the systems.
Most of the Top 500 supercomputers — 426 systems — now use quad-core processors. Only 59 use dual-core chips, and just four systems are based on single-core architectures. There were six systems on the latest list using IBM’s nine-core Cell Broadband Engine processor, also used in the PlayStation 3. Gigabit Ethernet is the internal interconnect technology in 259 installations, compared with 181 using InfiniBand.
Hewlett-Packard led in the number of systems on the list, with 210 supercomputers or 42 percent, compared with 185 for IBM. However, the IBM systems accounted for the most computing power, with 34.8 percent of total performance, down from 39.8 percent. HP held 22.8 percent.
The Top 500 list is compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim in Germany, Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
Tags: hp, ibm, intel, jaguar, Nashville, oak ridge, supercomputer, technology, Tennessee, university of tennessee
Global Entrepreneur Week Kicks Off
Editor’s note: this is the first of five daily features during Global Entrepreneurship Week.
Guest blogger Mark Montgomery is a serial entrepreneur and strategic consultant. He was the co-founder and former CEO of echo, a digital music innovator which was acquired by IAC in 2007. Along with his other pursuits, Mark chairs the Advisory Board of the Nashville Entrepreneur Center.
Mark Montgomery from Nashville Entrepreneur Center on Vimeo.
Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) runs from today, November 16, through November 22. Global Entrepreneurship Week is a worldwide event intended to inspire, connect, mentor and engage young people with the desire to change the world. Partners include universities, high schools, non-profit organizations, successful entrepreneurs and government agencies. Tennessee has more events going on during GEW than any other state—and is a great reflection on the capabilities and opportunities for Nashville and Middle Tennessee.
While measuring the exact impact of entrepreneurs in a market can be a difficult task, it is clear that where entrepreneurship flourishes, wealth and value are created in that city. Our fair city has always been home to risk-takers and great thinkers (offer to buy Chamber CEO Ralph Schultz a beer and he’ll fill you in from the 1850’s forward…), and today they make up 21.6% of our economic ecosystem. Because of the high concentration of the creative class here in Nashville, we not only have a more traditional group of small businesses and sole proprietorships, we also have Keith Urban and the Kings of Leon, among many other great artists. Along with our rich musical history, we also have a more than few small healthcare companies…a strong foundation to build upon.
The short version of my story is that I moved to Nashville in 1990 with $800.00 and a guitar in hopes of becoming a big fish in a big pond. I managed to become a decent-sized fish, but not as the next George Lynch. My grandfather had one of the first personal computers, and I had always been a bit of a curious computer nerd. I became interested in the web in the early nineties, and began building websites in 1994. On April 20th, 1996, I helped launch an ecommerce platform selling music directly to consumers. That moment defined the next 10+ years of my life. In 1999, I co-founded echomusic with Neil Einstman, and off to the races we went. Grown organically out of cash, we moved the company through many phases; and in 2007, we sold the company to the Interactive Corporation (IAC). The sale gave me something I had not had in a long time: a boss. After a couple of years, I recognized that while I was certainly capable of running an operational business unit of a major multinational corporation, at my core I am a builder. So back into the sea of entrepreneurship I threw myself.
I signed up to help launch our Entrepreneur Center for two simple reasons. First, a healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem requires connection and community. The EC gathers all of that energy and focuses it in one place. Focus and execution are the key to success; and while I am glad that to date we have succeeded without this level of focus, I am extraordinarily excited to watch as the EC’s impact begins to be felt in Nashville and Middle Tennessee. This focus will bring mentorship, tools, business plan advice, educational and networking opportunities, directories and pathways to capital to our community of entrepreneurs, providing real value and support at a key time in the life of a business.
Second, Nashville has become my permanent home, and I believe that we all have a responsibility to give back. It gives me great pride to know that as new people arrive here with their dreams in tow, they will have a place that will provide focused resources for those dreams. And by committing to my community, I will have the opportunity to watch many of those dreams come true.
echo was a pioneer in the digital music space, and I will always say with pride, “yes, sir, we built our technology business in NASHVILLE.” Our city and state has many other pioneers, companies that have the ability to be truly transformational in music, healthcare, publishing, logistics, payments, and more. As my next big dream unfolds, as exciting as that is for me, I am even more excited to watch Nashville’s community move to the next level in its support of ALL its entrepreneurs.
If you are an entrepreneur, this is your week! Take a moment and be grateful for what you are doing. If you work for one of us, how about a pat on the back (or better yet a hug…) and if you enjoy one of the products as a consumer, take a moment to say thanks…it means so much…
Be well!
Tags: Digital Music, Entrepreneur Center, Mark Montgomery, Nashville, technology
Google says ‘Happy Holidays’ with free WiFi in Airports Including Nashville
Nashville Tech Story (11/11/09)
‘Tis the Season. From now until January 15th, free wireless access will be available in over 45 airports Nationwide, including Nashville International Airport (BNA). In addition, free wireless access will be available on board Virgin American flights, powered by Gogo® Inflight internet. Are you curious how in-flight wireless access works at 35,000 feet? It is very similar to how a cell phone works with cellular towers. Click here for a full description.
Google is also all about giving back to the community, and now you can contribute. If you make a donation to one of 3 charities, Climate Savers Computing, One Economy Corporation or Engineers Without Borders USA, Google will match your donation 100%. In addition, the Airport with the most donations, will receive $15,000 to give to the charity of their choice.
That’s not all. If you are in a participating airport, take a picture of yourself using the WiFi network and submit to win a number of awesome prizes. Thanks Google for spreading the Holiday Cheer, and making traveling a little more pleasant through the busy season.
Click Here for more information
Tags: airports, bna, broadband, charity, Google, holidays, inflight internet, Nashville, nashville international airport, wifi, wireless access, wireless network
PureSafety Continues Aggressive Growth Strategy
PureSafety Continues Aggressive Growth Strategy
Taps Avondale Partners to identify acquisition opportunities
FRANKLIN, Tenn. — Nov. 10, 2009 — PureSafety, a leading provider of results-driven software and information solutions for workforce safety and health, is ramping up its acquisition strategy and has engaged Avondale Partners, a full-service investment banking firm, to assist in identifying potential opportunities.
PureSafety’s scale, market leadership and momentum make it well positioned for additional growth and a prime candidate to further consolidate the industry. The company is seeking highly capable and committed teams as well as complementary software solutions and service partners within the workforce safety, health, environmental and risk management sectors.
This heightened focus on acquisition growth is in support of PureSafety’s vision to create the industry’s most comprehensive suite of web-based software and information solutions to address compliance, risk management, governance and culture needs.
“Our ability to help our customers protect their most important assets and drive meaningful business results has never been stronger,” said PureSafety President and CEO Bill Grana. “We are looking for like-minded people and companies that share this vision.”
The company’s successful acquisitions to date include the December 2008 acquisition of Unique Software Solutions, Inc. (USSI) and its Occupational Health Manager® (OHM) software suite and PerDatum’s Prognos® software application in November 2006.
“We are excited to partner with PureSafety on this engagement, and already have multiple indications of interest outstanding to acquire complementary firms,” said Chris Calton, director, Investment Banking at Avondale Partners.
About PureSafety
Born out of a workplace tragedy in 1999, PureSafety empowers its customers to protect their organization’s most valuable assets: their people and profits. PureSafety provides comprehensive, web-based software and information solutions that support compliance requirements, overall risk management needs, and the enhancement of governance and company culture through improved programs, processes, awareness, understanding, visibility, and accountability within workforce safety and health. The company’s growing team of 160 employees serves more than 2,000 companies operating in more than 20 major industries including manufacturing, construction, distribution, energy, and healthcare, and encompasses 34 percent of the Fortune 500. Headquartered in the Nashville-area, PureSafety has an additional location in Colorado Springs, Col. To learn more, visit www.puresafety.com or call 888.202.3016.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Amy Gray, APR
Gray Public Relations
615.497.1799
agray@graypr.com
Tags: avondale, Franklin, government, Health Care, Nashville, puresafety, risk management, software solutions, technology, Tennessee, tn
