NEOSA "Connecting Business and Technology"

It has been a number of years since I have been talking about Pittsburgh and Cleveland. How do we work more closely for the mutual benefit of both regions? I am going to work on having a meeting with Tech folks from Pittsburgh before 2004 is over. I think maybe we should do it in Poland, Ohio. It is about half way between the two communities and they have a great new library where we could hold the meeting. So I need your help to determine what we should talk about. So, please send me your ideas as to what the best topic would be for the joint meeting.

I will try to be a good blogger and post some news every few days.

We had an excellent meeting of the NEOSA Akron/Canton group on Thursday, February 26th. Here are quick highlights from the meeting:

Jim Cookinham was there and gave an update on NEOSA. Among other items, he pointed out some exciting NEOSA events coming up, including "Going Global" on March 17, "Specifications for Software Projects" on March 19, and "Futures Forum" on March 24. Check the NEOSA Events Calendar for more info.

We were honored to have Ray Leach, CEO of Jumpstart, join us. He gave an overview of Jumpstart's strategy to fund and grow early-stage businesses in Northeast Ohio. He suggested that NEOSA and Jumpstart look for ways to work together wherever the respective missions intersect.

That same thought about collaborating with other groups in the region was echoed throughout the meeting. The general consensus was: a key part of NEOSA's outreach strategy in the Akron/Canton area should involve collaborating and partnering with existing organizations. Doing so will make the best and most efficient use of existing resources in the region. It will get the word out about NEOSA so that NEOSA can be a "magnet" to draw the Akron/Canton business community. The more NEOSA extends its reach, the better it can promote the IT industry and member companies.

Some organizations that we identified and agreed to explore possible deeper linkages with are: Greater Akron Chamber of Commerce; University of Akron; Kent State University; Ryze networking mixers; and, of course, Jumpstart. In separate posts I will report on two joint-sponsored events that are already in the works.

At our next meeting we will drill down and outline specific ways we could potentially work together with these and other organizations. Those ways include joint sponsorship of events, creating a speakers' bureau and/or a trainers' bureau, and leveraging state and federal grant monies, among other possiblities. In the meantime, feel free to leave your ideas here under "Comments." That way others can think about and build off your ideas.

We presented Ron with a gift card to thank him for his leadership. Ron resigned the leadership role in order to focus more time on his own business, but assured everyone he is still interested in the group and pledged his help. Ron also asked me to pass along his sincere thanks for the gift card!

We re-affirmed our regular meeting schedule: the 3rd Thursday of every month, 7:30 am. That means our next meeting will be Thursday, March 18, 7:30 am, at Software Answers. (Thank you Paul and Software Answers!)

Thanks to all who attended. Your input is very important. And oh, Buy NEO!

Just a reminder that NEOSA Akron/Canton is holding its business meeting from 7:30 - 8:30 am this Thursday. Details in the earlier post.

Also, later in the afternoon is the regular NeTT (NEOSA Tech Thursday) networking event, with special guests from Crain's Communications. Shasta Clark is leaving town (Bye, Shasta). Jeff Stacklin is moving from tech to the financial beat. And Tom Jackson is the new technology reporter for Crains in Cleveland (Hello Tom!). It starts 5:30 pm at the Powerhouse in the Flats. Register here.

On Thursday March 11th, the U.S. Secret Service, Cleveland Electronic Crimes Task Force will host the Spring Northern Ohio Information Technology Roundtable Meeting (NOITR).

The subject of the meeting will be SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) systems. These systems are used to control environmental systems -- such as electric, gas, water -- in businesses, manufacturing plants, public buildings, and academic institutions. The meeting will be moderated by Chris Thompson, Editor of Craintech.

Go here for meeting details. NEOSA is a member of the Roundtable, as are many NEOSA member companies.

How often do you get to listen to FIVE top executives at once? Thanks to Jim Cookinham and his crew, we had that chance yesterday when DataVantage, Flashline, Tribute, KeyCorp Technology Services, and Hyland Software all sent their big guns to answer questions put to them by John Soat, senior executive editor at InformationWeek (who happens to live in Northeast Ohio).

The audience got to ask, too, and the whole atmosphere was one of comraderie and sharing. The gist of what they all said was that IT has come down from its high horse of old and is now acting on the primary lesson all successful businesses must learn: find out what your customers need

I think it was Bob Dutile of Key--the only panel member who was an end user as opposed to software maker--who said it: Gone are the days when you would buy technology just to buy it--and then look for a problem it might be able to solve. Now IT vendors have to say, how can I help you?

Thanks to NEOSA for these excellent opportunities to meet and get to know each other better.

For those of you who could not attend today's 2004 Trends in Information Technology forum, it was standing-room-only. And excellent. I blogged a small slice of it over at Small Business Trends.

UPDATE: Chris Seper, technology reporter for the Plain Dealer, also blogged about the forum over at Chat Room Live in his February 18th post.

UPDATE March 6, 2004: Magnum Computers also gave a report of this event. Sorry I didn't include it earlier. I just discovered it.

OK, now that we have weblogs, how do we keep up on all this reading? Here's one way.

My Yahoo is Beta testing a new feature that should be a real time saver. You can read the headlines from all your favorite blogs right on your "My Yahoo" page.

It's another take on RSS newsreaders. What I like about My Yahoo is that you get access to all your other favorite information in one place: weather, movie listings, stock market updates, news headlines from major news outlets, and updates from your favorite weblogs.

You'll need to sign up for My Yahoo first. So go do that now and then come back to this page.

Once you have done that, click on the little "add to My Yahoo" button that I've set up on the right side of this page under the heading "Weblog Information." That will automatically add the NEOSA blog headlines to your My Yahoo page.

Remember, this is in Beta. But I've been using it for several days now with no problems.


UPDATE February 22, 2004: Well, you can tell this is still in Beta. My Yahoo is not updating the feed, i.e., the latest entries are not showing up. It seems to be a problem with all Atom format news feeds -- none of the sites with Atom feeds that I am following are updating in My Yahoo since last week. I wrote Yahoo and actually got a very substantive response giving instructions for pinging this site so Yahoo will pick up the updates. I've pinged and I've pinged -- but alas, no change. Anybody have any ideas?

UPDATE March 6, 2004: Still in Beta. Some days it works and some days...well. Yesterday all my Atom feeds in My Yahoo! appeared up to date. Today they are not.

Software Answers (a NEOSA member!) is holding a technical seminar on Thursday, February 19, at 6:00 pm on managing Microsoft patches. Topics include:

Magnitude of the patch management issue

Best practices for testing and rolling out patches

Tools available to automate the process

A demo on Systems Update Services (SUS)

You must reserve a spot if you want to attend this technical seminar. Send an email to Joya or call 800-638-5212 for details.

I am most impressed with all the work Anita has done to get this Blog started. We do not have such one in Cleveland and it appears we should consider having one.

Please do let us know what type of NEOSA events you would like to see in the Akron/Canton area. I have seen how much energy there is in this region and we want to follow up on all the good work Ron F. did to get everything going. So, please let Anita or me know what you would like to see us do.

Looks like a terrific NEOSA meeting coming up Wednesday, February 18th (this is the regular monthly meeting in the Cleveland area). The topic is 2004 trends in Information Technology. What an impressive panel of speakers:

Chaz Napoli, President, DataVantage Corp

AJ Hyland, President and CEO, Hyland Software

Charles Stack, Founder and CEO, Flashline, Inc

Tim Reynolds, President, Tribute Inc

Robert Dutile, EVP, Enterprise Architecture, KeyCorp

The event will be moderated by John Soat, Executive Editor, InformationWeek. Another added plus.

Register here to attend. I'm going.

The commenting feature has now been added to this Weblog. Feel free to comment on any of these posts -- no advance registration required. Just click on the "Comment" link under the post.

Just a reminder that the Buy NEO site is officially in business. It is an online "deal matchmaking" site for buyers of IT services and local vendors. Vendors must be members of NEOSA (but then, you already are, right?).

I know this isn't strictly Akron-related, but thought it was of interest anyway:

The Center for Regional Economic Issues (REI) at Weatherhead School of Management reports that it will sponsor a student chapter of NEOSA, as reported by the Inside REI weblog.

Did you know NEOSA has student chapters? A couple of them, including one at Kent State University. Glad to see another one.

I know that Jim is far too modest to bring this up, so I will. Jim has been named to the Inside Business Power 100 in Northeast Ohio:

"Cookinham is the region’s strongest advocate for fostering a stable technology industry and culture, even in a post-dot-com era."

Our next meeting of NEOSA BTG will be held on February 26, 2004 from 7:30 to 8:30 am at Software Answers. The address is 202 Montrose West Avenue, Akron, OH 44321.

(Software Answers is located on "restaurant hill" in Montrose, in the Crown Pointe building. Enter the building through the main door, take an immediate right inside the door and follow the hall back to the cafeteria where we will be meeting. Thanks to Paul Chaffee at Software Answers for hosting us once again.)

Agenda topics include:

NEOSA Update.

Meeting schedule; planning next BizBuzz event.

Coordination with the Greater Akron Chamber.

Communicating between meetings.

Recognition/Thank You for Ron.

Thanks once again to Jim Barlow, President of Western Reserve Controls, who gave an intriguing presentation about holonic manufacturing at our January meeting. Holonic manufacturing holds promise for manufacturers. It can also mean new business for the IT industry.

If you weren't able to make it to the meeting, you can still check out the presentation online over at the Western Reserve Controls website.

Thanks also to Dennis Adamkiewicz, who arranged for our speaker.

Welcome to the new weblog for announcements and group communications affecting NEOSA in Medina, Summit, Stark and Portage counties. I've prepared the following Q&A explaining what this weblog is all about:


Question: OK, you're probably wondering why we need a weblog for NEOSA in this region?

Answer: A weblog will help us to stay in touch between meetings. It also helps us share information between NEOSA members -- information such as tips and sales leads. Information that can help us all build our businesses.


Question: Don't we have regular websites for that?

Answer: Yes, we certainly have websites. But websites don't always make it easy to share information informally. A weblog is nothing more than a personal publishing tool that will allow us to post text quickly and easily, without having to format pages, design graphics, and do all the other things that set the web designers apart from the rest of us. A weblog is content -- pure and simple.


Question: If I am a NEOSA member, may I post on this weblog? And if so, how do I do it?

Answer: Great! If you want to post, that's fantastic. Just send me an email (link on the right sidebar) and I will get you set up so that you can post here. You will receive an invitation from Blogger to create a login account.


Question: What will happen to the NEOSA website?

Answer: Glad you asked. The main NEOSA website will not change. Remember, this is simply a weblog, not a full website. This weblog is for informal communications among members. It does not take the place of a website -- it just adds another communications method. The main NEOSA website is an important part of presenting the face of NEOSA to the outside world. (Besides, it is better looking and has far more functionality than this weblog.)


Question: What will happen to the NEOSA BTG website?

Answer: Jacob Mathew was very gracious and got a NEOSA BTG website up and running very quickly. However, the group did not really use the website. That is a topic of discussion at our next Board meeting.


Question: Is this weblog public?

Answer: Yes, this weblog can be seen by anyone in the general public.

Here are guidelines for posting on this NEOSA group weblog:

We use this NEOSA weblog primarily for fast group communication and intellectual entertainment.

We respect and help our fellow NEOSA bloggers and members so that they may prosper as much as we do from NEOSA.

We shall not attack anyone personally or attempt to judge anyone's character.

We shall not bear false witness against our competitors or any other members or companies.

We shall respect each other's time by making all our posts to the site informed and concise (i.e., 500 words or less).

We honor the blogging tradition by complementing our posts with links to sources, if applicable.

-- Adapted from the Always-On Blogger Ten Commandments.