A New Kind of Venture Capitalist Makes Small Bets on Young Firms

Good story in New York Times on VC – Union Square Ventures which has built its portfolio making small bets on young companies….

click here for more –

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/technology/22venture.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1222081594-gnolVx6avSlwaODwsfe1Sg

Union Square Ventures’ partners are, from left, Brad Burnham and Fred Wilson, the co-founders, and Albert Wenger. The firm has become a magnet for Web entrepreneurs.

Spotlight on top local innovators – Information Week 500

INNOVATION – it’s a business imperative and everyone is looking for more of it. Information Week discusses trends in emerging technologies and recognizes 500 of top companies for their innovation.

InformationWeek 500 Trends: Web 2.0, Globalization, Virtualization, And More
http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/trends/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210601098

Local winners are:
Grange Insurance – VP and CIO – Michael Fergang
Huntington Bank – EVP and CIO – Zahid Afzal

Congrats to Grange and Huntington!

Other Ohio winners are:
AG Interactive – Cincinnati
Applied Industrial Technologies – Cleveland
Catholic Healthcare Partners – Cincinnati
Cincinnati Financial Corp – Cincinnati
Cintas Corp – Cincinnati
Convergys – Cincinnati
Diebold – North Canton
Fifth Third Bancorp – Cincinnati
Messer Construction – Cincinnati
Nordson – Westlake
Ohio Casualty – Fairfield
Owens Corning – Toledo
Proctor and Gamble – Cincinnati
Progressive Insurance – Mayfield Village
Sherwin Williams – Cleveland
Standard Register – Dayton
Teradata – Miamisburg
WinWholesale – Dayton

Tech Events of note this week

– Wed 9/24
TechColumbus After Hours with Quick Solutions –
http://www.techcolumbus.org/en/cev/280

– Thur 9/25
AITP -How does Web 2.0 Effect IT Professionals? –
http://www.aitp-columbus.org/ – (I’ll be speaking at this one)

– Friday 9/26
TechColumbus ‘Special Event’ Luncheon: Dave Berkus Presents “Ten Technology Trends That Will Shape Your Corporate Future –
http://www.techcolumbus.org/en/cev/297

Interview with entrepreneur – Vish Vishwanathan – Znode

What is Znode?

Znode is a Flexible Storefront Platform – Revolutionary technology that allows online retailers to launch world-class online storefronts and increase profitability within weeks instead of months. Extensive research and analysis shows that no other competing platform has the Ultimate Flexibility that Znode Storefront includes in its framework, which allows it to be custom-tailored to virtually any business requirement. Moreover, Znode is extremely user-friendly, can handle millions of SKUs and can be easily integrated with virtually any back-office system or third party application. Znode allows retailers to rapidly market their products, manage inventory and connect seamlessly with trading partners.

What problem does it solve?

Znode’s primary goal is to address the biggest challenge in e-commerce today which is the lack of flexibility in commercially available solutions. We are continuously working to make the Znode Storefront platform provide the ultimate flexibility to enable our customers to create rich, custom-tailored solutions for virtually any real-world requirement. Our extensive expertise with building user friendly web applications and adherence to a standards based development approach has clearly differentiated us from other competitors in the market.

Where is the company at its maturity?

Our licensed product – Znode Storefront was launched in the first quarter of 2007 after 30,000 man-hours of development over a period of 3 years. Since its launch, several major retail brands such as LoJack have successfully implemented world-class solutions using the Znode platform. The platform is currently in version 5.1 and is very mature. We have also established streamlined development and support processes in place to provide world-class support to our customer base. Znode is currently in the process of enhancing its enterprise service offerings such as the “Storefront-On-Demand” product which would allow rapid implementation of complex enterprise storefronts through a middle-ware service model.

Why did you start Znode?

We were doing a number of e-commerce projects for different clients – we realized that all of these projects had a “common thread” – we felt that it could benefit us if we were to create a solid e-commerce base framework that we could base all our projects on. When we started building this framework, we were careful enough to ensure that it is based on industry standard best practices. Once the framework was built, it was obvious to us that it would be beneficial to license it to other developers and agencies as well.

Tell us a little bit about your background

Currently the CEO of Znode – I have been with Znode since its inception. I have consulted as an architect for several companies over the last 15 years including BMW Financial Services, Qwest Communications, Wendy’s International, Borden Foods and Information Control Corporation. I have a bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering and have a number of patents and publications in the electronic firmware area.

About yourself

I have 2 cats that keep me busy, I like riding my bike, love the TV series : Entourage, not much of a writer, favorite travel destination:Santa Monica, I am a big movie buff, musicals tickle my fancy, Favorite drink: Chai Tea Latte with Soy and a shot of Espresso (only at Starbucks!)

What are your aspirations for Znode?

Our goal for Znode is to achieve global leadership status in the e-commerce domain. There are several players In this domain but we have been able to cut through the competition easily because of our unique product strategy. We strongly believe that we can achieve our leadership goal in the next few years based on our roadmap and current momentum.

What would you like to tell our columbustech.blogspot.com readers?

First of all, we would like to thank everyone in Columbus who have been instrumental in Znode’s success. We have received invaluable help and support from industry leaders in this region that has helped shape our company to what we are today. We are proud to be located here in Central Ohio!

IT Community Events – October 2008

This listing courtesy of the Platform Lab – http://www.platformlab.org/default.asp – click on event to link to more detail

October 7th – Central Ohio VMWare Users Group meeting

This meeting will be covering ESX 3.5 / Virtual Center 2.5. There will be several presenters from area businesses and organizations including…

October 7th – VMWare classes monthly at Platform Lab’s Training Room

This series of hands-on training course explores VMware Infrastructure 3, which consists of VMWare ESX Server and VMware VirtualCenter. Completion of this course entitles…

October 10th – Three Nationally Renowned Best Selling Authors in Project Management

Project Management Resource Group is a Project Management Institute(PMI)Registered Education Provider (R.E.P.). Their mission is to provide high value educational programs for…

October 13th – 2nd Annual RHIOhio: Building Partnerships for Change

This year’s conference will convene health care providers and professionals, governmental officials, policy makers and industry representatives to discuss the integration of health information technology (HIT) into the…

October 14th – VMWare Infrastructure 3: Deploy, Secure and Analyze V3.5

This hands-on training course, aimed at experienced VMware Infrastructure administrators, has been updated to reflect ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5. It focuses on…

October 15th – Central Ohio ISSA monthly meeting

The Central Ohio ISSA – Columbus chapter has a mission which is to enhance the professional growth of our members via education, training and networking. Come join the local ISSA chapter as…

October 15th – Cincinnati Programmers Guild to feature Platform Lab

The Cincinnati Programmers Guild features Platform Lab Director, Steve Gruetter as speaker for their October meeting. Gruetter will be discussing ‘Leveraging Ohio’s Resources’, an interactive informative presentation focusing on how to take advantage of…

October 16th – Central Ohio SharePoint User Group – Monthly Meeting

The user group is targeted towards end users, administrators, implementers, developers, and anyone who likes to learn about emerging technology. We meet the third Thursday of every month from…

October 17th – Groundwork Group – 3rd Annual Members Conference

“Collaboration – Working Together” Guest speakers, Dr. E. Gordon Gee and Bob Harrington will be exploring this topic from a wide variety of perspectives, the focus will be on Central Ohio’s…

October 27th – VMware Site Recovery Manager

This hands-on training course is aimed at experienced VMware Infrastructure 3 administrators and covers installation, configuration and operation of VMware Site Recovery Manager and…

October 28th – ISACA – Auditing Oracle Database Security from Secure IT

This two day seminar will give participants the knowledge necessary to understand and effectively evaluate controls over an Oracle database management system. Participants will…

Central Ohio Java Users Group – gathering and meetings – Sept 9

Lunch Meeting

Testing … what’s that?

Quick Solutions will be providing lunch.

Abstract

Vital to any development is the ability to test that application. Often time developers use excuses as to why NOT to test. One of those excuses is not knowing HOW to test. Testing can be as simple as writing code to go against your method and expecting a certain result. However most applications have a variety of moving parts that include databases or outside services that we do not want to test. Luckily Java has created multiple ways of helping to test out outside services, and we shall go over four of those ways. The first two will look at Easy Mock and JMockit which can be used by any framework. The third one will be specific for EJB3Unit testing and our last example of testing will look at how to test against JBoss Embedded application server.

Bio

Joseph Faisal Nusairat, author of “Beginning JBoss Seam” and co-author of “Beginning Groovy & Grails”, is a Java developer who has been working full time in the Columbus Ohio area since 1998, primarily focused on Java development. His career has taken him into a variety of Fortune 500 industries including military applications, data centers, banking, internet security, pharmaceuticals, and insurance. Joseph is particularly fond of open source projects and tries to use as much open source software as possible when working with clients. Joseph is a graduate of Ohio University with dual degrees in Computer Science and Microbiology with a minor in Chemistry. Currently, Joseph works as a Senior Partner at Integrallis Software (www.integrallis.com ). In his off-hours he enjoys watching bodybuilding and Broadway musicals, but not at the same time.

Quick Solutions Offices

Time: 11:30 am

Address:

440 Polaris Parkway

Suite 500

Westerville, OH 43082

Evening Meeting

Google Web Toolkits (GWT)

Quick Solutions will be providing an after hours event at Brazenhead.

Abstract

Brief introduction of ajax as needed, what is and why GWT? Building User interface with GWT Widgets, event handling and styling, Remote procedure call (RPC), JavaScript Native Interface (JSNI). The talk will be accompanied with live demo.

Bio

Yiguang Hu have been working in IT for over 12 years for some of the finest companies in Ohio. He was a Sun Certified Java 2 Programmer and J2EE Web component developer. He also passed the Sun Certified Enterprise Architect in Java Technologies knowledge exam. He is now a senior software engineer working on supply change management software using technologies like JSF/Spring/Ajax technologies.

Time: 6:30 pm

Place: OCLC’s Kilgour building auditorium

Address:

OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.

6565 Frantz Road

Dublin, OH 43017-3395 USA

Columbus $100k Tech Jobs

One of the challenges to building a vibrant tech community is keeping our talent here. A key component to that retention is making exciting positions visible to our community. Here a listing of higher end positions currently available where total compensation packages are >$100k

New postings:
Director of Engineering – http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcr92k6t_159d2t266cz
Senior Project Hardware Engineer – http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcr92k6t_160q26pkzf7

First posted 8.28.08

Field Application Engineer – http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcr92k6t_154g8dknjht

IT Director – http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcr92k6t_1559cxzbrcr

Sharepoint Director – http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcr92k6t_156dp82dkwz

Senior Java Developer – filled

Peace Out,

Ben

Monday Morning Muses – Aug 25, 2008 – on professional development

I’m sitting in my home office listening to the opening and closing of doors as the kids get ready for their first day of school. It’s a cycle that’s repeated year in and year out. In our household we value education as a key to success and options in life. We constantly remind our kids of this fact. If you’re like me most of you also were reminded of this by your parents.

The question at hand is what are you doing to model continuous learning to your kids? Especially in a industry where the half life of relevant knowledge can be measured in years and sometimes months. Ask yourself a few questions:

– What I am I doing to keep myself current in my profession?

– How much time have I spent in the last year investing in myself? How does that compare with the amount of time I’ve spend watching TV?

– What am doing to surround myself with people who stretch my thoughts?

– What are the implications of the answers of the previous questions? It sometimes said that if you’re not moving forward then you’re falling behind.

There are a ton of professional development activities out there. All you have to do is look at the various sources. (techcolumbus website, your professional society website, this blog 😉 ) and get the date on your calendar. Make it a priority, get it on your calendar, commit to a few hours of professional development activities a month.

After all our kids need good education role models and you owe it to yourself to keep growing. Start your new school year today.

Peace out,

Ben

Chez Sez – COSI #1 science center in the nation

For those of you missed my earlier kudos –

Out of 150 science centers in the United States, not counting many more natural history museums. Parents Magazine just announced COSI’s selection as their #1 Best Science Center for families in a national survey.

Click to see David Chesebrough’s (Prez and CEO of COSI) blog reaction to the announcement…

Chez Sez –

– http://chezsez.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/1-in-the-nation/

3 CIO 100 award winners in Central Ohio – How cool is that!!

CIO magazine awarded 3 of our own Central Ohio companies with their 2008 CIO 100 award. The 2008 CIO 100 Awards honor 100 companies that are creating new business value by innovating with technology.

The three organizations, the project type that they were judged on, and their CIO’s are:

Click on the organization name for more detail on the projects . Click on the CIO name to see their linkedin profile.

Limited Brands – ERP – Tom Keiser
Ohio State University Medical Center – BI – Herb Smaltz
OhioHealth – Document Management – Michael Krouse

Congratulations to Central Ohio’s CIO 100 award winners!!