Utah Tech Spotlight Events

Review: IT home runs, Utah First Friday, and Speed Pitching

Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Dec 13

I was pleased to have the chance to attend several events here in the valley last week, and I wanted to take a few minutes and give you my review of them. My hope (especially with recurring events) is that this might be helpful for you in determining what local activities migh be worthwhile for you and your company.

IT Homeruns: There was an event on th Novell campus last week, that highlighted IT, and IT companies here in the valley. It appeared that the purposes for this event were two fold: 1 to educate people, and 2 to act as a recruiting tool. Now, I did not attend the entire event, but here is what It hought of what I did attend:

I caught a brief speech about Entice. Apparently this is a local company… but what they do or intend to do is completely shrouded in mystery… but they say will be huge. The presentation was entirely a recruitment tool. They touched on the fact that they give all employees free gym memberships, steak and salmon dinners, everyone gets a dual quad core computer with dual 24 inch monitors, and so on and so forth. I have to say… I might be jaded, but I was right in the heart of the bubble. I worked with Critical Path as the company bought everything that stood still long enough, fed everyone all of the time, had a massage therapist come into the office, and even had someone come and adjust the feng shui of the office once per week. This presentation seemed all too familiar to me. I will say again, however, that I have no idea what Entice does. If anyone from Entice reads this, and wants to blow my mind with what they do, then I look eagerly toward the chance to eat crow on this blog. Until then, I really don’t work at another company with an official “chill room.”

The rest of the event was great however (at least what I was there for.) I saw a great long-tail presentation by Phil Windley, and some really good Q&A with VC’s. Kudos to all who pull that together!

Speed Pitching: The IT Home runs event ended and rolled right into the speed pitching event by Funding Universe. The event was a bit smaller this time, with 6 presenters rather than 10, but I am guess that is because of the time constraints. You all know I love these events… but that aside, the real question is do they work? Well, I can say that several people I have personally heard present have gotten funding and follow-up meetings with investors from these events. Not only that, but I ahve heard incredible advice given out to these presenters. If I were looking for funding I would definitely present at one of these. The feedback is incredible, even if you don’t get funded from the specific event.

Utah First Friday: Okay, so I have not attended the Utah First Friday events for a while… It’s not because I think they are poorly done, it just comes down to who you are hoping to network with, or what you are looking to learn. UFF tends to get a good crowd (there were probably a couple of hundred people there.) But the crowd seems mainly made up of individuals, or very small businesses (a lot of SOHO) rather than small, mid, or large companies. If that fits what you are looking for, then these events are very well done. Otherwise, I would recommend the UTC or Corporate Alliance.

Final note: before I wrap up, I want to mention that Jason Alba, of Jibber Jobber (one heck of a bright person BTW) is making an effort to make everyone aware that Andy Sernovitz is coming to SLC on December 17th. Jason raves about Andy’s presentation, and Jason is one of those folks that if he tells me something is a don’t miss, I really believe him. Find out more about it here.

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Posted in Local Review

Utah Social Media Developer Garage — Dec 11 (tonight)

Posted by Clint Goudie-Nice

Article posted on Dec 11

The Utah Social Media Developers Garage will be tonight, December 11, at 7pm at our office in Draper. Jesse Stay has lined up Jeff Barr, evangelist for Amazon Web Services, who will speak on how Amazon AWS is being used in Social environments. After Jeff’s talk, there will be a round-table discussion with topics such as Google’s OpenSocial, Facebook, and other Social Media.

We would like to thank Jesse and his consulting company SNAPlic8 for putting this event together and Bungee Labs for providing the food.

We hope to see you there!

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Posted in Events

Skiing behind the truck!

Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Dec 07

Well, I mentioned that in the coming weeks I was going to make an extra effort to look at how technology helps us to improve our quality of life… Thanks to our crew out of the Reno office you can see exactly what a little snow, a little tech (in the form of a big truck!) and working with some really fun people can do!

Youtube link here

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Posted in Just for Fun

Park City Chamber, Speed pitch, and more!

Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Dec 07

Happy Friday all! Today we have a guest-post review from Eric Morgan for the Park City Chamber new member orientation. This Chamber has some real interesting aspects of it, so expect us to keep a close eye on them. Additionally, I attended a Funding Universe Speed pitching event last night, and the Utah First Friday Extravaganza this morning… so expect write-ups on both of those int he coming days. But enough from me… here’s the good word form Eric:

Through attending a new member orientation conference with the Park City Chamber of Commerce you realize that they are somewhat of a unique chamber compared to most in Utah.

The meeting itself was very nice, located at the Stein Erickson Lodge in Deer Valley. There were about 30-40 people there; all of which were new members within the last 3-4 months. They provided a continental breakfast and there was no charge to attend the event.

I learned some cool facts and data about the organization; here are some key points that stuck out to me. They are the 3rd largest chamber in Utah, most of their revenue, approximately 80%, comes from lodging taxes in Park City. Only about 7-8% of their revenue came from membership dues which is amazing. They also claim to have 1,100 members which was far more than I expected. I am guessing that they have many members that are not located in Park City, such as us, to reach that number.

There was a very surprising variety of businesses in the meeting though; I was expecting hotels, lodging facilities, ski related organizations, restaurants, shop owners, etc. In reality it was a very large mix of businesses. A few examples were concierge services, dog training, office supplies, beauty products, banks, high end cabin builders, credit unions, insurance companies, non-profit organizations, car rentals, etc. There were very few technology companies though and we were one of the only ones.

Through talking with others one of the most desirable benefits of being a member is that they provide their mailing list to any member free of charge, you can even use the chambers bulk mailing rate for mail pieces you may want to send to other members or you can obtain an email list. They also provide member-member discounts that you can take advantage of on their website. Plus the three major ski resorts give season pass discounts to chamber members.

Overall I think it was a good event, the networking was great as every person had the opportunity to introduce their company to everyone else in the room. Many cards and brochures were exchanged at the end between different members.

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Posted in Local Review

Podcast: Jeremy Hanks from Doba

Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Dec 04

You know, Jeremy Hanks is a very easy person to get excited about. If he’s not busy making his company of one Inc’s 50 fastest growing companies, then he’s probably busy interviewing with Utah Business Magazine about the fact that his companies is one of the best companies to work for (You can see his smiling face on the cover of this month’s issue), or just generally finding ways to make Utah a better place (such as wit the event where he got Guy Kawasaki here to Utah to speak to 500 people, and then donated all of the proceeds to charity!)

As I read through the article on why people love working at Doba, there were several specifics… renting out theaters for family movie nights, ping pong tables, and more. But one thing that I know is really at the core of it all (and I think you will hear this come through in the podcast) is that Jeremy is just a really nice guy. There are few people I have ever met that are more genuine, and just generally likable.

Please join me during this podcast in learning more about what is not only a successful, and exciting (not to mention fun to work at) company here in Utah, but also in celebrating a person who is a real icon of what an entrepreneur, and a person should be.

Listen Now (34.2 MB, MP3)