It’s just always great to see public recognition too.

Chopra spoke to a packed house at the City Club recently, outlining his and the administration’s goals for leverage technology to accomplish administration priorities. Since IT is so often viewed as just a support function, it was great to see such a large crowd at the presentation.

• To be involved in the community
• To associate with like companies
• To get some tangible value, like insurance or education
• To get intangible value, like government advocacy or a shared voice for your industry
  

What would be the impact on all of our ability to get more done with each other if we took the time to get to know what is really important to the folks we do business with?  A dinner with some Asian colleagues last night had me thinking a little more about the importance of connecting in the context of getting things done.

So I was at the University of Akron last week for one of their frequent Information Technology Executive Exchange (or ITEE) meetings, centered on the subject of social media. It was an eclectic group, with a couple of vendors, like DigiKnow and Via Vera Group and tech gadfly Jim Cookinham, along with a few professors and students from the University. But most of the attendees were CIOs, VPs and IT Director level folks.

Growth, funding, staffing, compensation – all big issues for tech firms, but what are CEOs in the area thinking about those issues right now?

This is one of a series of posts that we’ll make that describe some of the details of Issue 6 and why it helps us create a more accountable, efficient and effective county government. In this post, we discuss appointing qualified individuals for six of today’s elected offices.

On the face of it, it doesn’t sound very interesting, I know, but we incorporated Twitter into the action, enabling real-time sharing of the conversation among all of the executives. But even better, we’ve captured their thoughts around these issues: effective cost controls in 2009, priorities for 2010 and most challenging issues .

StartUp Weekend is an intense exercise in starting a company, it's done around the world and this is the first time it was done in Cleveland.  Over the course of a weekend (in this case the weekend of 11/20), entrepreneurs, idea guys, investors, advisors and others get together, form teams, build prototypes and pitch the audience to win.

Inspiron Logistics and Electron Database Company have won JumpStart funding and are current portfolio companies.  Inspiron has developed a cool emergency notification app that leverages mobile technologies while Electron is developing a revolutionary database product.

The topic for the most recent session (January 22) was “How are Companies Leveraging IT Resources for Innovation?” The execs in the room shared how their companies, and their IT organizations, ensured that the IT function was included in business discussions leading to innovation.

The transition to a new form of government for Cuyahoga County took another step today. Since the win at the ballot in November, COSE has been working with GCP, New Cuyahoga Now and others to discuss how to best involve all the people in the community that want to be a part of the planning of the transition and still create a practical process for developing recommendations.

The Cuyahoga County transition process has always been committed to public engagement and transparency.  The organization of this effort has had a few road bumps as we get going, but there is a commitment to seeing this be an open and inclusive process.

Attending the Public Engagement Forum for the Cuyahoga County Transition Process tonight at CSU's Levin College may be a good way to provide your input on the work ahead.  Here are some thoughts to get you warmed up for the conversation.

Yesterday, President Obama hosted a health care summit to bring Democrats and Republicans together in a final effort to discuss the future of health care reform in the U.S.  During this summit, President Obama and leaders from both sides of the aisle discussed the most contentious issues at play in the health care debate.  The goal of the summit was to uncover ways Republicans and Democrats can compromise on key provisions in the health care legislation and breathe new life back into this effort.

Kent State University, through its Center for Information Systems (CIS), hosted students today in a unique twist on a career fair. Great local companies were represented, like First Energy, Smuckers, Sherwin-Williams, Parker Hanifan, Davey Tree and others. But instead of the normal, kind of boring, “Here’s what makes our company a great place to work blah blah blah..." conversations, the booths were set up by IT function.

What struck me the most was the incredible energy of the crowd - sharing stories, looking for connections, and finding potential partners. I was hard-pressed to believe that we’re in a rough economy right now; I heard nothing but positive stories.

John Steidley, founder and CEO of Intelligent Mobile Support, is a mid-life entrepreneur, and proud of it.  After a long, successful career with Phillips Medical in a variety of positions, John launched IMS a little less than a year ago.

We’ve all heard of Brain Drain, right? How all our talented young college students are fleeing the area to find jobs elsewhere around the country? Well, could it be that one of the major institutions of higher learning in our area is actually giving out questionable career advice and pushing talented young technology students right out of our area?

When we talk about “elections,” we’re typically referring to the General Election that occurs each November. However, what many Americans – approximately 54% in fact – fail to realize is the importance of the Primary Elections that take place each spring. While most of the “heavy lifting” in terms of candidate races comes down to the Election in the fall, there are a host of critical ballot issues that often go unnoticed because they are place on the ballot for the Primary Election each year. This Tuesday, May 4, is the Primary Election – which will provide voters with the opportunity to support the renewal of two key economic development issues both locally and throughout the State.

• network security and intrusion detection/prevention
• eXtreme Programming (or XP programming as they called it)
• software integration projects for a pair of local companies

Those are the words I chose today when asked by Inside Business to describe the tech companies in this year’s Best of Tech Awards for a feature that will run in thier July/August issue. We were discussing the awards, the nominees and the finalists when Lindsay asked, “What sets these companies and tech entrepreneurs apart?”  

Even small businesses with fewer than 10 employees can take advantage of wellness opportunities when they have the right person leading the initiative. 

First, it was great to see a positive article in the Plain Dealer, and second, it was great to see a story about local tech.

As many of you know, it can often be difficult to pin down legislators for meetings, appearances, roundtables, etc.  Being pulled in so many directions really forces legislators to be strategic about where they spend their time.  Over the past few years, COSE has made a concerted effort to provide members with access to their elected officials.  We’ve had meetings with state senators and representatives, mayors from around Northeast Ohio, statewide office holders, etc., all of which have been great experiences that involve engaging dialogue between elected officials and small business owners.  Our goal and success in connecting small business owners and legislators was once again reinforced earlier this week with a visit from U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown.

Over the past few months, we have received feedback from COSE members regarding the Health Care Reform Gameplan that was delivered as part of the May COSE Update magazine. Because some of the feedback and questions we have received pertain to the tone that was used in this Gameplan, we wanted to take a moment to provide an explanation around the language or phrases that were used and also about the political vs. non-political nature of this piece.

I recently spent time with Bennett Gaines, CIO, to interview him for a NEOSA podcast and to learn more about the company’s internship program.

Business gets done by reaching out to each other – that’s why the network is the product!

These uncertainties appear to be affecting the regional tech sector as well as our most recent quarterly survey showed a slight reversal of some positive trends from the first quarter survey.

• Extension of SBA Recovery Loan Provisions
• Doubling the maximum loan size for certain SBA programs

Last week at the COSE Small Business Conference, we announced the winners of our inaugural COSE Energy Efficiency Challenge. We created the Energy Efficiency Challenge because we wanted to reward local small businesses that had taken the initiative to pursue energy efficiency. We also wanted to help facilitate their efforts to become energy efficient further, by providing them with energy efficiency grants.

For many people, Cleveland may not seem like a great place for agriculture. With our long winters, relative paucity of sunlight and unpredictable weather in spring and fall, producing food in Northeast Ohio can be a complicated venture. Despite these challenges, local food is one of the key components of the Sustainable Cleveland 2019 effort. Organizers have pegged 2012 as a year of celebration for the local food movement in the region. And given the recent developments in this area, there will likely be much to celebrate two years from now.

Over the past month, Greater Cleveland has been the beneficiary of millions of dollars of federal grant and investment dollars to promote energy efficiency and transportation sustainability efforts throughout the Northeast Ohio region.

Sustainability is no longer an emerging trend, but the way of doing business. COSE is proud to recognize several members who have taken an active role in top line growth and bottom line savings through sustainable business practices.

On January, 19, 2011, the United States House of Representatives voted 245-189 to repeal the health care reform laws (the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act of 2010 and parts of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010), signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010 and March 30, 2010, respectively.  Three Democrats, Reps. Dan Boren (Okla.), Mike McIntyre (N.C.), and Mike Ross (Ark.), joined 242 Republicans voting to repeal. 

Late last year, gas prices crossed the $3.00 per gallon mark, and they have, by and large, stayed above that threshold since that point throughout Northeast Ohio and most of the country.  At around the same time, John Hofmeister, the former CEO of Shell Oil, made headlines for reporting that he expects gas to hit $5 a gallon sometime in 2012 and remain at that price moving forward.

• Kent State is considering a new school of Digital Sciences to focus on IT education and business disciplines
• Baldwin-Wallace is planning a pair of executive panels on IT career opportunities and IT career success strategies for its students.

Some positive elements reported for the 4th quarter included:

• 65% of companies reported Good/Very Good results for the quarter, up from 54% last quarter
• Companies reporting Bad/Very Bad results for the quarter continued a year-long, declining trend
  

I was very pleased that Chris was able to address us last night. Rosetta is a really impressive company whose growth is exploding through the roof. The company started in 1998 and did about $800k in revenue that first year; they’re projecting $240m this year. Not bad, eh?

I originally wanted to write about being a novice at networking, so  I checked “networking novice” in my search engine, and as you might expect, found millions of results.   What made me do a double-take, though, was the different nuances to the word “network.”

Ivan Schwartz , President of the Greater Cleveland Film Commission is one of my favorite “new” Clevelanders.  Ivan came to town a little over four years ago from Los Angeles to become President of the Greater Cleveland Film Commission.  His goal – help Northeast Ohio make more movies and build an infrastructure that could support that.  As a result, we can put NEO on the map for film and create jobs and opportunities for Ohioans. 

I saw a Jimmy Fallon clip in which he asked, “Raise your hand if you're either a man or a woman. Yeah, me too!”   Reader, raise your hand if your company has customers. Yeah, me too!

And if you have customers, you still probably want to find more of them.  Thinking about all the sales, marketing, branding, and social media techniques and strategies that are out there will make my head spin but I can definitely speak to some COSE-specific opportunities for you that are fairly low-hanging fruit.

Last week we hosted Tech Week 2011 featuring a variety of events, programs and content hosted for the regional IT community.

On Wednesday, Hyland Software hosted a roundtable discussion entitled "Successful Recruiting and Retention Strategies." Reps from the company shared their experience and attendees also shared what’s worked for them. Not only was it a great sharing session, but the information passed around was outstanding. And the passion and enthusiasm shared by the tech recruiters was contagious.

Here are a few of the top, most effective ideas shared for recruiting:

A nice byproduct of the planning effort is that it lets us get into the heads of CIOs each year, and understand what their challenges are and what they’re thinking about.

So, here are the top 10 issues for CIOs, according to our planning committee:

On May 25, 2011, I boarded a bus with over 50 small business owners.  The destination: the Statehouse in Columbus.  The goal: to spend the day talking with legislators about the opportunities and challenges facing the small business community.  The result: a high-energy event with the strongest turnout of both small business owners and legislators to date!  Here’s a little bit about this day.

Recently, I came across a USA Today articles stating that the federal government added $5.3 trillion in new debt in 2010, bringing the total debt to $61.6 trillion.  TRILLION. I’m not even sure if I can count all the zeros in a trillion dollars.  To put this into perspective, the $61.6 trillion breaks down to $534,000 per household, according to USA Today.  While I’m not an economist or a financial expert, I do know that something must be done to control our federal debt. 

Generally speaking, performance for the industry looks to be moving forward reasonably well and anecdotally, I keep hearing pretty good news from the tech companies I speak to - sales are up, hiring is up, prospects are releasing more RFPs and so forth.

So, what does our survey show more broadly? Here are a few, selected results:

Over the last couple of weeks, COSE has worked with The Illuminating Company to deliver a package of six CFL light bulbs to about 5,300 members.  If you received this package and you are like other members we’ve heard from, you are either appreciative to have the opportunity to install these bulbs or upset because you believe we’ve wasted money sending you something you didn’t ask for, don’t want or can’t use.

IT Martini, a Columbus-based IT networking group, brought their show to Cleveland for the 4th time and it was this area’s largest crowd yet. The attendees were diverse; I ran into tech staff, tech entrepreneurs, IT execs and even a couple of investors. 
 

But those techies get kind of a bad rap sometimes; after all, some can be a little introverted. But combine their intelligence, dedication, and willingness to lend a hand with food, caffeine and a great cause and something special happens - Cleveland GiveCamp. 

At the Small Business Summit that COSE organized last February, a lot of participants told us that they enjoyed the experience and they hoped we wouldn’t just let the recommendations and ideas fade away without action. I appreciate that because I have had the misfortune to be involved with a number of similar sessions that are high on enthusiasm but short on follow-up.

We told you at the summit that we would get a summary of the proceedings out within a month or so and we did that in April. In that report, found here, we also told you that we wanted to organize and support a next step. We had targeted mid-summer to kick off that effort. And, I’d like to provide a quick overview of the next steps we are suggesting.