In the midst of all that has been going on here I have been meaning to post some links and info that I have found interesting. The first was an article about the trends in Social media and the growth in advertising dollars being spent. According to eMarketer, advertisers spent an estimated $920 million on social networking sites in the US in 2007, and are projected to spend $1.6 billion in 2008. Thisis encouraging news for folks getting in to growing their online communities and

it just shows the value of Social networking even if you do not push ads in the face of your visitors. http://www.mediapost.com/ommasocial/

This is just one example, Social networking is expected to grow to a 5 billion market by 2012 as per the graph I found in CRM magazine.

The other stuff I wanted to post this week was some cool utilities and web tools that we have just started using and found to be very powerful in our business processes. The first was http://www.makanasolutions.com/ they have a great new tool suite for developing and calculating compensation plans for your sales teams. Another is http://www.mindjet.com/ which is a mind mapping tool that has a desktop version which integrates with MS Office, MS Project and Visio in addition to sync with a web based tool for real-time collaboration on mind map diagrams. Since we work with so many folks in different time zones I have personally found http://www.qlock.com/ useful to keep track of world times.

Other news on the development side, we are going live with http://www.bavc.org/ tomorrow which is a fantastic new social networking community for the Bay Area Video Coalition. We partnered with Airbag Industries and developed not only the Joomla Portal Framework but also a complex and well designed custom template. Real Life Radio just launched this week at http://www.realliferadio.com/. This was a partnership with Canonball Creative and is a good example of a simple JoomlaCRM installation. Our JoomlaCRM social networking CRM 2.0 portal will be officially released in the couple weeks. We are excited to be one of the first to bring to market what will be a common business framework of the future for integrated customer communities. You can learn more by visiting http://www.joomlacrm.com/ to see a live demo of the community portal or http://www.infoathand.us/ to learn about the Infoathand CRBM system. We also just started a new project with Pro-Link this week. Exciting and busy times ahead and we are thankful to our many customers. Ahhh... that reminds me of my favorite quote of the week "Great companies are built by great customers". We are glad to offer and be part of great collaboration teams...

There I got it out... clear head...now back to the grind :-)

CN

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This past week Sony and I had the great pleasure of participating in the Entrepreneur Launch Pad program sponsored by the Providence Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce. This educational series kicked off with a three day “boot camp” led by Jack Derby and George Simmons from the Derby Management Group and is part of a 6 month program designed to educate and introduce startup businesses to the Venture Capital and Angel investor funding community. This initiative is intended to stimulate economic growth for the RI business community. Perhaps I am bias as a participant but what an excellent idea on behalf of the chamber.

I have to say the program was excellent! We took away a lot of valuable information and met some wonderful folks. This was set up as a workshop where the lectures by George,  Jack and others provided insider information on how to hone our pitch and fill in the voids of information required to improve our focus and solidify the vision and factual information in our business plan as it relates to the funding community. What helped make it powerful for me was the workshop setting with 16 other startup businesses that are going through some of the same strategic and growth challenges that we have been going through. I know there will be a lot of homework over the coming months since they unraveled so much great info to digest and apply but well worth the effort. This program has the potential to be just as it is intended by its very title, a “Launch Pad” for growth and success.

Quick overview:

Through six months of intensive coaching, the Chamber will provide entrepreneurs with hands-on, real-world specifics and answer the vexing questions that keep them awake at night. Entrepreneurs will also have the opportunity to meet investors from throughout the New England region who are specifically interested in generating deal flow from Rhode Island.

Among the topics to be covered in Entrepreneur Launch Pad:

• How to successfully raise venture capital?
• How to craft a winning business plan?
• How to ramp-up sales?
• How to recruit an "A" level team?
• How to protect intellectual property?
• How to get to the next round of financing?
• How to land the next meeting?
• How to meet the right people?
• How to negotiate a term sheet?

The ideal applicant would look like this:
• Revenue: 0 to $10 million
• Number of Employees: 2 to 50
• Market Size: Would support company growth to $10 million in sales
• Product or Service: Non-commodity
• Growth Capital Needed: $1 million to $5 million
• Market Sectors: Software, hardware, clean tech, alternative energy, health care, medical devices, preventive health, defense related, oceanography, financial services

If you want to learn more about the Derby management group check out their site: http://www.derbymanagement.com, if you want to learn more about the program visit the Providence chamber site: http://www.providencechamber.com/Launchpad.aspx or contact Janet Raymond, senior vice president/economic development/operations at jraymond@provchamber.com or 401.521.5000.

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It has been a very eventful couple months. We are in the process of launching three NEW major portal projects based on our JoomlaCRM platform. Our JoomlaCRM platform features a large collection of built in social networking components and is integrated with a suite of robust eCommerce and Customer Relationship Business Management tools (CRBM). Our demo is live finally at http://www.joomlacrm.com/.  Feel free to stop by and watch this presentation take shape over the coming months. We are excited about this new integrated bundle because it allows us to deliver feature rich systems, in shorted deployment times with a greater value and return on investment to the customer. Having a flexible framework pre bundled allows us to offer greater value in training, consulting and content configuration and development.

The first of our projects has come together in record time due to the great collaboration and synergy we were able to get between the customer the Client and our development team. Typically projecets of this magnitude can take up to a year to build out and configure content. However this project has been built in a fraction of the time. The new portal at http://www.bavc.org/ which will be live as of July 1st  leverages many of the deep features built into our Joomla + CRM social networking community platform. This portal offers a myspace meets youtube type of user community since BAVC interacts with a diverse constituency but has many event registration and eLearning tools as well. This JoomlaCRM portal framework is complimented with a beautiful design by Airbag industries and solid template coding by our expert Joomla! development team. We built over 30 custom modules and will have two unique template designs once the second phase of the project unfolds over the coming months.  In addition we integrated a unique class registration and event management system.

Bay Area Video Coalition, or BAVC (pronounced "bay-vac"), is a nonprofit media arts center that was founded in 1976 by a coalition of media makers and activists who wanted to find alternative, civic-minded applications for a new technology.

The second Joomla portal project we pushed out this last month was for http://www.realliferadio.com/ , a catholic radio station. This portal leverages media libraries and podcasts of their programs and they plan to build a web based community over time leveraging their enthusiastic radio audience. This was a partnership with the Canonball Creative agency and came together with compelling customer driven content.

The third portal project http://www.fredfriendly.tv/ will leverage not only our unique suite of social networking and media library and cataloging tools built into JoomlaCRM but will feature a robust CRBM system though the integration of Infoathand (http://www.infoathand.us/). This project framework will leverage the full capabilities and take advantage of the deep features in this portal bundle. The FFS team plans to utilize the project management features and campaign management tools to grow their constituency and manage their many productions. We met the Fred Friendly Seminar folks while attending a social networking seminar with Paul Greenberg in NY. The quality of their programs and nature of important topics they cover has been an inspiring project to participate in. In their words this quote says it all... "Our job is not to make up anybody's mind, but to open minds and to make the agony of decision making so intense you can escape only by thinking. " The http://www.fredfriendly.org/ redesign will be coming online for a pilot program in Mid June and will have a more formal public launch in August. If you are interested in getting involved in our pilot program to help us test and develop initial discussion for the site please contact me so we can get you involved.

We look forward to hearing from you. If you visit any of the links in this post I am eager to get your feedback.

Sincerely, CN

 

 

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Thursday, May 04, 2006   Ok so it has been a while...

I have moved on from ASFT as an employee and am now full time freelance. This was good timing for both ASFT and myself and the door is still open should new opportunities present themselves. The last year with ASFT has been very rewarding. I had the opportunity to attend several conferences and build the framework for a major corporate training initiative. I helped lay the groundwork for a full service multimedia department and learned a lot while serving on the Business Development Team.




I visited my friend Joe Andrade while attending the Flashforward Conference in Seattle WA. I had the great pleasure to meet one of my favorite multimedia designers Hillman Curtis. I bought his latest book and watched some of his well crafted films.


I was exposed to some of the most cutting edge training technology in the industry while attending the The Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in Orlando FL. I had the privilege of attending a lecture by Three Star General Yakovic and talking briefly with him afterwords. As part of his presentation they went to a live video conference from IRAQ with a Blackhawk commander for the IRAQ forces to discuss the types of training that best supports the troupes in real time war situations.

While attending I met a new friend, Alex Broadbent, who is one of the leading 3D animators in the industry. His work inspired me and I have since engaged in some business opportunities with him.





At ASFT, I had the honor of working with so many very talented folks and many were like a second family to me since my move to the East Coast. I plan to continue my involvement providing training multimedia support for the DoD community. You will see more of my new initiative "The Creative Services Team" over the coming months as I build a new service network for interactive multimedia and rich internet application development.

Now that I have a little more time, I promis to post more often... :-)  ¶ 3:35 PM 8 comments   Sunday, July 10, 2005   Flash Forward 2005 in NY
I had the privilege of representing ASFT at the Flash Forward Film Festival 2005 conference. I got to meet Keven Lynch the Executive Vice President and Chief Architect for Macromedia and so many other flash gurus. I will be scheduling several information workshops to share the vast information collected from this three day event held in New York City, July 6-8.
FlashForward 2005


Meetings:
I had the opportunity to meet and start dialogs with Sr. Product Managers and Engineers to explore Macromedia technologies and how they can meet the demands of the contracting work we do for Government customers. If you have any technical question please send them to me and I will consolidate them in my correspondence.
I met with several product vendors and folks that can help us build our training programs. I met several companies that could provide logical teaming agreements as we embark on new projects. This can not only help us qualify for opportunities but it would grow our talent pool and enhance our in house capabilities through the process.
I met with the NY Macromedia Users Group about starting or getting involved with a RI Users group. As this develops I will keep you all in the loop.

News Highlights:
Here are some links... there is so much information it may make your head spin, it sure did get mine going...

Flash is evolving as a platform and growing in global acceptance for rich Internet application development.
Flash Platform

The greatest business opportunity for ASFT's flash skills will be in the area of mobile devices and the Flash Lite v2 player. Macromedia announced partnership deals with Nokia and Samsung which combined with advancements in the player and improved band width for cellular delivery systems will open the market wide open for new content delivery and application development for these platforms.
Macromedia Mobile Solutions
Justin Everett Church
Justin Built several great sample mobil apps in flash.


CN and Keven Lynch of Macromedia. Humm... I always thought he was 6'10" tall?


The Flash Player 8 "Maelstrom" and the new Flash authoring environment "8 Ball" will offer many improved performance features for video compression and improved drawing tools. Both are expected out late Summer or Early Fall.

The new Flash, Ajax and Javascript SDK will enable dynamic html content that provides two way communication directly with embedded flash apps and does not require page refreshing. Stop and think about this one and read up because this is BIG NEWS. Get more info in Mike Chambers Blog.

Mike Chambers

There is so much more... but these are good places to start.
More to come...

CN  ¶ 10:31 AM 5 comments   Tuesday, April 26, 2005   Back from Brazil

Wow what a trip! Sony, my son Angelo and I just got back from 3 weeks in Brazil. This was mostly vacation with the exception of running around dealing with a bunch of business stuff for Sony's properties and visiting family. This is my second trip and all my efforts to learn Portuguese paid off. I was able to communicate though I would hardly call it graceful or even conversation. :-) I realize now how much I have yet to learn about the language and Brazilian culture.


Of course we ate a lot. The Brazilian traditions and hospitality often will have you eating 2 or 3 breakfasts. You better like beans and rice... ;-)

We spent a week on the Beaches of Navigantes which is a small town not too far from Florinopolis, the capital city of Santa Canterina in Southern Brazil. Our condo is very close to an amusement park "Beto Carrero" (They have a cool web site) similar to Six Flags with a flavor of "the Circus" so we spent a day doing the "tourist thing". We all had so much fun, especially Angelo. We then went inland to the mountain regions near Lages. We spent two weeks herding cows, horseback riding, cutting trails through the brush in the jungles and harvesting "Pinoen" (a nut that grows in tall trees as a melon like ball that you shake off the branches and break apart to harvest). Sony owns a large piece of land, a mountain, with the highest peak in the area that overlooks a beautiful waterfall, river valley and skyline which goes as far as the eye can see (great place to camp). It may sound weird but I bought a cow and a calf. Combined my son's calf (gift from Grandpa) and Sony's cows we now have a small herd and our own "brand" symbol. Do not worry... I/we have no intentions of running away to become farmers but as an investment it makes sense (don't laugh it realy does).

Over time you may start seeing more of the images from the trip in my poetry or music slide shows. If you have any interest of visiting Brazil and want help planning your trip we are renting our condo on the beach and have a lot of resources to help you learn and explore the Southern regions of Brazil.

I can hardly wait till next years trip...

CN
 

¶ 3:51 PM 0 comments   Monday, February 28, 2005   Macromedia MX2004 Designer Certification

Hey, I just passed my Macromedia MX2004 Designer Certification exam this morning. This program allows developers to set a bench mark for skill levels. I am also planning to test for a MX 2004 Developer Certification soon. For more information on the program visit the Macromedia web site: www.macromedia.com

:-) CN
  ¶ 10:48 AM 0 comments   Thursday, January 06, 2005   Review of Mystic Holiday

Hi Chris -

Anjan loaned me your CD while he is out of town and I started listening to it on the way home and then Jimmy and I listened to some more of it later in the evening. We both love it! I knew you were a talented pianist from hearing you at the Awards Banquet several years ago, but this blew me away. Nothing can positively affect my mind and soul like music and your compositions brought me joy. A plaque that I saw in a magazine puts it best - "Music is God's way of allowing us to pray without words." I am not "religious", but I am very spiritual and your music touches that part of me. I'm going to buy a copy for my parents, who aren't musicians, but certainly appreciate it and contributed to my love for good music.

Let me know when you record another one!

Sheri
  ¶ 11:27 AM 0 comments   Sunday, January 02, 2005   I am diggin Flash MX 2004

News:

Flash MX Professional 2004 was recognized as Design Software of the year. It provides a fine opportunity to create fascinating and eye-catching web pages. Though there are lots of similar products, none of them has become a real competitor with Flash as the Macromedia team constantly works hard on improving and upgrading it.

Flash MX Pro 2004 is not the only product Macromedia released this year. It gained the title of the Best Web Design Software Vendor for their constant improvements and upgrades of Flash technology, which remains the best means of creating richer content. Besides, Macromedia's contributions to the Web Design industry is not limited to Flash, as the vendor is the only one who represents the widest range of products related to the industry: Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Macromedia FreeHand, Macromedia ColdFusion, Macromedia Web Publishing System, etc.

http://www.cheaphostingdirectory.com/article765.html
  ¶ 6:24 PM 0 comments     Mystic Holiday

Hey my new CD is out and I would like to encourage you to get a copy. The recording is world class and I am very proud of the compositions. This musical experience will transcend you into a world of inner thought and relax your mind and spirit. Great for romantic interludes, massage or meditation sessions and quiet Sunday mornings in an easy chair with a cup of tea.


Visit:
http://www.cnpcreative.com/cn
To order online.

CN  ¶ 3:55 PM 0 comments   Thursday, December 23, 2004   ASFT Innovation Awward

This past year I received an "Innovation award" for my work on Interactive Technical Manuals and Distance Support Collaboration Tools for delivering training and technical support. The "DocBuilder" user interface was designed to shift the paradigm for developing Navy technical manuals from "Here is the text with some pictures" to "Here is an interactive graphic with text to support it". The "Distance Support Collaboration Tool Suite" (DSCTS) was designed to provide a suite of team collaboration, communication, knowledge repositories and productivity tools within a common framework. This framework was built to provide fleet technical support, distance training delivery, knowledge management and real-time work group communications. I lead and worked with a team of four talented developers of which our team collectively won two Innovation awards and one Teamwork award for our efforts.

 

 

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