Rhode Island Nexus

The third annual Rhode Island Innovation Awards (presented by the Providence Business News in partnership with the RIEDC and Tech Collective, and sponsored by Cox Business) are designed to honor Rhode Island-based companies, organizations and individuals that constantly replace existing methods, models and products with better ones.

Past winners include several info-tech and digital media organizations and entrepreneurs such as: Matt Grigsby, developer of Ecolect.net, a free website that helps those interested in sustainable design source sustainable materials; Brian Jepson and Jack Templin, Co-Founders of Providence Geeks; and Item Group, a product design firm that does everything from hardware to software to firmware.

Innovation Awards winners will be honored at the annual Tech Laureates Night, held at Kirkbrae Country Club on September 18, and will be published in a Providence Business News special report released in September.

Awards include: 

• Innovation of the Year
• Innovation Champion
• Collaborative Innovation Leader
• Innovator of the Year
• Rising Star Innovator
• Student Innovator
• Innovation Champion

To apply, fill out the short application form. It's due by August 20. Good luck!

After an intensive competitive process that pitted us against the city of Worcester, MA I am pleased to announce that we have landed a new member of the info-tech and digital media community here in Rhode Island! Inquest Technologies will be relocating during the fall from their current offices in Southborough, MA to 300 West Exchange St. in Providence. The move will include about 20 employees and Inquest has plans to hire approximately 30 employees over the next year or so.

Inquest Technologies product is called IQ9, a platform for delivering web-based enterprise business applications that covers a gamut of functions including business process management, project management, and collaboration (think a young Oracle or SAP). Their platform is already being used by leading worldwide organizations including ADT, Verizon, National Grid, ConEdison and the US Navy. In fact, they already have a small office in Newport to handle the myriad of business they have locally with the Navy. 

Some of you may have already met Jeremy Carr, their VP of Engineering, as he attended the Providence Geeks meeting with a couple of his senior engineers in May. He was initially impressed with what he saw and is looking forward to interacting with the geek community for both ideas and new staff.

This success provides further substantiation that Rhode Island (and Providence) has what it takes to attract new companies and talent to the state. Among other things, Mike Colapietro, their CEO, indicated that our “vibrant IT and digital media community” was one of the reasons for their move. Our momentum in the sector continues to build!

I’ve gotten to know them over the last few months and I am excited for both them and Rhode Island. Please join me in welcoming Inquest to the community.

Two of 2008's terrific new additions to the fair city of Providence - Christopher Lydon, of Radio Open Source, now a Fellow at Brown's Watson Institute, and John Maeda, formerly of MIT's Media Lab, now President of RISD - have teamed up to create an exciting new podcast, aptly named - LydonMaeda.com. But don't try to box in these big thinkers - from their "About" page:

This is a meandering informal venture between Christopher Lydon and John Maeda. It’s intent may seem nonsensical because it is. And where we might go will probably be where all open thoughts go … which are to you and perhaps they end there … or perhaps that is where it all begins.

The inaugural, and very interesting, first installment is here. 

And note that the next Jogging with John (Business Edition) is tomorrow morning 6am (Friday), and that there is now a Ning network for the group.

37signals CEO and founder Jason Fried, hacker and personal technology innovator Joshua Klein, tech writer and thinker Clay Shirky, and electronic drum pad and MIDI standard inventor Dave Kusek are among those ITDM storytellers participating the Business Innovation Factory’s BIF-4 Summit on October 15-16. Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh, Marc Ecko and Richard Saul Wurman will also be there, along with many others.

BIF is offering registered RI Nexus users 25% off regular priced registration at http://www.businessinnovationfactory.com/bif-4/nexusregistration.php You must use this special link to claim the RI-Nexus discount. The discounted rate will expire on August 15 when the regular registration rate of $1,200 goes into effect.

Co-hosted by BusinessWeek Assistant Managing Editor Bruce Nussbaum and “Mavericks at Work” author Bill Taylor, the BIF-4 Summit will feature more than two dozen innovators who have 15 minutes on stage to share a personal story about how they turned an idea into an innovation.

In 2007, the sold out BIF-3 Summit hosted participants from 174 organizations, 65 percent of whom were CEOs, presidents, founders or senior leaders within their organizations.

This year’s line-up of BIF-4 storytellers includes:

• John Abele, leader of the Grunion expedition and the founder of Boston Scientific Corporation
• Steve Bendt and Gary Koelling, founders of Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation
• Dave Berry, principal at Flagship Ventures and MIT Technology Review’s 2007 Innovator of the Year for his work developing renewable petroleum from microbes
• Ruby Bridges , educator and activist and first African American child to desegregate an elementary school
• Deborah Brooks, co-founder of the Michael J. Fox Foundation
• Joseph F. Coughlin, founder of the MIT AgeLab
• Marc Ecko , who heads a global lifestyle and entertainment empire
• Jason Fried, founder and CEO of 37signals
• Tony Hsieh, Zappos.com CEO
• Jeffrey Hollender, president and chief inspired protagonist of Seventh Generation
• Joshua Klein, technology principle at Frog Design
• Dave Kusek, MIDI standard inventor and electronic music master.
• Cat Laine, Deputy Director of the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group helps developing countries get affordable access to energy, sanitation and clean water.
• Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of Acumen Fund, uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve problems of global poverty
• Lewis Gordon Pugh, explorer, environmentalist and first person to undertake a long distance swim at the North Pole
• Richard Satava, visionary surgeon who co-developed the first surgical robot
• Clay Shirky, writer on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies
• John Wolpert, former head of IBM’s Extreme Blue business innovation incubator
• Richard Saul Wurman, Author and information architect now is working on “19.20.21”--an attempt to standardize information about 19 cities that will reach 20 million inhabitants in the 21st century
• David R. Yaun, VP of Corporate Communications for IBM and director of IBM’s innovation and technology leadership programs

Held at Trinity Rep in Providence, R.I., BIF-4 is limited to 300 participants.
Get the full list of storytellers, more information on registration and details at www.businessinnovationfactory.com/bif-4. To receive the RI Nexus discount remember to register here: http://www.businessinnovationfactory.com/bif-4/nexusregistration.php.

Annette Tonti, CEO of MoFuse, Inc. found her 'next big thing' literally reading the February RI Nexus email newsletter. She will be presenting along with founder David Berube at next week's Providence Geeks Dinner, Wed. 16th 5:30-9pm. Details and RSVP here.

Taking a page from Oz, I sort of believed I had to look in some far off place to find my next entrepreneurial move. While I love RI and co-founded a online advertising company here called Bluestreak, I felt that I had to be in the 'digital-cool' places like New York, California, Austin or Boston for my next big thing. One day last February I was in the new Watertown, MA offices of Bluestreak when I saw the RI Nexus newsletter in my inbox. I actually don't remember signing up for it. I opened it expecting – well nothing – yet an icon in the upper left corner caught my eye. It was the logo for MoFuse. I clicked on it from that newsletter and the rest is history.

I met David for lunch – he brought his buddy Allan Tear - I thought they were both awesome… and wow Rhode Island entrepreneurs! I had been so head's down in Bluestreak that I had no idea that so much was going on here. David had already built a remarkable platform- better yet- he built it for the right reasons: he was annoyed by what wasn't available. He saw a problem and built a platform to solve it. What was a problem for him apparently was a problem for a lot of others out there. He's one in a million because he took steps to fix it! That takes guts, and I like that.

Speaking of millions er…billions – there are about 3.3 billion mobile phones out there. According to a recent Gartner report there are about 1 billion desktop computers. To further put the mobile market into perspective, there are 722 million cars worldwide and there are 1,067,610 people living in Rhode Island. The mobile market is large and getting larger, and new formats like the iPhone are getting people using the mobile web more frequently. For most people on the planet, their phone IS their computer.

MoFuse is focused on bloggers and their readers. With every new mobile site, there is a chance to monetize eyeballs. We are therefore building the next generation of niche mobile ad network. We are following the Feedburner model: build it yourself quickly and easily, share in the revenue, and get access to analytics. There are 120 million blogs worldwide and we think blogs are nicely consumed on a mobile device. Soon we'll be launching tools to integrate (hmmm, fuse…) the mobile and PC blog. Every week the word is getting out - MoFuse is mobile fusion for bloggers.

Join David and I next week at the last Providence Geeks Dinner of the Summer where we'll be sharing more about MoFuse including the exclusive scoop on our upcoming embedded video launch. Details and RSVP here. We'd love to see you!

Update: Just today, MoFuse landed Mashable - another major blog. Read about it at Mashable.com. 

Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, once said, “Every silver lining has a cloud.” Not to be outmatched, P.T. Barnum once said, “Every crowd has a silver lining.” Which one of them captured the essence of the “silver lining” metaphor better? I believe they both do as they collectively speak to the issues of reality and hope which are inextricably linked. 

In Friday’s Providence Journal, I was struck by the interesting juxtaposition of two seemingly unrelated stories — R.I. jobless rate soars to 7.2%, the highest rate in 14 years AND R.I. makes top 10 in tech index. Which of these two headlines captures the essence of current state of our economy better? The answer is that they both do.

The fact is our state’s economy is at a transformational crossroads. Last year, Rhode Island was cited as one of the "Top Five Movers" in economic transformation in the 2007 State New Economy Index, a report published by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). The Kauffman Foundation/ITIF Index contained state-by-state analysis of how state economies are transitioning away from economic development strategies that focus on big company relocations toward strategies that focus on the creation and retention of high-wage jobs in growth industries. The silver lining in the jobless rate is that health, education and the info-tech & digital media (ITDM) sectors actually saw an increase in employment while other sectors shrunk. More and more ITDM companies are seeking talented staff, and good-paying positions currently available are left unfilled because we need even more talent in this growing sector.

As Rhode Island continues to move in the direction of establishing a stronger knowledge-based economy, we may go through some transformational pains, but in the end our workforce and talent retention will be stronger than ever. Rhode Island’s silver lining lies in our aligned approach to create the best entrepreneurial ecosystem possible. There are numerous endeavors looking to progress this vision and no one entity or person can get us there, but one fact is undeniable…the Ocean State is home to incredible assets, talent and opportunity and we need to be actively engaged in those efforts which will retain our talent, bring new talent here and foster new company creation.

If you're interested in learning more about these efforts, feel free to contact me - I'd love to hear from you.