I’m excited to share more details about TribeCon, a conference about communities – both online and offline.  Tiffany Starnes and I have been working for the last six months to put it together along with a lot of help from our Tribal Council and a lot of friends from Net2NO.

We’re producing the conference in partnership with the Voodoo Experience.  TribeCon will be the official interactive component of the Voodoo Experience.  This is a tremendous opportunity for TribeCon. The Voodoo Experience has grown into a huge annual music festival, and together we can build TribeCon into a integral part of the experience and a major interactive conference.

So let’s get to the details:

• What: TribeCon is a conference about building communities, online and offline.
• When: October 29-30, 2009
• Where: Voodoo Experience – City Park, New Orleans, LA
• How much: $169 for TribeCon includes single day Voodoo Experience ticket. $269 for TribeCon includes three day Voodoo Experience Ticket.
• Who: The speakers are all people passionate about building communities.
• Why: Building a community around your brand, cause, or mission is the most powerful way to grow.  Today’s social networking tools make it possible to reach your audience in powerful new ways to build a movement.  At TribeCon you’ll learn how to build community online to effect action offline.

Why does TribeCon need New Orleans?

One of the things I’m most excited about is bringing the conversation about authentic online communities to New Orleans.  Having the Voodoo Experience has a partner enables us to make this truly a world-class conference.  TribeCon connects with New Orleans because we have such a deep sense of community here.  From the Mardi Gras indian tribes to front porch neighbors, New Orleans culture is rooted in community.  Andrew Larimer, Tim Soslow and Matt Tritico will be curating a special panel presentation that will be a celebration and exploration of community in New Orleans.

Inspired by SXSW, and now TribeCon is just six weeks away.

The idea for TribeCon was inspired on the Y@ Pack trip to SXSW organized by the Net2NO community.  We had such an amazing experience together, and it was truly amazing what a motivated community can accomplish.  On the bus ride back from SXSW in March, we hatched the idea for TribeCon.  We pitched it at the GNO Inc Digital Media Alliance meeting in May, and though I regrettably made a couple of miscues in my pitch (ugh), we started to line up support and Robbie Vitrano helped us line up meetings with Rehage Entertainment.

So after a long summer of laying the ground work, here we are, just six weeks away from the inaugural TribeCon, with a supportive partner in the Voodoo Experience and a tremendous slate of speakers. Tiffany and I are both getting much less sleep these days, but we’re doing it, and really excited about producing TribeCon.

TribeCon is important to the tech community, and important to New Orleans.

So, you’re interested in getting involved?

Fantastic.  We need your help to make this a success.

• We’re bouncing a lot of ideas off our friends and supporters in the Tribal Council.  Everyone on it has been tremendously helpful and it has really shaped what this conference is, in addition to helping us make decisions on branding, marketing, content and more.  Membership is open to all, so join the Tribal Council.
  
• We will be looking for volunteers to coordinate a number of things for TribeCon.  If you’re interested getting to TribeCon for free, please contact us.
  
• We’re also looking for sponsors to support TribeCon and connect with an audience of community activist and online influencers.  We have a sponsorship package that we can send you, please let us know if your interested, or know someone for us to reach out to.
• Stay updated with all of the latest, follow @tribecon on Twitter.
  
• Ready to sign up? Great, head on over and buy a ticket to the conference.

Thanks to everyone for all your support.  We’re excited to present TribeCon and connect with the community.

Have more questions? Hit me up in the comments! Thanks.

There’s been a lot of good news lately about entrepreneurship in Louisiana.  With the renewal of the digital media tax credit and the energy around startups lately, things are just going to start taking off, right?

Well, maybe.

I still see some gaps in current eco-system that can be filled with a true mentorship-based seed fund.  (In case you’re wondering, I mean a Y-Combinator / TechStars style investment program.  Mentorship-based seed funds exist all over the country, I’ve compiled a listing here)

So where are the gaps? Well, here’s what I see:

1. The “Moving Companies to Louisiana” Strategy – one of the biggest stated goals of the digital media tax credit, and a strategy I see LED & GNO Inc among others pursing is trying to lure companies to move to Louisiana with the tax credits, etc.  GNO Inc put together a great deck, on what makes New Orleans so appealing.   Probably the most visible impact thus far is the EA Sports testing facility in Baton Rouge.  Here’s the thing: Established companies have employees.  Employees have families, houses, schools located near where the company is currently based.  Even though knowledge-based industries like digital media don’t have large infrastructure needs, their employees have established lives.
2. Supporting the “Shoot for the Moon” Companies – I had a conversation with a Launch Pad member on Friday who has been through the startup process several times, and he and many others feel we don’t have the deal flow in Louisiana right now.  The problem is that were not quite at the point where people are seeing the wealth creation of other successful companies, and frankly we’re just new to building a startup ecosystem. Deal flow is directly related to entrepreneurs willing to take huge risks.  Entrepreneurs willing to take huge risks and “shoot for the moon” is directly related to having an ecosystem that supports risk-taking and acknowledges and accepts failure.
3. Bridging the Gap Between Business Plan and Business - having a great idea doesn’t mean you are prepared to run a company.  Most people starting a company have great subject matter expertise or talent, but may not have a fully rounded skill set in the ancillary areas of building a company.  First time entrepreneurs get bogged down in this stuff: accounting, legal, personnel management.

So, how does a mentorship-based seed meet these needs and more:

1. Move Folks when its Easy to Move – Start young.  Most people entering Y Combinator are just graduating from college or in their 20’s.  People are portable at this stage and many digital nomads would love nothing more try out New Orleans for a stint.  We’re already seeing this with all the amazing young people coming down here post-K for Teach for America and programs like that.  There is a huge difference in a person’s willingness to move based on what stage they are in their lives.
2. Go Big - A lot of people have a “go big” idea, and given the opportunity to pursue it, even for 3-6 months will usually determine if there is something there or not.  Of course, this is the riskiest stage of an idea, but most people never get the shot to really go for it.  I know so many people trying to bootstrap a startup right now, but paying the bills with freelance work.  The freelance work engulfs you and you never really get to go for the big idea.  Often times (I am an example), people build service businesses to pay the bills, and though they may be successful, they aren’t investable and aren’t the big win that we all want to see happen.  A seed fund that provides Ramen-soup money for founders to pursue an idea and get it to a prototype without having to divide their time to pay the bills really gives entrepreneurs a shot to go big.  Think what would happen in Louisiana if every summer we gave 10 young startups enough funding to build out their big idea.
3. Mentorship – these funds are called mentorship-based seed funds for a reason.  They don’t just hand entrepreneurs $25k. They have a curriculum and program that teaches the skills required to run a business.  Already in New Orleans we’ve created a set of entrepreneurial hubs.  This is a huge start, because startups can ask each other questions, and tackle problems together.  Filling this out with a true curriculum that removes the headaches of setting up your accounting, legal, etc would enable entrepreneurs to have a singular focus on building their product.  We have people in this city willing to devote the time and effort, but the value of this contribution needs to be acknowledged and compensated.

What kind of investment are we talking about?

• 10 companies selected for June – August 2010. Each company gets $25,000 to build a prototype. – $250,000
• The administrative costs of the program are probably equivalent to the investment dollars. – $250,000

When I think about the real-world impact that a program like this would have and the allocation of economic development and grant dollars that are being spent in Louisiana on advertising, conferences, infrastructure, administrative staff, workforce development, it seems like a drop in the bucket to get a program like this off the ground and I believe it is an investment worth making.

What do you think?

The digital media tax credit in Louisiana is up for renewal in this legislative session.  Senator Ann Duplessis presented SB 277 which has been passed by the Senate and is now in the house.  There is a competing bill, but SB 277 is the one I’m supporting.  The bill is on the agenda for the House Ways and Means committee for Monday, June 15th.

If you’re in the digital media industry in Louisiana, this bill has the potential to positively impact your business.  Want to support it? Here’s what you can do:

1. First, I encourage you to read the bill in its current form with the revisions that have been made.
2. Find the state representative for your district on the Louisiana House of Representatives website and click to send them an email.
3. Send them a quick email saying you support the SB 277 and encouraging them to pass it.

Here’s what I wrote to Neil Abramson. (Feel free to copy/paste):

Dear Representative Abramson -

I am writing you to voice my support for the Senator Ann Duplessis’s SB 277, which is on the agenda for the House Ways and Means committee for Monday, June 15th.  I believe the extension of the Digital Interactive Media Produces Tax Credit is good for the state of Louisiana.  I am an active member of the technology and entreprenuership community in New Orleans and develop internet projects through my company Voodoo Ventures.  There is currently a tremendous amount of energy in the digital media industry locally, and I believe passage of this bill will enable the state to build a thriving industry that provides economic development in a cutting edge industry.  I encourage you to support this bill, and I’d be happy to discuss my support further.  Thanks.

Best, Chris Schultz

Just a few emails of support for the bill could mean a lot to its passage, and I think the outcome could have a huge for us.

Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Stephen Moret gets it.

In one fell swoop, after hours of wrangling on Monday at the Louisiana State Legistature, Moret was patched in on a crackling cell phone connection. After listening to all sides, he said that the most important thing to him for a company to qualify for the Digital Media Tax Credit is that 80%-90% of it’s revenue come from out of state.

It’s interesting and revealing to note, this has nothing to do with who does the work, where the work is done, or what the work is.  Now, I’m not saying he doesn’t hold opinions about these things, and they will be codified in the bill, but his primary focus was that this work is export work.

Why?

Because, building websites and applications by Louisiana businesses for Louisiana business is going to happen anyway.  It’s already happening now, people need this stuff, but it doesn’t expand the fiscal pie.  So why incentivize it? On the flip side, if we can build businesses here that have clients in New York, San Francisco, London, LA then it gets interesting.  Sound familiar?

Let me submit what I recognize is a controversial argument, but is in line with Moret’s 90% rule: My company, Flatsourcing, is good for the state of Louisiana.

Now, many readers know, but for those who don’t, Flatsourcing is a software development firm, based here in New Orleans, with production offices in Kazan, Russia.  I just returned from a trip there last week with Peter Bodenheimer and two clients.  We have a team of 21 people over there, and the business is growing.

I talked about Flatsourcing when I testified before committee at the State Senate this week.  Of the six or seven of us, I was the only one asked a question, and it was clear that “shipping jobs to Russia” went over like a lead balloon.  I was asked whether Flatsourcing would qualify for the Digital Media Tax Credit and I said no. I know the company would have more of an economic development impact if those 21 jobs were here in New Orleans, but for a variety of factors (too many for this post), they are not.

The economy of the 21st century is based on knowledge work, the creation of stuff that can be broken down to 1’s and 0’s and therefore done anywhere.  Because of this, borders are pourus and its close to impossible to understand, much less regulate, where the work is done.  The value chain is long and distributed, often globally.  The most important factor of who wins this race is where the value is captured.  Value capture = wealth creation = profit.  If a company is based in Louisiana, and those profits are captured here, they will be taxed here and spent here.  This is certainly the case in terms of Flatsourcing.

The fact that more than 90% of our revenue comes from outside Louisiana, flows into a company that is based here, is distributed here as profit, and gets spent locally very clearly economic development for the state.

When I speak to people about the stigma of outsourcing, I often bring up what the rest of the world calls it: competing.  While I certainly agree that in an ideal world, all the people we employ would work in the same office here in New Orleans, this simply isn’t the way the world works anymore.

When I work with entrepreneurs who are starting businesses, one of the first questions I ask is: are you locally or globally focused?  I believe you must be looking worldwide for customers.

It was refreshing to hear Moret focus on this idea of expanding the economic pie with the simple metric: does 90% of your revenue flow from out of state.  We see it happening right now, right here.

Benjamin Reece with Deltree has national level clients through Deltree, has a partnership in New York that drives this business to him, and yet bases his company in New Orleans.  Kyle Berner may manufacture his flip flops in Thailand, but he markets them all over the country, not simply in a local New Orleans boutique.  Naked Pizza may be a local pizza shop right now, but the vision is much grander, and I know Jeff Leach won’t rest until they’ve got franchises all over the country.  I am confident that all of these businesses will soon meet Secretary Moret’s 90% rule if they don’t already.  These are the businesses that will expand the economic pie for Louisiana.

Turning back to Digital Media, it is unlikely that this 90% rule can be codified in the law, and that’s probably a good thing.  We don’t want the state having to audit accounting statements.  But it was great to see this understanding at the State level.

We’ll see how the Digital Media tax incentive works out, but I am very enthusiastic to see this high level understanding of what economic development is all about from Secretary Moret.

We’re back from SXSW and I was invited to present a review of the Net2NO Y@ Pack’s efforts at the Digital Media Alliance (DMA) yesterday. It is great to see the DMA gaining steam and taking an active leadership role in the New Orleans tech community.

While I was tapped to present the results from the SXSW road trip, I have to say that it was a total team collaborative effort. The leadership of Damien Lamanna, Jessica Rohloff, Adele Tiblier, Tiffany Starnes & Andrew Larimer was what made this trip possible. And of course the support from GNO, DDD, City of NO, and all our sponsors. We’ll be posting a case study that is being put together very shortly with success metrics, but I wanted to convey how impactful the support of the trip was in terms of raising awareness about the New Orleans tech scene.

On the way home from SXSW, Tiffany Starnes, Adele Tiblier & I spent eight hours brainstorming on a bus about what we wanted to do next, how we were going to capture and build on this momentum. We kept coming back to community. We got home and tore through Seth Godin’s Tribes, and started bouncing the idea off people we respected, forming a Tribal Council. Today, we’re pleased to present our conference idea that heretofore has been under wraps.

What is happening in New Orleans right now is just a microcosm of what is happening all over the world. Traditional organizations with top down power structures are giving way to grass roots community-driven movements. Let’s call them tribes. These tribes self organize and galvanize to action. Let’s put a conference on to explore this phenomenon:

The Tribe Conference is a conference for people passionate about building communities. Over the last several years there has been an explosion of grass roots organizations that have been built through connecting people online with the mission of spurring action offline. These communities have developed organically and have consolidated national and international presence through websites, wikis, and branding. The communities are very grass roots and inherently local. As these communities evolve, there is a further need to facilitate a sharing of ideas, best practices, and development of a national community for the growth of all of these movements. The Voodoo Tribe conference mission will be to educate and connect communities, with a focus on the exchange of ideas about common ties of community-building, rather than a focus on what the communities do.

When we look at the ideal time for a conference like this in New Orleans, it fits well with the Voodoo Music Fest which is a great music festival around Halloween each year. The ethos of the music fest fits well with the idea for this conference too. I’d be interested in feedback on whether that timing is a draw or a drawback. We believe people like to come to New Orleans around great events like that to get some of the New Orleans cultural experience in addition to the conference.

The communities we would be interested in reaching out to are the ones that share these common threads:

• unconferences / unorganizations / movements / tribes
• web-based self organization through twitter, facebook, wikis, meetup.com, google groups, etc
• grass-roots but part of a larger national & international movement that people have simply picked up and run with
• Examples: Net Squared, BarCamps, WordCamps, Co-working, Ignite, Social Media Club

Want to learn more? Contact me, Tiffany or Adele. Want to be a part of the movement?  Join our Tribal Council.  Let’s make this happen together.

Lots to report, I’m gonna do it Marcoullier-style and keep it as concise as possible:

SXSW

• Net2NO <3 SXSW road trip rocked.  See pics and wrapup. Thanks to all sponsors. Video coming soon.
• Our Outsourcing 2.0 Panel went great.  Not as many fireworks as we expected, but good discussion.  Thanks to Sandeep, Andrea and Matt for all their hard work and to a great audience (200+) for turning out.  Read more on Twitter.
• Loved getting the VC dialogue going with Taylor Davidson.  He ran a great panel that I missed and is a thought leader on where funding is going. I’m paying attention.
• Had a blast getting the post-panel jitters out with Mike Bonifer. It was a game changer for my afternoon.
• Learned a ton about co-working and building earning whuffie. Connected w/ co-working space catalysts in Tony in NY, Chris in Phoenix, & Matt in Houston.
• Loved connecting with the LA & SF tech scenes at the LA BBQ and their panel.  Thanks to Gerard, Sloane (welcome to NOLA), Andrew & Paige.
• The NOLA party @ Lucky Lounge was hot. DJ Othertempo and Austin Knights Brass band killed and Larimer ran a tight show.

IDEACorps

• Idea Village just hosted six teams of MBA students working with local entrepreneurs on spring break.
• I was honored to be invited as a panelist and sat alongside some very invigorating folks.
• Had a great conversation with Robbie Vitrano about the need for a mentorship-driven seed capital fund. More to come.
• Congrats to Feelgoodz, Project 30-90, and Naked Pizza on all they accomplished.

Upcoming – WordCamp NOLA

• John Ramirez has been working night & day to put this conference together. He’s had quite a vision and is pulling it off.
• 11 days left and only 34 seats left to go. Get tickets now!
• We’ve lined up some great presenters and panelists, check out the lineup.
• Ben Huh from FAILblog and LOLcats will be here.  Nuf said.

More Upcoming

• Tritico is getting the steam behind an upcoming BarCamp.  Let’s make this happen.
• We’re going to do a pre- French Quarter Fest bloody mary geek breakfast with Eric Marcoullier when he is in town April 18th.  Stay tuned.
• Tiffany Starnes is getting Social Media Club New Orleans off the ground.  Interested? Hit her up.
• Shameless Plug – Launch Pad will be opening in May.  Sign up now for 50% off first month.

That’s it from Voodoo HQ. Lots brewing. Come back for a fresh cup soon.

My presentation for The Feast last Friday revolved around lessons I have learned in my 9 years as an entreprenuer and business owner.  I’ve included the slides below, but wanted to add some notes, because many of the slides are not self explanatory.

• Impostor Syndrome – An entrepreneur’s crisis of self confidence.  You’ve got to believe in yourself to make anyone else believe in you. So you just quit your job 2 weeks ago and started a company… that’s what you do now, go for it with confidence.
• Sprinklers & Golf – That’s where I started my career after college.  From sprinkler salesman to business development of golf course management contracts. The only problem, I don’t like golf.  You must do what you are passionate about.
• TRS80 & Vegas – What am I passionate about? I’ve loved computers since the days of BASIC on a Trash-80 and I love going to Vegas.  My best friend Matt and I were in biz school and traveling back and forth to Vegas.  So we decided to start a company that combined the things we love.  Internet + Vegas = Internet-based Bachelor Party Planners
• Biz Cards – I have a biz card fetish. 1) we printed at Kinko’s with the logo design by Bill Gates (MS Word Clipart).  2) BachelorBlowOut got a little more professional 3) changed the name to Destination VIP because no-one takes you seriously with a name like BBO 4) Got aquired.  Notice title change.  Realized 8 months into it that 25% owner means youre not in charge any more, so 5) started Voodoo Ventures
• Charts - big changes over the last 10 years.  Cost of starting a startup is falling to zero.  Witness Y Combinator, TechStars, etc.  Meaning, the number of startups is skyrocketing.  Result? Best bet is to bootstrap until you have something “real”. 3 stages of a startup.  1) Ramen soup phase – you should be able to scrape together something and get a few customers to get yourself to 50k in rev. 2) Then the bootstrapping starts and you grow your company to 500k.  3) Growth capital is available beyond that because you have a real business.  This is where I believe more capital will be entering the market.
• You’ve got a Website, Now What – You need traffic.  Best source for traffic = Google.  How to get free traffic from Google?  Dan Finnery gave me my “The Graduate” moment in 2001 when he whispered in my ear “Search Engine Optimization“.  Check your current website, if your page title says “Frontpage” you ain’t got it.  Learn this and do it.  It’s free and easy and powerful.
• Customer #1 – Relentless focus on getting in business.  Get that first customer.  Until someone writes a check, you aren’t in business.  Mine was Dave Mullen who wrote us a check for $5000.
• Friction - Now that things are getting serious, you are going to get distracted from your business by all the other “stuff” you have to do.  Legal stuff, IRS, opening bank accounts, permits, insurance, etc.  You will figure this stuff out.  Don’t pay a lot of money to do this, you can do this yourself.  Find an attorney who will give you a break and help you grow with them.  Don’t fall victim to paralysis by analysis.  If you mess something up, someone will tell you. Just keep moving forward.
• Funding - Several options: 1) credit cards 2) rich uncle, friends & family 3) wife (mines not available) 4) cash flow.  This is why cash flow is king.  Focus on driving revenue.  Cash flow = sustainability.
• How Do You Make Money? – figure it out.  You don’t have the luxury of not focusing on it.  Google Adsense ain’t it.  And you’re not getting bought by Google.  How do you add value, and what will people pay you for?
• Markets - I started my first company in Vegas in 2001.  Vegas boomed, and so did we.  A rising tide lifts all boats.  New Orleans is seeing the same energy, and rumblings right now
• Be Local but Act Global – Don’t focus just on your city.  Have a global strategy for your supply chain and collaboration.  Also focus on global customers, not just local ones.  But have a personality and leverage whats special about you being in New Orleans. Culture, music, social change.
• Be Disruptive – If someone is telling you to slow down, you’re doing something right. If you’re making people mad or nervous, thats a good thing.  My first idea was GrooveOn.com and I called a bunch of record labels in LA and asked for their digital music rights. In 1999.  They were mad. And scared.  Understand?
• Launch Early and Often & Fail Fast – We built and launched Huckabuck.com, a meta search engine for $50,000.  We did some crazy things like signing Rebirth Brass Band to a ringtone contract and flying a plane around Jazz Fest.  Then we got a check for $2.42 for our first month revenue. Spending $25,000 to make $2.42 doesn’t compute so we sold it.  Launch to sale in 9 months.  Not a home run, but a single and it was fun.
• Failure - You learn a lot from failure.  You have to erase fear of failure from your mind.  Be fearless.  You will fail, but you are not a failure.  Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and do it again.
• Ideas Are a Renewable Resource – They are also worthless unless acted upon.  Keep following your dreams and making your ideas a reality.
• Give Without Expectation – This builds social capital.  The old term for it is Karma.

I stopped by the “Group Think” that SENO held last night with local entrepreneur Blake Haney.  You may have heard that his ambitious new project, HumidBeings is launching in beta later this month.

One of the biggest mistakes that I have made, and I coach others on is not following the “if you build it they will come” strategy of launching a project. (There is always an exception to the rule, in this case Brian Bordainick’s 9th Ward Field of Dreams Project. But I digress…)  In the fight for mind share on the web, you will always be the tree that falls in the forest and doesn’t make a sound.  You’ve got to make some noise!

Blake has had his head down building out the site, and he was open about the challenges he’s faced with funding it through client work, and distractions from his other business Dirty Coast.  It’s clearly been a 2+ years labor of love, and he’s getting close.

But, let me dispel the notion that he is launching this month.  He launched last night in front of 40 people, and he has been launching for the last six months.

Here are some lessons that I am taking from his launch:

• Following the “launch early and often” mantra, he’s has had teaser site up for over six months and he’s collected over 2000 email addresses for interested beta users.
• He’s been very visible publicly and is engaging his target market, the New Orleans community, in the development of Humid Beings, and will continue to even after he opens the doors.  He makes it feel as if its being built for us, a gift to the community, and I believe it.
• Running a targeted banner ad campaign to build brand awareness even before he opens the doors.  The audience for Humid Beings hangs out on sites like Gambit’s Best of New Orleans right now, so he’s running ads there.
• Leveraging Dirty Coast by getting stickers out there.
• Partnering in different ways with local talent like Ben Reece and Supasaint.  He’s building content and building a halo for his brand around cool content producers.
• Identified 85 local blogs that are going to provide content to Humid.  They get to blog on their own sites, and the content gets pulled in through RSS to a place where it will hopefully have more conversation around it.
• Identifying “the villian” NOLA.com so that we can root for him against a identified competitor.

Of course, I have some additional thoughts on what I think he could be doing:

• Follow Guy Kawasaki’s success with Alltop of feeding blogger ego’s by giving them a badge to identify themselves as “featured bloggers” or “founding partners” on their own blog.  Make this invite only, with an perception of exclusivity.  (Blake, what I am trying to say is give me a HumidBeings badge to put on Voodoo saying I’ve been “selected” to provide content… free advertising.)
• Get on Twitter.  You should be all over this already, tweeting out content, building followers.  Twitter is the best medium for launching a brand in a personal, transparent way.  You need a Twitter strategy if you don’t have one already… let’s talk.

PS: Blake, I’m cybersquatting for you.  In my research of discovering you aren’t on Twitter, I found that you handn’t registered @humidbeings.  Twitter handles are the new domain names.  So, I thoughtfully registered it for you as FakeBlakeHaney, and I will happily turn it over when you read this post and hit me up in the comments below.  Unless some other commenter can convince me to turn it over to them.

Lots of good updates to post today, so I’m going to get at it rapid-fire…

• The Feast, a social innovation conference that Michael Karnjanaprakorn is bringing to New Orleans for the first time on February 6, 2009 has moved to a larger venue due to the strong demand. Michael announced today that the conference will be held at the Contemporary Arts Center.  They’ve released additional $99 tickets (available only until Friday) so go register to attend today.  I’m going to be speaking at the conference, and I’m working on my talk now.  Any thoughts, send them my way.

• Startup School v2 will be held at Tulane on Thursday Jan 29, and Saturday, Feb 7.  This Startup School will be geared around the $40,000 Tulane Business Plan Competition.  We’re putting this together in conjunction with the TEA, SENO, VoodooTEQ, and hope to have the participation of many of the excellent judges from last time.  Keep in mind that for the Tulane competion, each entry needs to have a student (from any university) on the team.  More details to follow.

• 504ward will announce the first round finalists this Friday.

• 9th Ward Field of Dreams is an amazing project that Brian Bordainick behind.  He working to build a $1.85 million state of the art football field in the Upper 9th Ward for Carver High school and the community.  If you haven’t heard about this yet, check out the ESPN article and find out how you can help make it a reality.

• Net2NO is taking a road trip to SXSW and we want you to be a part of it.  We’ve broken into subcommities to put together the party, travel and pitch.  If you’re interested in helping New Orleans to take SXSW by storm in March, sign up here.

• GNO Inc’s Michael Hecht presented at NetNO last night about the new Digital Media Alliance launch.  This initiative is focused on equipping us, New Orleans’ creative class of knowledge workers to succeed and attract more businesses and talent to the city. One of the things that has already been prepared is a slide deck to pitch New Orleans as a great place to locate your business.  Take a look below.

Gno Cdm Deck

If you have anything that I’ve left off, hit me up in the comments.  I’ll include it in the post.  Thanks to everyone who is contributing.

We got our submission in today for 504ward.  We’re excited to be a part of the competition and ready to rock on moving the Launch Pad forward.  We’ve been somewhat under the radar with this project until now.  Starting today, we’re looking for local New Orleans entrepreneurs who want to get out of their bedroom and into a stimulating, collaborative and fun environment without the burden of traditional commercial leases.

Launch Pad – 504ward Business Competion Submission from Chris Schultz on Vimeo.

Startup businesses are born in a spare bedroom or college dorm. Once off the ground, entrepreneurs need an office for legitimacy and support, but find traditional commercial office leases daunting and expensive. The Launch Pad is a flexible office space for startup companies. We provide short-term leases, furnished offices, a support staff and multiple networking and educational events to get a new business off the ground.

Innovation doesn’t happen in isolation. The core value Launch Pad provides is the interaction, networking, and mentoring among entrepreneurs in a modern workspace. Our office space includes access to the services that all startups need so entrepreneurs can focus on their core competencies and build viable businesses.

Launch Pad is the brainchild of entrepreneurs who are intimately aware of the startup culture in places like New York, San Francisco and Austin. Launch Pad will be New Orleans hub for events like Startup School, BarCamp, Co-working, Net2NO. Launch Pad will thrust New Orleans into consideration for entrepreneurs nationwide deciding where to start businesses.

Want in on Launch Pad? Got feedback on what would make it work for you? We want to hear from you.  Contact us today for more details.