There are a couple great events coming up for the entrepreneurship community in NOLA that you should take advantage of.  I’m excited about going.  Voodoo Ventures’ own Will Donaldson has been instrumental in organizing these in his role as president of the Tulane Entrepreneurship Association.

Tulane Entrepreneurs’ Fall Workshop

Tulane’s Uptown campus on Friday November 21st from 9am-12:30pm.

The event will focus on social enterprises and feature:

• Andrea Chen of Social Entrepreneurs of New Orleans
• Stephen Shelton of the Louisiana CleanTech Network
• Jackie Richard of Louisiana Cultural Economy Foundation
• Nadiyah Morris of the Office of Lt. Gov. for Social Entrepreneurship
• Carol Bebelle of the Ashe Cultural Arts Center

Followed by an interactive business planning workshop on Sambazon, a social enterprise, featuring John Elstrott, Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship, Executive Director of the Levy-Rosenblum Institute for Entrepreneurship and Lead Director of Whole Foods Market.

RSVP at http://tea.tulane.edu. Coffee and bagels will be served at 9am and the program will begin at 9:30am. The program is limited to 60 participants.

Panel Discussion: “The New New Orleans for Entrepreneurs: Opportunities for Entrepreneurship”

Tulane’s Uptown campus on Monday, November 24th from 5:00 - 7:30pm.

• Stephen Moret - Secretary of Louisiana Economic Development
• John E Koerner III - Koerner Capital
• Pres Kabacoff - CEO & Chairman, HRI Properties
• Ashton Ryan, Jr. - CEO & Chairman, First NBC Bank
• Crichton Brown - Managing Director, Advantage Capital

To see more detail please go to the Speaker Series page.

I definitely plan to attend these events and highly recommend them to the NOLA startup community.

I’m very pleased to announce that siteMighty has been honored by New Orleans CityBusiness magazine as one of New Orleans Innovators of the Year, 2007. This is a real honor, especially because it is the second year in a row that we’ve won this award; last year we were honored for Huckabuck.com which we sold in October, 2006.

CityBusiness honored siteMighty in its “On the Brink” category. This is very exciting for for me as I feel this is exactly where SiteMighty stands today, particularly in light of our version 1.0 release earlier this week. You can read the whole article here, and here’s a brief snippet:

When creating siteMighty, which took a little more than a year to design, Schultz had a particular goal in mind. “The goal was to make it so simple that my mother would be able to do it.”

Since it’s debut in March, siteMighty has had more than 1,700 users nationwide. “The most satisfying thing is that users are making money by using our product” Schultz said.

A big shout out to my mom for letting me continually use her as my design inspiration. While I tend to say things like this, the truth is she’s a very capable Internet user, but it’s nice to have her as a muse for website design.

Thanks to everybody who’s worked on this project: Our partners NCS and Icommissions. The wonderful Flatsourcing team: Oleg, Alex, Timur, Dilyara, Rustmem, Evgueny, Ravil, Rustem & TimurB. Blake Killian. Our great summer interns: Will, Jeff, Claire, Tannia. And Susan and Jeff who are helping us take this thing to a whole another level. Stay tuned.

For those of you who don’t know, our offices are located in New Orleans. Far from the fervor of Silicon Valley or the pace of NYC, being a technology/Internet company in the deep south has it’s own set of challenges and rewards. One of the perks is getting the chance to work with people like the team at iCommissions.com.

We’ve been active in the affiliate marketing space for years, and have worked with iCommissions for a while now. When we made up our minds to start building siteMighty, we introduced the idea to iCommissions and without pause they committed to step up and help us any way they could.

Inviting their users to try and test siteMighty has proved to be invaluable as we learned (and continue to learn) a great deal about siteMighty from the user’s perspective. They told us what was working and what wasn’t which is exactly what we needed - honest, genuine feedback. Many of the features you see on siteMighty today have been tweaked, polished or suggested by an iCommission’s user.

iCommissions is located in Mandeville which is on the Northshore just across Lake Pontchartrain from us. We try to get up there as often as we can to talk about siteMighty, have lunch and drink in the crisp, lake front breeze.

We thought we’d post some pics from our last visit so you can get to know our good friends at iCommissions.com.

(Pictured: Natalie Yarbrough and Scot Rumsey of iCommissions.com)

I’m in the process of editing and polishing all the correspondence that goes out from siteMighty. We have automated messages that go to users when they sign up for an account, generate an agent ID, map their domain, etc. Although these messages contain important account information for our users, we don’t think they have to be all business.

We love natural language - slang, contractions, yadda-yadda-yadda. Apart from my own writing abilities, I’m constantly looking at the ways other people are doing things, and today I got a very good example of this from Anderson Cooper.

Before I share the email, here’s why they sent it. The Idea Village sent me an email today (I can’t believe I’m still on their mailing list since I must have signed up over 2 years ago). Long story short, here’s the part that caught my eye:

Retaining, attracting and engaging entrepreneurial talent is a key focus for The Idea Village over the next two years. This Thursday (9-11pm), CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 will feature an interview with Tim Williamson, President of The Idea Village, as he discusses the infusion of talent in the aftermath of Katrina.

I’ve never thought much of the Idea Village. This is due in part from a bad experience I had with them, and from the bad things I always seem to hear about them. In other words, I don’t want them speaking on behalf of New Orleans entrepreneurs. I want to give Anderson Cooper a perspective that I doubt he’ll get from those guys, so I submitted that sentiment through their Web site. Here’s the email I got back (I love it!):

Thanks for your email. Here’s our problem. We want you to know that we really do read every single email you viewers send us. No, honestly. But reading your email is one thing, and composing individual answers to each one is another. That would be a full-time enterprise. In which case, there’d be no AC 360. In which case, there’d be no emails. You see where we’re headed.

Anyway, the best we can do is to acknowledge that we have indeed received and will read your message, and this little note is to let you know that. It’s automatic, yes; fails to take into account whether you’ve patted us on the back or slapped us across the face; does not differentiate between praise, correction, fury, proposals of marriage, or invitations to get lost. But rest assured we’ll know that part when we read it!

Google goes back to pre-Katrina maps…Google’s popular map portal has replaced post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery with pictures taken before the storm, leaving locals feeling like they’re in a time loop and even fueling suspicions of a conspiracy.… (more…)

This is somewhat breaking news. I heard this story this morning on a local NPR news update, but I can’t find anything online about it. So, I thought I would be something online about it. As soon as I find a story about it, and I will post and link from here. Stay tuned. bk

UPDATE: Finally some news from Bayou Buzz.

Well, its that time of year again. Carnival season is upon us in New Orleans, and you can feel the energy in the air. It always feels good when Mardi Gras rolls around each year. And this year, a year and a half post-K, it will mark another mile along the road to recovery. I’m happy to report that the city is looking really good. For the past two weeks, cleanup crews have been out, potholes have been filled in, parade stands are up along St. Charles… New Orleans is ready.

One of the things that many people aren’t aware of about Mardi Gras is that it really is a very family friendly event. You wouldn’t know it from the shots from Bourbon St., but the parades along St. Charles for the next two weeks are really celebrations of culture and community for New Orleanians.

I am especially excited to report that I’ll be riding in a Mardi Gras parade for the first time. Some of my wife’s family and I will be riding in the Bacchus parade on Sunday Feb 18th. If you’re in New Orleans, look for me on the “Whale” float, I’ll be pelting beads at anyone yelling “thow me something Mister Voodoo.”

Happy Carnival to all our friends, family and readers. If you can’t make it to New Orleans, we’ll be thinking about you these next two weeks.