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| | 03/17/2004
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| | Scoop
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| | Briefly noted, by Ron May
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| | Briefly noted, by Ron May
* Too many events, too much going on, and not enough time to write.
How about this: a precis with one-liners on the stories. I am headed to an entrepreneurial event at DePaul University, and then the MIT-EF so I have to get going.
1. The reason I was talking to Gerald O'Dwyer (aside from the fact that he's Irish) is that he was sitting in Bill Zangwill's class on Saturday and is apparently working with Zangwill. In fact, Bill is sitting in on Gerald's class at the Union League Club this week. I left that fact out of my ramblings on Monday.
2. We will be publishing a survey on outsourcing in the next few days and hope to have the results for you long before the end of month event on the subject.
3. The EMC story in a nutshell: they sold 8730s, then told a large state agency in a state where that agency has done between $20MM and $25MM in business with EMC that they had 8830s in. They revised the Purchase Order and charged the agency for the 8830s, about 20% higher in price than the 8730s (the difference being in actual dollars about $200K,) and they shipped the 8730s, not the 8830s they said they were selling. Well, not only did they pull a switch-a-roo on the state agency, but they continued to lie about it for months and months, and are still to this day lying, according to my source. That lie is taking place in a falsified customer report that the agency gets every month. Now, for the real kicker.
The sales guys are EMC are known to be cowboys. That is one thing. But management appears to be just as corrupt. The issue was raised by a person who worked in close conjunction to the sales staff, and he raised the issue on moral and ethical, if not legal grounds. The question of whether they should falsify reports went two levels up at EMC, to the area sales manager and to his boss. It did not go to the divisional VP, to my sources knowledge, but did go to the sales manager in charge of five or six states.
The word came back that the documents should continue to be falsified!!!
There is much more to the story, but that will do for my short summary today. EMC stands for Evil Mean Company, I am told or Eventually Marriage Counseling. Report falsification is not isolated to this instance, I can tell you that based on my info.
4. Barb Rabchak (spelling?), CEO of Leap of Faith Technologies, is a master at getting SBIR grants. I believe that she is ten for eleven on her Phase I and Phase II applications. She spoke at the MEF meeting on March 8th. Most of her money comes from NIH which she said uses peer review. The process there is less political than DoD, but there are still 31 different agencies under NIH.
5. In 2000, On Shore split into two companies and Stel Valavanis took over On Shore, Inc., the group that wires buildings. The other group, made up of about five people, is On Shore Development and they do a lot of work with universities.
I interviewed Stel, a U. of C. physics major who worked at as a network analyst in the B-school before starting On Shore in the early 1990s. They have wired 27 high rise buildings, and do a combination of retail and bulk. There is more money per unit in retail, but bulk is easier to do. They wire for the internet but can leverage off of cable and phone lines although that is less frequent. They are doing well and had revenue of $3MM last year. Their largest building has 505 units and I believe that more than half the units or about 265 are signed up with them. I believe Stel said that about 60% of their business is retail and 40% is bulk.
There are problems which he elucidated with the installations and the awareness of the general contractors and the subs about what can and cannot be done with wiring these days.
Stel is a very articulate fellow. He just sent this e-mail about the MPC.
From: Stelios Valavanis <stel@onshore.com>
Reply-To: stel@onshore.com
Organization: onShore
Subject: Fwd: MPC e-alert: Neighborhoods need broadband
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 11:44:14
To: andy@onShore.com
------- Forwarded Message -----
Subject: MPC e-alert: Neighborhoods need broadband
Date: Wednesday 17 March 2004 11:22 am
From: "MarySue Barrett" <msbarrett@metroplanning.org>
To: <stel@onshore.com>
Chicago is the center of more Internet traffic than any city in the world,
yet many of its neighborhoods lack access to even basic broadband
technology. A new study by the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC)
identifies a huge disparity between the supply and demand of both DSL and
fiber-level broadband across the entire city, and calls on the City of
Chicago to move forward with CivicNet. "From Broad Shoulders to Broadband,"
released Monday, is a multimedia presentation that illustrates the negative
impact this has on Chicago-area businesses. It is based on an MPC report,
"Access to Redevelopment," also released Monday, that documents demand for
broadband in underserved areas of the City of Chicago.
Both are available at
http://www.metroplanning.org/articleDetail.asp?objectID=2055.
There's still time to register for MPC's next Roundtable on Monday, March 22,
2004 on Education Funding and Quality Reform in 2004. More information is
available at http://www.metroplanning.org/calendar.asp?objectID=2014.
You can also register now for the March 30 Sustainable Development
Roundtable, the final in MPC's Spring 2004 series. Visit
http://www.metroplanning.org/calendar.asp?objectID=2015 for more
information.
*************
To become a member of MPC and support our work, go to www.metroplanning.org
and click "Become a member" in the upper left of MPC's home page.
To be removed from this list, send a message with the subject line 'remove'
to info@metroplanning.org.
Much more to come on this. We talked about a lot of things.
6. It is noteworthy that Stel was one of the few entrepreneurs who showed up at the CTCNet event at i.c.stars on Monday evening. I interviewed about ten people from local organizations involved in digital divide issues.
Between forty and fifty people were there.
Some notes pertaining to those interviews are in today's report. Layton Olson was one of the people putting this thing on, and Sandee Castral had her i.c.stars alums out in full force.
Where was the hobnob mob? Not there is the short answer and that is a shame. The people who showed up were the ones doing the work in the neighborhoods, not the self-important DCEO and other state officials.
More to come on this topic, but the event Layton says should not be missed is on March 25th at the State of Illinois Building.
7. I have been meaning to mention that Jerry Mitchell lectured the audience at the last MEF meeting when some people were asking about the time involved in applying for a SBIR. How much time for $75K was one question. Jerry's point was that people would rather go to events where the VCs talk and where there is little chance of actually getting funded than do the hard work and heavy lifting associated with the SBIR grant application. Now, his point was also that VC money follows SBIR money. The places that do the best in getting VC money are also the places that get the most SBIR, Phase I and Phase II money. The SBIRs are legitimizers for the VC money.
Jerry challenges the MEF audience much more lately. Last month, he told everyone that when they introduced themselves they did not do the first thing you should do: give your contact info. How else can you market yourself?
Mitchell had a few comments about the SBIR conference in Elgin as well, but rather than paraphrase those choice words for Hastert and the Coalition, I will get it off the tape and quote it verbatim.
8. I talked to Christine Glatz of the SMA (815-469-2935) and she said that the slides from the Dale Nesbitt talk should be up on the site by Monday and it will be at www.sma-chicago.org. She also told me that the example Dale gave about probabilities and cancer rang all too true. Her dad was diagnosed as having throat cancer with two tests that showed positive and when they operated they found nothing. I believe she said that those tests had a 90% accuracy on positive tests.
9. I also heard today that there may be a way to measure blood sugar with an optical device that does not require any blood being drawn and it can do it continuously. The boys at Efoora should be aware of that. Also, you know Therasense was bought by Abbott Labs.
Look, gotta go if I am going to get to the events today.
10. BTW, Bill Scheurer of Pocketcard fame got 22% of the vote in his race for Congress. |
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