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| | 05/31/2006
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| | Scoop
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| | [Actually 5/23]: Briefly noted: A more definitive word on the ITEC situation, by Ron May
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| | Briefly noted: A more definitive word on the ITEC situation, by Ron May
* OK, I believe that I now have the facts with respect the ITEC funding situation.
1. There are seven ITECs in the state, three in the Chicagoland area.
2. The ITECs are a line item in the budget
3. The funding for the seven ITECs coming from the state has been about $2MM.
4. The source of the funding is 75% from the tobacco settlement. When that kicked in, I do not know.
5. And 25% of the funding comes from general revenue.
6. The part of the ITEC funding coming from general revenue is $400K approximately.
7. Yes, it is true that about four weeks ago, the ITECs were notified that the money had run out from the tobacco settlement.
8. The person at DCEO who handles the ITECs is Ray Williams
9. One person told me that he is in "fact finding mode" and that he talks to his boss and government relations people every day. Remember that most ITECs are tied to a university.
10. The objective of course is to replace a source of funding. Whether that can happen or not is uncertain, and one source would not speculate on its likelihood.
11. The ITECs are all talking to each other about this and they view their relationship as collaborative, one person told me.
12. They may try going down to
Springfield.
13. How does Jack Lavin feel about this? Don't know and neither do my sources.
14. Each year each ITEC must submit a form that shows its performance, but my info. is that this is not done until the budget allocation has been approved.
15. One person close to the situation told me that we should know in about 30 days what will happen and he also said that it seemed reasonable that the money would stop round about August.
16. Of course, the ITECs are probably all going to their sponsoring university or organization for support. Those instiutions are supposed to match the state money, so the budget for each ITEC in theory would be about $600K, but in reality, I think the supporting institutions are under-contributing.
17. No one I talked to said in so many words that anyone at DCEO has challenged the ITECs on effectiveness and performance to benchmarks --- if there are any. But I was told by one source that the efficacy of the ITECs has been under scrutiny for four or five months now.
I could have named the names of some sources, but because this thing is up in the air, I don't want anyone to be stigmatized for talking to me.
* Let me finish up on the CEC charity poker tournament. I have gone over my tape and here are some of my notes. Some people did not want to be identified when I asked questions about the rumor that the ITECs have lost their funding, so every conversation is not included here.
Let's start with the top 8 players. Nik Rokop was #10 and #9 is a mystery man because he begged out when they moved from the final two tables to the last table. Who was he? He did win a Magnavox DVD player.
#8 was James Howald (I googled him and he seems to be tied into UltimateChicago.org)
#7 was Greg Cazel from JP Morgan
#6 was Kevin Lyons from GOMA Systems
#5 was Stuart Koch from OnShore
#4 was Mike Persico, on hiatus, semi-retired
#3 was David Ariola from Chicago Realty Co. and on the CEC board
#2 was Pat Stakenas, CEO of ForceLogix
#1 was Brendon Geary from Winston & Strawn
Just going through my notes,
Some guy named Buczynski was there.
While I was talking to David Naylor, he had to take care of a minor crisis at StarThis. He patched two people in on his blackberry or was it just a cell phone?
Naylor feels that the ChicagoITEC has been helpful to him. He has worked with Robert Anderson at IIT and Maria Pistone have been very helpful.
Kathy Parsons is engaged to be married to Chris Chandler, a co-owner of Accumence. Kathy works for Trans Union.
Hoch and Howerton sitting at the same table and I would assume that they worked out a system to cheat. Hoch was with my cousin Ken Wasch at the annual SIIA meeting. I also heard that these two went to Ireland. From another source, Tomek, Julia's brother-in-law, I heard that 150,000 Poles have moved to Ireland to do programming! If that is true, expect to see a lot of Pirish children. Hey, I just coined a word.
Mark Goodman was there with his girlfriend Tatiania who works for the Reproductive Genetics Institute. Tatiana was asking me for people at the event who are in biotech and you know what, I don't think there were any.
Dave Gelfand was there and he is still with Julian Studley after twenty years.
Jim Dugan was running around like crazy all night and he must have been on something. At the end he was telling one of the top 8 players that they dodged some bullets because most of the board members were organizers and could not play.
Bob Zieserl from KB Partners was there. And so was Don from First Analysis.
Johnny Lamb with Vanco
Tom Veeder, a derivatives trader with Gertsman
Gary Conkright with InforMed
Doug Grimsted from Aginity
Rachel Bagelman does not do matchmaking. Her company is for giving advice.
Joe Jablonski from Accumence
Alan Cook told me that websites that Lucky Litter is using are Amazon, Costco, and retail stores at PetSmart. I reported this: they have had five angel rounds.
Bruce Zivian loves it at Bell Boyd. He said that they have been doing a public offering for a Chicago based company on the London Stock Exchange. The group is up to six partners in the venture area. They do a lot of private equity deals. Bell Boyd will become more visible.
Doug Newkirk and I talked about an investment mechanism called Public Investment of Private Equity Securities or PIPES. This along with a reverse merger into a public shell is very popular these days.
C-Change Hugh Schultz, a marcom firm
Rob Reynolds, formerly of LifeServ
Brian Crummy provided the cookies
Erin Bowler, fiber optic handbag, Verasa, Italy is where the mfg. is done, high end luxury bag, handmade, patent leather, wholesale for $900
They called her The Matador, and that was Meredith Miller with her winning ways and changing story about how much she has played.
Rachel Bagelman, launched in January, has been on MSNBC, and in the Sun-Times, plays with Weinstein in the poker group,
David Peak started a firm called LiquidTalk. He uses an iPod. it is a closed wall iPod for the business world. Abbott Labs sales force, time is money, they take content and convert it for a podcast format. Salespeople can listen while they are doing lots of things. LiquidTalk converts, stores, approves, and distributes the content. LiquidTalk translator and a LiquidTalk library. Before doing this, David sold multi-million dollar sales training programs for Carlson Marketing to Fortune 500 cos. and he noticed that they did not have a mobile solution. He has ten years in business, and is forty years old.
Has an advisor who may be able to help them with Abbott. The average enterprise client is at least a hundred users, but they would prefer 500 to 1,000.
Wes Shepherd, CEO of ChannelVelocity has angel money from high net worth people. $1MM, i believe he said.
Joan Jablonski was there.
Brian Calamura has software firm (this guy seemed to be hiding from me.)
Gina Ariola is David Ariola's wife
Gina Sandon is with Initiate Systems run by Bill Conroy, from Oracle, and Bill used to run Click Commerce. Initiate's clients include Intuit, Wells Fargo, Social Security Admin, Veterans Admin. Initiate Systems does customer and integration technologies
Tracy Sereiko works for Smith Bucklin
Gina Sandon married Rob Reynolds
Gina sounds like she's from the south, but she is from Minnesota and she's Norwegian.
Andy Bezaitis was there and he did well
Kevin Lyons
Jason Felger made it pretty far
Rokop came in tenth
Stephanie Koenig stef2468@rcddirect.com
Michael Sieman from USR was there.
Mark Murphy came in pretty high up?
One dealer, Scott Conklin, told me that it is really obvious how the people play within a few hands. Rokop said you can tell the playing style of people in short order.
Michael Krauss was there early but left early I heard.
Wes Shepherd was saying that Krauss is a great guy
Jim Dugan told Wes Shepherd to tell me the best VC firm in town
Dugan was enjoying himself
One last thing. The "8 high" that won meant that the differentiating card that decided the winner was an 8, not that an 8 was the highest card.
* I have a lot more, but let me get this out. George Calderon called me from San Jose, Costa Rica yesterday. He has a long story to tell about Efoora but the key piece of news that I got from him is that Eagle Venture Capital is still selling Efoora stock, even as late as this year.
Met with Keith Hooper and the folks from DaybreakOilandGas at the Columbia Yacht Club which has a new elevator, thank goodness. Interesting conversation with their investor relations guy. I may turn it into a podcast.
Nat Pomeranz called me (I know him from college) and he's a neighbor of David Grosky. His question is: What did they do with the money? Since Grosky's lifestyle has not appreciably changed in ten years. All in all between congratulatory calls and informational calls, I have had about fourteen calls since Friday morning.
The U.S. Attorney's Office returned my call and they are definitely seeking information about Efoora. Call them at (866) 364-2621 or email them at efoorainvestors@yahoo.com They will get back to you.
I am still on Cloud 9 here. This story may be my equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize. I stuck with it when it seemed to never end and I also believed that action needed to be taken. Of course, there were many people, I suspect, who talked to the feds and the state folks. But no one else was writing about it and the investors had a hard time getting info. from the company itself. A book maybe? Surely a good magazine article. If only I had a video cam when I had that tour or when I interviewed Grosky. I will find the tape. There is a podcast for ya.
Much more to come. You should hear what Adam Fendelman told an Medill student about ePrairie. You should also hear what I have heard about what Howard Wolinsky is saying about how Efoora has changed internal policies at the Sun-Times and how furious Dan Miller is about how the ST got snookered. Look, I am not being condescending here. I have been snookered many more times than they have been. It happens to the best of us. Here is a trivia fact for ya. The Chicago Public Schools teach Latin as early as the first grade. One student I talked to who just graduated from the High Jump program at the Latin School took six years of Latin before the 8th grade! And of course, don't forget the 3,000 high school students studying Mandarin Chinese. I attended the High Jump graduation ceremony on Saturday for what they call Cohort 16. The students go on from this program to the top high schools in the city and many end up in elite colleges, including the Ivy League.
Also, I heard today that Alex Jarett has started renting out his list for anyone who wants to pay for it and who wants to run their own mailing. Not good if true. |
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