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| | [Actually 4/17/2012]: The May Report: 4/17/2012: Part II, Part I was yesterday
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| | April 17, 2012
The May Report: 4/17/2012: Part II, Part I was yesterday
Editor and publisher: Ron May, ron@themayreport.com, ronaldmay@aol.com,www.themayreport.com, 773-525-3944.
If you missed an article, go here:
www.tmronline.com/A55951/tmrarticles.nsf/vwFullNewsletter
(ALL REPORTS HAVE NOW BEEN POSTED ON THE TMRONLINE.COM SITE AND THANKS TO PROMINIC FOR FIXING THE PROBLEM)
Otherwise, just go to www.themayreport.com where all the articles are archived and the search function on the new site is now working
Louis Brandeis: "Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants."
frequently attributed to Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." but the quote and its many variations have been the subject of dispute. See http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke for more.
"Larsen E. Whipsnade": You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939), a comedy film starring and scripted by W. C. Fields
Andre' Gide (1869 - 1951) in his "Les Nourritures Terrestres. Envoi:":
"What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself --- and thus make yourself indispensable."
_____________________________
****************************************
April 17 - Annual Fair/Pair for Entrepreneurs
Come join us for a mini trade show combined with a mini Taste of Chicago. Our annual Fair/Pair features businesses who support small to medium sized companies paired up with a local food and beverage vendor. Attendees will circulate throughout the various "pairings" to sample great food and drink plus have access to businesses who can support your business all in one night!
Plus you can qualify to win a Kindle!
Current Food/Beverage Vendors Attending:
Finch Beer
Foiled Cupcakes
Scott and Lisa's Gourmet Pretzels
Argo Tea
MJ Catering
Spark of the Heart
Current Business Vendors Attending:
US Voice & Data
IBM
Productive Scheduling Solutions
KnowledgeShift
Adalyze Technologis
Tandem HR
Racom Comomuniations
Venture SHOT/Funding Feeding Frenzy
Heartland Group
BTE Consulting
Open One Solutions
UBS Investments - Jeffery Tear
When: April 17th
Time: 5:30-8:00 pm
Where: IBM Innovation Center 71 S. Wacker 6th Fl
Fee: $10 for members $20 at the door
$35 for non-members $40 at the door
Click here to register
http://www.mitefchicago.org/
*******************************************
_____________________________
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Scoop section:
Part I
-- Unmetric Raises $3.2 MM In Series A Funding From Nexus Venture Partners to Deliver Social Media Benchmarks Between Brands
-- Authentify makes Sun-Times article on Online banking, plus they get the video
-- From the Tech Cocktail newsletter
-- Forbes: Groupon: Where Were The Auditors?, by Francine McKenna
-- Chicago Tribune: Analysis: Groupon accounting problems put spotlight on board [May here. Note that this is actually a Reuters article, not a Wailin Wong article, as one observer quipped to me recently, "When it's good news for Groupon, they use Wailin, but when it's bad news, they use Reuters" and none of this gets at the possible conflict of interest that The Chicago Tribune has with Groupon, if you recall their relationship a few years ago, is it conceivable that the Trib. owns a small percentage of Groupon?]
-- Cook County and CTA Collaborate on Fiber Optic Broadband Agreement
-- How Chicago Is Becoming More Viable for Tech Startups!, by Richard Komaiko, a co-founder of AttorneyFee.com, an angel funded startup seeking to promote transparency around the cost of legal services
-- April 5: Crain's: Founders tell all at latest Entrepreneurs Unpluggd
-- Wednesday, May 2: 2012 Annual IVCA/NVCA Luncheon - The Chicago Club - 11:30am - 1:30pm
__________________________
END OF PART I
Part II
The Scoop section:
-- Tom Brown on his site and app, http://livebytransit.com -- I've met Tom twice now, both times at Rockit
-- John Krause, Executive Director, Chicago Streetcar Renaissance, http://www.chicagostreetcar.com/ (whom I met Mon. night at CCEA), defends his idea
-- Kevin Willer: Everyone submitting an application for an 1871 desk must go through the application process [May here. See Briefly noted in this report for my longwinded comments on this.]
-- David Culver: Why Funding Feeding Frenzy moved to June 20th
-- Mike Fisher: Storymix Media, www.storymixmedia.com, and they're presenting Wednesday to BNC Startup
-- Josh London: His new idea vaguely described
-- Ashish Rangnekar: general update and "Watermelon Express" became "BenchPrep", www.BenchPrep.com 9 months ago
-- Jason Goodrich: www.getshortlist.com: Where his 1871 application stands
-- Kevin Willer: answers May's question about Tim Jahn [May here. KW, the reason I asked is that you told me on March 30th during my tour with you that 1871 will have no media firms, a polite way of saying I can't rent a desk, but is Entrepreneurs Unpluggd a media company? They don't just put on events, but they also have a blog, and as David Carman said to me Friday at Gleacher, he thinks the blogs drive the attendance. I told Carman that "the dirty little secret" of the Chicago entrepreneurial community is that some of the event organizers like Seth Kravitz, www.technori.com, Stella Fayman, and Tim Jahn, www.entrepreneursunplggd.com, are raking it in with mega-bucks being collected at their events. Stella and Tim are charging $150 a person, and figure 200 people per event, so that's $30,000 every two months or so, $180K a year. Seth Kravitz gets $25 per month times 400 (Seth claims 500, but I'd believe 400) and that's $10K a month, $120K a year, and he probably has a free auditorium from Chase, and no doubt Julian Pretto of www.chicagomicro.com is giving him free wi-fi services as he bragged to me after the last Technori event on March 27th that "I provided wi-fi services for 400 people tonight" and then he treated his guys to dinner at Gibson's -- he also brags that he now has 40 people -- never mind that 38 of them are sales guys; and Seth has flirtatious sycophants like Robbie Abed, www.rawdesignr.com, running around "representing" Technori and drumming up attendance when they should be seriously focused on fixing problems with web sites they developed :-). Kevin, even you told me that some organizations like Bernard Kappe and Lean Startup Circle are getting steeply discounted rates to hold events at 1871; now, I believe in capitalism as much as the next guy, probably more even if my money making skills don't show it, and if Seth, Stella and Tim can get that kind of traffic and money, the more power to them, but let's be honest about the fact that they are both event companies and media companies. I do feel that a lot of entrepreneurs, those who don't have trust funds or rich uncles Phil, have a hard time paying for things like Techweek. Much more can be said on this topic. I haven't even gotten to Frank Gruber, www.techcocktail.com, today.]
-- Kevin Willer: answers May's question about who Melissa is
-- Phil Tadros: The roast will be May 31st and
Zhenia Koval, Doejo's cinematographer told me Friday as he helped me put on my dress shirt and jacket so I could get down to Gleacher that they have the roaster already
-- Brian Connolly: The most litigious person I know?
-- Sonny Cohen
-- Stelios Valavanis
-- David Carman: One of 4 CCEA founders
-- Paul Goodman: About his company (we met at CCEA) and maybe he can write an article for TMR
-- Briefly noted, by Ron May
-- Retrofitme.com, www.retrofitme.com and the small world we live in: [May here. Now, here's a small world story -- way back in 1985, I was put on a protein sparring diet by doctors at Billings Hospital in the diabetes clinic at the University of Chicago and it resulted in my losing 65 lbs. in 70 days! I went from 295 to 229. But after about 6 months holding my weight below 250, I gained it all back; they sent me down the hall to the obesity clinic run by Dr. Robert Kushner and I worked with Dr. Kushner for about two years until Dr. Kushner kicked me out, telling me that I was a refractory patient (I didn't know what that meant, and he explained that I'm like a mirror, whatever they tried came back at them). Years later, Kushner left the University of Chicago and went to Northwestern. BTW, they got rid of me just as they were being deluged with requests for help from their obesity clinic and that deluge came because of Oprah's liquid protein diet in 1988. Just one more thing. I worked with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology in the program, Mike Alspaugh, and the approach was rooted in the behavioral model. One good thing that came out of that therapy was that I stopped going to No Hana on Broadway for their "all you can eat" sushi lunch deals. What they got me to realize that I was going to the all you can eat lunches to prove that I could get the best of the restaurant, to prove that I could "put them out of business." Once I understood that my addiction to all you can eat was rooted in my desire to be a big shot, I quit doing it. Overeating is not just overeating, it's a whole continuum of associated behaviors, just as smoking is about much more than the actual smoking with associated behaviors such as when a person does it, holding the cigarette box, playing with the cigarettes, etc.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot why I'm telling this story with that trip down memory lane.
On April 3rd at the Built in Chicago event at Rockit, I met Greg King who works for www.retrofitme.com.
Retrofitme.com is a weight loss plan focused on the modest result of losing 10% of body weight.
I looked at their site, as I often do at 2am and noticed that their chief advisor is none other than Dr. Robert Kushner!
It is a small world, a long life -- QED.]
-- Miscellaneous notes (3 messages)
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Cyber Forensics & Security Conference & Expo
April 19 & 20, 2012
Illinois Institute of Technology - Wheaton, IL (Chicago Area)
Join us for this outstanding Cyber Security & Forensics multi-track, technical conference that attracts 200+ professionals, 50+ speakers, 20+ sponsors, for an intensive one- and a half-days. Sample presentations include:
Keynote - Dan Kaminsky - Securing The Future: Complexity and Simplicity
FBI and Cyber Crime - FBI Regional Computer Forensics Lab and Special Agent FBI Chicago Cyber Squad
Cyber Security: A New Frontier for Cross-Jurisdiction Alliances - Rafael Diaz - Illinois Terrorism Task Force: Chief Cyber Security Advisor, Central Management Services: Chief Information Security Officer
iOS Forensics with Open Source Tools - Katie Strzempka - Senior Forensic Engineer at viaForensics
An IT Professionals' Guide to Using Data Analytics to Prevent and Detect Fraud - Sandra J.H. Rolnicki - Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
Non-Traditional Intrusion Detection For Non-Traditional Intrusions - Tom Liston - Senior Analyst for InGuardians, Inc.
And, more!
Attend - $200 (Ron May reader rate - $100) Use discount code: MAY
Sponsor/exhibit ($500-1,500)
Participants have included Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, KPMG, Computer Associates, the FBI, Fermilab, Argonne National Lab, Chicago Police Department, CompTIA, Motorola, Sungard and many others.
For more information, please visit www.cpd.iit.edu/forensecure, or contact Scott Pfeiffer at pfeiffer@iit.edu or 630-682-6001.
**************************************
____________________________
The Scoop section:
Part II
_______________________
Tom Brown on his site and app, http://livebytransit.com -- I've met Tom twice now, both times at Rockit
Subject: Re: Tom, just a reminder to send me your whole spiel and info. on your app.
Date: 4/12/2012 9:20:20 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: tbrown9902@gmail.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
Hi Ron,
Sorry for the delay in providing info on my web app, it has been crazy
over the last few days.
I accidentally started a real estate brokerage company in 2008. I had
started a small fund with friends and family buying foreclosures in
Chicago and rehabbing/renting. I obtained a brokerage license to
capture the brokerage fees related to this business, and had no
intention of having agents or running a residential brokerage. One
day a leasing agent that was showing one of our properties asked if he
could hang his license with my brokerage. We worked out a split and
he started doing deals, and I was getting revenue for basically just
cutting checks. It felt like easy money, so I decided to take on more
agents. I grew to 15 agents and paid a developer to build a website
that allows people to search for properties by train station and
advertised on the CTA in order to bring in leads. We had some
success, but ultimately the website did not capture leads very well,
and over the course of several months I came to the realization the
site was poorly designed from a UX perspective....the word poorly is a
sever understatement...is was horrible. I lived with it for about 2
years while focusing on the foreclosure business and a side consulting
job, and my agents moved on except for a small handful. During the
summer of 2011 I decided I wanted to do the website right, and I
obtained a quote that inspired me to learn how to code the site
myself. Then I found Code Academy and graduated last December with my
website: http://livebytransit.com
The site allows users to search for properties by train stations (both
CTA and Metra). I also geocoded all the Chicago public school
district boundaries and implemented a search by school district
feature, and it turns out that this search is more compelling to
users. So I built a new site, www.schoolsparrow.com, that allows
users to synchronize their school and home search. Schoolsparrow uses
the livebytransit API to layer several data sets including school
ranking data, school boundary data, and property data to produce the
most effective school/property search tool available today.
At SchoolSparrow, a user can easily find the top 30 districts that
have homes for sale right now within the users budget, and once they
target a school they can get connected with a schoolsparrow.com agent
who has the tools to effectively search by school district. The MLS
does a poor job of allowing agents to search by school district.
Schoolsparrow will fill in until the MLS fixes the problem.
Monetization: a moving target. Initially real estate agents will pay
a monthly subscription fee to have access to the search tool with
additional features to grab MLS id numbers so they can easily forward
the listings to their clients. I am also considering allowing agents
to have search by trains/school districts on their web pages. Other
strategies are forming.
7 months ago I did not know jack about coding....I wrote every line of
code in these two apps, but I also have to give credit to Dave Levine
from the CA UX class who designed the schoolsparrow home page. Both
sites are still incomplete, and slightly embarrassing, but I went
ahead and launched because I badly need user input. I have had 15-20
user experience sessions so far, and clearly there is still much work
to be done. These sites are still in Beta mode and have generated no
revenue (yet).
Anyone who is interested in a free cup of coffee can contact me and
we'll set up a user experience session.
Thank you for your interest, please feel free to contact me with any
questions or comments.
Regards,
Tom Brown
@scholsparrow
@livebytransit
@chicagoidx
On Apr 11, 2012, at 11:36 AM, RONALDMAY@aol.com wrote:
______________________________
John Krause, Executive Director, Chicago Streetcar Renaissance (whom I met Mon. night at CCEA), defends his idea
Subject: Re: JCK, not necessarily in the city, but at theme parks, or in smaller communities.
Date: 4/11/2012 7:08:05 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: jck@chicagostreetcar.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
But it's already been demonstrated in hundreds of cities all over the world, and some fifty cities in the US, not to mention that Chicago had the largest network of streetcars that has ever existed anywhere until the 1950s. Every street in our city http://www.chicagostreetcar.com/history.html was planned for streetcars. We need to do something bold right now to address the congestion crisis. The only realistic approach would be somewhere in the huge gap in the transit spectrum http://chicagostreetcar.blogspot.com/2012/01/modern-transit-for-majority-of-us-in.html between elevated trains that are few, far between, and impossibly expensive to build and buses that are stuck in traffic with cars. We need a growth-oriented strategy to bring more people and few cars into the loop every year: more commerce and less congestion.
John Krause, Executive Director
Chicago Streetcar Renaissance
2754 N Hampden Ct No 804
Chicago, IL 60614
+1 312 810 1525
chicagostreetcar.com
CSR blog
On Apr 11, 2012, at 6:58 PM, RONALDMAY@aol.com wrote:
______________________________
Kevin Willer: Everyone submitting an application for an 1871 desk must go through the application process [May here. See Briefly noted in this report for my longwinded comments on this.]
Subject: Re: You're not soliciting apps, but for cos. referred in? Still no special handling?
Date: 4/11/2012 11:32:40 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: kevin@chicagolandec.org
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
All startups need to apply through www.1871.com.
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 2:01 AM, <RONALDMAY@aol.com> wrote:
--
_______________________
Kevin Willer
President & CEO
CEC
1871
@kwiller
______________________________
David Culver: Why Funding Feeding Frenzy moved to June 20th
Subject: Re: David, you are aware that Techweek starts on June 22nd, 2 days after FFF?
Date: 4/16/2012 2:31:52 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: david@mentormastermind.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
Yeah. We moved the date to June 20th on purpose so that we unofficially "kicked off" tech week a couple days early. There are also events on Thurs 1 day before the official start of TW.
D
On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 10:46 AM, <RONALDMAY@aol.com> wrote:
--
David A Culver
CEO
Forward Momentum, LLC
www.ForwardMomentumLLC.com
www.VentureSHOT.com
www.meetup.com/VSHOT-Collaboration-Community/
www.FundingFeedingFrenzy.com
www.GnomeFrenzy.com
www.UltimateSportsDecor.com
www.MyHealthyPuppy.com
www.Adventerra.net
_________________________________
Mike Fisher: Storymix Media -- and they're presenting Wednesday to BNC Startup
Storymix Media
Inbox
x
from: Mike Fisher mikefisher@storymixmedia.com
to: ron@themayreport.com
date: Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 3:40 PM
subject: Storymix Media
mailed-by: storymixmedia.com
: Important mainly because of the people in the conversation.
Mike Fisher mikefisher@storymixmedia.com
3:40 PM (20 hours ago)
to me
Hi Ron,
Just following up. Chris Sorensen out in Silicon Valley sent you the
info about us and I spoke to you briefly earlier this week (woke you
from your nap).
Chris had said you wanted more info about our company, feel free to
call me at 773-315-2209.
If not, I'm sure I will bump into you again at a future event.
Take care.
___________________________
Josh London: His new idea vaguely described
Subject: Re: Josh, how did your meeting go w/ Seth? And what's your idea?
Date: 4/12/2012 11:28:37 A.M. Central Daylight Time
From: josh@allitas.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
It went very well. Extremely helpful and generous guy with his time.
The idea is healthcare related..as we get closer to the initial launch or presenting I"ll clue you in.
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 6:25 PM, <RONALDMAY@aol.com> wrote:
--
Josh London
President
www.allitas.com
Tel. (312) 725-3306
Josh@allitas.com
______________________________
Ashish Rangnekar: general update and "Watermelon Express" became "BenchPrep" 9 months ago
Subject: Re: Ashish, how is watermelonexpress doing? Funding, staff, customers, revenues?
Date: 4/12/2012 5:39:25 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: ashish@benchprep.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
Ron- Thanks a lot for checking in. Things are absolutely amazing.
Here is a quick update from our side:
We transformed into "BenchPrep" from "Watermelon Express" ~9 months ago
Lightbank remains the only investor; has been a great relationship
We have 14 employees now
Tripled our revenues and doubled our course offerings in the last 3 months
Also, we just redesigned our website. Please check: benchprep.com
Would love your feedback.
Thanks,
--
Ashish Rangnekar
CEO & Co-Founder
BenchPrep.com
@ashishrangnekar
Phone: 312.662.7957
On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 5:30 PM, <RONALDMAY@aol.com> wrote:
______________________________
Jason Goodrich: Where his 1871 application stands
Subject: Re: Jason Goodrich, have you heard from 1871 yet on whether you're in or not?
Date: 4/12/2012 5:28:25 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: jason@getshortlist.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
Hi, Ron.
Hope you're well. I need to clarify some points with you:
At BiC, you asked me if I was going to 1871. I replied "I hope to." I didn't say that I had applied, though, which I had not at the time. I should have made that clear then.
I can already hear your follow-up question. Yes, I have applied since then. Just recently, in fact. And I still hope to get in. I will give them some time, though.
Best,
Jason
On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 5:17 PM, <RONALDMAY@aol.com> wrote:
--
Jason Goodrich
CEO, Shortlist
getshortlist.com
(773) 931-6885
____________________________________
May here. Jason, that conversation was at the Technori after party on March 27th, not BiC.
_________________________________
Kevin Willer: answers May's question about Tim Jahn [May here. KW, the reason I asked is that you told me on March 30th during my tour with you that 1871 will have no media firms, a polite way of saying I can't rent a desk, but is Entrepreneurs Unpluggd a media company? They don't just put on events, but they also have a blog, and as David Carman said to me Friday at Gleacher, he thinks the blogs drive the attendance. I told Carman that "the dirty little secret" of the Chicago entrepreneurial community is that some of the event organizers like Seth Kravitz, www.technori.com, Stella Fayman, and Tim Jahn, www.entrepreneursunplggd.com, are raking it in with mega-bucks being collected at their events. Stella and Tim are charging $150 a person, and figure 200 people per event, so that's $30,000 every two months or so, $180K a year. Seth Kravitz gets $25 per month times 400 (Seth claims 500, but I'd believe 400) and that's $10K a month, $120K a year, and he probably has a free auditorium from Chase, and no doubt Julian Pretto of www.chicagomicro.com is giving him free wi-fi services as he bragged to me after the last Technori event on March 27th that "I provided wi-fi services for 400 people tonight" and then he treated his guys to dinner at Gibson's -- he also brags that he now has 40 people -- never mind that 38 of them are sales guys; and Seth has flirtatious sycophants like Robbie Abed, www.rawdesignr.com, running around "representing" Technori and drumming up attendance when they should be seriously focused on fixing problems with web sites they developed :-). Kevin, even you told me that some organizations like Bernard Kappe and Lean Startup Circle are getting steeply discounted rates to hold events at 1871; now, I believe in capitalism as much as the next guy, probably more even if my money making skills don't show it, and if Seth, Stella and Tim can get that kind of traffic and money, the more power to them, but let's be honest about the fact that they are both event companies and media companies. I do feel that a lot of entrepreneurs, those who don't have trust funds or rich uncles Phil, have a hard time paying for things like Techweek. Much more can be said on this topic. I haven't even gotten to Frank Gruber, www.techcocktail.com, today.]
Subject: Re: KW, Tim Jahn is a co-founder of Entrepreneurs Unpluggd. Will he be at 1871?
Date: 4/14/2012 5:07:25 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: kevin@chicagolandec.org
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
Entrepreneurs Unpluggd held an event at 1871 today. Hopefully Tim will be over often.
On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 11:16 AM, <RONALDMAY@aol.com> wrote:
--
_____________________
Kevin Willer
President & CEO
CEC
1871
@kwiller
________________________________
Kevin Willer: answers May's question about who Melissa is
Subject: Re: Kevin, who is Melissa at 1871? Is she new, one of the 4 CEC employees?
Date: 4/14/2012 5:00:37 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: kevin@chicagolandec.org
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
Melissa is our rock-star Chief Marketing Officer working on a contract basis.
On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 7:45 AM, <RONALDMAY@aol.com> wrote:
--
_________________________
Kevin Willer
President & CEO
CEC
1871
@kwiller
_________________________________
Phil Tadros: The roast will be May 31st and Zhenia Koval, Doejo's cinematographer told me Friday as he helped me put on my dress shirt and jacket so I could get down to Gleacher that they have the roaster already
Subject: Re: Phil, when is Tech Cocktail?
Date: 4/12/2012 8:20:42 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: phil@doejo.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
CC: katie@doejo.com
Thursday the 19th
Also Ron, we are going the roast at the Laugh Factory on May 31st
We need to get organized
Katie?!
Philip Tadros
708.655.6753
doejo.com
On Apr 12, 2012, at 8:14 PM, "RONALDMAY@aol.com" <RONALDMAY@aol.com> wrote:
___________________________
Brian Connolly: The most litigious person I know?
Subject: RE: We should do an article on whether you're the most litigious person I know.
Date: 4/11/2012 7:17:23 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: bconnolly@furthermore.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
"Litigious" is the wrong word; "principled" is more appropriate. It is not my fault that the our traditional informal modes for arbitration in society have all but failed.
That would make a great article.
From: RONALDMAY@aol.com [mailto:RONALDMAY@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2012 7:06 PM
To: bconnolly@furthermore.com
Cc: ronaldmay@aol.com
Subject: We should do an article on whether you're the most litigious person I know.
_________________________
Sonny Cohen
Subject: Re: I heard Duo got the contact to revamp the Built in Chicago site. True? Drupal?
Date: 4/2/2012 12:38:24 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: scohen@duoconsulting.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
Hi Ron,
You heard....? :)
You can read it here:
http://www.builtinchicago.org/profiles/blogs/built-in-chicago-re-launch-announcement
It is being migrated from the Ning to Drupal platform with some additional functionality. We anticipate there will be more features added over time as the Drupal platform offers greater capability. Job #1 now is to get out the gate.
Hope all is well.
Sonny
Sonny Cohen
Director of Internet Marketing Strategy
Office: 312.529.3000
Direct: 312.529.3003
Mobile: 847.971.1101
DUO CONSULTING
Content. Leads. Clients.
Drupal training classes now forming.
Marketers. Project Managers. Developers.
On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 12:07 PM, <RONALDMAY@aol.com> wrote:
_________________________
May here. Sonny, I heard about it from one of my new buddies, Caity Moran, of the CEC who wheeled me downstairs on March 30th after my tour.
_________________________
Stelios Valavanis
Subject: Re: Stel, who's the tall African American guy who used to be @ ic stars, now w/ you?
Date: 4/2/2012 2:50:38 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: stel@onShore.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
That's Aaron Cox. He's at aaron@onshore.com. He was with an investment
banking firm then with the Chi Chamber of Commercie before coming to us.
On Mon, 2012-04-02 at 07:55 -0400, RONALDMAY@aol.com wrote:
>
--
______________________
Stelios Valavanis
Founder and President
onShore Networks
____________________________
David Carman: One of 4 CCEA founders
Subject: RE: David, see below. Are you working for the CCEA? If so, BNC?; You missed Monday?
Date: 4/13/2012 8:33:38 A.M. Central Daylight Time
From: davidcarman@sbcglobal.net
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
I’m one of the 4 founders of the CCEA. No, I did not attend the last event. I had a hard conflict come up.
From: RONALDMAY@aol.com [mailto:RONALDMAY@aol.com]
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2012 7:51 AM
To: dcarman@bnchicago.org
Cc: ronaldmay@aol.com
Subject: David, see below. Are you working for the CCEA? If so, BNC?; You missed Monday?
. E-mail a short executive summary (2 - 3 pages) or PowerPoint deck (10 - 12 slides) to David Carman at: David@theCCEA.org. The deadline to apply is Friday, April 20, at 5 p.m.
_________________________
Paul Goodman: About his company (we met at CCEA) and maybe he can write an article for TMR
Subject: RE: Paul, I looked at your site. What's involved in your job? EPA, zoning?
Date: 4/11/2012 3:21:43 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: pgoodman@kggp.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
I can write an article on Distributed Generation but not sure if your online report is looking for that kind of article.
From: RONALDMAY@aol.com [mailto:RONALDMAY@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2012 2:50 PM
To: pgoodman@kggp.com
Cc: ronaldmay@aol.com
Subject: Re: Paul, I looked at your site. What's involved in your job? EPA, zoning?
Yes, www.themayreport.com.
You said you had something for me.
In a message dated 4/11/2012 2:34:07 P.M. Central Daylight Time, pgoodman@kggp.com writes:
Look at the top – we have set up Kingfisher Energy.
Do you have a newsletter?
__________________
Paul Goodman
Kingfisher Group
180 N. Stetson Avenue, Suite 3240
Chicago, Illinois 60601
T: 312-777-0038
F: 866-421-3064
www.kggp.com
From: RONALDMAY@aol.com [mailto:RONALDMAY@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2012 2:16 PM
To: pgoodman@kggp.com
Cc: ronaldmay@aol.com
Subject: Re: Paul, I looked at your site. What's involved in your job? EPA, zoning?
You talked to me Monday night at the CCEA Happy hour. I'm the fat guy in the wheelchair w/ the cane.
In a message dated 4/11/2012 2:09:44 P.M. Central Daylight Time, pgoodman@kggp.com writes:
Who are you?
From: RONALDMAY@aol.com [mailto:RONALDMAY@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2012 5:26 AM
To: pgoodman@kggp.com
Cc: ronaldmay@aol.com
Subject: Paul, I looked at your site. What's involved in your job? EPA, zoning?
http://www.kggp.com/client_list.htm
Partial Client List
Amalgamated Bank of Chicago
City of Harvey
CK Development
Cook County (Illinois)
EBI Consulting
G.L. Simmons & Associates
G3 Real Estate, LLC
LaSalle Bank
Loyola University
Lutheran Social Services of Illinois (LSSI)
MELJAY Partners
Newcastle Limited
Village of Markham
Village of Park Forest
http://www.kggp.com/lynwood_plaza.htm
Project: Lynwood Plaza
Location: 20431 South Torrence Avenue, Lynwood, Illinois.
At the northeast corner of Glenwood-Dyer Road and Torrence Avenue.
Challenge: Heavily contaminated corner gas station. The seller had removed a total of six underground storage tanks (UST’s) in 1993 but contaminated soils remained and total cleanup costs were unknown. Prospective buyers had expressed interest but did not move forward as the seller wanted to sell property “as-is” along with environmental liabilities.
Solution: Kingfisher signed a two-year option with the site’s private owners and secured an IEPA Brownfield Grant to assess and quantify the environmental cleanup costs. The grant is used as an economic development tool to facilitate brownfield development in municipalities. Kingfisher agreed to reimburse the Village of Lynwood a portion of the grant over a pro-rated period once the property is redeveloped and generating income. Kingfisher is actively marketing the site to potential tenants for a build-to-suit commercial development of the property.
Download the complete project specification sheet and rendered elevation.
For more information, please e-mail us at pgoodman@kggp.com.
http://www.kggp.com/info_philosophy.htm
Firm Info & Philosophies
What is a Brownfield?
Brownfield properties are defined as “abandoned, idled, or under used industrial and commercial facilities/sites where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental contamination”. The regulatory climate has shifted over the past few years from one that was more adversarial in scope — that emphasized command-and-control practices — to one that is focused on risk-based, practical strategies. It makes no practical sense to develop a gas station on the site of a former gas station with the stringent standards required if the site were to be redeveloped as a day care center. Environmental risk is now tied to the prospective end-use of a site.
Preparing brownfield sites for productive reuse requires the integration of many elements — real estate and financing issues, liability considerations, environmental assessments and remediation, compliance with regulatory requirements, and diligent coordination among various stakeholders.
What We Do
Kingfisher Group is an environmental consultant and developer that assists owners, municipalities and prospective purchasers in coordinating and delivering the various components in brownfield redevelopment. Learn more about our comprehensive services.
_____________________________
Briefly noted, by Ron May
* Kevin Willer answered my question about applicants who are referred in as a possible 1871 tenant in a technical sense, but what Kevin writes is not a full answer.
As I see it, KW's job is to make sure that the application and decision process is fair, entirely on a level playing field, with no leg up, no games, no "inside track" and that makes any wink and nod arrangement verboten, a big no no.
With as many interconnections as we have in this town, the playing field can never be entirely level. As I wrote on November 5, 2003 with respect to the Neil Kane/ITEC/Advanced Diamond Technologies controversy, "Everyone had supposedly recognized that the whole process was rife with conflicts of interest and Alan Thomas and Bob Rosenberg had told me that they were 'managing the conflict' and that conflict was an inherent part of the process."
Bill Weaver, one of the grandfathers of Chicago high tech angel investing, is retired now, but he used to wear many, often conflicting hats. He lead the angel funding, represented both the entrepreneur and the angel group, and he used the gimmick that on the day the deal was signed, he'd have one of his colleagues from another law firm sit in for him and represent the entrepreneur. for helping with the funding, Weaver generally took a seat on the board. Given how many hats Weaver wore, folks like Craig Bradley (another lawyer who did some angel investing and who is now a co-founder of Wildcat Angels out of Northwestern) used to tell me that he would never do what Weaver did, but by the same token, Weaver did far more deals than Bradley or any other attorney ever did back in the day.
Weaver used to routinely say that the cure for conflicts of interest was full disclosure. Full disclosure is a good start, but we need transparency and arm's length decision making to finish it off.
Of course it does get complicated and ultimately it's based on trust because this is such a small town and the trust includes giving people referred in by Troy Henikoff or Seth Kravitz NO special treatment. Having said that, even though there was some confusion in my mind about Jason Goodrich's application to 1871 (see Goodrich's note below in this report), Kevin did disclose to me during my tour on March 30th that he is an angel investor in Jason's firm, www.getshortlist.com and Jason even thinks that being an Excelerate grad will help him, but regardless of who is on the review committee (or who is not), it is still Kevin's job to make sure that the personal connections don't hold sway over the decision which should be entirely based on merit.
We should note that there are no non-Chicago people, people not tied to the inside crowd here, on the review committee -- the fair and unalloyed, uncorrupted process is Kevin's job and the local media's job is to monitor the situation closely to make sure that it is clean with a level playing field free of even the perception of conflicts.
We can never be fully free of conflicts and some hills and valleys on the playing field, but what we need as an antidote to favoritism and the buddy system running rampant is full disclosure and transparency.
Case in point: wouldn't all the applicants for admission to the 2011 class of Excelerate have liked to have known that Founder and CEO Jessica Kim and www.babbaco.com received angel funding from Excelerate CEO Troy Henikoff months before they were accepted in the program?
Here are some of Troy's investments as an angel.
+++++++++++++++++
Troy Henikoff's
Representative investments
Excelerate LLC, NextBigSound, BabbaCo, MightyNest, PVPower, EduLender, Neuros Technology
+++++++++++++++++
May again. PV Power appears to be an applicant for the Summer 2012 class of Excelerate and EduLender is also a Troy Henikoff angel investment and is an Excelerate LLC graduate.
I don't know the exact dates when Troy invested in PV Power or EduLender as an angel, but I respectfully disagree with Mark Lawrence of www.spothero.com who told me at the after party for the Bloomingdale's fashion show in November 2011 that he figures that the decision makers must know what they're doing so he is not worried about "the fix" being in.
No Mark, they often don't either know or care about doing things the right way. While it would not be fair to exclude Jessica Kim just because Troy invested in her firm, by the same token, shouldn't the decision be truly at arm's length, and not just with a wink and nod?
So, if Jason Goodrich and his firm or any other companies invested in by Kevin, Troy, Matt Moog and others like Seth Kravitz closely associated with 1871, do get admitted to 1871, not only should the connection be very publicly announced, the cleanliness of the decision process should be discussed openly.
Kevin, it is not sufficient for you to say that the application went through the review committee, which just "happens" to be made up entirely by your buddies. In my view, we need more than that.
But this is a thorny problem.
How do we judge or evaluate if the choices for who gets into 1871, the Knapp, Center, Tech Nexus, the Illinois Medical District (IMD), Catapult, the Evanston Incubator and other locations housing entrepreneurs are good or bad or somewhere in between?
First, we have to know what the goals and aims of the various locations are.
Willer, Frank Muscarelli and I discussed this when I took my tour on March 30th.
Kevin objects to the use of the term "incubator." 1871 is, in his view, a shared work space for digital tech start-ups with somewhere between 1 and 10 employees.
It is not an accelerator. Nor is it for biotech, nanotech, or energy companies.
I believe that within a year, they will change their minds on restricting 1871 to digital and open it up to other areas like energy including clean and green tech. Besides, who knows if they'll be able to fill the 50,000 square feet with digital start-ups alone.
1871 is for digital start-ups and as KW pointed out, not for one-off sales guys. So they don't want the sales guys from national firms or even from a local firm like Chicago Micro which is opening a downtown office.
One historic problem with incubators is that once a firm is there, it tends to stay forever. No one kicks them out, and if they do leave it's generally because they have outgrown the incubator or gone out of business. But too many incubator firms hit a plateau and stagnate.
Tech Nexus bills itself as a "clubhouse" and has not been emphasizing mentoring, but that may have changed. When I talked to Jennifer Thomas of www.travel720.com on March 7th at the FFF kick-off event, she was talking about exchanging emails with Fred Hoch about mentoring services. As Jennifer explained, the four finalists in the Lean Start-up Circle competition were split up between four locations and Tech nexus is one of the four, VentureSHOT is another from what I understood and I believe that 1871 might be another.
Slight digression with a point. Never mind that Fred and Jennifer were just feet away from each other in the same space, but they had to communicate by emails!!?? Fred, that's just goofy and besides Fred, Jennifer's a hottie, so you should talk to her Face to Face. My point is that the layout and the space does not control how people interact. the people control that. i see my apartment building as a good illustration. when i was more mobile and in better health, i knew far fewer people in my building, but now with the wheelchair and limited mobility, I've gotten to know many more people. The difference is not the building, it's the effort I make.
The Knapp Center at IIT has a full-time director, Nik Rokop.
Tim Lavengood runs the Evanston incubator and many of those firms have been there a long time.
I don't know who's running the IMD these days.
When Kevin says that 1871 is shared work space, he does have in mind that some collaboration will take place. David Carman and I agreed on Friday that the 1871 layout is conducive to collaboration, and it is not just Willer interacting with the "members" of 1871 as he calls them, but as Frank Muscarelli told me, it's the entrepreneurs interacting with themselves.
Carman noted that one reason he liked the Sync was that the space was open and lent itself to interaction and hence collaboration. He also said that the walled off space at Tech Nexus with separate offices hinders collaboration.
1871 will be offering classes to the members, and Una Pipic of the CEC will teach them. KW showed me the room where she'll be teaching, and while the CEC supposedly serves entrepreneurs of all kinds in Chicago, not just within the four walls of 1871, Kevin said that 1871 members -- aka tenants, aka payers of rent -- will have first priority.
Kevin, one caveat. If it turns out that the CEC with an annual budget of more than $1MM with four full-time employees ends up focusing only on the 1871 tenants, I'd say you're aiming far too low and thinking far too parochially.
Far be it for me to tout the efforts of one David Weinstein :-), but for a while David saw the job of the CEC as one of being an outsourced business development arm of the fledgling firms. If he was working with ABC Startup, he would connect them to CNA, Boeing, or Motorola. That is true value add, and it beats the heck out of just selling or acting as a conduit to generic legal or accounting services to entrepreneurs.
I hope that the CEC under Kevin will provide the kind of connectedness that creates traction for the start-ups. They certainly have the board to do it. Weinstein lost focus when he allowed the CEC to go off course by becoming a channel for DCEO funds.
So, first we have to know the goals of the people running a location that houses entrepreneurs.
Kevin says the goal is to create great companies.
Then we have to know whether they are making admission decisions based on the objectives and criteria rooted in merit versus extraneous factors like who they know.
But given their rules and criteria for who will occupy the space, it's axiomatic that you can't judge whether 1871 is a success just by counting the firms that succeed in their environment.
In part, that's because based on Willer's own stated rules, a company which gets to ten people -- well, then it's time to move out and presumably up.
I haven't asked Kevin whether a tenant firm that is paying the rent, but is not growing to the satisfaction of the "powers-that-be" could be kicked out, but trust me, I will ask him.
In observing what happens with startups, we need to drill down deep.
Not just who started the firm, and what they do, but what kind of traction they're getting, who their customers are, what their value proposition is, how it's being actualized, what established firms in Chicago they're connecting to, what their competitive strengths and weaknesses are, etc.?
We have start-up mania or fever in this town right now. Everyone is mesmerized, even transfixed, on the pursuit of the next Groupon.
But the success of 1871 will not be known to us by just looking at their members or tenants.
We'll have to track the firms far longer term, well beyond their time at 1871 because if a firm grows at 1871 and hits ten people, it will be asked to move out and perhaps it will go to a place like Catapult which started off with somewhat larger firms.
Steve Hendershot wrote about Catapult in early March.
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20120305/BLOGS06/120309922/citys-latest-communal-tech-startup-space-launches
++++++++++++++
Catapult's co-founders are three young tech entrepreneurs: Ryan Leavitt, 26, Vishal Shah, 27, and Kris Chinosorn, 34. Mr. Leavitt is running Catapult's day-to-day operations, while Mr. Shah (CEO of VLinks Media) and Mr. Chinosorn (CEO of MentorMob) serve as the initial tenants, along with four other companies — StyleSeek, Tech.Li, Afiniate and 5Degrees. Catapult itself is a nonprofit and does not take an equity stake in its member companies.
Catapult sponsors Henricksen and Allsteel collaborated on the design for Catapult’s office space. One of the planned common areas is pictured here.
Mr. Leavitt has lined up sponsors and partners that will assist the Catapult companies. For one, the real estate comes free of charge from law firm Foley & Lardner, which will provide legal assistance to Catapult's tenants. Tenants also will have access to accounting help from Blackman Kallick, hiring services from EmpowerHR, IT consulting from Seneca Global and public relations work from SSPR. In addition, part of Mr. Leavitt's job is to attract investors to the site to check out the Catapult companies.
++++++++++++++++++
May again. We tend to follow the progress of start-ups for a year or two, and then get bored, lose interest, and shift our eyes to the latest shiny new object.
As a result, firms like SAVO Group, Cleversafe, Threadless, Sittercity and many others tend to get ignored.
The kind of work that David Carman is doing at BNC Startup with interviews like the one he did with Genevieve Thiers, http://vimeo.com/39010680, or the one he did with Kevin Willer, http://vimeo.com/35382695, or with Troy Henikoff, http://vimeo.com/32242466, represents the drill down deep approach we need more of. David just needs to interview fewer heads of Economic Development organizations and more actual entrepreneurs.
Bruce Montgomery has done hundreds of in-depth interviews with just about everyone in this town through his Technology Access TV program. I dug up a few shows on the net and I'll watch his two-parter on crowd funding.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUKJrUYvWmU, http://vimeo.com/37017590, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YnKHAYc5Ws
So, we need long term tracking, in depth examination, and a much more meaningful media presence when it comes to the plethora of start-ups.
Built in Chicago is doing a good job of cataloguing the funding and the acquisitions with the work of Adam Calica, but what Adam is doing is just scratching the surface.
Adam recently reported that 12 firms in tech were acquired in Q1 2012 for a total of $127MM (never mind that some of the deals had undisclosed amounts):
http://www.builtinchicago.org/blog/q1-2012-digital-startup-report
Prep Me, Pointbridge, Cellit, Clear Trial, Intelli, Mob Manager, Savid Tech, RoundArch, Registry Pro, Quiet FDN, FeeFighters, and ki edi + design.
This is not just a numbers game, however.
How many of us can rattle off what Brain Tree https://www.braintreepayments.com/
does, what Trunk Club does, http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/trunk-club-outfitting-men-just-the-way-they-and-their-wives-like-it/ ?
Too often we note the funding and the acquisition, and leave the rest.
http://www.builtinchicago.org/blog/q1-2012-digital-startup-report
Adam says that 17 firms were funded for a total of $33MM.
We're skirting around a key issue.
If you ever studied statistics, you'll recall that there are two types of error, Type I and Type II, often called false positives and false negatives.
A false positive would be hiring a guy who turns out to be a dud, buying a car that turns out to be a lemon, etc.
That is easy to see because the mistakes are visible to everyone.
What is not so easy to see are the ones that got away, also known as the false negatives.
To assess false negatives for 1871, we need to know what firms they reject and it woild be nice to know why, but not really necessary.
I don't actually know of any firms which fit the criteria that have been rejected.
You know, it is possible that the whole mantra being spewed by Willer, Moog and company that the demand for their desks far exceeds the supply could be a cleverly crafted marketing ploy. Make people think it's a very exclusive club, very picky, and you're lucky to get in. They'll crave acceptance. Companies like Accenture and P&G have developed this psychological technique for decades. the science behind it is called cognitive dissonance,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance, theory developed by Leon Festinger at Stanford in at late 1950s.
A false negative would be a company that applies to get into 1871, gets rejected and turns out to be Michael Jordan.
It is harder to track the companies which were rejected since you don't see them as readily.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive_paradox
http://falsenegatives.blogspot.com/
I'll have much more on this topic.
* I've been trying to find out the logic behind the Lightbank funding of Social Katy given that it's really a service firm -- not writing code that automates anything -- essentially a niche PR firm focused on helping companies with their Twitter and Facebook presence. The question I've been asking PR professionals on a national level is "Why would a VC firm looking for a 10x return make this investment? Where's the scalability? The barrier to entry?"
Let me be clear here. A tiny percentage of businesses qualify for funding by VCs, even if they are potentially great businesses.
Being a profitable business with positive cash flow can often be a negative from point of view of VCs.
Julian Pretto went through this several years ago. TiE-Midwest rejected him for their mentor program and it was not because they thought he couldn't build a successful business. In fact, he has built one, and now has 40 people, with offices in Arlington Heights and soon to be downtown, but Chicago Micro is still not a prospect for venture money.
I spoke with people at PR firms in NY about this - first off they were surprised that any services firm would even seek - let alone find funding. It's relatively unheard of - and they nor any of their associates had considered it. A firm is worth as much as it can bill -- there's no secret sauce in plugging a bunch of kids into a laptop to make social media posts. Needless to say the comments ranged from "they probably received enough money to make the announcement: $5K, to not more than $50K or $100K." Every commentator questioned the nature of the relationship between Katy, Craig and Lightbank - as being somewhat hard to understand - murky - and not cut and dry. Needless to say - Social Katy is in the PR business - and this generated a little PR. But that was last week. If the George Zimmermans of the world can't capture the front pages for more than a couple of weeks - it's clear that the Social Katys of the world can't either. He heard the gurgle and spit last week - let's revisit this in nine months and see if SK's new offices will be in NYC's Trump Tower or Toldeo, Ohio!
__________________________________
www.retrofitme.com and the small world we live in: [May here. Now, here's a longwinded small world story -- way back in 1985, I was put on a protein sparring diet by doctors at Billings Hospital in the diabetes clinic at the University of Chicago and it resulted in my losing 65 lbs. in 70 days! I went from 295 to 229. But after about 6 months holding my weight below 250, I gained it all back; they sent me down the hall to the obesity clinic run by Dr. Robert Kushner and I worked with Dr. Kushner for about two years until Dr. Kushner kicked me out, telling me that I was a refractory patient (I didn't know what that meant, and he explained that I'm like a mirror, whatever they tried came back at them). Years later, Kushner left the University of Chicago and went to Northwestern. BTW, they got rid of me just as they were being deluged with requests for help from their obesity clinic and that deluge came because of Oprah's liquid protein diet in 1988. Just one more thing. I worked with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology in the program, Mike Alspaugh, and the approach was rooted in the behavioral model. One good thing that came out of that therapy was that I stopped going to No Hana on Broadway for their "all you can eat" sushi lunch deals. What they got me to realize that I was going to the all you can eat lunches to prove that I could get the best of the restaurant, to prove that I could "put them out of business." Once I understood that my addiction to all you can eat was rooted in my desire to be a big shot, I quit doing it. Overeating is not just overeating, it's a whole continuum of associated behaviors, just as smoking is about much more than the actual smoking with associated behaviors such as when a person does it, holding the cigarette box, playing with the cigarettes, etc.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot why I'm telling this story with that trip down memory lane.
On April 3rd at the Built in Chicago event at Rockit, I met a guy named Greg King who works for www.retrofitme.com.
It's a weight loss plan focused on the modest result of losing 10% of body weight.
I looked at their site, as I often do at 2am and noticed that their chief advisor is none other than Dr. Robert Kushner!
It is a small world, a long life -- QED.]
Subject: Re: Greg, so how did you guys at Retrofitme.com connect with Dr. Kushner?
Date: 4/11/2012 2:29:00 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: greg@retrofitme.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
Ronald,
Our advisory board and program advisors call Dr. Kushner when they have specific questions.
Regards,
Greg King
Retrofit Tech Guru
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 1:43 PM, <RONALDMAY@aol.com> wrote:
_________________________________
http://www.retrofitme.com/company
friends, and country.
Jeff Hyman founded Retrofit after he and his wife shared a life changing experience at an exclusive weight loss resort. They were assigned a team of experts who helped them change their mindset, focus on long term results, and reconstruct the way they ate and exercised.
Retrofit brings that intense successful experience into your daily life. We are honored to have some of the nation's leading experts in weight management build the Retrofit program from sound medical research and clinical data, to serve the needs of real people.
The Advisory Board
Robert Kushner, MD, MS
Holly Wyatt, MD
James Hill, PhD
Dawn Jackson Blatner, RD, CSSD
Brad Saks, PsyD
Melissa Paolino, ACSM-CES
The Business Team
Jeff Hyman, Chief Executive Officer
Kim Evenson, Chief Marketing Officer
Doug Donohoe, Chief Technology Officer
Whitney Durbin, Director of Client Services
Vikki Caruso, Director of Wellness Experts
438,000
That’s the number of people that have taken the quiz developed by Dr. Robert Kushner to identify their top healthy lifestyle challenges. Find out yours.
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Robert Kushner, MD, MS
A nationally recognized expert in the care of overweight and obese patients, Dr. Kushner, helps patients manage their weight with state-of-the art approaches including diet, exercise, behavioral change, pharmacotherapy and bariatric surgery. He is Clinical Director of the Northwestern Comprehensive Center on Obesity in Chicago, Illinois. He is past President of The Obesity Society (TOS), the American Board of Physician Nutrition Specialists (ABPNS), and the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN).
Dr. Kushner serves on the editorial boards of two prominent journals, Obesity and the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. He has authored numerous articles, reviews, books and book chapters. Among his recent books are Counseling Overweight Adults: The Lifestyle Patterns Approach and Toolkit; American Medical Association's Assessment and Management of Obesity; Dr. Kushner's Personality Type Diet; Treatment of the Obese Patient; Fitness Unleashed: A Dog and Owner's Guide to Losing Weight and Gaining Health Together. He is the recipient of the 2011 Atkinson-Stern Award for Distinguished Public Service.
Dr. Kushner received his medical degree from the University of Illinois, completed his residency in internal medicine at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, completed a post-graduate fellowship in clinical nutrition at the University of Chicago Hospitals, and received his master's degree in clinical nutrition and nutritional biology at the University of Chicago.
___________________________
http://www.retrofitme.com/howitworks
Weight management as data-driven as the rest of our lives.
What You Get
Retrofit brings the best of science to help you change your weight for good.
3 Wellness Experts
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Program Advisor
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The Retrofit Promise
You will lose at least 10 or 15% of your current weight and keep it off through the end of the 12-month program.
If you meet your commitment and do not hit the weight loss goal specific to your personalized plan, we will provide you with a second year of services free.
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Take Your Next Step
Retrofit
Call 1-800-975-7198 for program details.
Retrofit5250 Old Orchard Road Suite 300Skokie, IL60077
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Miscellaneous notes (3 messages)
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#1: Broken Search on your Web Site - theMayReport.com - Using MS Internet Explorer 9
Inbox
x
James Wiczer jwiczer@sensorsynergy.com
5:25 PM (5 minutes ago)
to me
Ron,
Often your newsletters contain some interesting information. -- Thanks for your efforts.
I tried the newly improved and repaired "Search" feature on your Web site, but found it inoperative with Internet Explorer 9.
Error http 404 occurs when a search - any search - is attempted with Microsoft's IE 9 Browser.
For example, type "May" in the Google Custom Search entry field in the upper left part of your home page.
When you click on "Search" the error, "Webpage cannot be found --- http 404" appears when using Internet Explorer 9.0.5
Good luck with your May Report efforts.
Regards,
Jamie Wiczer
James (Jamie) Wiczer, PhD
Sensor Synergy, Inc.
1000 Hart Rd. Suite #220
Barrington, IL 60010
Ph. 847-353-8200
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#2: subscribe link seems to be broken
Inbox
x
from: Shahriar Allen shar.allen@gmail.com
to: ron@themayreport.com
date: Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 9:40 AM
subject: subscribe link seems to be broken
mailed-by: gmail.com
signed-by: gmail.com
: Important mainly because of the people in the conversation.
Shahriar Allen shar.allen@gmail.com
9:40 AM (1 hour ago)
to me
Hi Ron,
The subscribe link on your page does not seem to work.
Regards,
Shar
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#3: Subject: Happy birthday Ron
Date: 4/15/2012 5:37:45 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: uki@cyberwalkabout.com
To: ronaldmay@aol.com
Happy Birthday from Uki and Natalia!
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