From Greg's Head

Happy Halloween!

My colleague and resident millennial advisor to the blog, Jen Lemanski, asked me to read this article from Advertising Age about an interesting contest from MTV. 

It’s nice to see companies such as MTV supporting and encouraging this entrepreneurial generation. With everyone searching for the next Web 2.0 phenomenon, MTV and Cisco’s Digital Incubator contest puts their money where their mouths are, by awarding start-up capital to the niche websites targeting college students. 

The best thing they did was to examine the business models and unique impressions of each website to determine a winner. Hopefully the winners, Matthew Fargo and Ben Luduc-Mills will be able to translate the money they won into further success.

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PKF Texas needs your vote! 

We have been named a 2007 Houston’s Greatest Company by the Greater Houston Partnership and we are vying for the People’s Choice Award. The honorees are companies who have made a positive impact on the community and have advanced the greater Houston region as a business magnet.

You can vote by visiting www.houstonsgreatest.net or AT&T, Verizon Wireless & Dobson users can text the word “Vote” to 63513. The voting is open until November 26^th.  

So spread the word and tell your family and friends! To find out why we were honored as a Houston’s Greatest Company click here. PKF Texas and I thank you in advance for voting. 

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I’m here at Texas A&M's Zone Club, within the confines of Kyle Field, where the 2007 Aggie 100 were just announced. 

Guest speakers included Richard Scruggs, Executive Director of the CNVE; Bill Jones, the Chairman of the Texas A&M University Board of Regents; Dr. Eddie J. Davis, President of Texas A&M; Dr. Ricky Griffin, the Interim Dean of the Mays School; and yours truly to give the details on the honorees for the Class of 2007.

My speaking role was limited, but the role of PKF Texas in the background and verification process was an enjoyable and tedious process.  I want to thank John Stephenson, my assistant for all his help.

Over 650 people attended the Awards Luncheon today.  The event was sold out several weeks ago without and marketing effort and is now the hottest ticket on campus!

Major sponsors of the event include:  Texas Business Journals (there will be a special section in each of the 4 major cities in Texas); The Association of Former Students, Bill Miller B-B-Q, Hollinden Professional Services Marketing, Research Valley Partnership, Infinity Pro Sports, and PKF Texas.

In addition, the CEO of the #1 ranked Aggie business (REDE), spoke and Christine Hollinden announced the creation of the Aggie 100 Scholars program a new student scholarship funded by the honorees of the Aggie 100 program.

The singing cadets kicked off the event and followed by lunch.

The highlight of the day was the countdown to the actual honorees. 

Below is the list of Honorees and their growth from 2004-2006:

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Last night at the Association of Former Students, the Aggie 100 Class of 2007 came together for the first time. Over 250 attended the welcome reception.

Richard Scruggs, Executive Director of the CNVE addressed the crowd and welcomed everyone to the campus. Additional comments came from representatives of the Association of Former Students and the Research Valley Partnership.  

John Beddow, publisher of the Houston Business Journal spoke on behalf of the Texas Business Journals and the publishers from Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio Business Journals were also in attendance.

Today is the big day! I’ll have more later today after the winners are announced! Come back at 1 PM today and see who won.

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Note: Running most Fridays in FromGregsHead.com, is a continuing series of tips brought to you by Greg Price. These run Saturday mornings during the BusinessMaker’s Radio Show on KPRC 950AM. Audio files can be found on the Entrepreneur's Playbook page of the PKF Texas website.

This is the fifth in our series on Information Management from Microsoft and PKF Texas. When people can easily and quickly communicate insights and knowledge with peers, customers, and partners, they drive business success. Give your people the tools they need for:

• Quick publication. With Microsoft SharePoint Server you can easily create and publish Web content directly from familiar applications or e-mail. Personalized, dedicated SharePoint sites make data storage and sharing easy.
• Dynamic and frequent collaboration. Reduce travel costs through the use of online meetings and team workspaces that help groups to better collaborate on or off the corporate network.  
• Effective communication. With the integrated platform, your people can easily find and communicate with peers, partners, and customers in multiple ways (such as e-mail, phone, and instant messages). With team profiling tools, personnel can take advantage of people networks, both inside and outside your organization, to connect and share knowledge.
• Partner and supplier connections. Windows SharePoint Services helps you achieve tighter integration and high-value connections with your partners and suppliers through the easy creation of more secure extranet sites. This integrated approach can streamline shared business connections and reduce the time spent on administrative matters.

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Howdy from the Aggie 100!

It’s an honor and a pleasure for PKF Texas to again serve as the Aggie 100 accountants. PKF Texas strongly supports the Mays School and its Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship here at Texas A&M. 

A big Aggie thank you to Richard Scruggs, Lenae Huebner, Dean Griffin and Dr. Davis for your unwavering support of a unique one-of-a-kind program at a “Unique American Institution.”

Every Aggie is already a winner. But the Aggie 100 stands for the school’s legacy as well as its future. So how did we get this year’s list of the Aggie 100?

Over 200 companies completed the application process this year. Additional information was sent to our offices in Houston, where we verified the financial information, and reviewed the data submitted by the applicants.

In some cases we spoke with some of applicants to gain additional insight about the business. It took about 6 weeks to review all the applications.

Once we had the data, we calculated the two year compound annual growth rate from 2004 to 2006. Then the individual companies were ranked by their growth rate to get the Aggie 100.

For those or you who won't be able to attend the Aggie 100 Awards Ceremony on Friday October 26, we have another way for you to participate. KBTX television in College Station will be filming the event and streaming it live on their website www.KBTX.com . The coverage will begin around 11:15 a.m. (Central Time) and will last until all the honorees have been announced (around 1:00 p.m.).

Check back at 1:00 PM CST for an update on the winners!

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Last week the Rice Alliance was recognized as the leading university entrepreneurship center in the United States for the creation of successful new enterprises by the National Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers (NCEC).

You can read the rest of the press release here. 

Rice University was also named as one of the top 25 U.S. graduate schools by Entrepreneur Magazine. 

This is exciting news for the Rice Alliance and Rice University! 

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Note: Running most Fridays in FromGregsHead.com, is a continuing series of tips brought to you by Greg Price. These run Saturday mornings during the BusinessMaker’s Radio Show on KPRC 950AM. Audio files can be found on the Entrepreneur's Playbook page of the PKF Texas website.

This is the fourth in our series on Information Management from Microsoft and PKF Texas. Information, once found, must be organized and managed to be used effectively. When data, facts, and figures are assembled in a coherent manner, they become knowledge and insight that your team or organization can use to drive the business forward. Effective data management requires:

• Sorting and selecting. A Desktop Search that offers visual page previews with detailed summary information to help reduce the time people spend interpreting search results.
• Customizable, up-to-date searches. Retrieve your information on demand with saved searches that organize and quickly display up-to-date information
• Integration with applications. Excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft Office applications smoothly incorporate data regardless of its format, to help your people transform information into knowledge.

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As I announced back in August  the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) is coming to Houston. Microsoft has finally announced the dates, July 7-10, 2008.

This is what Microsoft has to say about Houston:

“The fourth-largest city in the United States, Houston has emerged as the Gulf Coast’s cultural capital. A major U.S. hub for international business and trade, Houston boasts industry leadership in energy, information technology, medicine, and even space exploration. The city is hip. Diverse. And offers a world-class art scene and the kind of cuisine foodies crave.”

I whole-heartedly agree with the above. By choosing Houston for such an important conference, Microsoft is demonstrating exactly what Joel Kotkin was talking about in his Opportunity Urbanism report. 

Houston is an opportunity city and it’s great that large corporations are recognizing they can find business success here.

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With all of the exciting things going on in Houston, I haven’t let you know about the article in which we were featured quite prominently. It ran in the Oct. 5^th issue of the Houston Business Journal. The article was about accounting firms and how they are reaching out to the next generation with “hip” marketing. 

Greg Barr, the reporter, mentions the blog as one of the tools we use to speak to the next generation. Looking at our Webtrends, we’ve had quite a few visitors referred from that article. Welcome to fromgregshead.com!

If you haven’t had the chance, take a look at our new career site, www.pkftexas.com/careers. I’ve learned quite a bit about team members who I don’t have the opportunity to work with on a daily basis. 

What are your firms doing to reach out to the next generation? How much are you promoting your firm and city’s culture rather than just the job role?

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This is the third in our series on Information Management from Microsoft and PKF Texas.  Effective business information management requires providing the tools and access to an organization's people, helping them to make better decisions, be more productive, and achieve greater success. These tools and processes help people to find, use, and share information quickly, easily, and more securely.

The beginning of the information process typically begins with access—quickly and smoothly connecting people with the right information—which can dramatically impact an organization's productivity. To provide adequate access, make sure that your people have:

• A single interface that is integrated across the desktop, corporate network, and Internet, reducing the time spent looking for information.
• A smart search that quickly finds relevant results with business-specific search capabilities—across line of business applications, databases, and more.
• An intuitive search. Effectiveness is maximized when people use a familiar user interface, integrated into all familiar Microsoft Office applications.

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Once again the blog has been nominated for Best Corporate Blog for the Bloggers Choice Awards!

We’re currently in 10^th place, but I know we can do better! Here’s what my loyal blog readers need to do:

• Go to www.bloggerschoiceawards.com. 
• Click on ‘Best Corporate Blog’ and look for fromgregshead.com. It will move up as more people vote. 
• Click on the ‘vote’ button – they’ll ask you to create an account for voting purposes because you can only once per blog, per category.

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In conjunction with the Greater Houston Partnership Joel Kotkin recently published Opportunity Urbanism: An Emerging Paradigm for the 21^st Century .

Using Houston as a model, Kotkin explores “the fundamental economic and demographic dynamics of …an opportunity city.”

The section that really caught my eye was “Can Opportunity Cities Become World Cities?” Before reading the section (the short answer is yes by the way) I immediately thought “Houston is a world city!”

One only needs to look as far as our partnership with the GHP for the International Connections speaker series to see that. For example, our next luncheon on October 17^th features Hungary. The Hungarian Ambassador to the US, the US Ambassador to Hungary and the Hungarian Minister of Finance are all scheduled to speak. 

If Houston wasn’t a world city, would these distinguished individuals jump at the chance to speak to members of the Houston business community? Probably not. From the energy industry to the Port of Houston, our role in the global community is a big one and I’m glad we’re being recognized! 

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A very exciting event is coming to Houston! The Greater Houston Partnership and the UK Trade & Investment at the British Consulate General are bringing in Dr. Ari Patrinos, president of Synthetic Genomics, Inc., to speak at the Next Generation BioFuels conference on October 15^th. 

Dr. Patrinos was the director of the US Department of Energy’s component of the Human Genome Project. He will be speaking on a panel with several other key individuals discussing the industrial biotechnology trends and new research developments. 

Another session at the one day conference will discuss Texas’ role in the biofuels market. The discussion will be chaired by Paul Dickerson, COO for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the Department of Energy. 

Here is the official blurb about the conference from the GHP and the UK Trade & Investment office:

“Please join UK Trade & Investment at the British Consulate-General, Houston and the Greater Houston Partnership for a one day conference on Next Generation biofuels on October 15, 2007 at the Intercontinental Hotel. This conference will look at current and next generation industrial biotechnology methods and techniques and how they are meeting the global energy challenge. New approaches are being developed and deployed in the US and the UK by major oil companies, agribusiness, venture- backed start-ups and research groups.

With strong ties to the energy, agricultural and biotechnology sectors, Houston is uniquely positioned to become a hub for biofuels activity. Likewise the UK is on the forefront of biofuels research and development. This conference therefore will align US and UK strengths in the biofuels market.”

Date & Time: Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 · 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Location: InterContinental Houston · 2222 West Loop South · Houston, TX 77027
Cost: Members and nonmembers: $125

For more information, contact Leah Mayo: leah.mayo@fco.gov.uk, 713-659-6270 ext. 2136, or Blake Harvey: bharvey@houston.org, 713-844-3639.

This is going to be a great event, I hope I see you there!

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This is a second in our series on Information Management from Microsoft and PKF Texas. Organizations generate more and more information that is increasingly valuable, but also increasingly hard to locate and use in a meaningful way. Knowledge workers spend 15 percent to 30 percent of their work days looking for information, and at least 50 percent of online searches are not successful. The number and complexity of information sources are growing constantly, which results in people storing more data in more places. This creates inconsistencies and confusion.

As a result, the return on information for enterprises is lower than it should be. The growing complexity of business information makes it increasingly difficult to structure, organize, and process the information to improve business insight. Compounding this issue, people have an increasing amount of data on their computers, much of it stored and organized poorly. Often, when this data is placed on corporate networks, there is no unified process for filing and retrieving it.

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The Rice Alliance always has great events and this one came through my inbox yesterday morning. I thought you'd like to be aware.

Elevator Pitch Opportunity at the 5^th Annual Information Technology & Web 2.0 Venture Forum

Event Date: Thursday, November 8, 2007

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship has a limited number of opportunities available for companies to present their elevator pitch at the upcoming 5^th Annual Information Technology & Web 2.0 Venture Forum to be held on Thursday, November 8, 2007.  Interested companies can submit their executive summary.

Deadline: Executive Summaries due Tuesday, October 9, 2007 at 5:00 pm

Send your executive summary to: tvforum@rice.edu

The Elevator Pitch Presentations represent tremendous opportunities to showcase your company to a large group of industry participants, investors, service providers, mentors, and entrepreneurs.

Companies can be involved in any aspect of the life science industry, including but not limited to:

• Hardware
• Software
• Web 2.0 Companies
• Energy-related IT
• Video/imaging for security
• Wireless sensor platforms

To apply to present your Elevator Pitch at this event, please send an electronic version of your 2-page Executive Summary to tvforum@rice.edu, no later than Tuesday, October 9, 2007 at 5:00 pm CDT.  There is no fee to apply and no affiliation with Rice University is required.

We look forward to seeing you on November 8, 2007 at the Information Technology & Web 2.0 Venture Forum, regardless of whether your company applies to present.

For more information: tvforum@rice.edu or 713-348-3443.

Let me know if you choose to participate. I’d love to get an insiders perspective of the event!

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The Aggie 100 is fast approaching! The awards luncheon will be held October 26^th at Texas A&M. 

As the accountants for the Aggie 100, I can’t reveal who is on this year’s list yet, but suffice it to say, the companies all truly represent what it means to be an Aggie. There is a lot of wisdom to be gleaned from the winners. I hope you take the time to visit the Aggie 100 website and see what each CEO has to say after the awards luncheon.

If you have any questions about the event itself, contact Lenae Hubner at aggie100@tamu.edu. See you there!

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