TechStar celebration - free to guests of NETTC members

In years past, the NETTC TechStar Awards event has been a luncheon that was, well, a bit pricey for those who didn't have corporate sponsorship - or skin in the game in terms of an entry in one of the TechStar categories.

This year, the price of admission can't be an excuse, not at least for the Northeast Tennessee Technology (NETTC) members or a limited number of guests of NETTC members. As of today, the EventBrite sign-up still shows 95 guest tickets available.

For free.

I've already recommended the event to an NETTC member, who in turn invited me to go as a guest. So I guess that means there are 94 free tickets left . . . 

In addition, back by popular demand, the TechStar awards will be also be accompanied by a tech symposium. It's the kind of event where short classes are held on a variety of topics. If I were a member, it's the kind of place I'd do one of my presentations on business streaming to the iPad / iPhone or how to convert old videos to BluRay, but the other presentations look equally as interesting ;)  

The tech symposium runs for a few hours prior to the TechStar dinner. 

NETTC TechStar Award applications available

In my local region, spanning the borders of three states, there's an award that really piqued my interest years ago. Started by Shelburne Ferguson, the TechStar Award is a celebration of technology, innovation and - to a lesser degree - entrepreneurship and economic development.

Hosted by the Northeast Tennessee Technology Council (NETTC) the TechStar Awards have continued Shelburne's vision for almost a decade now, and continue to be a big draw for the NETTC to recruit members and showcase the opportunities in the region.

According to NETTC president Lewis Cox, award applications are available now.

"Do not forget to apply for your own TechStar Award by September 10th," said Cox, in an email announcing the awards banquet. "We know many of you have been making good use of technology, and this should be recognized and shared. To apply for an award, to be an exhibitor or sponsor, visit www.nettc.org."

Small Business Role In Economic Development

The small business role in economic development is a paper by Kelly Dane Edmiston, who was with the Kansas City Federal Reserve branch when the document was written in 2004. Still highly applicable today.

Final thoughts on Kingsport Small Business CNN win

Hmm, well, the Kingsport small business debacle is soon to be over, hopefully: even though CNN never took down the errant rankings (leading me to believe there was never any contact with them from the City of Kingsport) the new rankings will be out in a few months. Let's just hope CNN hires a firm that know how to do math, beyond just counting!

The whole experience leaves a bitter taste in my mouth; still comfortable I did the right thing, and have to realize that others might feel compelled to win at all costs. Based on that, I'm going to take a break from posting content about Kingsport for a while, until there's evidence of a level of professionalism that seems lacking.

Postlude: CNN Money Kingsport Small Business Award

[Update 4:45pm: The City of Kingsport representative has confirmed, in an email, the accuracy of the original analysis, adding: "I will be talking to Census and CNNMoney.com on Monday about correcting the data sets." See this subsequent Bjournal.com article for more details. Issue resolved?] 


Postlude (20 November 2009 10:45am): Two days ago, on a call between a reporter and a representative of the City of Kingsport, two claims surfaced regarding CNN Money’s ranking Kingsport as the best place to launch a small business: first, that our analysis of the error was itself errant; second, that another error existed in the Census data used to rank Kingsport number one.

Unfortunately, the representative had not read the original blog post, prior to making these same claims to city and community leadership,  nor had the representative been able to pinpoint the second error. The reason is quite simple: there is no other error.

A website the representative pointed to as proof that a second error existed is the same website we used to analyze the error in the first place.  Often referred to as CenStats, the site allows one to choose an MSA and a year and then generates detailed info about an MSA - the exact detail CNN Money uses to populate the snapshot section of its rankings. 

• Choosing the Bristol VA MSA for 2004 yields the 1779 businesses that were pointed out in the original blog post as the businesses missing from the baseline. 
• Choosing the Kingsport Bristol TN VA MSA for 2004 yields the original errant baseline number of 4235 businesses.

Notice a pattern? In two clicks on the CenStats website, the error emerges, consistent with the original analysis. One more click (choosing the Kingsport Bristol TN VA MSA for 2007) yields the correct 6087 businesses at the end of 2007.  

Of even more interest, an extra two clicks of CenStats obliterates an objection mentioned in the first post, namely that the Bristol VA and Kingsport MSAs were combined together all the way back to 2000. CenStats clearly shows the Bristol VA and Kingsport MSAs as separate all the way up to 2006, combining them together in 2007. If one tries to choose the Bristol VA MSA for 2007, the end result is a screen that says “No record found.” 

Year	Kingsport MSA (24700)	Bristol MSA (14980)
2004	4235	1779
2005	4222	1813
2006	4210	1801
2007	6087	0

The full chart shows the Kingsport MSA’s small business numbers declined in 2004 - 2006, while the Bristol VA MSA’s small businesses actually grew.  The original post intentionally avoided pointing this out, but the requirement to “show our work” (like in long division in elementary school) now openly reveals the small business decline in the Kingsport MSA. 

How will Kingsport address this Census Bureau administrative/CNN quality control issue? 



Finally, what about jobs?  Did we gain anything?

Yes, we did. The combined MSAs saw a total of 8,085 jobs added for the four year period.

The CenStats data doesn’t tell us how many of those were small business jobs, though, as it only provides business size and aggregate employees, per industry, without breaking them down to aggregate employees per industry per business size.

I suspect most of these jobs were gained from large businesses, for four reasons:
First, small business declined through most of the timeframe, as we only added 73 small businesses over the four years.

Second, even if we assumed all these 73 small businesses were made up of the maximum number of employees (49 employees) that would only bring us to 3,577 jobs created, less than half of the total 8,085 jobs created in that same timeframe.

Third, a maximum possible 3,577 small business jobs number can't possibly be true, because the number of 20-49 person businesses only grew by 15 total for the timeframe, yielding a maximum possible of 735 jobs.

Fourth, even if we run a formula based on a consistent weighted average, where the average is the percentage of maximum employees per business size (100% would mean that 1-4 person companies would have four people in them, while 50% would mean of 1-4 person companies have 2 people in them) we end up with a decline in the number of small business jobs.

At a 50% consistent weighted average, we actually lose 2,147 small business jobs.
So, while there is no doubt we can say the combined MSA gained small businesses and gained jobs, we can't say for certain we gained jobs in small businesses.

Jobs	Kingsport MSA	Bristol MSA	Aggregate
2004	76,694	29297	105,991
2005	77,040	29289	106,329
2006	81,214	30420	111,634
2007	114,076	0	114,076
			Total Jobs Added 2004-07	8,085

Food for thought for someone like me who is always touting small business as the growth engine -- maybe Kingsport is unique after all, appearing to have had significant mid- to large-sized business growth.

Theaters, theaters, everywhere, and not a one being bought by a city

v

Embarrassment in Entrepreneurship?

A great quote from the founder of LinkedIn:

"If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late."

http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/technology/article/the-iterate-fast-and-release-often-philosophy-of-entrepreneurship-ben-parr




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