Rochester Startup Blog written by Lee Drake

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Rochester, NY still faring well despite economy

December 21, 2009

In two recently released studies, Rochester came out among the top cities nationwide.  A Brooking’s Institute report ranks Rochester’s economy among the top 20 (14th overall) in the last 3 quarters.  Rochester is the only city in the entire Northeastern United States to enjoy that distinction.  We’re also the only city that ranked among the top 20 in every single quarter of the year.  The report mentions our strong real estate economy with rising home values, a stabilizing job market compared to other regions, and an overall increase in goods and service output.  Even Buffalo and Syracuse NY made the list for the last quarter (though their overall growth has not been consistent like our’s has).

In addition a Farmer’s Insurance report lists Rochester NY 5th in overall secure places to live.   This list is compiled each year using factors such as housing values, risk of natural disaster, crime, job market, life expectancy and air quality.  I suspect our strong local health system, stable housing prices, and relatively lower unemployment due to a strong small business economy contribute to these factors greatly.

According to www.bestplaces.com Rochester’s cost of living is a full 20% lower than the average US City.  That means that we have inexpensive real estate - a dollar’s salary is worth 15-20% more in Rochester than anywhere else, our crime rates are low, our real estate values are lower but stable, and we enjoy a lower unemployment rank than most of the country.  That all sounds positive to me.

So why then is NYS overall rated as one of the least happy places to live?  Can the “upstate divisionists” be right and (as they claim) downstate is so unhappy they’re dragging the rest of us down with them?  Is it just the weather and the “long gray” we get each winter?  Is it our highly conservative approach to promoting small businesses and entrepreneurialism (most of the small businesses and entrepreneurs I know live in Rochester despite the low level of angel and venture capital - not because of it)?

I’m curious - what are your views?  How can we continue to outshine the competition as the folks at Eyes on the Future point out each year and yet we’re still down on Rochester and NYS all the time.  There must be something strong about us that makes us what we are - why isn’t that making us happy?

Written by Lee Drake · Filed Under Politics, Startups, media · Comments

Abby gets it wrong….

December 5, 2009

In her December 5th, 2009 column famous columnist Dear Abby (aka Jeanne Phillips) gets a letter from a reader who has come into some money which would give her a “cushion” to use while she tries to build her own business (basically it would cover a year’s worth of her income).  The letter writer goes on to say that she’s dreamed of being an entrepreneur all her life but in the past has not had the opportunity that this inheritance has given her.  Her friends and family are telling her she’s “crazy” and will end up “blowing her inheritance” on this dream because small businesses are destined to fail.  To any of you who are entrepreneurs you are already laughing.  She’s just going through what every single entrepreneur on the planet has been through.   But the real problem comes with Dear Abby’s reply.

Jeanne Phillips AKA Dear AbbyAbby’s (aka Jeanne Phillips) sage recommendation (which she obviously didn’t ask any REAL entrepreneur’s about) is to write up a business plan (ok so far) and present it to a bank and ask for a loan.  Supposedly if the bank says “yes” to the loan then the idea is a sound one.  Does anyone else see the silly irrationality of this “test” to see if the business idea is valid?  No?  Well let me spell it out.  The bank will either say yes or no - based on it’s own interests - not the validity of the business plan:

  • YES - ok, rule number one - bank’s will only loan you money when you don’t need it.  So if they say “YES” to loaning money on this plan it will be for one reason only - that this young lady already has enough money and assets to act as collateral against the loan they are giving.  They know that any bet on an entrepreneurial venture is a long shot - so they won’t loan her any money she can’t already cover.  They’ll ask her to put her home equity, personal assets and everything else up against the loan and then will only loan her a portion of that total.  As a test for whether this is a “good idea” this fails miserably.
  • NO - this is the most likely answer.  Banks don’t take “angel capital” style risks.  You could walk in with the full business plan for Facebook(before Facebook was created) and they would say “that’s a nice idea.  Where’s your income stream or other collateral that we can hold in case your silly idea fails?  Your booked A/R?   Your history of past performance? Oh you don’t have any? Sorry no luck.”  This poor woman would walk away thinking she can’t be an entrepreneur because the most fiscally conservative organization you can find won’t invest in her.

So if Abby’s foolish advice is NOT the route to take - what should this woman do?  Well the first thing she needs to do is that business plan - she needs to fully flesh out her business idea and examine it critically.  She needs to bounce it off  other entrepreneurs, and preferably get an experienced entrepreneur mentor (Try SCORE, or social media to connect to one) or gather a board of directors made up of other business owners she knows together to review the plan before she spends her effort and cash on it.  Just because she has a dream does not mean she has a marketable idea.  If there are startup resources (say a Springstage Blog) in her area she should go to them to help connect her with others who have been down the road she wants to take.

In addition she needs to approach this venture with some reality checks in mind:

  •  The likelihood of successfully starting a business and maintaining your marriage without your spouse’s full buy-in is vanishingly small.  Starting a business will affect everyone in her immediate family.  She needs to have their support, help and understanding to succeed.  It may actually come down to “which is more important - your dream or your marriage”.  Better to decide that before she starts the business.
  • Does she want to build a business as a consultant, a lifestyle business, or an asset that she will eventually resell, or retire from and will provide her with long term wealth. Those are different routes, with different risks and rewards.  She should choose which she’s going for on purpose.
  • She should read a couple of excellent books*.  I’ll make some specific suggestions here, but I’m sure my readers can recommend others. 
    • She should start with E-Myth Revisted (Michael Gerber) to wrap her brain around the concept of exactly what kind of business she wants to start, and what the differences are between business types.
    • Purple Cow (Seth Godin) - What about her business idea makes it unique and special.  Why would people buy from her?  How will she convince her potential customers of the uniqueness of her idea or proposed service?
    • How to win friends and influence people (Dale Carnegie) - this book, written over 60 years ago - still applies today.  She must live this concept to succeed in business.  Does she already? or is there still work to do?
    • Think and grow rich(Napolean Hill) - does she already adopt the positive mental attitude she will need to succeed?  Building a business is very hard work, and you must be willing to commit to it inside your head before you even start working on it.  She need self confidence that borders on egomania or the world will beat her down.
    • Rich Dad Poor Dad (Robert Kiyosaki) - does she understand the difference between a “good” and “bad” investment?
    • Executive EQ(Robert Cooper/Ayman Sawaf) and Now Discover your Strengths  (Marcus Buckingham/Donald Clifton)- she should take a personality profile check and fully understand her strengths and weaknesses as a person.  No two people are the same, and there is no “magic formula” for being a good entrepreneur - but if you understand where your weaknesses are you can hire to compensate, and if you know where your strengths are you can create a business role for yourself that takes advantage of those strengths.
  • She should examine her own motivations for starting a business and do a reality check with real business owners about whether they are realistic.  Think you’re going to do it so you can “set your own hours”?  Think again - most small business owners work more hours than their employees during the startup phase.  There are many other myths about entrepreneurship that she should examine and debunk before proceeding on.
  • She should be prepared to fail.  Boundaries need to be set for how much to invest, what the final endplan might look like if the business does not succeed, and how she will protect her personal assets as much as possible.  The reality is that most successful entrepreneurs have a few failed business ventures under their belt before they hit one out of the ballpark.  If you fail - fail in a recoverable way.

Finally though - she should not be dissuaded by nay-sayers.  Whether it’s friends and relatives or the bank - if entrepreneurship is in her blood, she’ll never be satisfied until she tries it to see if it’s really for her.  Success will depend on preparation, having the right business advisors around you, having a great idea, hiring the right people to implement it for you, and supporting those people with the proper investment in marketing and sales.

* Full disclosure - if you purchase books through these links Amazon pays me some miniscule commission on them.  Don’t feel obligated - it’s just easier for me to organize them all in one place this way.

Written by Lee Drake · Filed Under Angel investment, Blog, Startup mentoring and coaching, Startups, media, newspapers · Comments

How does your city rank in terms of twitter influence

September 30, 2009

A twitter statistics company www.localtweeps.com has started publishing information about some of the demographics of twitter members, derived from their volunteering this information (basically enter your handle and your zip code).  You can then be notified when someone new starts an account in your area, and you can gather some overall demographics about your town and other towns.

One of the demographics you can collect is the number of registered local people, and a total of the number of followers they have.  If you place # of followers/# of local “tweeps” you should get an “influencer” score that shows, per capita in the city, how many followers are following people from that region per capita on average.

I was curious, because many Rochester tweeps seem to be very influential.  They have large subscriber bases and their dissemination of information is widely re-tweeted.  So I calculated influencer scores for the top 100 cities in www.localtweeps.com   Here is the resulting table:

Original rank City #followers #localtweeps Influencer ratio Influencer rank
37. Las Vegas, NV 512,522 186 2,755 1
100. Saint Petersburg, FL 98,092 79 1,242 2
44. Scottsdale, AZ 185,404 167 1,110 3
2. Chicago, IL 750,707 796 943 4
45. Honolulu, HI 148,305 159 933 5
90. Corpus Christi, TX 82,051 89 922 6
59. Rochester, NY 113,433 130 873 7
93. Colorado Springs, CO 66,495 87 764 8
58. Albuquerque, NM 100,603 132 762 9
79. Plano, TX 72,432 99 732 10
49. Miami, FL 105,939 146 726 11
88. Buffalo, NY 66,674 92 725 12
6. San Francisco, CA 433,314 599 723 13
20. Saint Louis, MO 217,515 305 713 14
9. Los Angeles, CA 326,606 474 689 15
99. Fort Worth, TX 56,004 82 683 16
48. Salt Lake City, UT 97,469 148 659 17
13. San Diego, CA 235,165 362 650 18
64. Boulder, CO 74,776 116 645 19
18. Washington, DC 201,320 318 633 20
5. New York, NY 380,610 641 594 21
60. Memphis, TN 76,579 129 594 22
29. Tampa, FL 127,664 216 591 23
17. Denver, CO 198,455 336 591 24
10. Atlanta, GA 265,044 449 590 25
11. Charlotte, NC 239,932 410 585 26
41. San Jose, CA 100,347 173 580 27
35. Richmond, VA 107,663 188 573 28
77. Fort Collins, CO 57,329 101 568 29
83. Lexington, KY 52,502 94 559 30
72. Wilmington, NC 55,504 104 534 31
73. Columbia, SC 53,929 102 529 32
68. Tempe, AZ 55,061 106 519 33
27. Orlando, FL 128,959 252 512 34
4. Portland, OR 345,027 675 511 35
81. Charleston, SC 49,448 97 510 36
1. Austin, TX 483,098 948 510 37
63. Arlington, VA 58,336 116 503 38
42. Des Moines, IA 84,781 169 502 39
54. Tulsa, OK 69,209 139 498 40
75. West Palm Beach, FL 50,519 102 495 41
34. Nashville, TN 93,841 191 491 42
22. Dallas, TX 138,968 284 489 43
26. Indianapolis, IN 123,615 261 474 44
14. Phoenix, AZ 162,050 349 464 45
16. Brooklyn, NY 155,397 336 462 46
15. San Antonio, TX 157,384 342 460 47
12. Houston, TX 170,370 371 459 48
71. Fort Wayne, IN 48,141 105 458 49
31. Baltimore, MD 91,558 200 458 50
91. Mesa, AZ 40,364 89 454 51
84. Little Rock, AR 41,818 94 445 52
36. Boston, MA 82,192 186 442 53
19. Milwaukee, WI 135,206 306 442 54
7. Seattle, WA 248,745 592 420 55
74. Portland, ME 42,245 102 414 56
51. Boise, ID 57,967 140 414 57
82. Oakland, CA 38,358 95 404 58
21. St Paul, MN 118,148 295 401 59
3. Minneapolis, MN 285,075 714 399 60
43. Grand Rapids, MI 66,618 167 399 61
78. Greensboro, NC 39,923 101 395 62
30. Cincinnati, OH 78,170 209 374 63
57. Fort Lauderdale, FL 50,375 136 370 64
33. Kansas City, MO 70,847 192 369 65
96. Alexandria, VA 30,917 84 368 66
92. Bellevue, WA 31,798 88 361 67
39. Cleveland, OH 62,316 175 356 68
23. Philadelphia, PA 100,977 284 356 69
65. New Orleans, LA 38,009 107 355 70
32. Pittsburgh, PA 68,453 194 353 71
8. Columbus, OH 169,236 480 353 72
67. Dayton, OH 36,615 106 345 73
38. Birmingham, AL 60,422 176 343 74
87. Sacramento, CA 31,907 93 343 75
98. Cambridge, MA 28,727 84 342 76
56. Jacksonville, FL 46,119 137 337 77
69. Virginia Beach, VA 34,847 106 329 78
28. Tucson, AZ 70,160 225 312 79
86. Tacoma, WA 29,201 94 311 80
47. Madison, WI 43,843 148 296 81
62. Ann Arbor, MI 35,192 119 296 82
66. Tallahassee, FL 30,915 107 289 83
24. Oklahoma City, OK 77,458 269 288 84
46. Omaha, NE 44,676 156 286 85
94. Fargo, ND 24,190 85 285 86
25. Raleigh, NC 75,641 267 283 87
85. Springfield, MO 26,604 94 283 88
53. Louisville, KY 38,463 139 277 89
40. Wichita, KS 47,695 174 274 90
50. Shawnee Mission, KS 38,495 143 269 91
55. Knoxville, TN 36,936 138 268 92
97. Burlington, VT 21,134 84 252 93
89. Charlottesville, VA 22,031 89 248 94
76. Cedar Rapids, IA 24,841 101 246 95
80. Eugene, OR 23,287 98 238 96
95. Lincoln, NE 19,809 85 233 97
52. Spokane, WA 32,559 140 233 98
61. Columbia, MO 27,543 120 230 99
70. Fayetteville, AR 23,868 105 227 100

Note that this is a snapshot in time, and these numbers may change at any time.  In any case at the bottom of our chart we have residents of FayettVille Arkansas.  For each “tweep” in FayetteVille AR, only 227 people follow them on average.  On the other hand, The number one influencer city is Las Vegas, NV.  For each tweep in LV, 1,242 people follow them!  Rochester ranks a respectable 7th (they were 6th yesterday).  I think that this “influencer city” score is more important than the number of people who tweet - more how many people FOLLOW folks from that region.  I look forward to LocalTweeps making this stat part of their demographics table they deliver. Feel free to follow me at http://twitter.com/leedrake

Written by Lee Drake · Filed Under Blog, Startup mentoring and coaching, Startups, media · Comments

According to a recent study Rochester is in the top 20 metro areas!

June 19, 2009

Rochester’s regional economy is in the top 20 of the 100 most populous metro areas.  A study by the Brooking Institution divided the top 100 metro areas into groups of 20, ranging from strongest to weakest - and Rochester was in the top 20 for a strong economy.  Rochester rated well in areas such as employment, housing prices, foreclosure rates and overall regional economic growth.  We did rank dead last for wages however.  So what does that mean?  A thriving economy with an inexpensive workforce!  So entrepreneurs from all over - come to Rochester.  Our highly educated, inexpensive workforce and our thriving economy makes the perfect location to create a new business.  Our low housing and commercial property prices will also make setting up your first office attractive and inexpensive.  Husband your cash and make it last longer by living in a region with lower wages and a better standard of living than 80% of the metro areas in the US.  If you are a NY State resident consider that our area ranked better than New York City, Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany and the Hudson Valley region.

Our recession in Rochester is being considered “recession light” compared to the rest of the country.  We’re one of the few Northeastern cities where that is true - others in that category come from Texas and the Plains states.

Our overall growth rate is now stagnant - but by coming to Rochester and setting up here you can help turn that around!  Our stable housing prices means you don’t have to worry about losing 23% of the value of your home overnight, like in cities like Miami and Las Vegas.  While the rest of the country showed a 6.3% decline in housing prices  ours climbed by 2.5% - 10th best rate in the country.

And Ventures and Angels - the next time a Rochester entrepreneur approaches you be aware that they are building their company in an area with a strong economy, a low cost of housing and wages, and a thriving real estate and rental market.  Your investment dollar will last longer, and be more efficiently used by investing here in Rochester.

Written by Lee Drake · Filed Under Blog, Startups, Venture Capital, media, newspapers · Comments

Twestival, ImagineRIT, and YEA - OH MY!

May 4, 2009


ImagineRIT participants, Photo by Max Schulte, RIT Class of \’96, from RIT Press release

In a weekend filled with entrepreneur-oriented events, this one did not disappoint.  By every measure the 2nd Rochester Twestival benefiting Foodlink went off without a hitch, raising over $2500 for Foodlink.  The event was covered by the media (thanks RNews, and the D&C).

The Young Entrepreneurs Academy competition was a great start to the weekend, with seven 11-17 year old finalists submitting business ideas to the final judging panel made up of local entrepreneurs before an audience of over 150 people.  The final winner, Matthew Brazeau a 12th grader at Lake Zurich High School took home a $30,000 achievement scholarship to RIT.   Matt’s company, iBraz, creates high-tech electric skateboards.   Watch this blog for a profile of YEA and their next event - the YEA trade show, featuring young entrepreneurs and their product and service ideas.  YEA is currently recruiting students for the 2009-2010 competition.

ImagineRIT couldn’t have picked a better weekend.  With over 25,000 attendees this year this event has grown into a real blockbuster of entrepreneurial activity.  The weather was very cooperative providing a warm but not too hot sunny day for the event.  This year’s event featured solar powered cars, liquid nitrogen ice cream, and even the automated hot-dog machine.

A fun and exciting week for Entrepreneurs, with new events coming up fast and furious.  Stay tuned to find out more about Rochester’s entrepreneurial scene.  If you know of an upcoming event that can be featured here - leave me a comment or find me online.

Written by Lee Drake · Filed Under Blog, Startups, education, events, media · Comments

The chilling effect of bandwidth caps on Entrepreneurial Culture

April 14, 2009

Coming soon to a city near you, imagine this scenario:

Your city, one of the first to be wired with Roadrunner cable has a highly concentrated available pool of engineers, software programmers, business owners, small businesses and over 6 excellent, nationally known schools pumping out hundreds of entrepreneur-ready highly-educated students.  The region has enjoyed the ability to use Broadband internet for reasonable though not inexpensive prices through Time Warner Roadrunner.  When initially introduced the service was rolled out at 10mb/s but that was quickly scaled back to 1 (the speed of DSL at the time) and then slowly increased to remain competitive with the local DSL provider - always one step faster than they were.  A higher bandwidth option was offered, which restored the original 10mb/s speed at a higher price point, but most people settled for just slightly faster than DSL.

Then suddenly - your cable company, who now has essentially a lock on anything faster than about 4mb/s down, announces a new policy:  They are going to cap usage and make users pay not only by the speed of their connection but by their consumption of bandwidth.  Various “tiers” are offered in which users get a “bucket of usage” which, if they exceed, they pay between $2 and $1 per gigabyte of usage over the amount.  Your bill, currently at $40-50/month, could easily max out at over $150.  The “buckets” are so small that even with the largest, fastest plan an advanced user family of 3 could easily blow through the entire $150 in bandwidth in the first week or so of usage.  100gb (3gb/day) would cost over $75/month and 150gb or more would cost $150.  The cable company isn’t offering this “tiered usage plan” to people outside your region, because outside your region they have competition like Verizon FiOS to keep it in check.  But here - a monopoly on the high speed Internet prevents penetration by other vendors.  They justify this tiered usage plan by blaming users for their consumption and claiming that their pricing wouldn’t support necessary costs of providing the bandwidth.

The time for this to happen is - now.  As of August Time Warner Cable will institute tiered pricing with bandwidth limits in 1, 10, 20, 40, 60 and 100gb increments.  They are generously offering unlimited bandwidth (at any speed) for “only” $150/month (that’s not a 3-in-1 plan, that’s $150/month for Internet alone).  If they aren’t doing this in your area, and they are your primary provider - you may want to prepare for a fight.  They are planning to roll this out everywhere that they don’t currently have competition that would cannibalize their user base.

So what is the effect that this has on entrepreneurs specifically, and the region in general?

  • Most entrepreneurs these days are “heavy users” of the Internet.  Between developing their software, creating distributed development teams, uploading and downloading information to servers, twitter, website updates, video presentations, and all the other myriad ways that entrepreneurs market themselves - they almost all will fall into the high bandwidth usage scenario.  Many do this sort of work from home, either during work hours, or just during off hours.  This means that they will typically be paying between 3 and 4 times what they are now for Internet access - times as many employees or collaborators as they currently have.    This additional cost will not only discourage the average money-conscious entrepreneur, but also discourage their collaborators, their users (for after all if they develop a high-bandwidth application like HULU, or NETFLIX , or even medium bandwidth services like BLIP.FM, or they will be trying to get users in this city as well, and their financiers (what venture capitalist will take seriously an investment developed in a city where they know that everyone is watching their “Internet gas meter” to see if they go over).  They’ll simply move on to invest in other areas that are more tech-friendly.
  • Students and new, young minds are the core to successful entrepreneurial ventures.  New ideas come from youth, and the more we can encourage our youth to come to Rochester to learn their trade, and stay here once they have learned it, the more competitive our city can be in attracting and retaining young hard-working bright men and women to our area.  But if their first impression when they arrive in Rochester is to get a bill for a 10mb/s connection for $150/month(because believe me - college students are probably the definition of high-bandwidth users) which they get at home in a combo bundle form Verizon FiOS for$60/month which includes phone, TV, and Internet at a blazing 20mb/s down and 10mb/s up - are they going to stick around here after they graduate, or move to a more progressive area with more reasonable Internet access.  I’ve already gotten tremendous feedback from the RIT campus here in town that students en massse’ (and especially the deaf and hard of hearing students at NTID who use video streaming) are up in arms about this latest proposition form Time Warner.  So, as a region, we have to decide - do we tolerate this monopolistic pricing scheme, or do we legislate it away?
  • Collaboration depends on a highly connected community.  According to this study made by the state of South Carolina, a highly connected, inexpensive to access broadband infrastructure is one thing that can make a region more competitive and connected to the future.  Having this strength available makes the collaborative process easier to manage, results in more ideas, creates those ideas faster and brings them to market.  Adding high price or being unable to access high speed broadband on the other hand puts a community at a definite disadvantage, because the oppressiveness of monitoring and paying for the bandwidth cap drives collaboration down and highly skilled employees and technical people away from the community to areas where they can get these features.
  • Driving prices up in an already suffering economy hurts our residents, whether employed or unemployed, ability to recover quickly, and adds to inflation.  A full package of internet, phone, and cable television services could easily run into the $300-400/month range depending on features selected.  A marginal price increase would be painful, but doubling or tripling the rates for many users renders them impossible to bear.
  • Price caps selectively punish your most tech savvy and powerful users - the ones who help all other users, the ones that drive change and innovation on the internet.  It selects against young people, active business people, and the businesses that they drive. 
  • It selects against tech-savvy small businesses who use the web to their advantage to market their products and services.  Ah you say, businesses themselves won’t be bandwidth limited, while this is true (for now - I wouldn’t bet on it being true forever if we let price caps enter the market), its not the business use of bandwidth that is at issue, it’s their end users.  Am I as likely to search for houses on www.nothnagle.com if I find out that each house I look at and all the attached pictures represent over 1MB of my precious bandwidth?  Am I likely to create www.webhomeusa.com if I know that the pictures and map mashups my users download are chomping bandwidth as I browse for houses?  Both of these interesting and innovative sites started here in Rochester - pre-cap.  Would they be as likely to be invented in the future if we knew we were penny-pinching every download and web page?
  • The very fact of bandwidth caps subtly changes our Internet usage - and reduces the power of the internet to entertain, increase productivity and provide better services to our clients and end users.  People have become dependent on “instant access”  - it’s now EXPECTED in the business world.  If we have to watch every gb of usage though, we’re more likely to “Skim the surface” of the Internet, rather than dive in head first.  That is doing a disservice to our high school students, college students and others across the region.
  • What about companies that have moved to a more distributed “work from home” environment.  Many companies (I know of one local Rochester top 100 company at least) have eschewed large installations of capital investments in buildings, leases, and office space, in favor of a distributed environment. Their “workers” work from home and are paid based on their productivity.  Typically these work from home users are vpn’ed into the central office machines during work hours - happily performing their tasks.  They used to pay one flat fee for the privilege - but if they now have to pay metered bandwidth rates - what happens?  Do they pass that cost up to their employer, who then passes it to the customer - yet again we run into an inflationary situation.

So what can the Rochester (or other region) entrepreneur do to protest these caps?  Fortunately the Rochester Community - recognizing the peril this puts our region in - has stepped up to the task. Here are specific things that you can do - right now - that are listed on my website.  Bringing FiOS to Rochester (www.verizonfiber.com ) is a long-term plan - they have no plans yet to enter our market.  If we continue to let Time Warner own this market then it will be difficult to bring other competitors in.  I strongly suggest you take action on multiple fronts:

  • Visit other websites like www.stopthecap.com and www.dslreports.com and look for ways to resist the tiered billing system.
  • Spread the word - get 5 people you know to sign up for www.verizonfiber.comsurvey, or post some flyers around campus, or tell your neighbors and co-workers.  Most people BELIEVE TIME WARNER that their bills will not go up.  We know otherwise and we should spread the word to all who we know that they can expect to pay more for internet under the new plan.
  • Support Congressman Massa who has taken up this cause as his own.  Senator Massa is the REAL DEAL and has gone out of the way to hep us in this quest.  Please take time to visit his website or write a supporting letter.
  • Take time to write Time Warner and tell them how you feel.  Also engage Time Warner’s PR mouthpieces in as many venues as you can - ask them the hard questions.  The more they don’t have an answer the worse they look in the eyes of the media and the public.  We’ve slowly been turning the media’s attention around from just reprinting their press release to seeing it from a user’s eyes. 
  • Attend the protest April 18th and let them know IN PERSON you are not going to take this lying down.
  • If you have connections in the media, talk this issue up.  Ask them why they’re not giving it more attention and coverage.
  • Take time to write the Attorney General and let him know that you believe that this new tiered pricing is a discriminatory policy and is based on Time Warner’s monopoly in our area.  Insist that if Time Warner wants to implement tiered pricing it do so in competitive markets as well.  They never will because they know that Verizon Fiber and others would eat them alive.
  • Help me with writing content - if you have a link to share, or a profile to post, or a blog post to register, I would love to have help and input.  Writing content is very time-consuming and I do have a company to run.  Any help anyone would like to lend would be welcomed.

You can find all these resources at: http://www.verizonfiber.com/TWCProtests/tabid/57/Default.aspx

Thank you for your support - please spread the word,

Written by Lee Drake · Filed Under Blog, Politics, kids education, media · Comments

The Lamentable State of Rochester Media

March 25, 2009

Penfield Robotics Team wins Chesapeake Regional

I guess I just don’t get it.  As a long term investment in the future of our region, training, retaining and attracting scientists, engineers, programmers, skilled technical people, and smart kids is a sure win.  And yet our media does very little to feature success in these areas.  How can we get them to “change their ways”?

As a contributing member to the community I and other scientists, engineers and business people dedicate a fair amount of time to mentoring programs like the FIRST Robotics program.  The team I mentor (Penfield Robotics Team 1511, Rolling Thunder) is a contender for an international award for their community outreach, community service, mentor involvement, business involvement and school relations.  We actually won the award in the highly competitive Chesapeake Bay regional competition at the US Naval Academy in Maryland (not even relying on how well known we are in our own area).  The team has already won 3 awards (Entrepreneurship, Imagery and Website) so far this year, was a finalist in the local robot competition  and has qualified for the international competition every year for the past 5 years. 

The average kid on the team (Rolling Thunder’s presentation team) puts in a year round effort that adds up to hundreds of hours, and mentors work essentially 2 jobs during build season - their regular employment and almost another full time job’s worth of time to mentor the students and help them to do an awesome job.  The kids learn leadership, engineering, math, science, teamwork, technical writing, PR, speaking and presentation skills, and other highly valuable life skills that are all the things that schools seem to struggle to teach our kids.  The nature of the program is that it also grabs kids that might be good with their hands, but have learning disabilities with classroom settings, and puts them on the straight and narrow.  They dedicate to the team year round, including the summer.  100% of the alumni from Team 1511 have gone on to college.  How many sports teams can claim the same thing?

And yet, when you go to the media to cover this fantastic testimonial to how industry and education can work together (and I’m talking ALL the media, newspapers, webzines, television, local magazines) they at best relegate you to page 2 of some inner section of the paper, or a short blurb about the “geeks and their robots” - if they cover you at all.  And this isn’t true of just FIRST - it’s true of any academic competition: Science Olympiad, Mathletes, FIRST Lego League, even spelling bees.  We’re frequently told “there wasn’t room” in the print edition.  Meanwhile of course high school and college sports get full color 1/2 page feature articles, detailed student statistics on how each player performed and weekly coverage.

Now you might say we’re not doing our job - but that’s not true either.  We have an extensive website with pictures, videos, etc. all released for use.  We have signed releases from every student and mentor on the team. We pre-announce events through press release and send out event results through press releases.  And still it’s page 3 in the corner somewhere along with “man loses cat up the tree”.

There have been occasional high spots, feature articles, in-event media coverage, video or picture specials as part of some other section (our kids were featured in the Penfield Neighborhood section because I suggested it to the Penfield editor), but they are few and far between.  Meanwhile the kids pour their heart and soul into these highly productive and beneficial programs and get ignored when they succeed. 

So what is the answer?  I’m asking you all for suggestions for how to get academic achievement and academic competitions better featured in each of our local regions, but especially the Rochester area.  How can we be sure that our community is known for the fantastic kids, mentors and parents we have who don’t happen to enjoy baseball or football (or enjoy them along with their academic achievments) but would rather create the next generation of scientists, programmers, and engineers?  Should we team up with all the competitions and try to coordinate PR?  Should we storm the steps? Comment in newspaper blogs and comments?  What has worked for you?

Written by Lee Drake · Filed Under kids education, media, newspapers, television · Comments