Columbus Events
TechColumbus Innovation Awards
Last night TechColumbus held its annual Innovation Awards at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. I got the opportunity to attend as a representative of The Fisher College of Business Center for Entrepreneurship.
The event, attend by more than one-thousand prominent figures in Columbus business, has seen 40% grown since last year. The primary purpose of the event was to announce and celebrate the finalists and winners of awards in the following categories:
- Green Innovation
- Minority Owned Enterprise
- Outstanding Service
- Outstanding Product
- Innovation in Non-Profit Service Delivery
- Executive of the Year
- Outstanding Woman in Technology
- Inventor of the Year
- Outstanding Start-up Business
- Outstanding Technology Team
- Student Innovation Awards
However, the event emceed by 10TV’s Andrea Cambern and Jeff Hogan also included several special guest appearances including one by Resource Interactive Founder and CEO Nancy Kramer.
TechColumbus’ web marketing team made creative use of social networking technology to engage the audience at the Convention Center as well as those that did not attend. A “tweetpit” was setup next to the stage with three web marketers who live blogged, tweeted, updated facebook and posted live video of backstage interviews with the winners. A giant display showed a live twitter stream of the Innovation Awards twitter hashtag (#IA09) which the “1100 geeks in a room” drove to a regional trending topic.
It is interesting to see what happens when you encourage the twittersphere to embrace your event. All the conversation certainly attracted attention from people outside the physical event, but it also gave a voice to people with negative opinions of it.
Congratulations to all the winners and nominees and thanks to the Center for Entrepreneurship and Dave Shaw for the invite.
Reposted from Fisher Grad Life Blog.
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Free Food and Drink
Ever since I got my snazzy new Fisher business cards, I’ve made a habit of leaving them in the “fishbowl” that frequently resides near the register at diners, eateries, watering-holes and restaurants. My persistence finally paid off: I had a pretty lucky weekend. Today, a couple of my starving MBA friends (including fellow Fisher Grad Life blogger Robin Jenkins) and I enjoyed a meal on the house at Noodles & Company. Also, taking a note from my Johnny-Appleseed-esque business card distribution scheme, Emma won a happy-hour (free drinks for her, and discounted drinks for her friends) at McFadden’s Restaurant and Saloon in the South Campus Gateway. These two freebees were of differing value.
If you’ve never been to Noodles & Company you are missing out on some good and reasonably priced food—I recommend the Whole Grain Tuscan Linguini with Parmesan Chicken which you get in a few minutes for 7 bucks. The freebee, which they called a “tasting,” consisted of a family style meal for six. As a group, we picked a dish from each of the noodle menus (Asian, Mediterranean and American) and they though in a few salads, desserts and drinks. Although, their Pad Thai is far from the best I’ve ever had, it was a pretty low key and fun way to cap off the weekend.
The McFadden’s experience left a bit more to be desired. To their credit these complementary “happy hours” seem to be a pretty effective way of getting people in the door. As far as I can tell, they had 10-12 people on Saturday night that were hosting a happy hour for their social circle. The strategy probably does a reasonable job of compensating for the abysmal customer experience. When we arrived, we got a table by the window. At about 10:30, a McFadden’s employee came by to ask to us to get up so that they could “clear out” the table and chairs. In fact, by that time every table was taken and they asked everyone to get up. I’m not an expert in the restaurant business, but I would think that you would start removing tables like at 6:00 PM as the dinner crowd left—not at 10:30 when the restaurant if full. Besides that, the incredibly understaffed bar (3 bartenders to 150 bar goers) and the Howard-Stern-brand-of-inappropriate DJ, everything else was awesome.
Reposted from Fisher Grad Life blog.
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Start! Central Ohio Heart Walk 2009
This past Saturday, Emma and I walked in the 2009 Start! Central Ohio Heart Walk. My mom works for Ohio Health (one of the local sponsors) so we walked with her coworkers and sported attractive fluorescent green Ohio Health t-shirts.
The walk started at Huntington Park (the new Columbus Clippers’ stadium). It was the first time I had been there and I have to say I was impressed. It’s a very intimate, clean park with a great view of the Columbus skyline. And although I may have missed my opportunity to see a game there this season, I’ll have to make one next summer.
The three-mile route went up Neil Avenue, across 3rd Avenue to High Street and then south on High to Nationwide Boulevard.
