You can meet Michael Rihani, President & CEO of Koofers.com (Koofers, Inc.), at the NewVa Tech Expo.

Here's more about his company, Koofers.com, from the company's history on CrunchBase:

"Koofers.com provides an interactive community that serves the academic needs of college students through information sharing. Students benefit from collaboration with their peers and the experiences of former students. Many helpful services span the entire academic calendar from course selection through final exams, and include collaborative note taking, course & instructor ratings/grade distributions, and an online library for sharing past exams & study materials."

Michael Rihani includes on CrunchBase this bit of history for Virginia Tech fans of terms like Hokie:

"Unique to Virginia Tech is the word 'coofer' that was coined in the early 1940s to refer to tests or homework completed in an earlier course that is available to students taking the course later, and used as a means of studying or preparing. The term originated at Bluefield College, a former extension branch of VPI, and is likely derived from the word 'coffer' (synonym for a strongbox). A student from Bluefield College transferred to the Virginia Tech - Blacksburg campus and first introduced the term. It is often used as a verb in such constructions as 'to coofer a problem,' also sometimes spelled 'koofer.'”

Koofers.com was featured as one of nine LaunchBox award-winning start-ups in this 8/5/08 post on TechCrunch.

And you can watch a demonstration video of how Koofers.com works.

For more information, please contact:

Michael Rihani
President & CEO
Koofers.com
michael@koofers.com

We're following the advice of Cory Donovan, Executive Director of the NewVa Corridor Technology Council.  He said to show up.  So we're showing up!

Handshake 2.0 will show up and shake hands at the NewVa Tech Expo on Friday, September 5, 2008, at the Roanoke Civic Center.  We'll be in great company!

Here's the latest from Cory Donovan, including all the booth and set-up specifications.  Blog Diva is reassured.

Dear NewVa Tech Expo Exhibitor,

We are happy you will be exhibiting at the first ever NewVa Tech Expo! This email contains information regarding the event, set-up, and other details. An email will be sent next week with additional information as it is finalized. I hope this provides the information you need, but if you have additional questions, please contact us.

Schedule
12-1pm Exhibitor Set-up
1pm      NewVa Tech Expo Welcome (Rear stage area)
1-3pm   NCTC Member-only networking
3-6pm   NewVa Tech Expo is open to the public
6pm      Virginia Tech Football Pep Rally hosted by the City of Roanoke

NewVa Tech Expo Set-up
The Civic Center will be available for exhibitor setup from 12-1pm next Friday. If you think you might need more time or require special assistance, please let us know.

Booth Space/Dimensions
An eight foot draped table and two chairs are included with your exhibit space. If you have a 10x10 trade show booth and would like to use it, there will be enough space. If you don’t need your table and chairs and would rather have them removed from your exhibit area before you arrive, please let me know by emailing cory@thetechnologycouncil.com.

Wireless Internet
Wireless Internet access will be available at Tech Expo. Instructions for getting online will be provided in next week’s email.

Registering Company Representatives
I encourage you to register any and all company reps that will attend Tech Expo. If they are registered, we will create a name badge for them and their contact information will be added to the attendee list. There is no cost to bring additional people. Attendee registration can be done online.

Media
A number of local print media publications will be attending Tech Expo. This is a great opportunity to gain exposure for your company and our local media are very interested in connecting with the NCTC membership. I encourage you to engage with them to explain your company/technology and why it’s important. Practice your elevator pitch!

Thanks,
Cory Donovan
Executive Director
NewVa Corridor Technology Council

If you send your company's news in a press release to a print publication, you have to a) hope it picks your story, b) wait for it to appear. 

If you post your news to a blog?  It's picked and it appears.  Done.

Use Handshake 2.0's blog services to put yourself in the news now.

"I love Bennie!"

That's the first line of a comment I left on Robert Geller's blog post on Flack's Revenge mentioning Handshake 2.0.

I wrote in a Handshake 2.0 post on the art of business blogs that Geller had heard of Handshake 2.0 from his colleague, Bennie. 

That's an example of the art of human interaction, the art of who-you-know, the art of business blogs.

Geller "wrote back."  On his site, in his comment on my comment, Geller wrote, "I learned of your comment through the Typepad dashboard."

And that's an example of the science of online human interaction and the science of site tracking software that lets you know who knows you and and how.  That software and search engine listings--those are parts of the science of business blogs.

What's my point?

I had a friend from New York who would exclaim, "It's a whole thing!"

That's the phrase that occurs to me when I try to summarize the art and science of business blogs. 

In Blog Diva and The Devil's Advocate:  An Incandescent Dialogue About Value Propositions, I reported that the most-read blog posts on Inside VT KnowledgeWorks were stories about the VT KnowledgeWorks companies and their leaders.  Written from the heart.  With art.

It's true.  I know art works with business blogs.  I saw it through the science of a site statistics report.

***

I left another comment on Flack's Revenge a little after 1:10 PM on 8/26/08.  If you want to find out what it is and whether or not I get or got a reply, feel free to try the site Geller suggests below, or to follow the conversation on Robert Geller's post on Flack's Revenge.

A Transcript of the Geller-Clelland Comment Exchange

My comment on Flack's Revenge:

I love Bennie!

Thank you very much for mentioning Handshake 2.0!

At 6:00 AM EST on 8/25/08, I posted a blog entry on Handshake 2.0 about your mention of my site on Flack’s Revenge.  It included multiple links to your site and to sites to which you referred.

At 8:24 AM, I clicked on the link to Flack’s Revenge from the Handshake 2.0 post.

Since I learned of your site through a link listed on my TypePad site statistics page, I just checked my TypePad’s stats to see if a link appeared from you indicating you had learned of my blog post in some way.

I don’t see a click from you to me.

I’m posting this comment a little after 10:00 AM.

Only if you care to share or are interested in this, I would welcome knowing your answer to this question:

Did you learn of my comment on your blog from an e-mail from TypePad indicating someone had left a comment (I use TypePad’s notification system to learn of comments--you may use a different way) or from seeing your site stats page indicating the 8:24 AM click to your site originating from Handshake 2.0?

Why do I ask?  I’m still trying to see and understand the art and science of how blogs work.

And it took me 10 days to ponder what you had written, to study other posts on your blog, to reflect on what you were saying and how you were saying it, and to express my own synthesis. 

Does a blog comment left 10 days after the original blog post matter?  To you, to the blogosphere, to your standing in top lists of blogs, to your listing in search results?

I hope so.  I find your work informed, informing, and thought-provoking.  Thanks for doing it.

Geller's comment on my comment, left on 8/25/08 at 4:48 PM:

Anne

Thanks for reading, and for your kind words (and mention) about my blog. I learned of your comment through the Typepad dashboard. Bennie sent an email with your website and I clicked on this (yes, Bennie rocks!).

Comments are always welcome, even if on a post that is a little dated. Having said that, the various sites that track which blogs are buzzing about which topics probably rely on some kind of time window when considering how talked about the topic is.

You might want to look at CoComment (at the website of the same name) which provides a utility for tracking comments across the blogosphere.

Hope this helps.

***

Thank you so much, Bob!  So much learning!  So many insights!

With gratitude,
Anne

A reporter asked me the other day, “Does every business need a blog?”

I've enlarged my answer:

Every business needs a blog mention.

That is, if that business wants to appear in search engine results.

In The Business Blog To-Do List, I wrote about the art of business blogs and how they create an "It’s-who-you-know" network, developed in the past by word-of-mouth slowly and locally, now developed through online content, quickly and globally.

That was the art of business blogs.  Now here’s the science.

On 8/7/08, I posted a quote from Cory Donovan, Executive Director of the NCTC, about Mailtrust, a division of Rackspace, which had an IPO the following day.  While Donovan’s quote was news, the IPO was not and I linked to a source from Donovan dated 7/25/08.

I searched Google using the term “mailtrust” yesterday, 8/25/08.  Of 157,000 results, Handshake 2.0's post was listed number 52.  I searched Google Blogs using the same term, “mailtrust.”  Of 434 results, the post was number 5.

The post totaled two phrases and two sentences, 64 words, 344 characters.

The Handshake 2.0 blog launched on 7/28/08.  It’s been in existence not quite one month.

What conclusions might one draw? 

Even a short blog entry from a brand new blog can have search engine results power.

Did the listings result from someone at Google “liking” the story?

Nope.

According to Introduction to Google Ranking from The Official Google Blog, Amit Singhal writes, “No discussion of Google's ranking would be complete without asking the common - but misguided! :) - question: ‘Does Google manually edit its results?’ Let me just answer that with our third philosophy: no manual intervention.”

Singhal continues, “The final ordering of the results is decided by our algorithms…”

Algorithms.  That's the science of business blogs.

Google is a company.  Just as I do not need to know, or to try to figure out, the recipe for Coca-Cola to savor the taste of its product, I do not need to know, or figure out, Google's algorithms to treasure one of its main products--search results.

But in the world of Web 2.0 business, Google matters.

I have written the blog for business accelerator VT KnowledgeWorks, Inside VT KnowledgeWorks, for three-quarters of a year.  While the blog has many goals, one primary one is to brand the member companies and their entrepreneurial leaders.

From my experience writing Inside VT KnowledgeWorks, and from my on-going research on business blogs, what works best in achieving branding and business results through search engines are these two principles:

1. New.
2. A lot.

The more I write about specific VT KnowledgeWorks companies and individuals, and the more often I write about them, the higher those companies and individuals appear in search results.

Why do I think Handshake 2.0's single post on Mailtrust has the search engine listings that it does, modest as they are?

1. New.
2. A lot--of links.

Handshake 2.0's news on Mailtrust is still relatively new.  (As of this writing, of the top 5 listings on Google Blogs for "mailtrust"--listing Handshake 2.0's post at 5--2 of the 5 have more recent dates.)

Handshake 2.0 is part of a network of interlinked blogs, each a venture of Handshake Media, Inc., a member company of VT KnowledgeWorks.  In the absence of a lot of posts, a lot of links can do.

According to the American Mathematical Society’s How Google Finds Your Needle in the Web’s Haystack, “…the importance of a page is judged by the number of pages linking to it as well as their importance.”  (The image in this Wikipedia entry may help one visualize this.)

Does every business need a blog?

Every business needs a blog mention.

Handshake 2.0 specializes in the art and science of all things business blog--including blog mentions.

“…I learned about Sally Whittle's GettingInk website when she commented on my blog.”

This is an excerpt from a post on Flack’s Revenge, a blog written by Robert Geller, a senior vice president with Fusion Public Relations.

I learned of Geller through the referrers section of the TypePad site statistics report for Handshake 2.0.  The report listed Geller’s post as a source of traffic.

From Handshake 2.0’s online site statistics report, I clicked on the link to Geller's post, Crowdsourcing and Collaborating on the News.  In the very last sentence, Geller includes a link to Handshake 2.0:

“And a service called Handshake 2.0, which my colleague Bennie pointed out to me today, appears to do the same thing.”

Geller lives and works in New York.

How in the world did Handshake 2.0, a blog originating in Blacksburg, Virginia, get mentioned on a blog originating in New York?

And who is Bennie?  How did he hear of Handshake 2.0?

Whoever Bennie is, Handshake 2.0 loves him.

Apparently Bennie told Geller (in person? by e-mail?) about Handshake 2.0.  Geller wrote about Handshake 2.0 in a blog entry, including a link to the site. 

Then the link from Geller’s site to the Handshake 2.0 site showed up in the Handshake 2.0 site statistics report.  The site’s owner (that would be me), clicked on the link leading back to Geller's blog post.  I read that post, other posts on the blog, and his About page.

By visiting Geller’s site:

1. I became more knowledgeable about technology public relations through his sharing of his expertise.
2. I learned of companies and services about which I had never heard.
3. Because of the authority and credibility with which Geller writes, and because of the credentials he lists on his About page, I became a subscriber to a service Geller reviews offered by Robert Shankman.

What does one conclude from all this?

1. Expertise matters.
2. Expertise shared in a blog post can create both a "value add" and an invocation to action.

The Bennie-Geller-Shankman-Handshake 2.0 story perfectly demonstrates the to-do list for companies who want to use blogs for business results:

1. Blog.
2. Link. 
3. Comment. 
4. Track. 
5. Repeat.

What does Handshake 2.0 do for companies that want to use blogs for business results?

That to-do list.

I don't know Bennie, but it's still who you know, because he knows about Handshake 2.0.

I can guess where Bennie heard of Handshake 2.0.

From a blog.

Thanks, Bennie!  And Robert Geller, and Sally Whittle, and Robert Shankman...

Speaking of "It's still who you know," if you're in-the-know, you're sure to have been asked this question:

"Do you know Stuart Mease?"

Mease writes the blog Connecting People, fully titled "Connecting People to professional and social opportunities:  Providing a bridge for young adults in the Roanoke and New River Valleys (RNR) seeking professional and social opportunities."

Mease has discovered a very interesting aggregator of social networking/Web 2.0 news, currently in beta:  Fwix.

According to About Fwix, "Fwix shows you the most relevant and trendy information and media in your local area."  Its sources include Flickr, Twitter, Technorati, YouTube, and several dozen others.

Fwix currently covers five metro areas and was set to launch coverage of twenty more.  Not surprisingly, metropolitan Southwest Virginia wasn't on that list.

Until Fwix got to know Stuart Mease.

Mease reports this news from his blog:  Fwix will be adding Roanoke, Virginia to its city launch list next week.  Mease writes:

"Therefore, Roanoke and Blacksburg community, here is an opportunity. Please register and sign up for Fwix. Once Roanoke is launched, then blog about it, invite your contacts to Fwix, and let’s get a first-mover advantage on this new site and showcase to the world our region. Next week, we are going to be one of only 25 cities in the U.S. featured on this site."

Thank you, Stuart Mease, for your initiative on behalf of our area and for shaking up Handshake 2.0 by sharing your news with us.

It's still who you know--and Handshake 2.0 is very glad we know you.

Look who's coming to Tech Expo!  And look who you already know from Handshake 2.0!

Advanced Logic Industries INC.
AMTI
Atempo
Automation Creations - You know Henry Bass.
CCS-Inc.
Click and Pledge
Cox Business
Delta Dental
Design Nine
EIT Inc.
Handshake 2.0 - You know Anne Clelland.
Interactive Design & Development
JDSU
Luna Innovations
Mailtrust
Maxtena
Media Marshall
The Microscope Store
Modea
NCTC - You know Cory Donovan.
NBE Technologies
NetVentures
Optical Cable Corporation
Polymer Solutions - You know Elizabeth Jewel. 
Portaqua
Science Museum of Western Virginia
SoftSolutions
Source4
Sunapsys
Synchrony
TechLab
TechTransfer Associates
Tele-Works
TORC Technologies
Virginia FIRST
Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties
Vision Point Systems
Vitech
VT Knowledgeworks - You know Jim Flowers.

And a source close to Handshake 2.0 informs us that Valley Business FRONT Magazine (here's a subscription form) will be at Tech Expo. 

So you know Dan Smith.

Looking forward to getting to know you at Tech Expo on September 5, 2008!

"If you run a small business--even a home-based business with a staff of one--and you don't have your own Web page, it's time to get with the program:  You're missing out on some of the most efficient, least expensive marketing power you can buy."

--Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, February 1998

"Hiring on a Handshake," an excerpt from More Benefits for Green Companies, BusinessWeek Research Briefs, 8/17/08:

A firm handshake might be the difference between getting the job and not getting it, according to a recent study from the University of Iowa's Tipple College of Business that is scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology. With an interest in finding out what happens in a job interview and why an interviewer decides early on whether to hire a person, Greg L. Stewart, professor of management at Tippie, had 98 students come in for mock interviews with real employers.

Without telling the students, he had the interviewers evaluate their handshakes. He had them rate the quality of the handshake independent of the job interview and then analyzed the relationship between the two. Those with firm handshakes were more likely to get the job.

What Stewart confirmed was that handshakes matter. "I don't think people necessarily remember the handshake," says Stewart. "I think it's a good signal of other things." He adds that extroverted people were more likely to have firm handshakes.

In addition, women, on average, have less firm handshakes than men, but they do as well or better in interviews. Therefore, says Stewart, women who have a firm handshake get more out of it than men in the job interview.

The lesson for all job hunters is to work on your handshake and other social skills, says Stewart. His research is now focusing on what drives initial impressions in interviews.