High Fives for Handshake 2.0

We were ecstatic and honored to receive such great news!

• Handshake 2.0 was one of five finalists selected for the VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Summit Open Business Concept Competition.

• Handshake 2.0 was nominated for a Rising Star Award by the NewVa Corridor Technology Council (NCTC) for its TechNite 2010 Awards.

• Anne Giles Clelland, founder of Handshake 2.0, was nominated for an Entrepreneur Award by the NewVa Corridor Technology Council (NCTC) for its TechNite 2010 Awards.

• We're delighted when Handshake 2.0 is in the news.  We've been honored to write guest posts for Bob Geller at Flack's Revenge and Sramana Mitra.  We were very gratified that James Ball found value in our social media sales funnel graphic for Social Media Today.

• Robert H. Giles, Jr., founder of Rural System, and father of Handshake 2.0's founder, Anne Giles Clelland, was also one of five finalists selected for the VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Summit Open Business Concept Competition on April 7, 2010.  He was selected as one of five finalists to pitch to angel investors at the VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Open Angel Forum on April 8, 2010.

We are very proud of our clients!

Smart College Visit, Inc., founded by Z. Kelly Queijo, was one of five finalists selected for the VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Summit Open Business Concept Competition.

Smart College Visit, Inc. was nominated for a Rising Star Award by the NewVa Corridor Technology Council (NCTC) for its TechNite 2010 Awards.

InteractiveGIS, Inc. was nominated for a Rising Star Award and for an Innovation Award by the NewVa Corridor Technology Council (NCTC) for its TechNite 2010 Awards.

***

"If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself."
- Henry Ford

For moving Handshake 2.0 forward towards success with them, I thank our clients, our team, my mentors and fellow company founders at VT KnowledgeWorks, and my serendipitous colleagues who go arm-in-arm ahead with me with strength - and who carry me with them when I falter.

***

Handshake 2.0, an enterprise of Handshake Media, Incorporated, is a business news, public relations, and business development site featuring new developments in entrepreneurship and venture funding, best practices in business principles, models, and innovation, and the latest on company leaders and companies, from start-ups to moguls. 

Handshake 2.0 synthesizes the personal, the social, and the technological, adds the fundamental business risk reduction principle of “It’s who you know,” and shares its clients’ corporate messages in multiple, well-established social media channels, resulting in “word of Handshake” leads and referrals for clients’ companies. 

Handshake Media, Incorporated, based in Blacksburg, Virginia, specializes in social media services for companies seeking national and global clients, customers, partners and investors.

Angel Investor Guide to Blacksburg, Virginia

Whether an entrepreneur is seeking funding for an idea, an individual is seeking to become an angel investor, or an angel investor is seeking the like-minded, here's how to make contact with those in the know on the angel investor scene in Blacksburg, Virginia, the New River Valley of Virginia,  and the nearby Roanoke, Virginia area.

460 Angels

460 Angels is a seed and early-stage angel investor group focused on funding and coaching hi-tech entrepreneurs with scalable business models based in the New River Valley and Roanoke region of Virginia.

Contact: Bob Summers, bob@460angels.com

Access to Capital Committee

The goal of the Access to Capital Committee, formed by the NewVa Corridor Technology Council, is to increase communication between technology firms that need funding and investors willing to fund them.

Contact: Bob Summers, bob@energyware.com

DayOne Ventures

DayOne Ventures is a seed stage investment and mentoring program for technology-based startups, funded and operated by experienced, successful entrepreneurs who are also angel investors.  It is housed at the VT KnowledgeWorks Business Acceleration Center, located in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg, Virginia, home of Virginia Tech.  

Contact: Lindsey Eversole, lindsey@dayoneventures.com

Hutchison Law Group Angel Investment Education Series

Hutchison Law Group offers a series of workshops and seminars for prospective angel investors and for entrepreneurs seeking angel investor funding.

Contact: Ken Maready, kmaready@hutchlaw.com

LeClairRyan SCOUT Award

The LeClairRyan SCOUT Award was created to recognize an entrepreneur or emerging business in southwest Virginia that has a unique idea and is ready to evolve. If you have a business plan and are ready to seek angel or venture capital financing, the SCOUT award may be for you. Every new venture needs someone to guide them through the common pitfalls that can end a good idea before it emerges.

Contact: scout@leclairryan.com
 
Virginia Active Angel Network, VAAN

Virginia Active Angel Network, VAAN, is a professionally managed and member-led group of accredited investors that meet monthly in a dinner model in Charlottesville, VA. Members from outside of Charlottesville, in Blacksburg, Roanoke, Richmond, NY and Georgia participate either by driving to the Charlottesville dinner or through on-line access. VAAN considers opportunities to provide funding and mentor capital to early and seed stage ventures primarily in the central and southern Virginia region, and the greater region, including Maryland, Washington DC, North Carolina, Kentucky and West Virginia. VAAN also syndicates opportunities with other Angel Capital Association angel groups.

Contact: info@virginiaactiveanglenetwork.com
 
VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Summit

The VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Summit is a yearly two-day comprehensive workshop for prospective company founders, entrepreneurs launching or re-vamping a business, growing companies seeking expansion capital, and individuals interested in investing in early-stage companies. The Summit includes open and student business concept competitions and live angel funding sessions.

Contact: Lindsey Eversole, lindsey@vtknowledgeworks.com

GIS - Making Meaning from Spatial Data

For the very reason that a Geographic Information System - a GIS - makes meaning from spatial data, is why we think GIS is a killer app maker.

Especially if it's web-based.

Our client, InteractiveGIS, experts in GIS technology, offered what we named the world's first GIS at auction on eBay.

InteractiveGIS will sell the first GIS on eBay. That's because the starting bid is $1.

And it's a Web GIS.

The world's second GIS at auction on eBay is live. 

Of course if a town or government agency is the winning bidder, that would be a good and standard use of GIS.

Honestly, though, we hope an entrepreneur is the winning bidder.  We want to see a killer app with GIS.

***

You're invited to read more about InteractiveGIS on Handshake 2.0, to fan InteractiveGIS on Facebook, and to follow InteractiveGIS on Twitter.

InteractiveGIS, a custom, Web-based Geographic Information System (GIS) solutions provider, is a client of Handshake Media, Incorporated, of which Handshake 2.0 is an enterprise.

Shoebox Pedestal

Upon learning that I likened their creation of my new closet to Mr. Big's wedding gift to Carrie Bradshaw in the 2008 film Sex and the City, green builder Shelter Alternatives outdid New York.

While making a box for the shift of the heating and air conditioning register from the floor to the wall, Shelter Alternatives heard me call it a "shoebox pedestal."  Trim befitting a movie star appeared.  Picture perfect painting, of course, by Jeff Proco. 

I love it.

Jeff Proco heads Pro Painting Company based in Riner, Virginia.  He can be reached at 540-357-4880.

Shelter Alternatives is a green builder in Blacksburg, Virginia.  Shelter Alternatives creates custom homes, designs additions, and remodels existing homes using energy efficient building materials and systems.

Energy Check - energy audits specialist and a division of Shelter Alternatives - is a client of Blacksburg, Virginia social media agency Handshake Media, Incorporated, the parent company of Handshake 2.0.

Who's in FRONT? Lisa Ison

Lisa Ison discusses what it has meant to lose the New Century Venture Center business incubator and what to expect in the future in the March 2010 issue of Valley Business FRONT.

Valley Business FRONT is the monthly magazine for in-depth business news in the Roanoke Valley and the New River Valley of Virginia. You're invited to read moreFRONT and to follow Valley Business FRONT on Twitter, @vbFRONT.

Photo credit: Dan Smith

Handshake 2.0 Is Reading Business Model Generation

We might have gotten the last copy.

As you can see from the links to both Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (deluxe version) and Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (portable version), neither version is now available directly from Amazon.com.

We learned of Business Model Generation from Mr. Handshake 2.0 who learned of it from Business Models Illustrated in the April 2010 issue of Entrepreneur.  The Business Model Generation site has a pretty cool "page turning" .pdf demo of the book, but we nationalized Mr. Handshake 2.0's deluxe copy until our own portable start-up version arrived, which we announced on Twitter via TwitPic:

 
Given that Handshake 2.0 was selected to pitch its business concept at the VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Summit on April 7, 2010, we, ahem, thought a refresher course in business models might be in order.

While we're studying, you're welcome to watch this cool time lapse video from the book cover's designer on how it came into being.

Killer App Need GIS? Now’s Your Opp!

The origins of creativity are hard to trace but recently, somehow, the "System" in Geographic Information System - GIS - gave me an idea for a killer app.

This is how I began to formulate it:

Business Data + Algorithm, Formula and/or Idea + GIS = Killer App

Then thinking about AttaainCI's Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) added this dimension:

Business Data + Algorithm, Formula and/or Idea + GIS + SaaS = Killer App

I elaborated upon this in Honey, May I Have a GIS?

Does your killer application need a Geographic Information System? Now's your opportunity.

Our client, InteractiveGIS, experts in GIS technology, offered what we named the world's first GIS at auction on eBay.

Now InteractiveGIS is going to sell the first GIS on eBay. That's because the starting bid is $1.

The world's second GIS at auction on eBay goes live Tuesday, March 30, 2010.  The world's first sale of a GIS at auction on eBay happens seven days later. 

Whose killer app will begin that day?

***

Just added:  The GIS auction on eBay is now live!

InteractiveGIS, a custom, Web-based Geographic Information System (GIS) solutions provider, is a client of Handshake Media, Incorporated, of which Handshake 2.0 is an enterprise.

You're invited to read more about InteractiveGIS on Handshake 2.0 and to fan InteractiveGIS on Facebook.

World's First Handshake 2.0 Button

Our world's first client to sport a Handshake 2.0 button on its site is InteractiveGIS.

(In our history, that's it's second "world's first."  InteractiveGIS was also the world's first to offer a web-based Geographic Information System at auction on eBay.)

As does a button that links to a company’s presence on Twitter or Facebook, the H20 button links to all the posts about InteractiveGIS on Handshake 2.0.

Here are all the posts about more of our clients:  FurnishWEB, SmartCollegeVisit, VT KnowledgeWorks.

Clients use a presence on Handshake 2.0 foremost to communicate with Handshake 2.0's audience of those who lead companies - through position or initiative, from founders and CEOs, to agents, assistants, partners, vendors, evangelists and investors.

Clients also share the link to their posts on Handshake 2.0 in myriad other ways, often for breaking news as the most recent post with former posts for context. 

Posts in a series serve as a corporate blog, a company digest, the story of the development of companies and their products and services, or as a column showcasing expertise.

Like Twitter and Facebook, Handshake 2.0 is a social media channel by which a company can travel greater distances with its social media footprint.

Thank you, InteractiveGIS, for leading the way with another "world's first."

***

InteractiveGIS, FurnishWEB, SmartCollegeVisit and VT KnowledgeWorks are clients of Handshake Media, Incorporated, of which Handshake 2.0 is an enterprise.

Wine Moments - Jargon Pinot Noir

Wine moments with Attimo Winery

Every business, organization, and industry has its own unique language - its own jargon - comfortable to all who know it.  Whether highly technical or not, those who work in it speak a language that would receive puzzling looks on Main Street. 

Jargon Pinot Noir V.2008 is a full-bodied red wine that speaks in all the right ways.  It has a soft mouth feel that says "I'm smooth," and a peppery finish that says "I'm spicy." Those hints of vanilla and cherry say "I'm complicated, too."  A great wine served with grilled chicken, pizza, even chili.

Cut through the wine jargon, and just drink good wine!

***

Rik and Melissa Obiso, co-owners of Attimo Winery, a new winery located in the New River Valley of Virginia, write a weekly wine recommendation for Handshake 2.0. Attimo Winery plans to open to the public as early as 2012.  Attimo Winery (formely Eclipse Winery) was featured in  Couple hope grapes will yield dream business and Wine business budding in Montgomery County in The Roanoke Times.  You're invited to read all the recommendations, more about Attimo Winery on Handshake 2.0, and to follow Attimo Winery on Twitter @attimowinery.

Attimo Winery, a Virginia winery, is a client of Handshake Media, Incorporated, the parent company of Handshake 2.0.

March Movie Madness Poll - What's Your Favorite Business Movie?

With the Academy Awards ceremony behind us and the VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Summit and NCTC's annual TechNite Awards Banquet just ahead, now seemed like a good time to ask Handshake 2.0's readers: "What are the best business movies of all time?"

After extensive research, and more popcorn than I care to mention, I've compiled a top 10 list from a cross section of several previously published lists.

Please select your fav title from the list below or write in your top pick. We'll share the results and a link to Netflix in a future post.

What tops your list as the Best Business Movie Ever? If your fav is not this list, then add the title in the box below.

• Boiler Room (2000)
• Citizen Kane (1941)
• Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
• It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
• Jerry McGuire (1996)
• Startup.com (2001)
• The Godfather - Part I (1972) and Part II (1974)
• Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)
• Wall Street (1987)
• Working Girl (1988)

Not any of the above? Then, enter your favorite here:

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