ColoSpace

The Dow hit another yearly high this week and business and consumer confidence appears to be improving on a monthly basis.  The CFOs that I am communicating with are talking more often about expanding their payrolls that shrinking them.  We personally have several openings in our technical, sales, and administrative divisions.  Even more significantly, we are seeing a return of investor-backed start-ups. 

A couple of weeks ago ColoSpace sponsored the Speed Venture Summit.  A couple of hundred entrepreneurs spent the day networking and nearly 50 companies gave their elevator pitch to investors.  The buzz was palpable, there was a general feeling of excitement amongst most attendees, and the entrepreneurs were much more positive about funding opportunities than last year (in fact one company who was scheduled to give a pitch pulled out because they completed their round of funding more easily than expected).  

The top five (as voted by investors) companies included companies in the biotech, alternative energy/energy efficiency, and high tech spaces.  These are areas of huge opportunity and companies that should benefit from the unique resources available in our region.  A special congratulations to the winner Highest Wind and runner-up EnerTrac.  It is worth noting that while both of those two firms – one concentrating on alternative energy and one on delivering energy more efficiently – are in hot industries – their main pitch and focus is on reducing their customers’ costs.

We know that start-ups and small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy and I am happy we were able to be part of the event.  Please stay tuned to our blog and e-mail blasts, as we are trying to increase our support of the start-up community in our region.  Feel free to drop me a line if you have any suggestions for us to do so.

ColoSpace has been helping our customers deploy cutting edge technical solutions for more than a decade, and today, in addition to providing hosting services to the financial services and healthcare industries support a number of cutting edge firms in the region.  We are relatively new to the blog-o-sphere, however – I think it’s something about the shoemaker’s kids running around barefoot… 

You will now be able to hear from several of our managers weekly through this blog as well as through Twitter.  Wayne, Dave, Phil and myself (Aaron) will be providing insight and updates into the things that we think are the most meaningful in the industry.

Today I would like to talk about the ability of social media to affect change.  A little outside of the hosting space but I’m in charge, so bear with me.  I recently returned from a month-long honeymoon – we took a trip across Southern Africa, visiting South Africa and Mozambique (and looking across the river at Zimbabwe). 

At one of the northern-most parts of South Africa’s Kruger National Park we stayed in the Pafuri Triangle, a 240 square kilometer park at the confluence of the Luvuvu and Limpopo rivers (as any lover of Kipling would be quite familiar).  The park is quite rural – we were far from mobile phone coverage, and many of the surrounding villages lacked potable water and reliable electricity.  

It was in Pafuri that I met Alweet, who had spent nearly all of his life living in the area.  He worked very hard, took correspondence classes, and became a certified ranger, and today earns a very comfortable living leading photo safari throughout his people’s land.  The pay is good, but the work is hard, and he is away from his family for six weeks at a time, living in tented camps along the Luvuvu river.  

The reason that Alweet’s story was so remarkable has been the way in which he uses Facebook to keep in touch with his family and friends, and also to promote an educational non-profit he is involved with.  Rather than relying on sporadic and expensive telephone service, Facebook has emerged as a much richer communication mechanism.  The sharing of pictures and video allows people to keep in touch in ways never imagined, and all of this can be done from an area that truly defines what it is to be rural.

 The Village Innovation Program has used Facebook and Social media to connect with hundreds of donors located throughout the world and has received donations ranging from money to books to other teacher’s supplies.  When they lost funding from a large International NGO, they decided to harness the power of social media to connect with people.  They are able to further that goal by exploiting each of their individual supporters’ networks, creating a viral effect that has resulted in the COO of an Internet Hosting firm in New England supporting the construction of a library in the Makuleke Village, ten thousand miles away. 

We look forward to enhancing the communication that takes place between our leaders and our customers, employees, and friends.  If you have any suggestions or comments about that way in which we use social media, please do not hesitate to contact us & let us know!