April 26, 2007 Minutes

STARTWEST MEETING
April 26, 2007
4:00 PM

MINUTES

1.) Introductions: Tanner Dahlin, Anne Gunn, Ace Young, Matt Ramey, Jesus Rios, Garrett Lindemann, Sam Fletcher, Ted Lapis, Shaun Gee, Deb Anderson, Mark Thoney, and Liz Dearcorn.

2.) Goals and Methods: Discussed how the wiki and blog are currently working to achieve our goals, and how can we improve.

What we want to do:

· Communicate with each other quickly online
· Reach out and tell people elsewhere what we do
· Nurture new companies within the Sheridan Community
· Have people come to the website for help
· Have access to Venture Capitalist funding

Ideas for how to do that:

· Create subcommittees to find what we are trying to get from this group, ex. communication subcommittees.
· Create ‘buckets’ on the web site for specific information, for example: employment opportunity/internship, extracurricular activities, news.
· Focus on our own companies and showcase what we have to offer
· Use the wiki/website and blog to communicate
· The point is networking (or really, getting beyond networking) pull resources and get answers, electronically get to know each other (not meeting in person)
· Wiki concerns- maybe too techy, lacks structure, needs to live a life of its own, navigation is not good.
· The content currently on the wiki is valuable!

3.) STARTWEST unanimously voted yes to build a traditional website instead of the wiki. The subcommittee for new website: Anne Gunn, Mark Thoney and possibly Troy Nissen.

4.) STARTWEST Website-
· Include a section on each member and what they do
· Keep website knowledge-based
· Help build jobs and build diversity for the Sheridan Community
· Have links to Sheridan Travel and Tourism, Chamber of Commerce and City websites
· Maybe have employment connection?
· Sheridan Press online? - News section would be good for website
· Check out biospace.com –lots of content and variety-good model for our website
· Mark will take a look at related job sites (Chamber, State) and see if we can promote them on our site.

5.) Discuss other potential goals including guest speakers, events, or other possibilities.
· Anne and Tanner have been approached by people who would like to speak to our group.
· Tanner suggests that we need to get our feet under us first.
· We should consider a local ‘expo’ - speakers can speak – open it to the community - focus on a particular day or event.
· Please continue to get articles to Anne so she can post them and continue to use blog to communicate, especially those traveling.