The NY Times reported about one history museum's new approach and plan to engage audiences and increase visitation. Great example of new ways of thinking and an entrepreneurial approach. As the article relates:
When thinking of ways to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon, studying history is not high on the list for most families. Now, in a bid to make history more vivid, alluring and accessible for the Wii generation, an interactive “museum within a museum,” focusing on the lives of young New Yorkers, will open in November 2011 on the lower level of the New-York Historical Society, museum officials said.
The DiMenna Children’s History Museum, as it will be known, is part of the $60 million renovation of the historical society building on Central Park West, Louise Mirrer, the president and chief executive officer of the museum, said this week. The roughly 4,000-square-foot museum has been designed by Lee H. Skolnick Architecture & Design Partnership with a $5 million donation from Joseph A. and Diana DiMenna.
The new museum will focus on the stories of children, from famous figures like Alexander Hamilton, who came to New York as a teenage orphan to attend college, to the boys and girls who hawked newspapers on city streets 100 years ago.
“In schools, history tends to be about figures once they have matured and become important,” Ms. Mirrer said. “But if we want history to become alive for children, what better way to teach them than showing them children from other periods? We want to be on the permanent agenda of children and families in New York.” Read more here.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Famous Entrepreneurs Series (FES): Central NY Resouce
The Famous Entrepreneurs Series (FES) is a business membership organization created to fuel the entrepreneurial flame in the Greater Syracuse and Central Upstate New York region. Through FES, admired CEOs and management thought leaders join us to share their successes, failures and bold visions in an effort to create inspired discussions within our local community.
4th Annual Series Continues
with
Vijay Govindarajan,
author of "Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators"
Wednesday, March 24
Onondaga Community College
Storer Auditorium, Ferrante Hall
with
Vijay Govindarajan,
author of "Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators"
Wednesday, March 24
Onondaga Community College
Storer Auditorium, Ferrante Hall
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Inventing as a way of business
Business First of Buffalo reported that ideas lead to inventions and, sometimes, a business. As the article relates:
“But that’s just a starting point on a long journey,” said registered patent attorney Vincent LoTempio of the law firm Kloss, Stenger and LoTempio.
On Jan. 19, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., in the Buffalo State College auditorium, LoTempio and other area experts will host entrepreneurs with big ideas and explain what to expect throughout that journey.
The event is called Product Idea Expo, where attendees will get overviews on writing business plans, starting a business and creating prototypes.
Local entrepreneur Richard Conway is scheduled to discuss his experiences in how to bring a product to market.
In 1998, Conway developed the Balance Buddy, a U-shaped handle that attaches to the rear axle of a child’s bicycle.
“It works like a stroller, so parents don’t have to bend down and struggle as they teach their kids to ride a bike.” Conway said.
Patented in 2001, Conway estimates he’s sold more than 100,000. The product can be found at Target, Toys R Us and Amazon.com.
Other sessions include how to avoid the common mistakes inventors make, how to sell a product and what retailers look for in products. “The program is open to anyone who has an idea and wants to market it,” said William Grieshober, business adviser at the Small Business Development Center at Buffalo State.
The event is co-sponsored by the college, New York State Small Business Development Center and the U.S. Small Business Administration. Besides LoTempio and SBA representatives, presentations will be followed by a question-and-answer session. Scheduled to present are SBDC counselors, as well as professionals with experience in customs, advertising and marketing.
For more information or to register, visit www.wnyinvents.com.
“But that’s just a starting point on a long journey,” said registered patent attorney Vincent LoTempio of the law firm Kloss, Stenger and LoTempio.
On Jan. 19, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., in the Buffalo State College auditorium, LoTempio and other area experts will host entrepreneurs with big ideas and explain what to expect throughout that journey.
The event is called Product Idea Expo, where attendees will get overviews on writing business plans, starting a business and creating prototypes.
Local entrepreneur Richard Conway is scheduled to discuss his experiences in how to bring a product to market.
In 1998, Conway developed the Balance Buddy, a U-shaped handle that attaches to the rear axle of a child’s bicycle.
“It works like a stroller, so parents don’t have to bend down and struggle as they teach their kids to ride a bike.” Conway said.
Patented in 2001, Conway estimates he’s sold more than 100,000. The product can be found at Target, Toys R Us and Amazon.com.
Other sessions include how to avoid the common mistakes inventors make, how to sell a product and what retailers look for in products. “The program is open to anyone who has an idea and wants to market it,” said William Grieshober, business adviser at the Small Business Development Center at Buffalo State.
The event is co-sponsored by the college, New York State Small Business Development Center and the U.S. Small Business Administration. Besides LoTempio and SBA representatives, presentations will be followed by a question-and-answer session. Scheduled to present are SBDC counselors, as well as professionals with experience in customs, advertising and marketing.
For more information or to register, visit www.wnyinvents.com.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Entrepreneurship study ranks New York near the bottom
The Albany Business Review reported that New York continues to be among the three least entrepreneur-friendly states, according to a new report by the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council.
New York ranked No. 48 in 2009, followed by California and New Jersey. The District of Columbia ranked last as a region.
The council’s 14th annual “Small Business Survival Index,” released Tuesday, considers 36 costs to small businesses that are imposed by or reported by the government. Most factors are taxes, including personal income taxes, corporate income taxes, property taxes, unemployment taxes and health insurance taxes.
Also factored in are energy costs and crime rate.
The top five most entrepreneur-friendly states are South Dakota, Nevada, Texas, Wyoming and Washington.
The Oakton, Va.-based Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council is a nonpartisan, nonprofit small-business and entrepreneurship advocacy group.
To read the study, click here.
New York ranked No. 48 in 2009, followed by California and New Jersey. The District of Columbia ranked last as a region.
The council’s 14th annual “Small Business Survival Index,” released Tuesday, considers 36 costs to small businesses that are imposed by or reported by the government. Most factors are taxes, including personal income taxes, corporate income taxes, property taxes, unemployment taxes and health insurance taxes.
Also factored in are energy costs and crime rate.
The top five most entrepreneur-friendly states are South Dakota, Nevada, Texas, Wyoming and Washington.
The Oakton, Va.-based Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council is a nonpartisan, nonprofit small-business and entrepreneurship advocacy group.
To read the study, click here.
Recession Brings Out Entrepreneurial Spirit
The NY Times offered an article about the recent entrepreneurial focus in Detroit. As the article related:
With $6,000 and some Hollywood-style spunk, four friends opened this city’s only independent foreign movie house three months ago in an abandoned school auditorium on an unlighted stretch of the Cass Corridor near downtown.
After the unlikely hoopla of an opening night, red-carpet-style event in an area known for drugs and prostitution, exactly four customers showed up to see a film.
Since then, the Burton Theater has had a few profitable nights. But, the owners say, this adventure in entrepreneurship was never completely about making money. It was also about creating a more livable community.
“Nobody could comprehend why we’d start a theater,” said an investor, Nathan Faustyn, 25. “But when you live in Detroit, you ask, ‘What can I do for the city?’ We needed this. And we had nothing to lose. When you’re at the bottom of the economic ladder, you have nowhere to look but up.”
Despite the recession — and in some cases because of it — small businesses are budding around Detroit in one of the more surprising twists of the downturn. Some new businesses like the Burton are scratching by. Others have already grown beyond the initial scope of their business plans, juggling hundreds of customers and expanding into new sites.
Across from the Burton, for instance, Jennifer Willemsen just celebrated the first anniversary of her shop, Curl Up and Dye, a retro-themed hair salon serving 1,500 clients. Not far away, Torya Blanchard, a former French teacher, recently opened the second location of Good Girls Go to Paris, a creperie. Next door, Greg Lenhoff, also a former teacher, opened a bookstore in August called Leopold’s.
And just down the street from Leopold’s, on Woodward Avenue, Victor Both runs Breezecab, a company he started with a severance package after a layoff from Wayne State University. He uses rickshaws to ferry workers and conventioneers around downtown. “This filled a transportation void,” said Mr. Both, 34, who picked up the pedicab idea while touring Las Vegas before his layoff. “I haven’t made much money, but the experience has been priceless. I had no idea Detroit had so much love.”
It is not an uncommon instinct to start an enterprise in bad times and seize on weakened competition, lower overhead costs and perhaps more free time. Nor is it limited to Detroit. But the trend is particularly striking here, in a city that was suffering long before the rest of the nation fell into recession and where hard times, business closings and abandonment became routine generations ago. Read more here.
With $6,000 and some Hollywood-style spunk, four friends opened this city’s only independent foreign movie house three months ago in an abandoned school auditorium on an unlighted stretch of the Cass Corridor near downtown.
After the unlikely hoopla of an opening night, red-carpet-style event in an area known for drugs and prostitution, exactly four customers showed up to see a film.
Since then, the Burton Theater has had a few profitable nights. But, the owners say, this adventure in entrepreneurship was never completely about making money. It was also about creating a more livable community.
“Nobody could comprehend why we’d start a theater,” said an investor, Nathan Faustyn, 25. “But when you live in Detroit, you ask, ‘What can I do for the city?’ We needed this. And we had nothing to lose. When you’re at the bottom of the economic ladder, you have nowhere to look but up.”
Despite the recession — and in some cases because of it — small businesses are budding around Detroit in one of the more surprising twists of the downturn. Some new businesses like the Burton are scratching by. Others have already grown beyond the initial scope of their business plans, juggling hundreds of customers and expanding into new sites.
Across from the Burton, for instance, Jennifer Willemsen just celebrated the first anniversary of her shop, Curl Up and Dye, a retro-themed hair salon serving 1,500 clients. Not far away, Torya Blanchard, a former French teacher, recently opened the second location of Good Girls Go to Paris, a creperie. Next door, Greg Lenhoff, also a former teacher, opened a bookstore in August called Leopold’s.
And just down the street from Leopold’s, on Woodward Avenue, Victor Both runs Breezecab, a company he started with a severance package after a layoff from Wayne State University. He uses rickshaws to ferry workers and conventioneers around downtown. “This filled a transportation void,” said Mr. Both, 34, who picked up the pedicab idea while touring Las Vegas before his layoff. “I haven’t made much money, but the experience has been priceless. I had no idea Detroit had so much love.”
It is not an uncommon instinct to start an enterprise in bad times and seize on weakened competition, lower overhead costs and perhaps more free time. Nor is it limited to Detroit. But the trend is particularly striking here, in a city that was suffering long before the rest of the nation fell into recession and where hard times, business closings and abandonment became routine generations ago. Read more here.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
In the Arts, Bigger Buildings May Not Be Better
A recent blog, The Data Stream (offered by the National Association of Artists Organizations), discussed the "Bilbao effect," which resulted in an overexpansion of arts and cultural organizations. As the post relates:
Within months of its opening in 1997, Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao had given the language a new term and the world a new way of looking at culture. The “Bilbao effect,” many came to believe, was the answer to what ailed cities everywhere — it was a way to lure tourists and economic development — and a potential boon to cultural institutions.
Municipal governments and arts groups were soon pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into larger, flashier exhibition spaces and performance halls.
Now the economic downturn has reined in a lot of these big dreams and has also led to questions about whether ambitious building projects from Buffalo to Berkeley ever made sense to begin with. Some are arguing that arts administrators and their patrons succumbed to an irrational exuberance that rivaled the stock market’s in the boom years.
Organizations were “blinded by the excitement of what it would be like to have this great new facility,” said D. Carroll Joynes, a senior fellow at the University of Chicago’s Cultural Policy Center.
The recession, he said he believed, is not solely to blame for a recent wave of projects that have been delayed (like additions to the St. Louis Art Museum and the Cincinnati Art Museum); scaled back (like the new building of the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, N.Y.); put into question (the new Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center and the renovation of the New York Public Library’s main Fifth Avenue branch); or abandoned altogether (the expansion of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo).
In Mr. Joynes’s view, “The recession is exposing the weakness of a lot of institutions that were seriously overstretched” before it began.
“It’s exposing poor management and poor planning,” said Mr. Joynes, who is collaborating on a study of 50 cultural building projects completed from 1994 to 2008 and their planning processes. These were situations, he added, in which “nobody actually asked: ‘Is there a need here? If they build it, will they come?’ ”
Read more here.
Within months of its opening in 1997, Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao had given the language a new term and the world a new way of looking at culture. The “Bilbao effect,” many came to believe, was the answer to what ailed cities everywhere — it was a way to lure tourists and economic development — and a potential boon to cultural institutions.
Municipal governments and arts groups were soon pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into larger, flashier exhibition spaces and performance halls.
Now the economic downturn has reined in a lot of these big dreams and has also led to questions about whether ambitious building projects from Buffalo to Berkeley ever made sense to begin with. Some are arguing that arts administrators and their patrons succumbed to an irrational exuberance that rivaled the stock market’s in the boom years.
Organizations were “blinded by the excitement of what it would be like to have this great new facility,” said D. Carroll Joynes, a senior fellow at the University of Chicago’s Cultural Policy Center.
The recession, he said he believed, is not solely to blame for a recent wave of projects that have been delayed (like additions to the St. Louis Art Museum and the Cincinnati Art Museum); scaled back (like the new building of the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, N.Y.); put into question (the new Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center and the renovation of the New York Public Library’s main Fifth Avenue branch); or abandoned altogether (the expansion of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo).
In Mr. Joynes’s view, “The recession is exposing the weakness of a lot of institutions that were seriously overstretched” before it began.
“It’s exposing poor management and poor planning,” said Mr. Joynes, who is collaborating on a study of 50 cultural building projects completed from 1994 to 2008 and their planning processes. These were situations, he added, in which “nobody actually asked: ‘Is there a need here? If they build it, will they come?’ ”
Read more here.
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