More Coverage of Small Business Summit

I continue with part 2 of my coverage of the 4th annual Small Business Summit in New York this past week  (read part 1 for background and additional coverage).  

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Intuit —  Intuit had a strong presence at the Summit and I managed to spend a few minutes with Rachel Euretig of Intuit who was there.  Intuit recently launched SmallBusinessUnited.com, a new site that offers freebies and is running a competition which will ultimately give out $300,000 in small business grants in 2009. To participate, go to the site and get your entries in by March 23, 2009.  (Note: I am a judge of this competition, so I’ll write more about it separately.) 

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Wasp Barcode — Wasp is a barcode manufacturer that came up from Plano, Texas.  Last year I had met Grant Wickes, head of marketing for Wasp, when he was an attendee at the Summit.  This year I had a chance to spend a few minutes with him, as Wasp was an official sponsor. Barcodes are a cost-effective way to automate your business.  For instance, you can use barcodes to keep track of inventory,  computer hardware, office furniture or medical equipment in a clinic or doctor’s office.  Barcodes minimize shrinkage and lost assets, and can eliminate much of the manual work to track inventory by hand.

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Network Solutions — According to Harry Brooks and Shashi Bellamkonda, Network Solutions has its roots in domain names, but it is much more today.  For instance, Network Solutions has several community websites.  There’s a small business community site called MySolutionSpot, with discussion forums, articles and free tools.  Then there is Ideas are Power, a site where any member of the public can post suggestions for ideas for Network Solutions. They also launched LinkTogether, an online community for Web designers and developers (many of whom, of course, are themselves small businesses).

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TargetSpot — Elena Perez, Director of Marketing for TargetSpot, gave me a quick overview of this self-serve ad platform for Internet radio.  Small businesses can go online to TargetSpot and create an audio ad using the TargetSpot platform.  Then you can place the ad on a variety of Internet radio stations and terrestrial stations that stream their broadcasts on the Internet. 

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Batch Blue — I spent some time with Pamela O’Hara, President, and Michelle Riggen-Ransom, Communications Director, of Batch Blue, who came down from Rhode Island to the Summit.  Their product is a Web-based CRM application just for small businesses called BatchBook.   One of the most intriguing aspects of BatchBook is the way it lets you track the social media activity of your contacts (their blog posts and Twitter tweets), right inside the application alongside their contact information and history. 

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Among others I met at this year’s Summit were Laurie McCabe, an analyst focusing on the small business market, with Hurwitz Associates in Boston.  Productivity expert Penny Duncan came all the way from Atlanta, Georgia.  And I also ran into Brian Moran of Moran Media; John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing; Rob Levin of the New York Enterprise Report; Colleen DeBaise of BusinessWeek SmallBiz; Gayle Kesten of Small Biz Resource; and last but not least, Brent Leary of Business for Technology Sake.  And there are so many others  (am still sorting through my stack of business cards).

Finally, no report about the Summit would be complete without mentioning the team that helps produce the event each year, including: Andigo New Media;  Doubet Consulting (which handed out a terrific booklet with 107 tips for marketing and public relations); Pattie Design; and WorkStation Business Solutions. 

You can also listen to the backstory behind the Summit from my recent radio interview of Ramon Ray and Marian Banker, the Summit organizers.  In it they talk frankly about the challenges of producing an event like this during a recession.

UPDATE February 9:  Gayle Kesten’s coverage of Small Business Summit can be found here:  Part 1 and Part 2.

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