This workshop was one in a series of events that the staffmagnet and DC ACM teams have partnered on recently.  If your organization would like to hold a workshop related to hiring, career strategy, job search strategy, resume writing, or another topic then send an email to info@staffmagnet.com with details today.

By Kim Hart, Washington Post, Monday, April 6, 2009; Page A11

Bonnie Williams of Linktogether.com, a Web developer community, and Markus Linke of Mingle360 exchange contact information by using a pair of Mingle360’s “mingle sticks.”

Social Matchbox has a new vibe these days.

The networking event was first known as “speed dating for geeks” because start-ups could give three-minute pitches about their idea in hopes of finding business partners, landing customers or even securing a bit of funding.

Now many of those geeks are running full-fledged businesses, even if they aren’t yet profitable. Some, like GeniusRocket, a Bethesda-based “crowdsourcing” marketing firm, and DubMeNow, a McLean-based start-up hoping to help people exchange digital business cards via smart phones, have become familiar names in the local technology scene. The entrepreneurs behind those companies now help make connections and recommendations for other, younger start-ups at the meet-ups.

“I’d say the event is now more like ’state of the start-ups,’ ” said Juliana Neelbauer, who hosts the event with her husband, Robert. The couple runs technology recruiting firm staffmagnet in Dupont Circle.

Thirteen start-ups — more were scheduled but a few didn’t show up — gave quick spiels about their businesses last Thursday evening. Some even said they were hiring.

One is Mingle 360, a company that has created a device allowing people to exchange electronic business cards. Mingle 360 provided free “mingle sticks” to attendees, who wore them around their necks. To exchange contact information with a new acquaintance, they pointed the sticks, which resembled large thumb drives, toward each other and clicked a small button. Both sticks glow with a small green light to indicate information has been shared and can be downloaded into an address book.

A few of the other firms in attendance have recently launched Web sites that they hope will thrive in a down economy. Ben Hattan co-founded LegalRiver.com, a site where small and mid-size businesses can solicit, review and compare lawyers and legal services.

“These days lawyers are willing to do anything” to find clients, he said. “And all small businesses have trouble finding lawyers.”

Kit Cody, who until recently ran online operations at AARP, founded Trustys.com, a local directory where people can find services such as plumbers or landscapers based on reputation, price and location. Natalie Hopkins started SameDayDr.com, which lets patients make appointments over the weekend or the same day they need treatment. “I think the health-care industry is very eager to use us at a time like this,” she said.

Greg Bardwell, founder of Innovative Query, a software technology that sorts disorganized data, sees his company finding business in the public sector rather than with consumers.

“All roads seem to lead to the government,” he said. “The government’s got a huge data problem.”

Some were looking for potential employers. Carl Leonard works as a contractor at the National Institutes of Health and builds robots as a hobby. If enough funding becomes available, he’ll be able to expand his job at NIH.

“If not, I’ll be looking for another job,” he said, perhaps with some of the companies in the room.

Can You Facebook Your Way to a New Job?  Done right, online networking will support your offline network, not replace it
by Kevin Fogarty, Writer for TheLadders.com

“In the old days, “networking” meant hours calling every contact in your Rolodex; paging through the directories of every professional organization you could join; going to breakfast seminars, lunch-time speaking events, happy hours and board meetings to press the flesh – anything to make real-time, one-on-one contact with someone who might know someone who might be hiring.

The tools of the networking trade are changing and moving online, where e-mail, IM and social-networking Web sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and some specific to industry and career are the means to make new contacts and interact with current ones.

A social-networking Web site is essentially a fancy, online address book that allows you to see what your contacts are doing and connect to their contacts. The medium allows users to quickly expand their reach, putting them in touch with industry allies and hiring managers miles from home and in different companies and verticals. It’s also an easy place to track relationships and promote yourself to a willing audience.

But how much use are online social networks to an executive seeking a job, and which ones are worth the effort?

“LinkedIn should be part of your strategy, but not in the way you might expect a good social-networking site to be,” said Robert Neelbauer, owner of StaffMagnet.com, a Washington, D.C.-based recruitment consultancy. Rather then sitting at your PC clicking your way to a new job, Neelbauer and career experts TheLadders interviewed recommend a job seeker use Web sites as the launch pad for traditional social networking. Pressing the flesh and phone calls remain the most intimate way to bond with the contacts in your network.

“If you’re only looking at LinkedIn for lead generation or hunting down candidates for jobs, it’s a valuable tool,” he said. “But if you send a message to someone through LinkedIn, they may not respond to it for days or even weeks.”

Neelbauer is particularly critical of LinkedIn. Although a frequent user almost from its launch in May 2003, he complains that the site has become watered down by millions of users and thousands of recruiters who have flooded the system with resumes and job posts and fill their networks with contacts they barely know. Neelbauer said he prefers other sites, especially Facebook, which gives users much greater control over who is in their network and sees their information. Facebook therefore tends to make in-network contacts more immediate for members, he said.

Don’t ignore the Web
While online networking won’t replace the handshake, career experts caution anyone who discounts it entirely. Their role in job hunting specifically has become so central for recruiters and hiring managers that job seekers are severely handicapping themselves by not participating, Neelbauer said.

The Executive Job Market Intelligence Report 2008 from ExecuNet, an online recruitment aggregator, shows executive recruiters now fill 56 percent of jobs through networking; another 10 percent through their own online research; and 4 percent by searching Google, social networks and other sites for possible recruits from target companies. Of the 42 million U.S. members of Facebook, the most active social network, 18 million, almost half, are over 26 years old, according to The Social Times, a Web site that reports on social-networking companies.

“If you’re a recruiter and you’re not using LinkedIn and Facebook or Twitter, I don’t know what you’re using,” said Lindsay Olson, partner and recruiter at Paradigm Staffing. Olson said social networking plays at least some role in the hiring process for more than 60 percent of the positions she fills. “LinkedIn particularly is the first place people go to look for candidates. When I get a name, that’s where I look first to get a little more background on someone before I talk to them.”

Online social networking is to networking what e-mail is to handwritten letters: it’s just easier, faster and a lot more convenient, said Isabel Walcott Hilborn, owner of Strategic Internet Consulting, an online marketing consultancy, and founder of SmartGirl.com, a 200,000-member social network for teenage girls. Rather than meeting people one at a time at a conference to trade cards or calls once a year, social networks let you do something with those contacts, Hilborn said. Put those people in a social-networking list, and you have the opportunity to learn more about them and let them get to know you in a low-stress way.

“Social networking and marketing and job searching is all about getting yourself out there,” said Paul Gillin, a social-networking consultant at Paul Gillin Communications and author of “The New Influencers” and “Secrets of Social Media Marketing.”

“Friends’ networks can show you who’s changing jobs, which means a job just opened up at their old company that you can go for that hasn’t been posted yet. And (it) can help you get introduced to people closer to that job than you might have gotten otherwise.”

Three degrees of separation
Job seeker Jim Nash used LinkedIn not only to get a new job but to do it in a foreign field where he had relatively few direct contacts.

Nash has been a writer and editor at news, business and technology publications. He was the editorial director of NBC Universal’s Sci-Fi Channel Web site and a former metro editor at the Chicago Tribune. But he wanted to follow his core interests into medical or science publishing, preferably with a nonprofit.

“I did know a few people at science publications, and that was helpful,” Nash said. “The good thing about social networking was that if I knew nobody in an industry, I could still look at all the people who were related to me and the people they knew to find people in the area I wanted so I could call them. I was casual about it but it was clear that I was looking, and almost everybody I approached was happy either to talk to me or introduce me to someone else.”

Nash landed his current job - Web managing editor at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York - through three degrees of separation. One of his contacts had introduced him to another contact, who introduced him to his boss. The employer educated Nash on how and where medical organizations might be able to use Web-publishing savvy and eventually hired Nash himself.

“Once we made that contact, it seemed like things moved really quickly,” said Nash, who started the new job in October. “I contacted my current boss as the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, and it just worked out.”

But not everyone is comfortable introducing themselves to strangers, even when the strangers are online and the job seeker has a lot of experience at marketing and selling. Susan, an UpLadder member who asked TheLadders not to publish her full name, has a profile on LinkedIn but is reluctant to use it aggressively.

“The majority of people I know are not on it,” she said. “So the people that would be contacting me on it are not likely to be close colleagues. None of my friends are really using LinkedIn to find jobs, and people who want me to use it seem to want to use my contacts. It seems more a way for business building than for networking.”

Don’t ignore the real world
Doing it properly means marrying your offline network to your online network, said Hilborn.

Hilborn recommends a job seeker use the contacts he makes offline to build out his social network, but then return to the offline sources when it comes time to make a job connection. For instance, when you find a job, online or off, don’t just e-mail your resume or apply online, she said. “If you’ve taken the time to develop your network and keep those connections live, you can type in a keyword and find you have three friends who work there or know someone who does,” she said. ”Then you can write to your contact, ask if they’d forward this to their friend and ask her to submit your resume. It’s almost impossible for HR to ignore a resume that’s submitted from someone inside, and they usually get paid if they refer someone who gets hired, so it works out really well.”

Even an interview that doesn’t work out can extend your network and lead to opportunities you might not have had otherwise, Nash said.

“I’d always try to talk on the phone or meet people I made contact with,” he said. “If they didn’t have a job available, or it wasn’t a match for some reason, I’d ask if I could link to them on LinkedIn and look through their contacts so I could write back in a week or two and say, ‘Thanks for meeting with me; it was really great, and would you mind recommending me or introducing me to this other person?’ And they were almost always fine with that.”

It requires the same attention and interest in relationship building as traditional networking, Hillborn concluded.

“When someone changes their picture, you can comment on it, or when they put up a note about having had a hard day, you can commiserate or offer suggestions,” Hilborn said. “And if in the past you’ve sent three e-mails to Maria, you are on her radar screen, so when you send an e-mail to all your contacts saying your company is doing a round of layoffs and you’re on the list, she’s going to respond, where if you just had her business card, she wouldn’t even know.”

“Half an hour on Facebook once a week is all you’d need to keep that social network totally thriving,” she said. “You have to pick and choose the things (to which) you respond to make them personal. But tiny little outreaches are quick; they take time over the long term, but one at a time, they’re pretty quick. And it lets you stay in touch with a much larger community than you otherwise could.”

The panel will explored the current and future DC technology job market, from the startup space to the government contracting sector. This panel was geared towards IT professionals who are considering a job change, pondering their career path, or just wondering what skills are attractive in this region’s job market. Students from regional computer science programs were also in attendance.

More information on the event can be found on the DC ACM website.

Moderator: Dr. Kent Miller

Panelists:
Robert Neelbauer, Principal, staffmagnet
Dr. Annette Reilly, Senior Manager, HR/Finance Systems Engineering, Lockheed Martin
Dr. Martin Herman, Chief, Information Access Division, NIST
John Thomas, Vice President, Large Scale Systems Engineering, Booz Allen Hamilton

Where:
American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
2nd Floor Conference Room
1200 New York Avenue NW (entrance is on 12th street)
Washington, D.C.
Near Metro Center

When:
December 8, 2008 from 7:30-9:30pm

The full article:

Monday, Dec 1, 2008

The Download: Navigating the Downturn
Washington’s technology community is about to get another test.

It’s only been a few years since the dot-com crash wiped out many of the area’s high-flying telecom firms and Internet start-ups. And with the economy now facing another dramatic downturn, entrepreneurs and investors are once again bracing for tough times.

“It’s back to basics,” said Raul Fernandez, a local business guru whose current investments range from a mobile advertising start-up to the Washington Capitals. “The days of wide-eyed growth pitches are gone for a while. Now all that matters is, do you have a product, are people buying it, and are you making money?”

In Silicon Valley, a number of large companies such as Google, Yahoo and HP Hewlett-Packard anchor and guide the technology community through lean times. But with two of Washington’s bellweather companies, AOL and Sprint Nextel, gone, local tech workers are looking to those who that have track records of doing more with less.

“The best people to fuel innovation are the people who’ve done it before,” said Hooman Radfar, chief executive of McLean-based widget-maker Clearspring. He said he has noticed people networking more to find partners and idea soundboards.

We’ve rounded up eight people who have a few ideas of how to help guide the region’s Web 2.0 community through the financial slump. Those pictured here are a sampling of the investors and mentors who are helping young companies navigate the crisis. You’ll also find the young chief executives who are figuring out how to manage their bottom lines, as well as those who’re are holding them all together.

The Networkers
Robert Neelbauer runs Washington-area jobs listing site jobmatchbox.com and management consulting firm Staffmagnet, and he hosts Social Matchbox, a quarterly tech jobs recruiting event.

Peter Corbett is chief executive of interactive marketing and consulting firm iStrategyLabs and co-hosts Twin Tech parties, designed to promote discussion between the government contracting set and a newer crop of Internet-focused entreprenuers.

These guys are sometimes called the glue of Washington’s tech community. In addition to running their own District-based companies, Robert Neelbauer and Peter Corbett organize the events that give disparate groups of developers, engineers, executives and investors an excuse to get together.

The most recent Social Matchbox, held last week, was more of a demo night than a recruiting speed-dating round, “because fewer people are hiring these days,” said Neelbauer, a former Capitol Hill staffer. He said he has prepared for a slowdown at his own firm, Staffmagnet, by cutting costs and consulting on a wider range of projects as fewer companies are looking for employees.

Corbett, a former concert producer, fashion-show videographer and advertising media planner, has picked up a few tricks for throwing a party. The last Twin Tech get-together attracted 1,050 people, and his current challenge is finding a venue big enough for the next one.

“There are so many smart people sitting in the basement of the DoD [Defense Department] or an association, and in order for the community to grow we need to meet more of these people,” he said.

Last month he worked with the District government to put together a contest, called Apps for Democracy, for software developers to design mobile and Web applications that would allow citizens to access government data. Getting citizens involved with government projects saves local resources and generates business for start-ups, Corbett said.

The Advisers
Raul Fernandez is chairman of ObjectVideo; board member of Web-hosting firm Network Solutions; investor in and adviser to mobile ad company Mobile Posse, equity firm General Atlantic and tech incubator LaunchBox Digital; and part owner of the Washington Capitals, Wizards and Mystics.

Ted Leonsis is chairman of online payment service Revolution Money; board member of widget-maker Clearspring; majority owner of Snag Films; investor in and adviser to GridPoint; and majority owner of the Capitals and Mystics.

The longtime friends and business partners are familiar with what it takes to survive a serious slowdown.
“2009 is going to be just as bad, if not worse, than the quarter we’ve just seen,” Raul Fernandez said, noting the super-tight credit conditions, big drops in consumer spending and spiraling stock market. “No one knows where the bottom is.”

He started his first company, Proxicom, in 1991 in the midst of a downturn, and said he was able to stay afloat by keeping his expenses low and getting paying customers almost immediately. He’s now imparting his lessons learned to the next generation of entreprenuers.

“It’s all about surviving the next 12 to 18 months,” he said. “Ideas that aren’t fully baked will not get funded.”
While Fernandez stresses the importance of conserving cash, Leonsis emphasizes the opportunities hidden in the slump.
“It’s important to focus not just on cutbacks, but what the company feels like after you survive,” Leonsis said. “It’s been a healthy exercise for all our young CEOs to ask, ‘What must we do and what’s frivolous?’ ”

Both Fernandez and Leonsis agree that companies working to help people save money and energy could have big potential.

“Anything that helps people and companies be more efficient is going to get attention, because we’re all trying to do more with less,” Fernandez said.

For example, Fernandez is an investor in Algentis, a San Francisco company that handles human resource needs for small businesses that can’t afford their own full-time staff.

Leonsis and Fernandez said that to their surprise, fans are still attending hockey games. “If people are going to spend the money, they want to watch something they enjoy,” Fernandez said.

The Funders
Phil Bronner is a partner in Novak Biddle Venture Partners and an investor in and board member of Clearspring, Webs.com (formerly Freewebs), Social Gaming Network, InGrid Home Security, Netcordia, Approva, Vision Chain and Clear Standards.

Don Rainey is a partner in Grotech Ventures and an investor in and board member of Arpu, Clarabridge, LivingSocial and Zenoss.

Many people look to the smart-money investors for direction. These venture capitalists say they’re staying their course, with money in e-commerce and social media.

“The greatest harm is being slow to react,” Rainey said. “It may bring opportunity or it may bring negative impact. It’s best to be alert, talk to customers as much as you can to find out how people are viewing the situation.”

Bronner sees the downturn as a way to “clear the clutter” of the Web 2.0 companies that have proliferated over the past couple of years. “At the end of the day, the strongest companies are going to emerge winners.”

Rainey said today’s local tech community is full of alumni from heavyweights like AOL, Sprint Nextel and MicroStrategy - a resource the region did not have the last time the tech sector took a hit eight years ago.

“Every generation of high-tech start-ups begets other generations,” he said. “A successful start-up is going to convince three or four other people they can do it. Even if it’s not the best of economic times, we’re doing well in terms of our entrepreneurial class.”

Bronner agrees. “Back then we didn’t have mentors who had done it before,” he said. “We have that now in every sector.”

He’s taking bets on businesses that promote efficiency. Today, he plans to announce participating in a $4 million investment in a Sterling software firm called Clear Standards, which helps companies affordably reduce their carbon footprint.

“The maxim is that great companies are created in downtimes,” Rainey said. “You do get rewarded if you can grow when it’s not easy to grow.”

The Chief Executives
Haroon Mokhtarzada is chief executive of Webs.com, formerly Freewebs.

Hooman Radfar is chief executive of Clearspring.
Clearspring and Webs.com have become known as the staples of the local Web 2.0 start-up community.
This is the first economic downturn Mokhtarzada and Radfar, both 28, have experienced in the business world.

“I never had a job before this,” said Radfar, who founded the widget syndication firm two years ago as a Carnegie Mellon University grad student.

The company is not yet profitable, but in May it received $18 million in funding to keep it going. Radfar said he is continuing to work with publishers and advertisers to reach Web surfers. “Monetizing is the next step,” he said.

Last week, Mokhtarzada rebranded Freewebs as Webs.com. The change reflects the company’s evolution from a make-your-own Web site platform to more of an online community.

Webs became profitable in the third quarter, but Mokhtarzada is still carefully watching spending. “Any good CEO right now should be at least cautious, even if they’re optimistic,” he said. “It’s a very tough environment to raise any capital. There’s definitely going to be a lot more focus, just like during the last tech bust, on companies that are generating revenue.”

Radfar said the tech community has grown much more diverse since he arrived in Washington. “There is a strong base of entreprenuers who get the Internet and data,” he said.

The economic slide could reduce the number of entreprenuers willing to take the risk to start a new company,

Mokhtarzada said. “But a lot of great entrepreneurs start the way we started,” by funding themselves instead of finding investors. “It’s a good opportunity to do that.”

–Kim Hart

For more information on the event visit the recap post on Jobmatchbox.

It was a melting pot of the Washington technology community.
They came out–hundreds of them–from all sides: venture capitalists, Web developers, government contractors, online marketing pros, consultants and bloggers.
The goal of the “Twin Tech Party” was to bring together the area’s two tech towns — the old tech consisting of government contractors and Beltway bandits and the new tech consisting of social media players — under one roof. (In this case, they filled virtually every corner of Local 16, a spacious bar on U Street in the District.)

There’s no question that the goal was accomplished. The name tags on people’s chests read: Booz Allen Hamilton, LivingSocial, Clearspring, Core Capital, PNC Bank, Leverpoint, WilmerHale, Ozmosis. Here’s what those companies focus on, respectively: government consulting, Web 2.0 development, online widgets, venture capital, retail banking, enterprise software, law, online health.
There was a question, however, of how much one side was talking to the other. On Local 16’s first floor, a scattered set of people in suits, ties removed, were talking. These were the old tech people. Up on the second floor deck, the new media people mingled. That’s an oversimplification, but the separation was clear as like-minded folks talked to like-minded folks.

“When there’s so many people, it’s hard to make introductions,” said Jared Goralnick, who calls himself a “productivity evangelist” and founded a Web site to cut down on e-mail traffic, Away Find.

That said, it was a step toward bringing these towns together. Bobbie Kilberg, head of the Northern Virginia Technology Council, which represents many old tech companies, shook hands with Elias Shams, founder of District-based Web search company Searchles. “Those guys are going to be the next Google,” an onlooker said, referring to the company, Searchles.

By the entrance to Local 16, three product demonstrations were set up. One was for Zippyjobs, a campus jobs site. Another was for the MIT Enterprise Forum, a business group associated with the university. Jean-Luc Park, a venture capitalist with Bethesda-based Calvert Group, was giving a presentation about it. A third was for Deliv, a new online food delivery service. Sharing a table with evDeliv was a collection of items labeled a “Beer Pong Kit.”

The party was the brainchild of NVTC and a motley crew of new media types. It came three weeks and one day after two big parties were held at the same time on the same night for the NVTC and for the new media community, symbolizing the gulf between Washington’s two tech towns. Sponsors for Thursday’s party included NVTC, a developer group known as Widget DevCamp, Social Times, Potomac TechWire, among others.

“It’s about time they got together,” said Limor Schafman of Arlington technology consultancy Keystone Tech Group, who has worked with new media firms such as Red Aphid and government contractors such as Scia Solutions. “I think particularly the NVTC group has a lot to learn from the Web 2.0 crowd.”
When they arrived, “each side was kind of shocked by each other,” Schafman said. “They didn’t see there was a common language.”

Shana Glickfield, who works in public affairs but also runs the D.C. Concierge (an advice site for going out in the District), said that when she was talking to Peter Corbett of iStrategy Labs, one of the hosts of the event, they thought about using different name tags for old tech and new tech. “You can put us in the same basket but you can’t make us mingle,” she said jokingly. The idea was nixed.

Regardless of what it was doing for mingling old tech and new tech, the party seemed to do a little mingling when it came to one of Washington’s other big divisions: politics. Glickfield introduced her friend Marco Nunez, a former John McCain staffer, as “the token Republican” of the social media crowd. After all, Washington’s social media community largely overlaps with the “netroots,” the liberal activists who have found a big voice online in recent years.

Robert Neelbauer, who runs tech job company staffmagnet, noted that the social media community is divided itself between PR types, bloggers and personalities, and hardcore developers who tend to skip networking events such as Thursday’s and instead meet up for geeky programming sessions, meeting regularly to discuss PHP at the offices of Greenpeace or Ruby on Rails at George Mason University.
Neelbauer said among the social media types, there’s a race to be the star of the community, the person who brings together venture capitalists and startups in the same way that Michael Arrington does in Silicon Valley at his site, TechCrunch. “It’ like a race for mayor of Techville,” he said. “You have people who want to be the connect, the influentials, much like in Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Tipping Point.’”

Art Swift, the new communications guy at NVTC, was proud of the event, and said the old-fashioned organization is definitely planning on ensuring that it won’t be an “isolated” happening.

“I’ve only been here five weeks and I’ve been able to co-create a party,” he said. “We’re re-examining how we do things [at the NVTC]. We don’t need to plan everything six months in advance. It’s a testament to the social media community how fast they got things out.”

Another testament to the social media community was on display downstairs at Local 16. Sarah Lacy, a popular writer and a big personality in the Silicon Valley scene, was visiting as part of her “user generated book tour” to promote her recent tome about the Web 2.0 era, “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good.”
Lacy said that when a she was planning her tour–where she visits events based on requests she gets from fans–she said Washington was the first stop because it had an enthusiastic community that sent her messages in droves urging her to visit. Boston’s tech scene, she said, is dead. New York’s ebbs and flows. Washington’s, she said, is on its way up.