I received the news that my friend and collegue John Reuben lost his son....an anquish no parent should have to have to know. Please read Johns outreach - and make a donation to his non-profit that helps teens. I did - I believe in Johns good work and have seen the results. If you already made a contribution from the email I sent, thank you - you have helped a teen!
Sincerely,
Paul Lavallee
From: John Reuben [mailto:jreuben@savingteens.org] Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2008 10:16 PMTo: VentureFuel@msn.comSubject: Passing Away Of My Son Michael
Friends & Associates,Many of you may have already heard about the passing of my son, Michael, this past weekend as the result of substance abuse related issues. As much as I have tried these many years, I could not help Mike escape the grip of his drugs of choice. And now I am faced with a void in my life that will be impossible to replace.Substance abuse is a horrid disease, a plague on our society. In 2004 I realized that my son had this problem and looked for a constructive way to channel my energies from worrying about my son. I formed a non-profit called Saving Teens In Crisis Collaborative (STICC) to help disadvantaged families with their children. STICC provides long term, substantive care for the children and support for the rest of the family. To date we have helped several families, some of which you can read about on our website at www.savingteens.orgWe are currently funding a family from Columbus, Ohio. His single Mom works three jobs and has watched her 14 year old son cycle into drug abuse and all that brings socially, academically, and legally. STICC will provide Billy with an environment where he can deal with his addiction, regain his academic initiative, and confront the emotional issues he has that in many cases can be the root of the problem. Afterwards we will provide the family transitional assistance to help Billy back into the mainstream and for the entire family to heal together.I hope that you will think about my story, read about the families we have helped, and participate in this war on this disease, one kid at a time. Please do so by visiting our website at https://app.etapestry.com/hosted/SavingTeensinCrisisCollabo/OnlineDonation.html Let's not let this happen to one more parent than it needs to.Thank you,John________________________John D. ReubenChairman & FounderSaving Teens In Crisis Collaborative(978) 852-2144mailto:jreuben@savingteens.org
Friday, September 12, 2008
Friday, May 09, 2008
The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits
The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits
By Leslie R. Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant
We spent three years studying 12 of the most successful nonprofits in recent U.S. history. They have come up with innovative solutions to pressing social problems, and they have spread these ideas nationally or internationally. In the business world, these organizations would be akin to companies like Google or eBay.
What we learned about these nonprofits astonished us, and intrigued others with long experience in the field. We believe that the framework we've discovered offers a new lens for understanding the social sector and what it takes to create extraordinary levels of social change. Any organization seeking to increase its social impact can emulate the six practices that we describe in detail below.
The secret to success lies in how great organizations mobilize every sector of society -- government, business, nonprofits, and the public -- to be a force for good. In other words, greatness has more to do with how nonprofits work outside the boundaries of their organizations than how they manage their own internal operations. Textbook strategies like relentless fundraising, well-connected boards, and effective management are necessary, of course, but they are hardly sufficient. The high-impact nonprofits we studied are satisfied with building a "good enough" organization and then spending their time and energy focused externally on catalyzing large-scale systemic change. Great organizations work with and through others to create more impact than they could ever achieve alone.
"Give me a lever long enough, and I alone can move the world," is the common paraphrase of Archimedes. These twelve groups use the power of leverage to create tremendous change. Like a man lifting a boulder three times his weight with a lever and fulcrum, they have far more impact than their mere size or structure would suggest.
The organizations in this book seed social movements and help build entire fields. They shape government policy, and change the way companies do business. They engage and mobilize millions of individuals and, in so doing, help change public attitudes and behaviors. They nurture larger networks of nonprofits and collaborate rather than compete with their peers. They spend as much time managing external relationships and influencing other groups as they do worrying about building their own organizations. These high-impact nonprofits are not focused only on themselves but also on the relentless pursuit of results.
After a long process of studying these organizations, we began to see patterns in the ways they work. In the end, six of these patterns crystallized into the form presented here -- the six practices that high-impact nonprofits use to achieve extraordinary impact.
The first four practices are more external; they represent how these groups dramatically expand their impact outside the borders of their own organizations. In observing this external focus, we also realized that working outside the organization entails special practices inside that help these nonprofits relate more effectively to their environment. This led us to discern two additional internal practices that enable high-impact nonprofits to operate successfully in the outside world and bridge boundaries.
More specifically, we learned that great social sector organizations do these six things:
1. Advocate and serve. High-impact organizations don't just focus on doing one thing well. They may start out providing great programs, but eventually they realize that they cannot achieve systemic change through service delivery alone. So they add policy advocacy to access government resources or to change legislation, thus expanding their impact. Other nonprofits start out doing advocacy and later add grassroots programs to supercharge their strategy. Ultimately, all of them bridge the divide between service and advocacy, and become good at doing both.
2. Make markets work. Tapping into the power of self-interest and the laws of economics is far more effective than appealing to pure altruism. No longer content to rely on traditional notions of charity or to see the private sector as the enemy, great nonprofits find ways to work with markets and help business "do well while doing good." They influence business practices, build corporate partnerships, and develop earned-income ventures -- all ways of leveraging market forces to achieve social change on a grander scale.
3. Inspire evangelists. Great nonprofits see volunteers as much more than a source of free labor or membership dues. They create meaningful ways to engage individuals in emotional experiences that help them connect to the group's mission and core values. They see volunteers, donors, and advisers not only for what they can contribute to the organization in terms of time, money, and guidance but also for what they can do as evangelists for their cause. They build and sustain strong communities to help them achieve their larger goals.
4. Nurture nonprofit networks. Although most groups pay lip service to collaboration, many of them really see other nonprofits as competition for scarce resources. But high-impact organizations help the competition succeed, building networks of nonprofit allies and devoting remarkable time and energy to advancing their larger field. They freely share wealth, expertise, talent, and power with their peers, not because they are saints, but because it's in their self-interest to do so.
5. Master the art of adaptation. All the organizations in this book are exceptionally adaptive, modifying their tactics as needed to increase their success. They have responded to changing circumstances with one innovation after another. Along the way, they've made mistakes, and have even produced some flops. But unlike many nonprofits, they have also mastered the ability to listen, learn, and modify their approach based on external cues -- allowing them to sustain their impact and stay relevant.
6. Share leadership. We witnessed much charisma among the leaders in this book, but that doesn't mean they have oversize egos. These CEOs are exceptionally strategic and gifted entrepreneurs, but they also know they must share power in order to be a stronger force for good. They distribute leadership throughout their organization and their nonprofit network -- empowering others to lead. And they cultivate a strong second-in-command, build enduring executive teams with long tenure, and develop highly engaged boards in order to have more impact.
Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits; Leslie R. Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant; Copyright © 2008 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material is used by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
By Leslie R. Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant
We spent three years studying 12 of the most successful nonprofits in recent U.S. history. They have come up with innovative solutions to pressing social problems, and they have spread these ideas nationally or internationally. In the business world, these organizations would be akin to companies like Google or eBay.
What we learned about these nonprofits astonished us, and intrigued others with long experience in the field. We believe that the framework we've discovered offers a new lens for understanding the social sector and what it takes to create extraordinary levels of social change. Any organization seeking to increase its social impact can emulate the six practices that we describe in detail below.
The secret to success lies in how great organizations mobilize every sector of society -- government, business, nonprofits, and the public -- to be a force for good. In other words, greatness has more to do with how nonprofits work outside the boundaries of their organizations than how they manage their own internal operations. Textbook strategies like relentless fundraising, well-connected boards, and effective management are necessary, of course, but they are hardly sufficient. The high-impact nonprofits we studied are satisfied with building a "good enough" organization and then spending their time and energy focused externally on catalyzing large-scale systemic change. Great organizations work with and through others to create more impact than they could ever achieve alone.
"Give me a lever long enough, and I alone can move the world," is the common paraphrase of Archimedes. These twelve groups use the power of leverage to create tremendous change. Like a man lifting a boulder three times his weight with a lever and fulcrum, they have far more impact than their mere size or structure would suggest.
The organizations in this book seed social movements and help build entire fields. They shape government policy, and change the way companies do business. They engage and mobilize millions of individuals and, in so doing, help change public attitudes and behaviors. They nurture larger networks of nonprofits and collaborate rather than compete with their peers. They spend as much time managing external relationships and influencing other groups as they do worrying about building their own organizations. These high-impact nonprofits are not focused only on themselves but also on the relentless pursuit of results.
After a long process of studying these organizations, we began to see patterns in the ways they work. In the end, six of these patterns crystallized into the form presented here -- the six practices that high-impact nonprofits use to achieve extraordinary impact.
The first four practices are more external; they represent how these groups dramatically expand their impact outside the borders of their own organizations. In observing this external focus, we also realized that working outside the organization entails special practices inside that help these nonprofits relate more effectively to their environment. This led us to discern two additional internal practices that enable high-impact nonprofits to operate successfully in the outside world and bridge boundaries.
More specifically, we learned that great social sector organizations do these six things:
1. Advocate and serve. High-impact organizations don't just focus on doing one thing well. They may start out providing great programs, but eventually they realize that they cannot achieve systemic change through service delivery alone. So they add policy advocacy to access government resources or to change legislation, thus expanding their impact. Other nonprofits start out doing advocacy and later add grassroots programs to supercharge their strategy. Ultimately, all of them bridge the divide between service and advocacy, and become good at doing both.
2. Make markets work. Tapping into the power of self-interest and the laws of economics is far more effective than appealing to pure altruism. No longer content to rely on traditional notions of charity or to see the private sector as the enemy, great nonprofits find ways to work with markets and help business "do well while doing good." They influence business practices, build corporate partnerships, and develop earned-income ventures -- all ways of leveraging market forces to achieve social change on a grander scale.
3. Inspire evangelists. Great nonprofits see volunteers as much more than a source of free labor or membership dues. They create meaningful ways to engage individuals in emotional experiences that help them connect to the group's mission and core values. They see volunteers, donors, and advisers not only for what they can contribute to the organization in terms of time, money, and guidance but also for what they can do as evangelists for their cause. They build and sustain strong communities to help them achieve their larger goals.
4. Nurture nonprofit networks. Although most groups pay lip service to collaboration, many of them really see other nonprofits as competition for scarce resources. But high-impact organizations help the competition succeed, building networks of nonprofit allies and devoting remarkable time and energy to advancing their larger field. They freely share wealth, expertise, talent, and power with their peers, not because they are saints, but because it's in their self-interest to do so.
5. Master the art of adaptation. All the organizations in this book are exceptionally adaptive, modifying their tactics as needed to increase their success. They have responded to changing circumstances with one innovation after another. Along the way, they've made mistakes, and have even produced some flops. But unlike many nonprofits, they have also mastered the ability to listen, learn, and modify their approach based on external cues -- allowing them to sustain their impact and stay relevant.
6. Share leadership. We witnessed much charisma among the leaders in this book, but that doesn't mean they have oversize egos. These CEOs are exceptionally strategic and gifted entrepreneurs, but they also know they must share power in order to be a stronger force for good. They distribute leadership throughout their organization and their nonprofit network -- empowering others to lead. And they cultivate a strong second-in-command, build enduring executive teams with long tenure, and develop highly engaged boards in order to have more impact.
Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits; Leslie R. Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant; Copyright © 2008 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material is used by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Ozzie Memo: Software is Dead, Long Live the Web
The Ozzie Memo: Software is Dead, Long Live the Web
Posted: 23 Apr 2008 01:40 AM CDT (From TechChrunch)
After a few years of trying to fill Bill Gates’ shoes as Microsoft’s chief software architect, Ray Ozzie is starting to hit his stride. In a remarkable strategy memo to employees (embedded below), Ozzie essentially shifts Microsoft’s mission from one of creating software for the PC and stand-alone servers to creating an interconnecting mesh between devices and people. He is not abandoning Windows or Office, but he is saying that the value of Microsoft’s software will increasingly depend less on what it can do on its own than what it can do with others. It is not about software anymore so much as it is about Web-based services. Ray, welcome to the club.
Excerpt:
Central to this strategy is our embrace of both a world of the web and a world of devices. Over the past ten years, the PC era has given way to an era in which the web is at the center of our experiences – experiences delivered not just through the browser but also through many different devices including PCs, phones, media players, game consoles, set-top boxes and televisions, cars, and more.
Guiding Principles There are three overarching principles guiding our services strategy – principles informing the design and development of products being implemented across all parts of Microsoft, for both individuals and business.
1. The Web is the Hub of our social mesh and our device mesh.
The web is first and foremost a mesh of people. . . . All applications will grow to recognize and utilize the inherent group-forming aspects of their connection to the web, in ways that will become fundamental to our experiences. In scenarios ranging from productivity to media and entertainment, social mesh notions of linking, sharing, ranking and tagging will become as familiar as File, Edit and View. . . . To individuals, the concept of “My Computer” will give way to the concept of a personal mesh of devices – a means by which all of your devices are brought together, managed through the web, as a seamless whole.
2. The Power of “Choice” as business moves to embrace the cloud.
Most major enterprises are in the early stages of a significant infrastructural transition – from the use of dedicated and sometimes very expensive application servers, to the use of virtualization and commodity hardware to consolidate those enterprise applications on computing and storage grids constructed within their data center. . . . Driven in large part by the high-scale requirements of consumer services, the value of this utility computing model is most clearly evident in cloud-based internet services.
Software built explicitly to provide a significant level of server/service symmetry will afford choice and flexibility in developing, operating, migrating and managing such systems in highly varied enterprise deployment environments that are distributed and federated between the enterprise data center and the internet cloud.
3.Small Pieces Loosely Joined for developers, within the cloud and across a world of devices.
Application design patterns at both the front- and back-end are transitioning toward being compositions and in some cases loose federations of cooperating systems, where standards and interoperability are essential. . . . At a higher level, myriad options exist for delivering applications to the user: The web browser, unique in its ubiquity; the PC, unique in how it brings together interactivity/experience, mobility and storage; the phone, unique in its extreme mobility. Developers will need to build applications that can be delivered seamlessly across a loosely coupled device mesh by utilizing a common set of tools, languages, runtimes and frameworks – a common toolset that spans from the service in the cloud to enterprise server, and from the PC to the browser to the phone.
Read this doc on Scribd: Services Strategy Update
var scribd_doc = new scribd.Document(2603500, \'key-15o38nqxcf0mbhrre6x4\'); scribd_doc.write(\'embedded_flash_2603500_lekzd\');
(Photo by Dan Farber).
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Can smallest state be high-tech hub?
R.I. officials hope location, size will actually aid efforts
By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff February 27, 2008
PROVIDENCE - Lee Hower lived the quintessential Internet start-up life as an early employee at PayPal and part of the founding team of LinkedIn, the social network for professionals. But three years ago, Hower left Silicon Valley's heady entrepreneurial scene for what might seem the outer reaches of the tech universe.
Last week, when Hower - now a venture capitalist - mingled with entrepreneurs hatching new websites, tech company founders looking to hire, and about 100 self-identified geeks, he wasn't in Palo Alto or even Boston - he was in an art gallery in downtown Providence.
"Five years ago, all of us thought we were doing this alone," said Soren Ryherd, president of Working Planet Marketing Group, a Providence tech company that had intended to set up shop in Boston or New York five years ago, but chose more affordable Rhode Island and now is profitable and growing, with a dozen employees.
Many areas compete to be tech hubs, trying to attract the high-wage jobs of a knowledge economy - whether it is Governor Deval Patrick's proposed $1 billion life sciences initiative, or New Hampshire's drive to develop a new tech park in Nashua and rebrand the state as a tech hotspot as well as a bucolic getaway.
Now, the smallest state is trying to position itself as an entrepreneurial hub, offering tax incentives and playing off its location between New York and Boston, its size, its universities, and Providence's urban renaissance.
"This is central to our economic development strategy - we're trying to create an innovation economy," said Saul Kaplan, executive director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation. "The whole state is 1,000 square miles with 1 million people in it and we all know each other - in an innovation economy, that's a huge ad vantage. Connecting the dots across sectors and silos is what innovation is all about, and we have the perfect real world test bed."
Last year, the first companies signed up for a new "innovation tax credit" of up to $100,000 for investors and entrepreneurs who invest and build high-tech companies in the state. In January, the state officially launched RINexus.com, a community site for techies to share news, job openings, and events - from computer science colloquia at universities to hacker fests. And Providence Geeks began as a small monthly gathering over a year and a half ago, but has blossomed into a full-scale geek gala.
That adds to other ongoing efforts. The state grants $3 million each year to the Slater Technology Fund, a nonprofit seed-stage venture capital fund. This is the fourth year of the Business Innovation Factory, an organization that brings together entrepreneurs and innovators for multi- disciplinary brainstorming sessions that could help Rhode Island play a key role in creating new products and innovations.
About 15,000 employees worked in the information technology and digital media sector in 2006, or 3.6 percent of the state's private employment workforce. Kaplan hopes to double the number of jobs within five years, and points to good news like Neurotech Pharmaceuticals, a local biotech company that announced in January it would build a manufacturing facility in Cumberland.
Other areas outside well-known tech hotspots have tried to cultivate a reputation for innovation, with varying levels of success. Portsmouth, N.H., branded itself the "eCoast." Wannabe tech corridors all over have aspired to the Silicon prefix at one time or another, whether it is Silicon Mountain in Colorado, Silicon Sandbar in Cape Cod, or Silicon Hills in Texas.
"It's different for Providence, than say 10 years ago - a lot has been done internally to Providence to position the city better to attract entrepreneurs," said Ross Gittell, a professor at the University of New Hampshire's Whittemore School of Business and Economics. "The development of culture and downtown life. There's buzz around Providence." And unlike a Silicon Prairie or Silicon Snowbank, Providence does have the unique benefit of proximity to New York City and Boston.
"Since I've been here, the tech start-up scene has started to flourish," Hower said. "It's exciting; still relatively early, still a fairly tight-knit community . . . but it's quietly bubbling up here, a grass-roots industry of people working on Web 2.0 stuff, and state and government agencies fostering an environment for innovation."
In 2000, when Charlie Kroll began working on a Web development firm out of his dorm room at Brown University, the tech scene in Providence was nearly invisible. The office space he rented initially for Andera was near a needle exchange; today the company is surrounded by designer boutiques, has grown to 40 employees, and will bring in $6.5 million in revenue this year, and Kroll attends geek events looking to recruit new employees.
Close proximity to Boston also means tech companies have access to vast networks of venture capital, but the close-knit community also fosters small businesses.
"You're nobody in a big pond for a very long time" in Boston or Silicon Valley, said John Zib, an entrepreneur who is building a digital signage company, Memo. "Here, they see you."
Recruiting is also more challenging when the local talent pool is smaller. But Pamela O'Hara, president of BatchBlue Software, an eight-person software company made up mainly of ex-Amazon people, said that there were advantages.
"For us it's nice to be outside of the Silicon Valley world where everyone is taking their computer apart on the weekend and putting it back together," O'Hara said. "We're a little more in touch with the real world."
Still, brain drain isn't uncommon. In the last few years, Spherics Inc., a biotech firm, moved from Lincoln, R.I., to Mansfield, Mass. A mobile firm, Teleractive, now known as Zoove, left Newport, R.I., for Silicon Valley when it landed venture capital money.
But Andrew Schiller went the opposite route, moving his company, Location Inc., from Worcester to Woonsocket. At the geek night, he showed off NeighborhoodScout.com, a website that uses data to help people find the Beacon Hill of Dallas or the Beverly Hills of Providence.
To demonstrate his service, he asked the audience to describe their ideal location.
What about the neighbors, Schiller asked. "Occupations?"
"Geeks!" someone shouted.
Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.
By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff February 27, 2008
PROVIDENCE - Lee Hower lived the quintessential Internet start-up life as an early employee at PayPal and part of the founding team of LinkedIn, the social network for professionals. But three years ago, Hower left Silicon Valley's heady entrepreneurial scene for what might seem the outer reaches of the tech universe.
Last week, when Hower - now a venture capitalist - mingled with entrepreneurs hatching new websites, tech company founders looking to hire, and about 100 self-identified geeks, he wasn't in Palo Alto or even Boston - he was in an art gallery in downtown Providence.
"Five years ago, all of us thought we were doing this alone," said Soren Ryherd, president of Working Planet Marketing Group, a Providence tech company that had intended to set up shop in Boston or New York five years ago, but chose more affordable Rhode Island and now is profitable and growing, with a dozen employees.
Many areas compete to be tech hubs, trying to attract the high-wage jobs of a knowledge economy - whether it is Governor Deval Patrick's proposed $1 billion life sciences initiative, or New Hampshire's drive to develop a new tech park in Nashua and rebrand the state as a tech hotspot as well as a bucolic getaway.
Now, the smallest state is trying to position itself as an entrepreneurial hub, offering tax incentives and playing off its location between New York and Boston, its size, its universities, and Providence's urban renaissance.
"This is central to our economic development strategy - we're trying to create an innovation economy," said Saul Kaplan, executive director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation. "The whole state is 1,000 square miles with 1 million people in it and we all know each other - in an innovation economy, that's a huge ad vantage. Connecting the dots across sectors and silos is what innovation is all about, and we have the perfect real world test bed."
Last year, the first companies signed up for a new "innovation tax credit" of up to $100,000 for investors and entrepreneurs who invest and build high-tech companies in the state. In January, the state officially launched RINexus.com, a community site for techies to share news, job openings, and events - from computer science colloquia at universities to hacker fests. And Providence Geeks began as a small monthly gathering over a year and a half ago, but has blossomed into a full-scale geek gala.
That adds to other ongoing efforts. The state grants $3 million each year to the Slater Technology Fund, a nonprofit seed-stage venture capital fund. This is the fourth year of the Business Innovation Factory, an organization that brings together entrepreneurs and innovators for multi- disciplinary brainstorming sessions that could help Rhode Island play a key role in creating new products and innovations.
About 15,000 employees worked in the information technology and digital media sector in 2006, or 3.6 percent of the state's private employment workforce. Kaplan hopes to double the number of jobs within five years, and points to good news like Neurotech Pharmaceuticals, a local biotech company that announced in January it would build a manufacturing facility in Cumberland.
Other areas outside well-known tech hotspots have tried to cultivate a reputation for innovation, with varying levels of success. Portsmouth, N.H., branded itself the "eCoast." Wannabe tech corridors all over have aspired to the Silicon prefix at one time or another, whether it is Silicon Mountain in Colorado, Silicon Sandbar in Cape Cod, or Silicon Hills in Texas.
"It's different for Providence, than say 10 years ago - a lot has been done internally to Providence to position the city better to attract entrepreneurs," said Ross Gittell, a professor at the University of New Hampshire's Whittemore School of Business and Economics. "The development of culture and downtown life. There's buzz around Providence." And unlike a Silicon Prairie or Silicon Snowbank, Providence does have the unique benefit of proximity to New York City and Boston.
"Since I've been here, the tech start-up scene has started to flourish," Hower said. "It's exciting; still relatively early, still a fairly tight-knit community . . . but it's quietly bubbling up here, a grass-roots industry of people working on Web 2.0 stuff, and state and government agencies fostering an environment for innovation."
In 2000, when Charlie Kroll began working on a Web development firm out of his dorm room at Brown University, the tech scene in Providence was nearly invisible. The office space he rented initially for Andera was near a needle exchange; today the company is surrounded by designer boutiques, has grown to 40 employees, and will bring in $6.5 million in revenue this year, and Kroll attends geek events looking to recruit new employees.
Close proximity to Boston also means tech companies have access to vast networks of venture capital, but the close-knit community also fosters small businesses.
"You're nobody in a big pond for a very long time" in Boston or Silicon Valley, said John Zib, an entrepreneur who is building a digital signage company, Memo. "Here, they see you."
Recruiting is also more challenging when the local talent pool is smaller. But Pamela O'Hara, president of BatchBlue Software, an eight-person software company made up mainly of ex-Amazon people, said that there were advantages.
"For us it's nice to be outside of the Silicon Valley world where everyone is taking their computer apart on the weekend and putting it back together," O'Hara said. "We're a little more in touch with the real world."
Still, brain drain isn't uncommon. In the last few years, Spherics Inc., a biotech firm, moved from Lincoln, R.I., to Mansfield, Mass. A mobile firm, Teleractive, now known as Zoove, left Newport, R.I., for Silicon Valley when it landed venture capital money.
But Andrew Schiller went the opposite route, moving his company, Location Inc., from Worcester to Woonsocket. At the geek night, he showed off NeighborhoodScout.com, a website that uses data to help people find the Beacon Hill of Dallas or the Beverly Hills of Providence.
To demonstrate his service, he asked the audience to describe their ideal location.
What about the neighbors, Schiller asked. "Occupations?"
"Geeks!" someone shouted.
Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.
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