Louisiana Technology Council

The logo of "the tech capital of the South"®

I don't think I've ever spoken before about the Louisiana Technology Council and the incredible job they are doing to bring all members of the burgeoning information technology and business sectors together. Located originally in New Orleans, the LTC has branched out to Baton Rouge, but has members and sponsors headquartered in Shreveport, Monroe and smaller metropolitan markets like Lafayette. Last night I attended the annual business meeting of the small, but determined group led by the charismatic Mark Lewis. Lewis, who formerly worked with IBM, has been at the helm of the LTC for eight years. He is the spark that makes the engine run. This past summer he fan afoul of the Mayor's office when he and some of his partners ended up restoring thousands of "missing" e-mails from Mayor Ray Nagin's e-mail account that they claimed had been mistakenly erased and therefore not accessible to public record requests from the media. Lewis had been operating under the behest of the mayor, but when he held a press conference to announce that the e-mails had been deliberately erased, the contract under which he was performing the service for the city was scrapped. Later, he revealed the entire data drives were turned over to the F.B.I. So, I will admit there are some bad feelings there, but with the exception of Mayor Ray Nagin and several City Hall workers, he is almost universally hailed as a one-man dynamo and diehard promoter of technology in the state. Lewis ,whose expressed vision is to see Louisiana achieve status as "the tech capital of the South, " actually registered that phrase as part of his strategy. Last night representatives from area member firms (including me) heard of Lewis's ambitious plans for 2010 and one after another gushed praise upon him for all of his efforts. Lewis previewed a soon-to-be unveiled website that will update his present site and he has encouraged several partners to develop social networking tools and training opportunities for businesses and members that will make the site even more impressive. I am proud to be a member of the LTC and hope to contribute in a meaningful way to its newsletter. Unfortunately, I write too much for little or no pay and have even less time, so I will have to offer my services cautiously and on a limited basis. Nevertheless, there is much to hear about from the LTC and I encourage anyone in the area to consider becoming a member and deriving a number of benefits by doing so. I find the advantages of meeting with other like-minded IT individuals and firms to be of prime interest to me and invariably it creates an environment for expansion of business and informs them about better security and efficiency of networking and computing in the process. Lewis raises his entire staff's salary from the private sector, so he is not a public servant. They receive no public funding for which he is beholden and can operate with virtual impunity in promoting the organization's cause. My hat is off to Lewis and the fabulous staff he maintains at LTC. Despite the controversy of 2009 from which he is distancing himself and the LTC, we can all expect very good things from Mark Lewis and the Louisiana Technology Council.

Video killed the Internet blog

I have been most favorably impressed with a new product recently unveiled by the Louisiana Technology Council. It is something that will allow businesses to reach out to current clients and customers and to try to reach hundreds or thousands more via a remarkable tool. Or, in its most simple application, it will mean an easy way for friends and relatives to correspond with each other in a more direct and personal manner. The technology employed is a video e-mail that can be customized with templates for each business with typical video lengths of up to five minutes. Imagine receiving a flashy e-mail with a custom-tailored business name and logo and a "click here" button enabling the launch of a short video. The incredible difference between this product and other video players is that these videos are not downloaded to one's hard drive or streamed from a server in a way that will cause buffering problems. These video e-mails are played with total throughput through the services of the host company with no loss of video signal as one might see over a media player or through an online video service like You Tube. The Louisiana Technology Council was so overwhelmed with the possibilities of getting others like me interested that they are marketing the product through individuals like me. I believe this product will be a great sales tool and a terrific way for businesses to connect to others. Whether a simple thank you to a client or a congratulatory video to a member of a sales team, all of these videos can be expertly produced and archived for later use. The product has such a crisp, professional feel that I believe it will be positively embraced by IT-savvy managers and administrators. The technology also has an impressive potential as a training tool. Each account that signs up for one of three levels of service will receive a free video USB camera that can be used to aid in the production of videos (a $100 value). Personally, I hope to use this product for video blogging, which will be a new method for me to connect to my community of business clients, friends and family. Anyone interested in a live demonstration of this promising new technology should contact me at smasonics-AT-Hotmail.com (note the spelling should include the "@" sign instead of "-AT-") and leave both a daytime and evening phone number for contact putting "Videos" in the subject field. Mark Lewis of the LTC has promised to make personal demonstrations on my behalf and anyone else who is interested in knowing more about this cutting edge product. In the meantime I am positively jazzed about the promise this business proposition portends. There is a modest sign-up feet, but after that the cost is minimal (packages start at $20 per month to reach up to 1,000 people at a time). The returns look like they could be lucrative. According to Lewis, people involved with the host company have been in the video production business for a number of years and this particular business model has been developed over the course of the last two years. This has all the earmarks of being something that will explode over the Internet in the coming months and years and I hope to be on the ground floor when it does. Besides, with Mark Lewis and the LTC behind it, there is little chance it will not succeed.