Look forward to seeing everyone!

Just a reminder that our next gathering is 5:30pm-8pm Thursday, August 14 at Northfield Food & Drink, 3001 Monroe Ave., Rochester.

This will be in place of our normal Friday coffee meeting.

It looks like we're going to have a good turn out with some new faces as well. Hope to see everyone there.

Thanks to everyone that came out to Spin Café for our July gathering. A couple of highlights...

We heard from Les Fritzemeier, Founder & CEO of Wakonda Technologies, about his recent $9.5 million Series A financing, raised from a syndicate of top Boston VC firms. Wakonda has been working closely with RIT and Cornell University to develop a patent-pending technology for developing low-cost, highly efficient solar cells. Wakonda serves as a very positive example of the types of technologies that can be commercialized from our local universities. Congrats to Les and his team - we hope to see you & hear about your progress at future open coffee club events!

I also had an interesting conversation with Jason, a local entrepreneur who's a corporate engineer by day and working to develop a new online application nights and weekends. He heard about ROCC from a friend and seemed interested in connecting with other tech entrepreneurs in our area. I was thrilled to talk with him, as he's exactly the type of person ROCC is meant to support - smart, driven and looking to make a jump into the entrepreneurial community (actually, he has been involved in a successful startup previously). I hope we continue to attract new participants like Jason that share our enthusiasm for growing Upstate NY's tech community.

For August, we're heading to Northfields, 3001 Monroe Ave., for an early evening gathering. Hopefully the weather will work with us and we can take our gathering outside on the patio. Look forward to seeing everyone then!

Last month's gathering, in concert with the Rochester Jazz Fest, was a great success! Special thanks (again) to Goldman Sachs & Merrill Lynch for sponsoring. A number of familiar faces were there, as well as many new, which was great. A number of interesting business connections were also made, which is even better!

I was excited to hear of some great progress with a number of local companies: Emmi Technologies, Leveractive, Novipella, Sweetwater Ethanol, Sydor Instruments, Techrigy, and others...nicely done guys, and thanks for taking the time to come out during these exciting and busy times.

It was also great to meet Brian O'Shaughenessy, an attorney at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC in VA, who heard about ROCC from Dave Lincoln of Novipella, and decided to join us while he was in town. Brian is from Upstate NY (SU and RIT grad) and focuses on IP law. He seemed very willing to work with local companies, so if you'd like to connect with Brian, let me know.

Several ROCC members mentioned that they really liked meeting in the early evening vs. the early morning - a few of the reasons: "easier to break away", "easier to stay longer", and "just plain easier than early morning" (this from a couple of late night software guys).

Someone suggested alternating morning and evening gatherings every other month. I think it's a great idea, so unless I'm outvoted by the other ROCC organizing committee members, I say we give it a try starting in August - any nominations for an evening venue? For July's gathering, it's back to coffee at Spin Café. Look forward to seeing you then!

This month, we're changing it up a bit...

Rochester Open Coffee Club Members and Members of EO - Entrepreneurs Organization are invited to revel around an open bar and dine on hors d'oeuvres from 5:30pm-8:00pm on Thursday, June 19 in the proximity of the Rochester International Jazz Festival at Monty's Korner (363 East Ave.).

[There will NOT be a regular Open Coffee Club event on Friday]

Food and refreshments are free, compliments of our sponsor, Goldman Sachs. Special thanks to Richard Glaser, Merrill Lynch, for proposing & coordinating this event!

Bring your spouse or significant other downtown to enjoy our wonderful city at its finest. Park on the street near Monty's (the intersection of East and Alexander) or a nearby lot. Parking is plentiful. You will be close enough to walk to the shows, which all take place within a several block radius.

Go to the early shows (6ish) and swing by afterwards or stop by first and go to the later shows (8ish). Boz Scaggs is the headliner at 8pm at the Eastman Theatre, but there are plenty of other choices. There is also a free show, DJABE, on Gibbs St. For those without a week long club pass, tickets for shows are reasonably priced. Go to www.rochesterjazz.com for more info.

Hope to see you there!

The next meeting of the Rochester OpenCoffeeClub is nearing and I just wanted to let everyone know that Cyndy Aleo-Carreira will be introducing her company Profy (http://www.profy.com). I won't spoil her intro, but I can tell you they just got back from the Web 2.0 Expo where they generated some good buzz. Go check out what they have and come hear it directly from Cyndy.

We are of course looking for people to tell us more about their Rochester high tech ventures. I already have a few people in mind but let me know if you have a story to share or know of someone.

Keep spreading the word on the meeting and come join us on twitter as well - http://twitter.com/aaronnewman.

Last weeks meetup had another nice turn out. A variety of people showed up - and some new faces which was great. A few of note:

Martin Edic, internet marketing guru (http://www.supernaturalagency.com/), joined us.

Mark Bocko from the University of Rochester also joined us. Mark has a new compression technology AND a really cool high resolution CMOS images that uses less power. Here's a link to more details:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080401150755.htm

Our guest this meeting was TextWise. Connie Kenneally, CEO of Textwise, gave us some background on the $1 million SemanticHacker challenge. For more details check out their website:
http://www.semantichacker.com/challenge

As well, there are a few people that found out about ROCC through me twittering (http://twitter.com/aaronnewman) and we are adding people to the list (Cyndy Aleo-Carreira over at http://www.profy.com). Nugde me if you are on twitter.

Thanks to Cyndy as well for pointing us to http://opencoffee.ning.com/ which I submitted our club to be officially included.

We are still trying to get some social media people from Kodak to join us. They have a great blogging platform over there (http://1000words.kodak.com/ and http://1000nerds.kodak.com/) and we hope they come see what we are doing. We meet across the street from their building practically ;)

As you can see, the Rochester startup community is alive and kicking. Come join us at our next meeting May 16th, 2008, 8 a.m. at the Spin Cafe.

Ok, so we have actually had 3 or 4 meetings of the Rochester Coffee Club (call them our Alpha & Beta launches), but with our new website AND an awesome turn-out at our March 21 event, I think its safe to say that we have "Officially Launched!..."

A very big "THANKS" (and then some) to Jason Mendelson and Ross Carlson at Foundry Group & founders/patrons of the Boulder Coffee Club for (1) convincing us that this makes sense (actually, that was pretty easy!) and (2) for so generously assisting us with the launch of our website!

ROCC was created by a small group of area high tech entrepreneurs who were inspired by Jason Mendelson's visit to Rochester to keep building momentum in our region's entrepreneurial high tech sector. Based on the energy in the room at our March 21st event, I'd say its working!

ROCC attracts a diverse group of high tech company Founders/CEO's and their guests each month, including entrepreneurs from across Upstate NY and across industries...the mix has also included special guests, including local legend, Dick Kaplan, CEO of Pictometry and even some Boston friends, John Hession from Cooley Godward Kronish and Steve Zamierowski from Deloitte's Tech Venture Group.

Our mission is simple...provide a forum for like-minded entrepreneurs to informally meet, share stories, contacts and strategies, (maybe change it up from time to time to keep it exciting), and most importantly, just keep the momentum going!!!

Hope to see everyone at our next event April 18 - we've invited special guest, Connie Kenneally, CEO of TextWise, to mingle with us & provide some more insight on the $1 Million semantichacker competition...pretty cool!

Deb.