Excerpted from Watertown Daily Times
By Steve Sharp

Jefferson County’s quaint, historic county seat is rebounding from the deep economic recession in remarkable style these days thanks, in part, to skilled and knowledgeable individuals, daring entrepreneurs, people willing to turn natural disasters into positive outcomes and perhaps, according to its mayor, “a little luck.”

In a recent State of the City address, Jefferson Mayor Dale Oppermann summarized the good things that have been happening in the city.

According to the mayor, recently opened, or opening soon in Jefferson, are Fort HealthCare Clinic, Heron’s Landing, and Frawley’s Citgo paired with River’s Edge Market.

Breaking ground are Foremost Buildings; Kwik Trip; the Kuehn Development’s East Reinel Street extension, Jefferson Golf Clubhouse and 20 duplex housing units; a Jefferson solar energy facility; Kendall Packaging’s expansion and the relocation of Del Chmielewski, CPA.

Building facade improvements include those of the Jefferson Area Business Center and the Sherry Lange Agency.

Among public improvements are the reconstruction of South Gardner Avenue and the 100 block of West Milwaukee Street. Historic brick on Dodge Street will be preserved and significant underground infrastructure will be replaced.

There will also be reconstruction of the Citizens Bank/Bee Hive/dime store public parking lot near the center of downtown to improve safety and increase parking. This parking lot work will include creation of what Oppermann called “a city-center atmosphere” that will be conducive to street dances, car shows and other public events.

Oppermann described ongoing shoreline improvements at Rotary Park that will include installation of more dock space with a goal being to entice boaters downtown to support local business.

At the close of his address, Oppermann welcomed Generac and the Wisconsin College of Osteopathic Medicine to the city.

In light of Jefferson’s economic development success, the Daily Times talked with Oppermann, Brandel, Jefferson City Administrator Tim Freitag and other key players in the city’s rise to learn more about how it occurred. In the process, many of these people also provided insight into how positive trends may continue.

Read the full article.

PRESS RELEASE: February 18, 2013

Universal Acoustic & Emission Technologies (AET) is bringing together engineers, designers, business staff, and manufacturing specialists under one roof to create a dedicated team for its new Center of Excellence, a company official announced today.

Universal AET’s integrated Center of Excellence will be housed within its Beloit production facility to bring those who work in the conceptual stages closer to the manufacturing team, resulting in improved communication and design, said Dick Strojinc, Universal AET’s Senior Vice President of Global Operations.

Universal AET’s innovative, collaborative approach to creating the most technologically advanced products in an efficient manner through improved communication and the open exchange of ideas will also improve customer satisfaction, and increase needed capacity to maintain growth this year and into the future, Strojinc said.

The Center of Excellence is a component of Universal AET’s plan to expand its facility in the Beloit Ironworks complex, increasing capacity by 40,000 square feet and adding up to 100 jobs in the coming year, as was announced in December.

Contact: Ron Jake, Marketing Manager
rjake@universalaet.com  |  608.509.3167 

See the full press release.

Excerpted from The Isthmus
by Marc Eisen

The tech world is so different from other industries. Can you think of another field where successful companies would rent space in their offices to freelancers working on their own projects?

This is not business as usual.

But that open-minded approach is central to the burgeoning coworking movement that’s spreading from information technology hotspots in Chicago, San Francisco, Cambridge and New York to much smaller IT markets like Madison. Its emergence here is another sign that the Madison tech scene is powering up.

In downtown Madison, Bendyworks, the 12-person web and app design outfit, rents another five desks to outside info tech workers. The online music storage company Murfie operates Horizon Coworking in shared offices. Hardin Design and Development welcomed outside IT workers for several years before moving to new quarters in the Verex Building in 2011.

“We hung out with those guys and played foosball with them,” Hardin exec Scott Resnick, who is also a city alderman, fondly recalls. “It created good energy. We were all in the startup game together. We did a lot of brainstorming.”

And that’s the key — the frisson of intellectual stimulation from chance encounters. Techies may have the reputation of being geeky loners, but the best aren’t. Web developers and software designers are unusually collaborative. Maybe it’s because many use open-source software as their tools to write code. Or perhaps because they’re used to working in development teams. Whatever the reason, they are often social creatures at work.

Alex Hillman, who runs the celebrated IndyHall coworking space in Philadelphia, put it this way in an email: “Our #1 resource isn’t our square footage, it’s the relationships and connections between our members…. Our entire reason for existing isn’t because people need an office, it’s because they need each other. The need for office ebbs and flows, but the need for camaraderie and support and friendship doesn’t.”

Read the full article.

Thursday, May 23, 2013
1:30-4:30pm with reception to follow
Madison Marriott West
Register now!

We’re off and running with the Advance Now Strategy, and we’ll share it all at this year’s State of the Madison Region Summit.

You’ll hear from the workgroups charged with steering the strategy’s transformative ideas. Plus, you’ll witness the launch of the new brand for our region.

We’ll be joined by Gary Farmer, a business executive at the helm of Austin’s wildly successful economic development efforts, and expert consultant Mac Holladay, who returns to inspire our vision for a stronger region.

Collaborating closely with our partners, MadREP is boldly bringing the Advance Now Strategy to life.

Come see what’s new.

REGISTER NOW!

 

Thanks to our sponsor:

Excerpted from In Business Magazine

When it comes to the strange, inspiring history of Madison’s Raven Software, you can pretty much pick whichever story suits you: Either the company was a fantastic, head-spinning success right out of the gate, or it was the clear embodiment of Thomas Edison’s famous axiom that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

For Brian Raffel, Raven’s studio head and one of its two co-founders (with his brother Steve), Edison’s recipe is probably closer to the truth, though there was plenty of luck and magic in the mix to help sustain this lifelong gamer’s dream.

“The thing that you don’t see is that for two or so years, my brother and I worked on that demo and everyone thought we were crazy. It’s like trying to say you’re going to be a rock star or something.” – Brian Raffel

The story of industry giant Raven goes back to 1986, when Raffel and his brother, at the time both hard-core Dungeons & Dragons players, were looking over a friend’s new computer games. Noticing that the games’ artwork wasn’t as good as what Brian (then a Middleton High School art teacher) and Steve (then a silk screen printer) could do, Steve turned to Brian and said, “We should make our own computer game.”

That started the brothers on a roughly two-year quest to get their game off the ground. The problem? They had no programming experience and no real idea how to begin.

The two got started, and on a shoestring budget, with a lot of hard work, and with the help of a 19-year-old programmer they’d found through an Amiga computer dealer in Janesville, they managed to get their demo – a fantasy adventure game called Black Crypt – completed. And that’s where the strange and inspiring part of the story started.

“We sent that demo out to 10 publishers, and they all said it would take months to get back to us – ‘we get them all the time,’” said Raffel. “And we’re like, ‘okay.’ And in three days, we had six offers. So that was pretty cool.”

Read the full article.