February 3, 2010 09:02 by kiramatalishah

. According to the study, the most important tool for small businesses to succeed in 2010 is search engine marketing, while email marketing, public relations and social media cited as crucial for success.
23.8% of all small businesses reported that search engine marketing was the tool most needed for their business to succeed in 2010.

www.onlineuniversalwork.com

January 27, 2010 09:01 by davidbaer

Small Business owners are largely forgotten. Thats why I only focus on them. I have experience several members of my family file bankruptcy due to small business failures. I also I suffered through 2 destroyed businesses due to failure however, in my failings I have learned some of the secrets to success. (Who can say they know it all?)

www.onlineuniversalwork.com

November 19, 2009 03:11 by Charles R. Stack, MPH

Harold, it was very nice to hear from you! Since the press release from GSC did not provide very much detail, we may have been distracted by the "high-tech tent" argument. You convey the concept of an integrated survival system quite well!

Have you considered aspects such as integrating pesticides into the interior for mosquito protection? DDT sprayed onto fabric is environmentally safe and extremely effective.

I've also read where the OLPC laptops often provide most of the artificial lighting in many 3rd world homes, so you may have some synergies with those technologies to reduce costs & energy consumption.

Best of luck to you in Clean Tech, Chuck Stack, VP of 2Ci

August 14, 2009 18:08 by Arthur Zwern

I was just pointed to this thread; sorry to be late!

HOMErgent has significant technology, currently including 7 patents pending. We are entering a market dominated on the high-end by bulky expensive Westernized box solutions, and on the low-end by miserable tents. Hundreds of clever shelter inventions to fill the price/performance gap in the middle have failed to gain traction. And they all need a grid or trucks to support the humans inside.

Our shelter panels themselves are pushing the limits of performance, cost, and eco-friendliness, and are trade secret. But that just gets us another one of the clever shelter inventions, so I can see how some might be skeptical.

Most of our pending patents cover a complete end-to-end home-scale utility system being developed to deliver most/all of a family's needs for clean water, sanitation, ventilation, cooking, heating, cooling, and lighting without a grid, outside support, utility expense, or eco-footprint. Our approach seems low-tech, but deep integrations of emerging component/materials technologies with appropriate technologies to do this for less than a laptop price involves significant technical challenges, novelties, barriers to entry, and security impact.

Example: I do not see a viable plan for major Katrina-like or large CA quake scenarios from FEMA/ARC, because they have no suitable shelter solution for the weeks between public mass evac and arrival of big Westernized boxes (trailer or successor to it). AND because they cannot deliver utilities in mass quantities without the grid for that long, especially if roads/rail are limited as is likely. So exodus will happen, and prevent rapid recovery.

Leave aside getting 50 human-portable shelters delivered by one truck instead of one trailer - our water design converts a few initial 5 gallon water bottles from an aid supplier into an end-to-end family water system, from solar well/distiller to hot showers to recycling all output, using a small box of cheaply produced parts, and leveraged by scavenging thermal energy from other subsystems. Low tech? It isn't an IC, but after NBC it will still work if it has not vaporized. Ditto for our patent-pending thermal system, until an enemy can take out the sun.

The ultimate personal security is being self-sufficient, and knowing that the rest of your community is as well. We invent ways to do that. Ways people like you and me would only want to live in/with for a few weeks after all hell breaks loose, but which can forever transform those who have cardboard roofs to start with. Who happen to be a very large majority of the planet.

By slashing input resources and resulting output pollutants, we can cut costs dramatically in multiple verticals, from oil, gas & mineral exploration to disaster relief to development aid to micro-loan homes for the developing masses.

The greatest global security problem I see is the combination of rising strategic resource scarcity/competition (from tribal level deforestation to peak oil and precious metals that all lie in other countries) combined with the pollutive impacts of same (CO2, weather change, water destruction, etc). Kyoto can't solve it, because the developing world insists on developing as is their right, and they refuse to be penalized. I think Darwin would say this species overpopulated, will crash, and "I told you so".

If enough companies like mine find innovative ways to cut resource use/impacts in the developed and developing worlds, and if we can enable development in a way that makes sustainability a direct economic benefit to the customer instead of a cost, we all might have a fighting chance of eliminating some of the largest defense and security problems we'll face this century.

In my last venture, after 9/11 I led a team of guru PhD programmers who built the first face recognizer TSA could not spoof, and that outperformed all others in the NIST grand challenge. Obviously "high tech", yet I am absolutely convinced the current problem is technologically and otherwise much harder. And much more vital to solve. Just as face recognition needed DARPA & DHS support (not to mention NSA, FBI, etc), the problems we are attacking could be solved sooner with support from DHS & DARPA-E.

I'm a little buried as we are currently semi-finalists in the Clean Tech Open, the world's largest clean tech business competition, and the process is intensive. So I may not be able to converse back and forth much for a few weeks, but I hope I've responded appropriately to the comments here, and I am very clear that besides information and logic, this post contains my personal opinions, and yours may differ:)

Please help us, or find another way to create a triple bottom line with respect to strategic resources. Defense starts at home, the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy. Winning is vital. And if we wait for Pearl Harbor it might be too late to turn the tide.

Thank you for reading, and many thanks again to GSC!!!!

Arthur Zwern
President, HOMErgent

August 13, 2009 17:08 by

Harold, you make an excellent point about low-tech solutions! However, there have been a wide variety of "high tech" emergency shelters available for many years. I recall US Army designs using a sprayed foam, exhibited at the University of Illinois in Urbana about 1973. Very rigid, light-weight and inexpensive.

Sprung Instant Shelters (fabric over extruded aluminum frames) were used for many shelter and decontamination purposes by the US Army and others. It is a proven, robust shelter available in many different capacities.

Considering the wide array of such systems already on the market, I'm not sure why the judges felt the winning entry was truly unique. There is certainly a need and market for such innovations, and I wish the winners well!

August 6, 2009 07:08 by Charles R. Stack

Harold, you make an excellent point about low-tech solutions! However, there have been a wide variety of "high tech" emergency shelters available for many years. I recall US Army designs using a sprayed foam, exhibited at the University of Illinois in Urbana about 1973. Very rigid, light-weight and inexpensive.

Sprung Instant Shelters (fabric over extruded aluminum frames) were used for many shelter and decontamination purposes by the US Army and others. It is a proven, robust shelter available in many different capacities.

Considering the wide array of such systems already on the market, I'm not sure why the judges felt the winning entry was truly unique. There is certainly a need and market for such innovations, and I wish the winners well!

June 16, 2009 20:06 by Harold L. Winebaugh

I like the idea that the winner was one that wasn't technologically based. Many great homeland security ideas can be very simple in nature but can affect all areas of life. I am glad that the judges in the competition recognized the low tech and serviceable ideas that were submitted.

June 15, 2009 11:06 by Sarah Allen

Hi John

We have three categories in our Global Security Challenge Competition. These are:

- Most Promising Security Idea (for individuals and companies with no revenue in 2008)
- Most Promising Security Start-Up (for companies with revenues between £1 and £1million in 2008)
- Best Security SME (for companies with revenues between £1million and £10million in 2008)

Perhaps you will be able to apply to the Most Promising Security Start-Up category if you have revenue from 2008?

Sarah

June 9, 2009 22:06 by John

Its unfortunate that you have a requirment that the idea can generate no revenue the previous year. That elliminates those with great ideas that are already proven effective, yet have struggled financially to get market traction.

June 6, 2009 06:06 by Charles R. Stack

GSC Team, please see US Patent No. 6,845,336. We believe that this is significantly more impressive than your selected technology winners.

We will apply for GSC 2009 and look forward to making our presentation. www.2Ci.com

November 25, 2008 14:11 by GSC Team

sorry you feel that way Charles. Do you know of more impressive innovations you can share with us?

November 20, 2008 05:11 by Charles R. Stack, MPH

What a thoroughly unimpressive bunch of inventions!