July 14, 2009 11:28 PM UTC

Colorado Business Fair report

• 4 Comments
• by: DavidThi808

( – promoted by ClubTwitty)

Governor Ritter (or to be accurate, some of his staff) put together a minority owned & small business fair today. I was there for work reasons – seeing if any state agencies could use our s/w.

There were a ton of people there. Each agency had a 2’x8′ table and it was all packed in this medium sized room. And there were several hundred businesspeople there.

First off, the people from the agencies were great. With one exception (there is always one) they were pleasant, helpful, and clearly discussing with people if their company fit the needs of their agency. And if not, in many cases they would suggest who else to talk to.

The bottom line is these people showed up to find new suppliers, not just to go through the motions. A special shout out to Revenue, Div of Central Services, and CO Community College System – super super helpful.

CSU gets the award for most people manning their booth – they had at least 5 people (most had 2). Ft. Lewis gets the award for longest trip.

CCHE and Office of Economic Development were both no-shows. I’m guessing OoED didn’t show because they are focused on bringing business to Colorado and not on helping business already in Colorado.

I showed up when it opened at 8:00 and was able to blast through a bunch of tables since no one else was in yet. There were two of us there and we split the room so we finished about 5 minutes before Ritter showed up. It ran till noon so there was plenty of time for everyone who showed up.

The good news for us – almost every school asked us if we could provide reporting for their BANNER system which is the ERP system the schools are now using. Apparently the reporting in it is so awful that the purchasing people know it’s a big problem. Needless to say, their pain is a nice opportunity for us. So that made it a worthwhile trip.

The bad news for us – every state agency said that all their IT work goes through OIT and OIT refuses to look at our software. (I don’t think they are picking on us in particular, I’ve heard from numerous other high-tech CEOs that OIT tells everyone they don’t already know “not interested.”)

Governor Ritter showed up to speak. Good speech, nothing extraordinary but a solid speech. He then asked for quesitons from the press (all the TV stations were there plus I assume print) – there was one whole question.

In his speech he signed an executive order that included the following:

State agencies to conduct aggressive outreach to minority- and women-owned businesses to encourage them to bid for contracts through the Recovery Act. These efforts will be assisted by the state’s director of minority and small business outreach and Gov. Ritter’s Economic Recovery Team.

Ok, so after that little tidbit I went and talked to a woman on the Governor’s ARRA team. Reporting is key to the ARRA requirements, our system can save the state a lot of money over the systems they use, and he’s made this policy.

And she told me that they have no interest in looking at anything different. That they will use the systems they presently have and extend those over to ARRA. Even if we can save them money it’s not something they are interested in.

I have to applaud her honesty.

On the flip side, this is not good for the state. I support Bill Ritter, I’ll vote for him in ’10, and I think he’s doing a good job. But his claims today about what the state is doing for small business is a lot like a husband’s claims about his efforts taking care of the kids – lots of talk but little action.

Maybe the administration outside of OIT does actually follow through on Ritter’s direction. I sure hope they do. And the people in that room sure seemed sincere and energetic. But when one of the people running ARRA, 5 minutes after Ritter’s speech, says they’re not even willing to look… Well I wonder what is actually going on elsewhere.

As to my company, we’ve figured out a way around this problem. We will shortly be the sole source supplier to the state for reporting software. How? We’re renaming the company Hogan & Hartson Reports.