Spend the weekend with other rising stars, whipping together prototypes for the next big thing. Bring your bright idea and come ready to work. At the end of the weekend, see which startup the judges like best. Attendees are 50% technical (developers, coders, designers) and 50% business (marketing, finance, law). Speakers and mentors inspire and advise. Friendly competition concentrates the mind. The main point? To educate and encourage entrepreneurial thinkers.

Founded in 2007, Startup Weekend is a non-profit organization that holds startup events all over the world. Funded by the Kauffman Foundation and others, it aims to “train and foster community leaders, ignite more entrepreneurial activity and map and connect the world’s startup ecosystems.”

At Startup Weekend Albany, you may find the idea and the team that will take you to success: more than a third of Startup Weekend startups are still going strong 3 months after the event. You are almost guaranteed to have intense fun, learn tons and meet fantastic potential partners. You will certainly be part of a core group of local movers and shakers that can take the Capital District through this recession and beyond, fostering a culture of empowerment and innovation.

To Register: http://techvalley.startupweekend.org

In the Press: http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/morning_call/2012/01/startup-weekend-coming-to-tech-valley.html?ana=e_alby_rdup

The Collar Collective introduces plans for co-working space to server Troy’s Tech Community

Form Collar Collective’s website:

The Collar Collective offers everything you miss about having coworkers — water cooler chat, impromptu lunches, idea sharing, informal networking — all without the cubes and corporate culture. When you’re here ideas and talents collide daily. 

Why Troy?

NiteTables.com, released August 1st, is a brand new VIP reservation system for nightlife in NYC. It has been making quite a splash in the NYC area over the past several days.

New York Daily News
Two new websites, NiteTables.com and BiteHunter.com, help New Yorkers plan a night on the town

Zink Magazine
TAILORED RESERVATIONS: Nite Tables

The Business Review
Greane Tree of Troy develops site for NYC night owls

New York Post
Grapevine: Chef into wine biz

Crains New York Business

More info at Twitter @NiteTables
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/NiteTables
www.nitetables.com

Photos of some of the Greane Tree Technology development team at the NiteTables.com launch party at Hudson Terrace in NYC on August 10!

NiteTables.com features easy ways, via the Venue Finder and Venue Search, to find night clubs, bars, restaurants, or any other preferred venue in popular metropolitan areas. Additionally, NiteTables.com can show upcoming events, via the This Week page, filterable by preferences and available for all types of venues, which helps people look for a particular kind of night life experience. Once a person has found a venue, they can choose to attend an event or select a package, and the reservation wizard guides them through the reservation process. Other features include the ability for NiteTables.com staff to update their Blog and Homepage content, view venue statistics, and gather critical marketing and campaign information. It also offers a Venue back-end administration interface that allows participating venues to completely customize their menu’s, seating areas, event schedules, and package offerings, and manage their reservations. NiteTables.com has also been designed to be easily used on iPad devices.

By: Robin K. Cooper

Originally Published in The Business Review, July 29,2011

A shortage of qualified software engineers is forcing area technology companies to recruit outside the region and come up with creative ways to expand their staffs.

Agora Games , a developer of video game data-tracking software, is among several small Troy tech firms that are on a hiring spree.

Agora founder Michael DelPrete has hired nine employees in the past six months.

Two were local hires, but the majority of the new employees are working remotely from their homes in Brazil, Spain, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan and New Jersey.

The ninth new hire, Logan Koester, was recruited from Boston three months ago.

“We are making offers to people who are being recruited by Google and other Silicon Valley companies,” said Agora founder Michael DelPrete. “We can’t compete with that.”

Agora also has outsourced some work to Greane Tree Technology, a Troy company that develops web and data management systems.

Annmarie Lanesey, Greane Tree’s co-founder and president, said a growing number of tech companies are outsourcing projects to her firm. She also has picked up two large contracts in New York City—one from the City University of New York and another working on a project called NiteTables, a restaurant and nightclub reservation site.

Lanesey, who started Greane Tree two years ago with husband and co-founder Joseph Payette Jr., said the new business has prompted her to go on a hiring binge of her own.

The company has grown from two employees to six this year, and that still is not enough.

“The way our workload is, we need to hire right now, but there’s a definite shortage of hardcore developers,” Lanesey said.

Her first hire was Jennifer Hixon, a systems analyst developer from New York City. Lanesey, whose company operates out of the Russell Sage College incubator, also has been patrolling area universities to find talented interns who could turn into potential hires.

Greane Tree began working with three different recruiters early this spring to identify software engineers proficient with Java programming language, .Net and the PHP scripting language for used in web development.

The shortage is driven by several factors, according to New York University computer science professor and HackNY co-founder Evan Korth.

Many college students are unaware how lucrative programming jobs can be, Korth said in a blog post on the website of BP3, a Texas consulting company.

Korth also said there’s a misconception that was created after the dotcom bubble burst that all programming jobs were being outsourced to India, leaving few opportunities here.

The growth of the Internet is driving the need for many tech startups and they all need programmers.

That bodes well for people with programming skills, especially at a time when New York’s unemployment rate stands at 8 percent.

“There is a definite shortage of qualified programmers here and that has forced us to be creative,” said Mark Menard, founder and president of Enable Labs, a Troy web developer.

Menard, whose company focuses on the Ruby on Rails web development platform, overhauled its business model last year and has since grown from two employees to nine.

He hopes to reach a dozen employees by the end of the year.

Menard hired Jim Wilson to lead business development and identify skilled software engineers and programmers.

The company offers training sessions to programmers to help them become proficient with Ruby on Rails, a programming language used to manage web sites, email and servers, and store information in databases.

“These are good jobs,” Menard said. “If you are a proficient Ruby developer, total compensation can be between $90,000 and $100,000 a year.”

Enable recently hired its first employee from outside the region after finding a programmer from Rochester who is a recent graduate of the State University of New York at Oswego.

The company’s customers are primarily software-as-a-service firms. Enable helps its clients set up applications so a customer can begin selling subscriptions.

Part of the reason for the shortage of Ruby-proficient programmers, Wilson said, is because many people have not kept up with all of the technology advancements that have occurred in programming over the past three years.

“People hunkered down during the recession and kept working, but they didn’t keep up with the times,” Wilson said.

Menard and Wilson said networking at technology group meetings and developer events has been one of their best tools to help find new candidates.

“You never know where you are going to find people,” Menard said.

He hired 20-year-old Ryan Lewis of Troy two months ago after finding Lewis through Craigslist.

Lewis, a home-schooled and self-taught programmer, had a job stocking shelves at a local Price Chopper  grocery store at the time, Menard said.

When Menard is eyeing a potential new hire he quizzes them on tech buzz words and tests their skills by spending two or three hours writing programming code with them.

“Ryan had no professional exposure and he was completely self-taught. But he was fast and one of the most skilled Rubyists in the area,” Menard said.

In five years, Lewis will have no problem commanding a $200,000 salary from a company in Silicon Valley, Menard said.

Qualified candidates must have:

• 2yrs experience with PHP w/MySQL database design; or 1-2 yrs experience with Ruby on Rails; or 3 yrs experience with .NET
• Excellent communication skills, as well as ability to work effectively on teams
• Ability to complete tasks on time and within budget
• Solid understanding of Object Oriented Programming and Design concepts and/or experience
• Solid understanding of Relation Database concepts and/or experience
• It is desirable, but not required, for the candidate to have experience with:
• Java SDK / Eclipse IDE, or .NET Framework / Visual Studio 2008 IDE
• MySQL command line client or MS SQL Server Management Studio

The successful candidate will assist in the development of ongoing and new software application projects, which may include:

• OO programming & design; Agile environment; Exp w/ TDD, BDD, MVC
• Using MySQL or MS SQL Server Relational Database Management System as a persistence store
• Design a schema designed for OLTP given a particular domain model
• Create SQL scripts to maintain said schema
• Use an Object Oriented Programming Language to perform CRUD operations
• Development of a software tool to ETL data from disparate sources
• Perform analytics on gathered data and provide reporting mechanism
• Writing Specifications and documentation

To be considered for this position, please send a letter of introduction, your qualifications, names of references, and samples of code or URLs that you have completed to alaneseyATgreanetreeDOTcom.

The Leader of Tomorrow Award recognizes a student intern who has made a significant contribution to his or her company, going above and beyond the expectations of his or her employer.

A Long Island native (Westbury, NY) Tucker is pursuing her masters degree in Organizational Management at Sage’s School of Management and has a perfect 4.0 grade point average. This month, she will travel to China with the Sage School of Management’s annual study trip to the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade (SIFT).

Greane Tree Technology Welcomes Additions to its Development Team

Greane Tree Technology welcomes the addition of two new members to its software development team. Jennifer Hixon joins Greane Tree’s software development team with over 25 years experience in corporate and nonprofit computing and communications. She has previously worked for Morgan Stanley, the Fund for the City of New York and Corporate One Federal Credit Union. Gabriella Spain joins the web development team as lead Drupal Developer. She has previously worked as a Web Designer at AbleTech in Watervliet, NY.

More on Jenny and Gabriella

First on Tuesday, March 8th, we’ll be celebrating the birthday of Joseph Payette Jr, our Chief Technology Officer.

To celebrate the date (ever so coincidentally) we are  hosting a networking luncheon at our office for a few of our colleagues and friends.   The luncheon will help to raise money for the Commission on Economic Opportunity’s Head Start Scholarship Fund.  This terrific scholarship is granted annual to a CEO Head Start alumni to assist with their college expenses.

Then on Thursday, March 10th, we will be attending the Albany-Colonie Regional Chamber of Commerce’s 111th Annual Gala.  Over 1,000 Tech Valley business and civic leaders will gather together at the Empire State Plaza Convention Center for this black-tie event to show the strength and vibrancy of Tech Valley as the chamber kick’s off another exciting year.  We hope to see you there!

More info on the gala: http://acchamber.org/Events/ChamberEvents/031011-AnnualDinner.aspx