The LSU 100 celebrates the success of former LSU students and recognizes the impact of LSU on the local, regional and national economies. LSU 100 is co-hosted by LSU and the Stephenson Entrepreneurship Institute. The complete list of 2012 honorees is available at www.lsu100.com.

“Gatorworks is indicative of the Tiger-led businesses that we are looking for to show other Tigers from every college on campus what they need to do to be successful,” said Lisa O’Beirne, director of development for SEI. “We congratulate them on this achievement and look forward to their continued success.”

Gatorworks met the following requirements for inclusion in the LSU 100:

• Has been in business for five years or more
• Has had verifiable revenues of $100,000 for 2008
• Has a former LSU student as owner of at least 50 percent of the company or as chief executive officer, president or managing partner
• Operates in a manner consistent with the mission of LSU and SEI

Partnership support for the events is available, as are individual tickets and tables of eight. For more information, visit www.lsu100.com or contact Lisa O’Beirne at lisao@lsu.edu or 225-578-0958.

The Stephenson Entrepreneurship Institute, an integral part of LSU’s E. J. Ourso College of Business, utilizes the Stephenson Entrepreneurship Fellows Program, LSU Executive Education, Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities, and the Distinguished Entrepreneur Speaker Series to address the challenges of entrepreneurship and to positively impact students, the regional economy, the state of Louisiana and the nation. For more information, visit sei.lsu.edu or call 225-578-0313.

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So what’s the difference?

Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform that was developed as a way to add animation, video, audio, and other interactive elements to web pages. Viewing Flash content requires the use of a free plug-in. Developers must embed the Flash content into the HTML document, which means that the Flash content is independent of the other content on the page.

JavaScript is a lightweight, and open-source scripting/programming language designed to add interactivity to HTML pages. Unlike Flash, support for JavaScript is built right into all major web browsers without the need for additional plug-ins. JavaScript works by manipulating HTML content, which means that all content on the page is seamlessly integrated.

Why do we use JavaScript?

Firstly, JavaScript has become immensely powerful and easy to use with the development of JavaScript libraries such as jQuery, MooTools, Prototype, etc. jQuery, our library of choice, is fast, concise, and versatile. It allows us to rapidly add complex interactivity to webpages without spending a lot of time. jQuery is also an open-source project with many developers working tirelessly to improve it each day.

The Web was meant to be an open system, and to use open-source tools is to follow in that virtue. I that same vein, JavaScript/jQuery is FREE. Flash (as a tool) can be an expensive initial investment and also expensive to maintain as upgrades are released over the years.

Another problem with Flash is that the required plug-ins to support Flash content aren’t available on all platforms, namely iPhone, which means that you could be limiting your content from a huge portion of web users by using Flash. Meanwhile, jQuery works on these devices with no problem. Furthermore, even if JavaScript is disabled in a user’s browser, because JavaScript is unobtrusive in nature (integrated content), those users still have access to all of your site’s content.

Finally, JavaScript is universal. As a web project changes hands from one developer to another, no special applications are required to view or edit JavaScript files. Additionally, JavaScript is a widely known language, therefore, future modifications should be able to be made by nearly any web developer handling the project.

These are just some of the reasons we’ve chosen to use JavaScript. Hopefully next time you’re looking to add some interactive elements into your site, you’ll take a look at using JavaScript & jQuery instead of Flash.

According to LSU Stephenson Entrepreneurship Institute Director of Development Jill Roshto, the LSU 100 celebrates the success of LSU graduates and recognizes the impact of LSU on the local, regional and national economies. LSU 100 is co-hosted by LSU and LSU SEI. The full list of winners is now available for viewing at www.lsu100.com/honorees.

“Gatorworks is indicative of the Tiger-led businesses that we are looking for to show other Tigers from every college on campus what they need to do to be successful,” Roshto said. “We congratulate them on this achievement and look forward to their continued success.”

Gatorworks met the following requirements for inclusion in the LSU 100:

• Has been in business for five years or more
• Has had verifiable revenues of $100,000 or more for the last calendar year
• A former LSU student owns at least 50 percent of the company or is a CEO, president or managing partner
• Operates in a manner consistent with the mission of LSU and LSU SEI

Partnerships to the event are available, as are individual tickets and tables of eight. For more information, visit www.lsu100.com or contact Jill Roshto at either jrosht1@lsu.edu or 225-578-1313.

The Stephenson Entrepreneurship Institute, an integral part of LSU’s E. J. Ourso College of Business, utilizes the Stephenson Entrepreneurship Fellows, LSU Executive Education and Social Entrepreneurship to address the challenges of entrepreneurship and to positively impact students, the regional economy, the state of Louisiana and the nation. For more information, visit www.bus.lsu.edu/sei or call 225-578-0313.

Rodriguez said, “I was very excited to see the conference quickly adopt our technology, and we hope to provide value to many future events of all sizes through both EventConnect.org and the iPhone app.”

Scheduled for April 8-11 in New Orleans, the SRLC is the most prominent GOP gathering outside of the national convention. Confirmed speakers include Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Tax Gov. Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and more. The SRLC will be carried on Fox and CNN, and Sean Hannity will broadcast live. More than 3,500 people are expected to participate.

EventConnect.org is an online social networking platform for conferences, conventions, tradeshows, and events of all sizes. The website is simple to use and integrates many existing social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

With more than 60,000 entries annually, the national ADDY® Awards are the world’s largest and arguably toughest advertising competition. The ADDY® Awards represent the true spirit of creative excellence by recognizing all forms of advertising from media of all types, creative by all sizes and entrants of all levels from around the world. The American Advertising Federation conducts the ADDY® Awards through its 200 member advertising clubs and 15 districts. It is the only creative awards program administered by the advertising industry, for the industry.

This year’s local competition produced 446 entries from Baton Rouge professionals and LSU students. Judging was held January 16, 2010 at Lamar Advertising. Renee Miller, President/Creative Director of The Miller Group in Los Angles, Ca.; Jim Dudley, Broadcast, Copywriter, Creative Director of Dudley Creative in Roanoke, Va.; and Jimmy Ball, Art Director/Designer, Photographer, Interactive of Jimmy Ball Design in Dallas, Texas, served as judges for the competition.

Gatorworks brought home a Silver ADDY award for their client project, Santa’s Online Wishlist. Santa’s Online Wishlist is an interactive website where children can dress a snowman, have fun in Santa’s Toy Factory, view Santa’s Mailroom, and best of all send emails to Santa Claus. The website took approximately 6 months to hand-draw, custom illustrate, and then custom animate using Adobe Flash software. David Link, Creative Director and lead designer/developer on the project, said, “It’s really nice to be recognized for our hard work, especially in a community as talented as AAF.”

At the red carpet ceremony, 41 gold ADDY®s, 50 silver ADDY®s, three Special Judge’s Awards, a Mosaic Award, Best of Show and Best of Category awards were presented. Advertising students were also recognized with 17 gold ADDY®s, 19 silver ADDY®s, a Best of Show and Special Judges’ Awards. ADDY® 2010* also recognized professional excellence on the business side of the advertising industry with its Pinnacle Awards.

Rodriguez will provide an overview of how social media tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, have changed the way entrepreneurs conduct business. Brian will be joined by New Orleans entrepreneur Damien LaManna who will discuss the impact that mobile marketing has on the way business owners connect with current and prospective customers. The seminar is free, and it will be held from 1PM to 3PM at 4950 Essen Lane (Baton Rouge).

11:30AM
The techies are in the LaunchPad conference room planning out the technical aspect of the project. Matt Tritico is jumping from the concept meetings to the technical meetings to try to keep an open dialogue between both groups. Our goal is to have a system by 4PM today. We’re thinking WordPress might be the technology to use.

11:40AM
Tritico just ordered pizza- will be here in an hour! Gatorworks will host the system.

11:55AM
Chris Schultz is heading up the concept meeting, and we’re going through our site architecture. Chris’ wife just walked in to join us! Here’s the temporary link for testing our system: http://www.gatortesting.net/schooldistrict/

12:10PM
The proposed domain name is nolaschoolvolunteers.org

12:25PM
The email address info@nolaschoolvolunteers.org has been set up. Our concept meeting will be meeting with the technical guys after lunch. Lunch should be here within the next 15-20 minutes I think. We’re going to purchase a WordPress theme to use.

12:40PM
We’re breaking for lunch right now. We’ll be back online in a bit!

1:00PM
We’re back at it- both the concept group and technical group is now coming together to discuss our ideas. We have 3 hours to code the system!

1:20PM
Chris Schultz just finished briefing the room on what our concept meeting discussed. Now Stanford Rosenthal is briefing the room on what the techies discussed in their meeting. I think the site architecture is pretty much finalized. We’re discussing specific WordPress plugins to use, etc.

Our goal is to thank the past and current volunteers of the NOLA public schools, report the latest happenings of volunteer projects in the schools, and help mobilize new volunteers for the NOLA public school system.

1:30PM
We’re getting ready to break out into teams again. We’re going to have different teams assigned to developing the various WP plugins we’ll need to achieve our goals. We’ll have copy writers working on gathering content. The energy is great in the room…people are stepping up and taking ownership of various pieces of the project.

2:10PM
The theme has been selected, and we’re getting ready to install on the server now. Thanks to Marc Juneau and Chris Schultz with the help on selecting the theme. We have several dev groups working on the WP plugins, and Andrew Larimer is going to work on modifying the design.

2:20PM
The theme is now installed and activated at http://www.nolaschoolvolunteers.org. We’re working on customizing the site according to the site map and architecture we’ve put together.

2:55PM
Things are coming together. We’re going to re-group in about 5 minutes to see what needs to happen during our final hour of development. I’m working on a press release that will communicate what we’ve done for our local community and help encourage technology professionals to join us for our next BarCamp. We are talking about planning a BarCamp in Baton Rouge in the Spring of 2010!

3:40PM
I just finished draft 1 of the press release, and I’m feeling pretty good about what was accomplished today. We have about 20 minutes or so left, and I think we’ll be in pretty good shape. Tung Ly has been documenting everything we’re doing so Troy Peloquin of the Recovery School District will be able to take this system moving forward and be able to update the content on a regular basis.

4:15PM
We have some guys working overtime over here at BarCampNOLA. However, the project is just about finished, and we just need to populate with content now. Check out http://www.nolaschoolvolunteers.org.

4:30PM
Ok, I’m going to go ahead and call it a day. We did it… we developed a website in ONE day in support of the New Orleans public school system. BarCampNOLA would not have been possible without our sponsors: Voodoo Ventures, LaunchPad, Humid Beings, Gatorworks, and Newstwit.com.

Today was truly inspiring.

Below are a few of our happy logo design clients. Let us know what you think of our logos!

This is a logo designed for FanTheFire.com

This logo was designed for New Orleans tech company Make Buzz

The above logo is for Wage Hunter, a Baton Rouge start up.

This is the logo for the Southern Republican Leadership Conference to be held in New Orleans in 2010.

This logo was designed for The Gulf Coast Food & Fuel Expo held earlier this year.

Green Escapes is a local plant nursery and landscaping company.

Press Release-For immediate release

[download#2]

On Thursday, February 12, 2009, for 24 hours, cities around the world will be hosting “Twestivals”, volunteer-run, fundraising events for people who know each other through the micro-blogging service twitter.com. Twitter communities are making plans to come together through the power of the internet. Twitter users from every continent will be forging local and global connections, to raise money for a good cause and in the spirit of fun, change, charity and communication.

The global event, described as “a ‘tweet-up’ with a social conscience”, will be raising money to support charity: water, a not-for-profit bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.

There are currently over 185 cities officially signed up to participate, including London, Paris, New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, Edinburgh, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Beijing, Sydney, Melbourne, and Lima. Meanwhile Twestival also offers a great opportunity for non-capital cities to host events, allowing for a wide spread of regional networking within countries, states and regions. City representatives keen to participate continue to come on board; so for the for the full and changing list of cities, or to get involved yourself, go to  www.twestival.com.

The event in Baton Rouge has found sponsorship from Gatorworks (www.gatorworks.net), a local web development and graphic design firm, who has completely organized the local Baton Rouge version of Twestival.

David Link, Creative Director at Gatorworks, brought the concept of a Tweet-Up to Baton Rouge, which is a meet-and-greet of local Twitter users. The first Tweet-Up was held last month at Chimes East, and it was a huge success. Following that idea, Link decided to head up the local efforts for Twestival.

In Baton Rouge, GatorWorks will play host at 600 Main, 600 Main St, Baton Rouge, LA 70802. Tickets will be available at the door. For more information visit http://batonrouge.twestival.com

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Quick Pitch:

Provide your audience with a primer in social media and encourage them to take part in a world-wide fundraiser.

Twestival Baton Rouge presents an evening of social media discussion, education and celebration for Baton Rouge’s Twitterati (twitter users, live) to meet up with each other face to face along with the social-media-curious. Join us to learn about social media, network, celebrate AND raise money for CHARITY:WATER to provide clean drinking water to impoverished communities.

WHEN: February 12, 6 pm

WHERE: 600 Main Bar
600 Main St., Baton Rouge, LA

WHAT: Charity event for CHARITY:WATER and learn more about
the power of social media. Tweetup, music, food and drinks

COST: $15 at the door (ALL proceeds go to Charity:Water)

To interview organizers David Link or Brian Rodriguez, contact Bryan Castillo at bryan.castillo@gatorworks.net

BACKGROUND

ABOUT TWESTIVAL
Last year, the first Twestival was orchestrated in London, England by twitter users to raise money for the homeless. Over the year, other similar initiatives have been observed in the twitter community. So this year, Twestival goes international and celebratory events are being organized in cities round the world. (see www.twestival.com for an event in the city nearest you) All of the work on this initiative is organized by volunteers and this year all of the proceeds from all of the events will go toward the work of CHARITY:WATER. More specifically, all of the proceeds will go directly towards the drilling of wells for water in communities around the world. Why?

ABOUT CHARITY:WATER
• Right now 1.1 billion people on the planet don’t have access to safe, clean drinking water. That’s one in six of us.
• Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all sickness and disease, and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war.
• Many communities in developing nations often have a plentiful supply of clean drinking water just below the ground, but no way to get to it.
• This is where CHARITY:WATER and their partner organizations come in. Drilling a well can cost from $4,000 – $12,000 USD and many living on less than $1 a day cannot afford one in their community, even if the money is combined.

ABOUT TWITTER
Twitter was founded in 2006 in San Francisco, CA and is used in countries all around the world. Twitter is a micro blogging service used to share information in 140 characters or less. It is simple to use and is available across multiple platforms (web, smart phones and sms).

Twitter users include the general public, governments, companies, non charitable organizations, and newspapers. Barack Obama used Twitter in his campaign in the US to connect with Americans; civilians used Twitter to update the world in real time about terrorists attacks in Mumbai; and Calgary Arts Development uses Twitter to notify people of updates on their website and create awareness about the arts.

ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS

DAVID LINK specializes in creating clean, friendly web sites and user interfaces by basing designs around the behavioral and emotional processes of the user.

David has 5 years of design experience, working in several design environments including time spent employed at both the Louisiana Department of Education and the Louisiana Department of Labor. He has worked as a freelance designer for clients across the country as well as the UK and Canada. David received a BFA with a concentration in Graphic Design from Louisiana State University. (via www.gatorworks.net)

BRIAN RODRIGUEZ career as an entrepreneur and web consultant began at an early age. He built his business throughout his time at LSU and managed websites for over 70 clients from 2002 to May 2006 while juggling the expected course load of a college student. Brian earned his B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in Information Systems and Decision Sciences from the EJ Ourso College of Business at Louisiana State University.
Brian is an active member in several professional organizations such as the Better Business Bureau, Baton Rouge Area Chamber, Business Network International (BNI), Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), American Advertising Federation of Baton Rouge (AAFBR), and Partners One.

Brian also takes part in the Visiting Business Executive Lecture Series at LSU’s EJ Ourso College of Business where he often delivers speeches to business students on how to become successful entrepreneurs. (via www.gatorworks.net)