Subudhi Consulting Group

We’re in the middle of a successful tradeshow season here at SCG with Comptel PLUS, SUPERCOMM 2009, Capacity Central America, Ethernet Expo Americas, the Texas IPv6 Conference, and the CTO Telecom Summit already under our belt and AHCIET’s XXVI Reunión Iberoamericana Tráfico Internacional, IEEE Globecom 2009, PTC’10 and the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) still to come.  I thought I’d take a moment and share with you a summary of SUPERCOMM 2009, which was held October 21-23 at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois.

Kazuhiro Gomi, COO of NTT America, discussed the challenges and opportunities surrounding the dramatic increase in worldwide demand for Internet access, during his stand-alone speaking engagement, which was secured for NTT America by SCG.

The SUPERCOMM press tour was a resounding success.  A total of eleven briefings were secured with leading IT and telecom publications including Telephony Magazine, InformationWeek, Lightwave, TMCnet, Converge! Network Digest and Streaming Media magazine, and the blogs, FierceTelecom and Broadband Daily; as well the analyst firm, Dell’ Oro Group, and the national daily, Los Angeles Times. We’ve already seen coverage in the SUPEROMM Daily News and on the Network Computing blog, and the video interviews have been posted on the TMCnet and Converge! Network Digest Web sites.  In addition, as a result of the SUPERCOMM press tour, a bylined article opportunity was secured for NTT America in the Journal of Telecommunications Management, and a speaking engagement was also secured at an upcoming TMCnet event.

Shannon, who traveled to Chicago to assist NTT America’s COO and staff all of the in-person briefings, said she enjoyed the opportunity to meet face-to-face with some of the industry’s leading journalists.  She also said that McCormick Place lived up to its status as the country’s largest conference center and she now understands why Segway’s exist (though she still doesn’t want to be seen on one).

After five years in business, Subudhi Consulting Group was recently certified as a Small, Women-and Minority-owned (SWaM) vendor, as recognized by the Department of Minority Business Enterprise (DMBE).  SCG is now a part of the SWaM Vendor Directory, a listing of all certified small, women- and minority-owned firms currently on file with the DMBE, along with a description of the products and services they provide.

We’re looking forward to the opportunity to work with the Commonwealth’s agencies and partner with complementary businesses to meet the PR needs of the Commonwealth.

Last week, SCG attended the New Media Mixer at Penny Lane Pub. The monthly event, which is hosted by Richmond-based advertising agency, Madison + Main, brings together individuals eager to learn more about the ins and outs of social media.

The level of social media experience ranges a great deal in the attendees, which represent a wide-variety of local companies. It’s a fun, casual way to personally connect with some of Richmond’s social media leaders, who are willing to share advice and insight with those that are just diving into social media.

SCG values the opportunity to share our experience in social media and serve as a reference to other small businesses that may have questions on making their social media campaign a success.

Here at SCG, we are constantly knee-deep into research, always printing out relevant industry articles and sharing information with our colleagues and clients. If your office looks anything like ours, there are folders full of printed out papers complete with multiple colored highlights, each signifying a different meaning, and sticky notes attached. Although the old school method is tried and true, we discovered a service that will allow you to put down those highlighters for good and start saving some trees.

WebNotes, a Boston-based technology innovator of online research tools, recently launched the WebNotes application which allows you to highlight material on the Web, and place sticky notes around the content of your choice.

Once you’ve highlighted the desired text, you can organize the information into the “My WebNotes” file, which is very similar to Outlook’s e-mail inbox. Once you’ve gathered all of your research, the service generates a report that you can publish as a PDF or in HTML format. It even allows users to e-mail their reports directly to others.

This service eliminates the hassle of copying and pasting content from various Web pages. You just highlight, file and voilà – all of your research is complied neatly just for you.

We’ve been using WebNotes for a few weeks now, and it has proven to be a great help for our research efforts. If you’re a PR professional, or anyone who conducts research on a regular basis, we highly recommend giving this service a try.

SCG attended the Richmond BizSense event, “Reporting Local, Reaching Global,” which took place at Plant Zero.

The event featured a panel of Richmond-based journalists who provided insight on working with local media to garner national attention.  The panel included Phaedra Hise, freelance writer for publications such as Inc. and Fortune; Robert Powell, editor of Virginia Business; Sean Ryan, public relations professional at The Hodges Partnership and a former reporter for a variety of publications, including Richmond Times-Dispatch and Virginia Living; Pam Feibish, former editor of Richmond Times-Dispatch; and Maya Smart, freelance writer for publications such as Black Enterprise and CNNMoney.com.  The panel was moderated by Aaron Kremer, founder and editor of Richmond BizSense, a frequent guest on area news channels whose work has also been featured in publications such as Los Angeles Times and Reuters.

BizSense is Richmond’s leading source for business news and information, combining the daily business reporting of a local newspaper with the analysis and commentary of a magazine.

Last month, SCG launched the US Government IPv6 (USGv6) Test Event, an interoperability test program, for the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), the networking industry’s premier independent third-party proving ground for developing technologies, in collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

From a PR point of view, the university agreed that the project was a resounding success.  In a very short time frame, SCG executed a PR campaign that resulted in fourteen feature stories for the UNH-IOL in publications like Network World, InfoWorld, ComputerWorld, InfoWorld, TMCnet, Government Computer News, Nextgov, and SmartBrief. In addition, SCG secured a radio interview on FederalNewsRadio.com and a blog post on IT Business Edge.