We find a pair of interesting stories in this morning's Standard-Examiner, which we suppose can be loosely tied together as promoting Ogden City economic development. The first involves a contest designed to provide seed money to local inventors, while simultaneously enhancing Ogden's reputation as an outdoor recreation center. We incorporate Ace Reporter Schwebke's informative paragraphs below:
A $20,000 prize will be awarded in September as part of a contest to attract new product ideas and companies to bolster Ogden’s burgeoning reputation as an outdoor recreation center.
The city is sponsoring the “Concept to Company” contest in connection with primary sponsors Zions Bank, Grow Utah Ventures and Utah Science, Technology and Research.
The winners and two runners-up will be announced Sept. 27 as part of the city’s Mountain to Metro festival.
$10,000 prizes will reportedly be awarded also to runner-ups.
The contest also has a potload of secondary sponsors, including Amer Sports Winter & Outdoor, Backcountry.com, Black Diamond Equipment Ltd., Deer Valley Resort, Descente North America, Goode Skis, Mountain to Metro, Ogden city, Outdoor Industry Association, Ogden Climbing Park, Petzl America, Rossignol Group North America, and Seed Weber Davis Morgan.We think it's great to see these above companies joining together to promote entrepreneurship in our community. And for a couple of them, it's a relief to see them diverting their attention (however temporarily) from crackpot projects like urban gondolas.
Got an outdoors product design scrawled on a notepad of cocktail napkin somewhere (and what self-respecting Ogden skier or boarder doesn't)? Now's the time to dig it out and sent it in.
Today's second Std-Ex article is a slight outlier, inasmuch as its business model goes against the grain of Boss Godfrey's High Adventure Mecca marketing
Flush with $6 million in newly obtained venture funding, a local internet technology company is planning an expansion at Business Depot Ogden. From today's Jeff DeMoss story:
OGDEN — Armed with a $6 million infusion of venture capital, a young Internet company is embarking on an aggressive expansion that could bring up to 100 new technology jobs to Business Depot Ogden.And yes, we realize that there are some within our readership who will be disappointed that TopTenReviews is an IT company -- and NOT a ski company -- and that it therefore fails to conform to the "visionary" high-recreation theme. And to those readers we say this:
TopTenReviews, which tests thousands of products and rates them online, secured the investment from two separate venture capital firms through the Utah Fund of Funds, a state program that matches entrepreneurs with potential funding sources.
The money will allow Top-TenReviews to add as many as 100 positions to its 48-member work force, company President Stan Bassett said.
It's never a good idea to put all your economic eggs in one basket... and you caught the part above... about the 100 new jobs... right?
Time to turn it over to our gentle readers.
We know you're out there BTW; we can hear you breathing.
