Talent

HCBC opens new CoWorks space for entrepreneurs, startups

By Newsroom

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March 5, 2013

The Hamilton County Business Center is Cincinnati's oldest incubator, and has evolved over the decades as the economy has changed. Startups are leaner and meaner now than ever before, and HCBC is piloting the region's latest coworking space, where small businesses can get many of the benefits of being in an incubator without the higher overhead. HCBC's CoWorks had a very quiet launch late last fall. With three businesses in the space, which is located in Norwood, Executive Director Pat Longo is now getting the word out about HCBC. "This has grown out of our affiliate program," Longo says. "There were companies that weren't yet ready to apply for the incubator but they wanted to be around it." HCBC has recently upgraded its conference room space, which has been attractive to small companies like SCORE, SBDC and Meetups that want to present themselves more professionally, says Longo. HCBC has 45 companies that last year generated over $18 million in revenues, accessed over $8 million in capital and created nearly 50 jobs. Renting CoWorks space on a month-to-month basis starts at $75 per month, and includes: 24-hour, 7-day-a-week accessWiFiConcierge and receptionist servicesFree parkingFax, scanner and copier servicesKitchenUp to four hours per month of conference room useA mailing address"We talk about having an entrepreneurial ecosystem, but I like to think of (HCBC) as a coral reef," Longo says. "We have a lot of life, people can grow, there is lots of nourishment and places to go and hide if you need a quiet place to work." CoWorkers will have access to the incubator entrepreneurial atmosphere, programming and resources. Some are free, while others have a fee attached. "They'll get the benefits of being a client," Long says. "And we hope when they are ready, they'll move into the incubator." Currently, there is space for about 12 companies, with potential room to grow. Interested businesses can find out more on the CoWorks website, where interpreters can fill out an application. By Feoshia H. Davis Follow Feoshia on Twitter

Latest in Talent

Nights out Cincinnati

By Scott Beseler

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Arts + Culture

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March 5, 2013

One weekend. Two nights of Cincinnati. Soapbox's managing photographer Scott Beseler tours the Art of Food in Covington and the Platter Party in Brighton. The result? A taste of fashion, music and fun in the city. Video by Scott Beseler.

Video The Kentucky Struts: Country Road

By Keith Neltner

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Arts + Culture

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March 5, 2013

Northern Kentucky filmmaker and designer Keith Neltner, who recently launched Neltner Small Batch, collaborates with musicians, both local and national. Here's an example of his art direction, and directoral skills, with The Kentucky Struts. Video courtesy Keith Neltner.

Cincinnati enters wearable tech market with Nugg-it recording band

By Newsroom

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Architecture + Design

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March 5, 2013

Wearable tech is emerging as the "next big thing" in consumer technology. And a trio of Cincinnati entrepreneurs are developing Nugg-it, a wristband that will easily record snippets of everyday conversation, and investors are taking notice. Nugg-it has raised $600,000 in seed investment, including a total of $250,000 from CincyTech and Design 2 Matter, a Silicon Valley-based industrial design firm. Design 2 Matter is also designing and building the device. "[Design 2 Matter] has a very successful track record of bringing products from concept to shelf," says Nugg-it's co-founder and social media entrepreneur Matthew Dooley. Nugg-it is meant to be worn 24 hours a day. It records live conversations on a 60-second loop, continuously saving them in one-minute "nuggets." To save a memorable part of a conversation, the user touches the device to save the last minute of buffered memory. That recording can be sent to a smartphone, and through an app can be edited, saved and shared. "It's a smaller, lighter weight band," says Dooley. "Right now, we are trying to focus a lot of attention on design. It has to be something that is stylish and comfortable to wear. A lot of the functionality is off the shelf, but we're putting it together in a new way." Dooley is working with former Procter & Gamble brand marketer and engineer Mike Sarow to develop the device. Plans are to deliver the final concept in March, and introduce it to the market by December, Dooley says. “It occurred to us that there are a lot of circumstances in life where we want to remember and share something that was just said—a clever phrase in a meeting, something adorable from our 3-year-old, words of wisdom from a mentor—but we can’t ‘capture’ it,” Sarow says. “Now you can.” Nugg-it is CincyTech's first consumer electronics device investment. “With the rise of the Nike FuelBand and smartwatches such as Pebble, wearable technology is projected to be a $7 billion market by 2017,” says CincyTech's Executive-in-Residence Doug Groh. “We expect Nugg-it to help drive that growth and to do for short audio files what Twitter has done for 140-character content.” By Feoshia H. Davis Follow Feoshia on Twitter

Markiplier attracts millions of YouTube gamer views

By Sean M. Peters

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Talent

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March 5, 2013

Mark Fischbach of Milford, Ohio, launched a successful career playing video games and yelling at his computer as a YouTube partner.

OTR Foundation preserves history, promotes community

By Newsroom

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Architecture + Design

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February 26, 2013

From organizing events involving beer and historic churches to providing affordable housing and jobs to those who have struggled to attain them in the past, the Over-the-Rhine Foundation does a little bit of everything. And it's all for the purpose of reinventing and celebrating a diverse, historically-rooted community. At the beginning of February, Kevin Pape, who’s lived in Cincinnati his whole life and who grew up with a fondness for the OTR community, stepped up to the role of president of the foundation. OTR has been a part of Pape’s family history for multiple generations, so he’s someone who understands what the community has to offer. His grandparents lived in OTR and operated a business there until 1935, though it was actually started back in 1850. Pape lived in the community himself for about four years in the 1970s, and his office at Gray & Pape—a cultural resource management and historic preservation consulting firm—just celebrated 23 years at its Main Street location. Pape says because of his background, he deals with the renovation of historic buildings all the time, but his vision for OTR contains much more than the preservation of buildings. “I think my interest really is in community-building,” Pape says. “The message is that it’s really all about putting people back into historic buildings and finding ways to do that in a meaningful way.” One way Pape and the OTRF plan to build on that vision is through their strategic plan, which entails owner-occupied redevelopment, historic preservation and the goal of making OTR the greenest historic neighborhood in the country. “We also want to encourage people who are investing in the neighborhood to seek ways to provide meaningful employment and jobs for people that live in the neighborhood who may not have had access to opportunities before,” Pape says. While working to show that “green buildings, sustainable buildings, LEED certification and historic preservation are actually compatible,” the OTRF also helps organize events like Bockfest, which Pape says showcases what’s good and great about the community. This year, the nonprofit, in conjunction with American Legacy Tours, is offering historic church tours, which will highlight the architecture and stories of four different 19th century landmarks within the community. “When you think about the size of OTR and the number of churches, it gives you a good sense about the density of people and the diversity even at that time that would have such a population to support a variety of churches,” says Pape. It’s that diversity that has withstood the test of time, and which Pape says the community embraces at all levels. “Socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, you name it,” Pape says. “It provides residential density that allows people to share ideas and celebrate those differences in being able to all live in a compact place at one time. It’s about not only economic vitality, but residential vitality.” Do Good: • Attend Bockfest, and register for the Historic Churches of OTR Tour. • Support the Over-the-Rhine Foundation by becoming a member. • Volunteer to help the organization preserve and revitalize OTR. By Brittany York Brittany York is a professor of English composition at the University of Cincinnati and a teacher at the Regional Institute of Torah and Secular Studies. She also edits the For Good section of SoapboxMedia.

Feel-good, comfort food in O’Bryonville at Eat Well Cafe

By Newsroom

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Development News

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February 26, 2013

The brightly lit restaurant welcomes customers when they walk in. Mismatched coffee mugs, cookbooks and a mural—which was done by chef Renee Schuler's sister, Michelle Heimann—above the lunch counter add a homey feel to Eat Well Café and Takeaway, which is exactly what Schuler was after. “I wanted the restaurant to be like a living thing, which is why there’s so much green,” she says. The café seats about 35 people, and is described as fast casual—instead of table service, customers order at the counter and take a seat or, if they’re in a hurry, take their food with them. Eat Well Café opened Jan. 9 in O’Bryonville in the old What’s for Dinner? space, between The BonBonerie and Enoteca Emilia. “The neighborhood is full of positive energy,” says Schuler. “There are so many creative people doing what they love in this area, and I wanted to be part of that.” When looking for restaurant space, Schuler searched all over Cincinnati. She decided on O’Bryonville because the community is interested in feeling good and living well, and that’s what food is about, she says. Before opening her catering business, Eat Well Celebrations and Feasts seven and a half years ago, Schuler spent years working in restaurants and catering in New York City. When she came back to Cincinnati, she worked as the executive chef at Murphin Ridge Inn in Adams County for three years. “It was a huge change,” she says. “I went from living in the city to picking out what types of cabbage our gardener would grow for the restaurant.” She loves to help people plan events and create something dramatic (her second major is in theater), but she also wanted to create something accessible to people on a daily basis. Eat Well Café allows her to see some of her regular customers outside of planning events. Eat Well Café’s menu was created with everyone in mind, Schuler says. There are vegetarian and vegan options alongside items like the Dr. Meat, which is a braised beef short rib sandwich. The menu will change seasonally, with spring items set to be added in two or three weeks. “America is a melting pot, and American food is influenced from all over,” says Schuler. “Our menu is a mix of flavors to create something new.” Vietnamese summer rolls and pesto pasta are both menu staples, along with salads and soups. The “takeaway” menu changes daily, and is based on Schuler’s mood, the weather and what she thinks would be good to eat that day. On dreary days, items like soups are takeaway staples. Schuler tries to source most of Eat Well Café’s ingredients from local farmers. She uses a local, family-owned company who gets eggs for the café from an Amish farm in Northern Ohio; the bread is from Blue Oven Bakery; dairy products come from Snowville Creamery; Eckerlin Meats at Findlay Market supplies chicken and other meats. “I try to keep it as local as that makes sense,” she says. “It’s a constant challenge, especially this time of year.” Schuler’s dream is to have an Eat Well greenhouse down the street to grow all of the restaurant’s salad greens and herbs, but that’s a ways down the road. By Caitlin Koenig Follow Caitlin on Twitter

Platter Party brings back the Funk

By Sean M. Peters

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Talent

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February 26, 2013

There’s good music in Cincinnati that you have probably never heard as some of the city's coolest bands didn’t release enough records.

Budget cuts jeopardize Media Bridges, volunteers needed

By Newsroom

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Arts + Culture

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February 26, 2013

Tom Bishop, president of Media Bridges, has worked to give the public a voice by providing access to media and channel space for years. But because of recent budget cuts and word from current members of Cincinnati City Council that the organization will not receive funds again, Media Bridges’ future is at stake. Rooted in the Cincinnati area, Bishop grew up in Hamilton, attended college and spent time working for public radio, in addition to spending 17 years with Norwood Community Television prior to his time at Media Bridges, where he has been employed for the past nine years. Bishop says he realized early on what good can be done with media. “I think I’ve always had it in the back of my head that you should leave the world a better place than you found it, and the idea of doing that with media is a really cool combo,” he says. Throughout his years at Media Bridges, Bishop led the nonprofit in providing free classes to the public on everything from studio and video production to editing and web design. The organization has also championed free summer camps for children so that they, too, can learn to be active participants in media by learning things like video skills, comic book design, animation and radio programming. Throughout the next few months, however, the organization will be forced to implement class and membership fees, so the facilities and access to create public programming will no longer be completely free. But Bishop says the organization will ensure that those below the poverty line are not left behind. “I’m sure we’re going to lose some people—and that’s really a shame,” Bishop says. “Cincinnati City Council has made the decision that their government access television station is much more important than the people actually having a voice in the community, and by making that decision, they’re telling the people to just go away, ‘I don’t want to hear from you.’” Because of the cuts, Bishop says the organization is in dire need of volunteers to help teach classes and run the studio so the public can continue to have a voice. Though he’s optimistic that Media Bridges will still be around in 2014, he says he’s not sure what it will look like. “Frankly, making up the amount of money we used to get via the cable franchise—put it this way—if we pulled it off, we’d be the only people to pull it off,” says Bishop. “When all funds have been cut, nobody has survived.” For Bishop, the cuts are disappointing. He says it threatens the future of the “many small victories” the organization has achieved over the years. “We have a program called Film Outside the Lines, where we work with people with developmental disabilities and turn them into film producers where they create their own films,” says Bishop. “The success of that is right there on their faces when they’re showing their films at screenings and entering them at film festivals and things like that.” Without public access, Bishop says people are left behind to hear only the voices of “the pundits, politicians and sports heroes” who make up a small portion our population. Instead of receiving media, Bishop says it’s more important than ever that people also participate. “It doesn’t have to be about the almighty dollar—it can be used to make communities stronger," says Bishop. "Media can be used to build dialogue—to let people communicate. It’s not that there shouldn’t be media for profit, but that shouldn’t be the only kind of media there is. And slowly but surely, we’re entering a world where that will be the only kind of media.” Do Good: • Volunteer with Media Bridges to help them shift gears to a volunteer-driven organization. • Support Media Bridges by making a donation. • Learn about Media Bridges' classes, and register for one so that you can become an active partcipant in the media. By Brittany York Brittany York is a professor of English composition at the University of Cincinnati and a teacher at the Regional Institute of Torah and Secular Studies. She also edits the For Good section of SoapboxMedia.

Miami University student wants to make The Ultimate Lip Balm

By Newsroom

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Education + Learning

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February 26, 2013

Miami University junior Samuel Frith was on vacation three years ago, and spent a little too much time in the sun. Today, when the rays get a little too intense, he relives a painful part of that vacation. "My lips are very sensitive when I'm out in the sun," he says. "I get really bad sun poisoning and blisters when I go out in the sun." Frith went through all of the cosmetically available lip balms around, especially those with high SPF levels, but they just didn't work. "I wasn't getting any relief," he says. "I even tried the brands that were SPF 30 or 40." Last summer, he decided to take things into his own hands, and create The Ultimate Lip Balm. It's a balm that would help sun-sensitive people like Frith. Active outdoor types could also use it, and it even has medical applications—chemotherapy patients often get severely dry lips during cancer treatment, and they could benefit from Frith's balm as well. Frith, a finance and entrepreneurship student, was one of the top winners during this month's Innov8 for Health business pitch event. He was one of four $1,000 prize winners in the student track. Frith's past experience includes working on a cosmetic lotion project for GA Communications in Chicago, which helped him learn about the process of getting a facial care product to market. "I did a lot of reading and research about the FDA and regulation of product claims," he says. "While I was there, I learned about SPF, sun care products and the facial care industry." After doing further Internet research, Frith decided to work with a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, company—Raining Rose—to develop the lip balm. Raining Rose is a small, custom lip balm manufacturer known for using organic and natural ingredients. The company and Frith are working to develop a formula aimed at making the lip balm last longer, and therefore, be more effective, Frith says. "After SPF 30, [sun protection quality] plateaus," Frith says. "You have to come up with other ingredients that will stick better on lips, or attributes other than SPF to make a higher quality lip balm." Currently, he's working to raise $15,000 for product testing. He hopes to get The Ultimate Lip Balm onto lips by late fall. By Feoshia H. Davis Follow Feoshia on Twitter