Gov. Ritter established the state’s first Innovation Council, bringing together 34 leaders from around Colorado. The Council is composed of experts from large, small, urban and rural technology businesses, as well as leaders in the venture capital, government, academic and nonprofit sectors. The council will have three primary subcommittees that will:

* Assist the state as it reforms and improve its use of information technology;
* Develop a strategy for spurring broadband deployment throughout the state, and;
* Support state government’s economic development efforts for the technology sector.

The council will be co-chaired by venture capitalist Brad Feld, managing director of the Foundry Group; entrepreneur Juan Rodriguez, who founded StorageTek and Exabyte; and national telecommunications policy expert Phil Weiser, who teaches law and telecommunications at the University of Colorado at Boulder and is executive director of the Silicon Flatirons Program.

In addition to Feld, Rodriguez and Weiser, three other tech-industry leaders also will serve on the Council’s executive committee: Cathy Fogler of Charter Communications; Su Hawk, president of CSIA; and Lee Kennedy, founder of TriCalyx.

To see the complete article http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite?c=Page&cid=1192091651316&pagename=GovRitter%2FGOVRLayout

StartupNation made its selection from among thousands of home-based entrepreneurs who entered the competition.

November 6, 2007 - StartupNation, a leading business advice and social networking site for entrepreneurs (http://www.startupnation.com) today named TriCalyx one of the Top Ten “Highest Vote-Getters” in the first annual StartupNation Home-Based 100 ranking of the nation’s top home-based businesses. Organized into 10 categories such as Most Innovative, Boomers Back in Business and Best Financial Performers, the Home-Based 100 celebrates the innovative, nimble and resourceful home-based entrepreneurs who have gone largely unrecognized until now. The full results of the Home-Based 100 ranking are available on the StartupNation web site.

“Although large companies often grab the headlines, home-based businesses today are thriving,” said Rich Sloan, entrepreneurial author, radio host and co-founder of StartupNation. “Millions of people are following their passions through entrepreneurship by pursuing innovative, sound business ideas.”

The StartupNation Home-Based 100, composed of ten Top Ten lists, presents a unique look at the nation’s top home-based businesses. Category winners span a wide range of revenue levels, sectors, ages and other characteristics.

“TriCalyx is proud to be recognized for this award”, said TriCalyx founder, Kathy Keating. “It shows that small businesses like ours are thriving and producing quality products and services that meet the needs of the consumer and other businesses.”

About StartupNation

Founded by Rich and Jeff Sloan, StartupNation (http://www.startupnation.com) provides entrepreneurial advice via a nationally syndicated radio program and through online content for entrepreneurs who want to start a business. The Sloan brothers are successful inventors, experienced entrepreneurs and authors of StartupNation: Open for Business (Doubleday). They appear frequently as small business experts on national television and in online and print media. More information is available at http://www.startupnation.com.

Lee Kennedy, Kathy Keating, and Trina Blazek, former senior executives at Webroot, have left the anti-spyware powerhouse to co-found TriCalyx, a web services company that helps Internet retailers increase web traffic, maximize profits from e-commerce sales and optimize technical operations.

While at Webroot, the founders observed that Internet retailers were becoming increasingly frustrated with their inability to find web service providers to integrate their technical and marketing needs to achieve the bottom-line results needed to be competitive. In addition, many web technologies, search engine optimization tactics and web marketing tools were changing so rapidly, that it was difficult to determine which providers were staying on the leading technical edge.

The three TriCalyx founders recently departed from Boulder firm Webroot Software where they managed all aspects of the company’s web operations.

“We have a proven track record of re-building and managing a web site that was initially constructed to handle a few million dollars in sales, to one that could handle over a $100 million in sales, and receive over 20 million hits per day. Together we can offer some of the best experience in the e-commerce industry” Kathy Keating said, TriCalyx founder and former Web Operations Director at Webroot.

“In order to minimize your expenses and maximize your profits, you need a greater ability to track, report and understand the complete lifecycle of online sales, products, media sources, keywords, and marketing campaigns,” Blazek said, TriCalyx founder and former Database Manager at Webroot. “Blending this disperse data and reporting on it, gave us the business intelligence to catapult our growth.”

The three founders have been trailblazers in their careers, in the male oriented field of software and information technology and wanted to continue to pioneer new horizons in starting a women-owned technology business. “We feel strongly that you need to be the change you want to see in the world,” Kennedy said, TriCalyx founder and former CIO at Webroot. She also serves on the Board of Directors for the National Center for Women & Information Technology.

About TriCalyx
TriCalyx optimizes your business for the web. We improve online profitability by getting visitors to your web site, converting visitors to customers and analyzing how to improve that cycle again and again. As your company grows, we provide a variety of software services to run your business more efficiently; custom software development, reporting, integrating customer data into financial, marketing and sales data, and scalability of your infrastructure. TriCalyx is a Louisville, CO based firm.

Contact: Lee Kennedy, 720-938-1222, lee@tricalyx.com

The overall percentage of women in the IT workforce is on the decline, from 41 percent in 1996 to 32 percent in 2004. In addition, a recent study shows that women fill only 9 percent of Boards of Director positions at high-tech Fortune 500 companies. Why are women leaving IT in such high percentages, especially mid-career?

TriCalyx, a Colorado-based web site development and optimization firm, is doing their part to stem this tide. The company, founded by three successful women technologists, has joined the National Center for Women & Information Technology’s (NCWIT) Entrepreneurial Alliance to assist in addressing this concern. NCWIT formed its Entrepreneurial Alliance to address the causes for the small number of women involved in starting businesses, filing patents, and transferring technology in the IT field.

Lee Kennedy, a TriCalyx co-founder, serves as an active member of the Board of Directors for the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). In this role she helps manage the Entrepreneurial Alliance through outreach in its IT Heroes Campaign. This campaign will use the expansive network of NCWIT members to identify and tell the stories of 15-20 successful women IT entrepreneurs. This project seeks to attract young women to IT entrepreneurship by highlighting the appealing opportunities for an exciting, lucrative, and self-directed career.

Learn more about how you can be a part of NCWIT by going to their web site at www.ncwit.org.