Yawn. A tired old advertising agency and a guy with a history of ethical problems thinking they can save the city. Trumpet has a history of milking the system and Sean Cummings’ questionable real estate ethics have been noted as well.

Come on, this is just a plug for new orleans to get people to move back / to there, as well as convince some easily duped venture capitalists to move there as well. Mardi gras is dirty and over-commercialized for tourism. Boo on New Orleans and boo on this post. I say we turn the whole place into a floating historic landmark to visit by boat, only.

Yawn, someone with an ax to grind against people actually trying to get something done. Care to elaborate on your random claims Lance, or were you just wronged in some way and taking a shot with the protection of being anonymous online?

And as for the constant skeptic, we’re so used to people, most of whom have never been here and only listen to AM radio tells them, slamming us it doesn’t mean anything anymore. We’ll do whatever we need to without you.

Boo tired old complainers, and boo useless comments.

Just had a friend forward me this blog post, figured I’d chime in as a New Orleans business owner. Lifestyle Revolution Group is actually one of our larger clients, so we’ve been pretty active in growth of our own company, growth of other companies and growth of NOLA at large.

I can completely get behind wanting to drive good minds down here to create new companies. I had a pretty extensive talk with some AdCenter students some time back in which we touched on the open terrain to create your own world here. Stop pitying us and start challenging us. Do things better than I do, so I get better and eventually we have a city with things like fewer potholes, less crime, a cleaner environment, a stronger sense of professionalism and everything else imaginable. That’s certainly been my path since moving here in 2001 and depending on the industry you’re in, there’s really a wide open marketplace to deliver quality and achieve the dream. It’s really been that way even before Katrina, its just now we have this bookmark in time to be able to show people that we’re open for business and would love sharp minds to help drive the economy. I was surprised at the level of business drive/professionalism and all when I moved here. Blown away really. Goes beyond just corrupt politicians of which there are many too as we all painfully know. I begged the AdCenter students to please move down here and start businesses. Why put your resumes at all the agencies in the world, when you can move to New Orleans and create one.

I think Lance and Skeptic may have decent reason to feel as they do and shouldn’t be dismissed, but a bit harsh perhaps? Perhaps they’d like to post and develop the ideas a bit more, haha. The glory of the blog I guess. I’m tired of the ‘rebuilding’ and hearing about it and all just as much as most of the people I come into contact with. We’re cool, we’ll never be back to the way we were, but we shouldn’t be. We’re what we are now and one thing we could use more of is more competition, more sharp minds a healthy dose of ethics in various ways and non-corrupt leaders, etc. I meet a lot of ‘constant skeptics’ and I certainly have a side to my personality like that as well. Obviously they feel the way they do for some reason, and it may not just be because they have an ax to grind or are just nasty people. It’s important to challenge, so I wouldn’t consider them useless, but would like a little more meat to chew on to discuss more fully as well. One thing I’m sure of though, is we need a lot more talent and sharp minds to move here, whatever their field and however we have to trick them into moving here, haha.

There are 3 groups of people here in New Orleans:
1. Those that have lived here since birth
2. Those that came here once and never left
3. And the rest of us

I always grouped myself in the last group. My wife and I lived here because of school and later work, but never because we loved the city. That’s changed now. I hate mentioning the K-word, but post-K I’ve grown to really love it here. In fact, I doubt we’ll ever leave.

Why? Things feel fresh and new-ish. It’s something in the air; it’s ripe with opportunity. I’m thriving both personally and professionally. I also feel closer and more protective of my fellow New Orleanians.

I wish the Startup New Orleans guys well. We need sharp, bright minds here, but what city doesn’t? We need them here because here they can thrive.

I too heard of the adcenter students who were down some time last year working on a presentation to some local ad agency. They interviewed a friend of mine. Loved their vision and passion. They spoke of a network much like this in their proposal. Is that where this idea was birthed?

Would be good to know if they were successful in their goals.

Yeah, they were cool kids. The agency was Trumpet. I got in touch with the adcenter students after posting my comments above… to ask about the website thinking they had started to see the fruits of their labor ripen. Not so. Turns out, according to them, Trumpet took their ideas and research and ran with it just using a different name and cut them out of it. Great way to treat people coming here to help, thanks Trumpet. So there’s a bunch of ambitious, talented kids who were trying to do the City some good and now they all have that horrible taste in their mouth of the flimsy ethics that make-up NOLA’s reputation. Seems rather self-serving, not to mention completely contrary to what would seem to be the point of attracting people/businesses like those kids here. There are 6 kids that won’t be back to start businesses in New Orleans.

I’ve spoken to Rick Boyko at VCU upon hearing this and am scheduled to speak with the students this week. For the record, Rick sent me the following note on Saturday, “I have talked to the students and there is no real problem so they were just going to leave it alone, but I recommended they have a conversation with you all the same just so they can hear from you.” Chris – whoever you are, you violated rule number one of anything approaching credibility – get both sides of the story. I’ll leave the rest we have to discuss when you pick up the phone and call me.

Trying not to overreact to misinformed assertions, but yeah, it bothers me on many levels. We loved working with the VCU students and we continue to help engage university groups from all over the country (we spoke to student chapters of AMA just last Friday) in projects ranging from business consulting to establishing a green construction industry. The VCU students had excellent ideas and we had a great exchange.

The project they worked on for a few months has been our life project. Nothing was stolen, re-purposed or repackaged. This is work I and Trumpet have been involved with pre-storm, post-storm and every day of our ten years in business. Every minute of the almost 30 months since Katrina.

The idea for Startup is fairly uncomplicated. That’s because it is not a funded, institutional effort. It’s fair to describe it as a rich business card helping like-minded people connect. The forwarding feature is a simple solution to the usual reaction from people inside and outside of NOLA about some cool entrepreneurial activity with “why don’t we ever hear about stuff like this.” Pretty simple. What they usually hear are the same reptilian comments about “flimsy ethics” and turning NOLA into a “floating historic landmark.” Connecting a network of people interested in enlivening the entrepreneurial activity in New Orleans is not a proprietary idea. Nor one that had to be stolen to be activated. It was necessary, right and the active work of people who care deeply.

Regarding our ethos, Startup, like a lot of the things we do here, is a pro bono effort. We speak with our time. Collectively we sit on numerous boards, teach at universities, volunteer regularly, even co-founded and incubated the Idea Village in our own old offices.

Our record of involvement and commitment speaks pretty loudly right down to the building we just purchased in a flooded neighborhood outside of the more fashionable CBD, Uptown or Warehouse District. Not an investment deal slick, but more the way you buy a house you want to live in. Footprint as catalyst. We’re here everyday rebuilding our homes and neighborhood, supporting cultural projects, education reform, public health, economic development, environmental issues and matters of social justice. All in.

Anyone hiding behind a post, smearing our contribution, working on flimsy information, if not ethics, owes me a phone call.

I’m easy to find.

Here are the thoughts I received from the students after I asked them if this site was a product of their research and presentation, and I quote. “The presentation went really well. So well in fact Trumpet wanted to use our idea. However, because of their reputation and the way they treated us we were extremely cautious about handing over the project to them. What we did do was let them know that we would be willing to collaborate. They never replied, so they never got our work. They totally took our idea. We had a website that does exactly what their website does. They named it differently than us- we called ours the power of small- the power of the individual to change the city. but the overall idea is the same. i had no idea about that website. that does seem to be a strange coincidence that they never responded but furiously took notes – and even called and emailed our group quite frequently and urgently for our presentation. somehow i’m not too surprised. i’m not sure what to do but – as we are all students – but those ideas were clearly ours. thanks for letting us know about this.”

So you can probably understand that my concerns for the little guy getting pushed around by a big agency weren’t unfounded. Perhaps I should have called you before posting this, but I stand behind what I posted and would have posted this anyway–considering the comments above, which show that the AdCenter students are clearly not comfortable with the situation. They nor myself have yet been satisfied with an explanation for why they may feel this way. Your explanation to me that “they’re kids” and that you essentially can’t copyright an idea just doesn’t make me feel much better that this is how we want to represent New Orleans.

It should also be made mention of that Trumpet’s Robbie Vitrano (the poster above) showed up on my front porch last evening while my wife and I were preparing dinner. This unannounced, threatening conversation (where it was mentioned that I may be subject to a libel lawsuit), was disturbing and unnerving to my wife and I. I’d met Robbie only one time before and have no gripes with his company or relationships with it gone bad. This blog post is only commentary on the situation which was presented to me and which I participated in with the goal of helping some grad students and making New Orleans a better place for people like them who may want to come start a business here.