Wyospace.com

Eureka! Winning Ways now in Wyoming

By Brandon Marshall

To the thousands of you that loyally come to wyospace.com everyday, I’m sorry.  The lack of content for the last couple of months has been pretty striking, and I have to say that it’s all the fault of the PR Department here at the Wyoming Business Council.  They haven’t been doing my job for me and I can’t seem to convince them to start again.  Oh well.  Here’s to doing better in the next months!!

Yesterday I had the opportunity to accompany Rick Rothwell and Barry Bruns, a couple of our partners with Manufacturing Works, to the first Eureka! Winning Ways session in Wyoming.  Eureka is a system that has been developed for businesses to breathe new life into a company and get employees and management thinking about new ideas to keep their company vibrant into the future and help make “Measurably Smarter Choices for Growth.”  Companies such as Nike and various other world class organizations have been through the exact same sessions to much acclaim.

The process involves multiple steps, but is basically having the movers and shakers in a company together in a room for a whole day to sit and have what could be described as an extremely organized brainstorming session.  Topics at yesterday’s session ranged from management and marketing ideas to ideas for actual proprietary products that could be developed.

Once the sessions were complete and all the ideas from the day had been written down on paper and justified with a “What’s in it for me”, statement as well as “Why should I believe you,” and “Why should I care,” the members of the company voted on which four of the fifty ideas would be submitted to Merwyn Research for evaluation.

Manufacturing Works will be back with the company next week to present the findings from Merwyn Research and get the company on the track to implementation of the ideas.

To find out more about the Eureka program, contact Rick Rothwell (rrothwell@bresnan.net) or Barry Bruns (barrybruns@aol.com).    For more information on the Eureka! concept, visit www.eurekaranch.com. 

Thanks for Coming to the Idea Expo!

By Brandon Marshall

The Wyospace.com Idea Expo is officially in the books for 2007!  Thanks to everyone who attended, organized, spoke and exhibited.  The combination of everyone's efforts made this the most successful Idea Expo ever!  Ok, so it was the only Idea Expo ever, but we're still declaring success, in fact, great success.  Look for the 2008 Idea Expo to burst on the scene sometime late next summer or early fall!

Meanwhile, if you were able to attend and would like the powerpoint presentaitons from any of the sessions, you'll find them at the expo website www.wyomingideaexpo.com.  We'll have them up as we get them in, so check in the next week or so.

Finally,  we at the Wyoming Business Council sat down this morning to de-brief (or de-boxer, whatever!) on all aspects of the Idea Expo.  We came up with a few things that were suggested by speakers, vendors and attendees for next time, that we want to get all of your thoughts on....

1. Make the tradeshow open to the public with separate rates for varying types of attendees.
2. Have the entertainment portion during the middle day.
3. Switch either to Monday & Tuesday or Friday & Saturday for the Expo.
4. Hold the Idea Expo earlier in the year, maybe summer or earlier in the fall.
5. Get more experts from within Wyoming.
6. Move venue to new convention centers in either Cheyenne or Laramie.
7. Combine even more conferences into the Idea Expo.

That's not an all inclusive list, but it's a start.  If you attended the Idea Expo, you'll also be recieveing survey materials in the next couple of weeks seeking your input on this and future Idea Expos.

Please, comment away and let us know what you're thinking.