CONTENTS

Letter to Dingman Center Community
Dingman Center Events Today and Tomorrow
Upcoming Dingman Center Events in December
Holiday Game Festival -- Sunday, December 4, 2005 -- Co-Sponsored with North Star Games
Half Day Seminar on Business Growth Strategies -- Friday, December 9 -- Co-Sponsored with
   Grow Fast Grow Right Enterprises, LLC
The Smith Store is Your One-Stop Shop for Smith-Branded Merchandise for Departmental Guest
   Speakers and VIP Visitors
Shop DC Publisher Zoey Rawlins Featured in UrbanDivas.org
Dingman Center Founder Rudy Lamone Honored at NCEC Conference
Pitch Dingman Competition November
Event Summary -- XM Satellite Radio CEO speaks to alumni, entrepreneurs and students (11/7)
Dingman in the News -- Visit our Web site for articles where the Dingman Center has been mentioned
MBAFinder.net -- An online service that matches MBA students with part-time, short term work
About the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship
Prior Issues of the Dingman Center Newsletter
 

DINGMAN CENTER EVENTS FOR DECEMBER

Back-2-Basics Panel Discussion -- "Exiting Your Business"
This popular event continues with a discussion about exiting your business.  Several entrepreneurs and Smith faculty who are highly experienced in the topic of "exiting your business" will talk about their experiences, answer general questions from the moderator, and then answer specific questions from the audience.   Panelists will include Bill Cole, Partner, Ernst & Young, S. Tien Wong, CEO of Opus8, Roger Hebden, Blueprint Technologies, Inc., and Bob Baum, Associate Professor in the Management & Organization Department at Smith School of Business. Light refreshments will be served.  RSVP to Carol Cron. 
Thursday, December 1, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m., 1206, Van Munching Hall, College Park

Dingman Day Lunch
These catered luncheons are open to undergraduate and MBA students and members of the entrepreneurial community.   The guest speakers will be Dr. Rudy Lamone, Founder of the Dingman Center, Mr. Dan Goodman, Smith Technology Commercialization Fellow, and Mr. Omarr Tobias, Dingman Center Scholar talking about his business, Clean City, LLC.  RSVP to Carol Cron.
Friday, December 2, 12:30 - 2:30 p.m., 3rd floor atrium, Van Munching Hall

Holiday Game Festival -- Stamp Student Union
The Dingman Center, Northstar Games and the YMCA will co-sponsor a Holiday Game Festival at the Stamp Student Union on December 4 from 11 a.m. until 9 p.m.  This is a great place to do some holiday shopping, try out some new games, and win some cash and prizes!  Read more about this event below. 
Sunday, December 4, 11:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m., Stamp Student Union, University of Maryland, College Park

Half Day Seminar on Business Growth Strategies
Co-Sponsored by Dingman Center and Grow Fast Grow Right Enterprises, LLC
Grow Fast Grow Right Enterprises, LLC (GFGR) is proud to partner with the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship and Snowbird Capital to offer a special half-day version of GFGR's full day and a half event on business growth strategies from 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Friday, December 9, 2005. This half-day seminar has been custom-tailored for earlier stage and rapidly growing smaller companies. The program will cover current market trends and best practices in business growth, while offering the perspective of several local experts in a smaller, interactive environment.
Friday, December 9 -- 8:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m., 2517 Van Munching Hall (Executive Dining Room)

Pitch Dingman Competition
This event is held monthly and is a follow-up to our weekly walk-in Pitch Dingman held on Fridays at 11:00 a.m.  Come to the monthly competition, present your business idea in 5 minutes to a panel of judges from the Dingman Center, and you could win $500!  For information about the weekly Pitch Dingman sessions on Fridays or the monthly Pitch Dingman competitions, e-mail Derek Vlcko at dvlcko@rhsmith.umd.edu.
Friday, December 9, 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m., 3570 Van Munching Hall

Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship's 20th Anniversary Gala
Save the date of Wednesday, April 5, 2006 for a gala celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship.  More details will provided in the winter and spring.  Many special VIP guests will be present at this celebration, and it is an event not to be missed! 
Wednesday, April 5, 2006

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The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, the YMCA, and North Star Games are co-sponsoring a Holiday Game Festival that will be held at the University of Maryland campus in College Park. It will feature over 50 volunteers who will teach and play the best new board games with you, a YMCA supervised activities room for kids, local board game inventors, $1,000 in cash prizes, and over $1,000 worth of raffled prizes! Admission, raffle tickets, and all Holiday Game Festival events are free!

        The event will be in the Grand Ballroom in the Stamp Student Union
        from 11:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. on Sunday, December 4.

This is your chance to enjoy the day with family and friends and find unique holiday gift items all at the same time. You can find more information about the event on the North Star Games website at http://www.northstargames.com/events/index.page. North Star Games is a local start-up business that was incubated at the Dingman Center in 2003.

Grow Fast Grow Right Enterprises, LLC (GFGR) is proud to partner with the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship and Snowbird Capital to offer a special half-day version of GFGR's full day and a half event on business growth strategies from 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Friday, December 9, 2005.  This half-day seminar has been custom-tailored for earlier stage and rapidly growing smaller companies. The program will cover current market trends and best practices in business growth, while offering the perspective of several local experts in a smaller, interactive environment.

This event will include an opening presentation led by award-winning Robert H. Smith Adjunct Professor, lawyer and co-founder of Grow Fast Grow Right Andrew J. Sherman on the questions facing all emerging growth companies including, “How do you keep your momentum?”, “How do you ensure a sustainable and durable increase in growth and profits?”, and “How do you increase your value and make money for your shareholders and leadership team?” GFGR can show you how. A panel discussion will follow with Mr. Sherman moderating and panel members including Dingman Center Managing Director, Asher Epstein, CEO of Snowbird Capital, Nelson Carbonell and President of New Vantage Partners, John May.

The leadership team at GFGR has seen it all in the selection, development and implementation processes of a given growth strategy. As business growth experts, Grow Fast Grow Right has helped hundreds of companies meet and exceed their strategic, financial and performance goals, delivering advice from the trenches and with the real-world track record to back it up. A GFGR event provides senior executives and other business leaders with the proven insights, tools and strategies that really do help to grow a strong, well-founded company. We hope you will take advantage of this rare opportunity to participate in a world-class executive education program co-sponsored by GFGR, the Dingman Center and Snowbird Capital.

To register for this event call 1-866-GRO-RITE or register online at www.growfastgrowright.com. 

BUY YOUR SMITH-BRANDED MERCHANDISE FOR DEPARTMENTAL SPEAKERS AND CONFERENCES AT THE SMITH STORE
 

Your VIP visitors and departmental guest speakers should leave Smith with an elegant Smith-branded gift as a thank you for their visit, and The Smith Store is THE place to go for these items. Vikas Tiwari and Josh Kroo have been working hard to develop a selection of high-quality merchandise that will be appreciated, displayed and used back in your visitor's home or office. A few of these items are shown below, and others are available as well. With two weeks notice, the "sky is the limit" in terms of item selection. If you are short on time and only have a few days, The Smith Store can help you out by providing one of their items that is in stock.

Two great products being carried in stock are the rosewood clock, pictured above, with a double picture frame and pen rest which sells for $45.00 and includes an engraved brass plate with the Smith School logo. Another gift idea is the coaster set, which contains 4 black leather coasters in a leather box, with the Smith School logo embossed into the leather. This is a good gift for air travelers in particular, as it is small and compact, and can be easily put into a gift bag for presentation. The cost is $20.00.

Always available from The Smith Store is the Smith coffee mug, available for $8.00, or engraved letter openers that sell for $17.00.

Vikas Tiwari and Josh Kroo can be reached via e-mail at Vikas_Tiwari@rhsmith.umd.edu or Joshua_Kroo@rhsmith.umd.edu . They are located in 3570-U, in the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship. The hours of the Smith Store vary, but are typically weekday mornings, and they are always available to meet with you by appointment.

Shop DC Publisher Zoey Rawlins Featured in UrbanDivas.org

The website UrbanDivas.org has picked up on the tremendous success of Zoey Rawlins, recent Smith MBA grad, Price Waterhouse manager, and founder, publisher and CEO of ShopDC, an upscale shopping guide for visitors and savvy shoppers visiting the nation's capital. 

In a recent interview with Urban Divias.org, Rawlins was asked what she liked most about publishing ShopDC.  Rawlins responded "When I hold the magazine in my hands I can't take my eyes off the fabulous cover. Once you get inside it's beautiful and has great information. I've received so many compliments on the magazine, and it makes me proud to say I put it together." 

Rawlins went on to talk about tips for women who dream of getting into the publishing business with her answer to the question "what advice can you give to women who dream about launching their own magazine?"  Rawlins replied, "Don't quit your day job yet!"  Continuing, she elaborated on that, saying "publishing has a good and bad side to it. It's relatively easy to start a magazine, but it's tough to keep it going. Start small. Don't try to “go national” with your first issue, or think you're going to fill 128 pages of content and have beautiful ads and photography without a dedicated staff. Build a prototype of what you think it will look like and show it to as many people as possible. Take it to potential clients and get their feedback. Look at what other magazines are doing and ask yourself if yours is significantly different. One thing that makes SHOP DC stand out is that it is focused. It's easy for us to look at the competition and show that we're hitting a very specific audience (people who love to shop!), and that goes a long way with potential advertisers."

Zoey Rawlins is a 2005 graduate of the Smith MBA program.  She spent the second year of her two years at Smith as a Dingman Center Scholar, where she came up with the idea for ShopDC using the "Dingman Process."  The potential for her success was great, and the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship opted to invest $7,000 in her business.  The first issue of ShopDC came out in April 2005 and the second issue came out in October 2005. 

Since 2003 Urban Divas has been featured in the Washington Post Style section, National Public Radio (NPR), DC Social Insider, mentaltheory.com, and more.  Each week UrbanDivas.Org sponsors activities including Brunches, Cocktail Parties, Fashion Shows, Gallery Crawls. Dinners, Beauty Events, Trunk Shows, Workshops, and more!  Visit UrbanDivas.org to explore their offerings and to become a subscriber.

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Rudy Lamone, Dingman Center Founder, Honored at NCEC Conference

At the recent annual conference of the National Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Rudy Lamone received a Distinguished Service Award for his "continued dedication to the National Consortium."  The first award of its kind at the NCEC Conference, Rudy Lamone knew nothing of this honor he would receive.  Delighted with this award, Lamone said "the NCEC has played a major role in developing programs to support the local and national entrepreneurship communities. It also has assisted many of the member schools in the development of academic and research programs in entrepreneurship."
Rudy Lamone doing what he most
enjoys . . . talking with a student
entrepreneur (Josh Norris).

Professor Lamone co-founded the consortium seven years ago with colleagues from the University of Southern California and Indiana University. The genesis of the consortium began nine years ago when Charlie Heller, then Director of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, requested that the Kauffman Foundation support a conference, hosted by the Dingman Center, to bring the top 25 entrepreneurship centers in the country to College Park to discuss best practices. The conference, the first of its kind, was so successful that the Kaufman Foundation agreed to fund a second conference. Rudy Lamone then worked with Tom O'Malia (USC) and Don Kuratko (now at Indiana University) to propose the organization of the National Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers, which the Kaufman Foundation continues to support. The Consortium now has more than 100 universities as members. Lamone continues to chair the Consortium.

Another award that is now presented annually at the NCEC Conference is the NASDAQ National Center of Excellence Award, and the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship was one of the first five recipients of this prestigious award.

This year's conference was held at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in October.  The location for next year's conference will be The Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Indiana University.

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NOVEMBER 2005 PITCH DINGMAN COMPETITION

EVENT SUMMARY

Hugh Panero, Founder and CEO of XM Satellite Radio Talks to Alumni, Entrepreneurs and Students -- November 9 at the Reagan Building

November's DCE Speaker Series event featuring Hugh Panero, founder and CEO of XM Radio, brought together over seventy Smith School constituents, from undergraduates to alumni, for an evening of learning and networking at the Ronald Reagan Building, where the Smith School holds their part-time D.C. classes. Smith School Dean Howard Frank and Senior Smith Fellow Mark Walsh introduced the evening.

Mr. Panero began his speech discussing his early background in cable and satellite television, encouraging the audience to excel when given a task, take risks, be competent, and to form opinions. Equally important, Mr. Panero provided an example from his past to illustrate the importance of not burning bridges. Early in his career Mr. Panero was offered the opportunity to take on the role of CEO of a distressed Pay Per View television network in Denver. He accepted the leadership role, eventually taking the company through a merger with Liberty Media in order to better compete with DirecTV. Mr. Panero was informed during the merger that he would be let go after the deal closed. As difficult as the situation was, Mr. Panero chose to approach his exit in a professional manner to preserve the value of his relationship with the company. Mr. Panero's impressive handling of this situation proved vital to the capitalization of XM Radio when Liberty Media company purchased one million XM shares based on their confidence in the start-up lead by Mr. Panero.

XM began as American Mobile Radio Corporation. Dr. Stelios Patsiokas was hired from Motorola to help develop XM Radio's satellite technology and brought 10 of the top engineers from Motorola. Dr. Patsiokas' involvement was a critical factor in XM beating competitor Sirius to the market with a functional chip technology. Mr. Panero cited the following as key events and milestones of the company:

• Satellite radio service was to launch September 12, 2001. The September 11^th terrorist attacks delayed the company's market launch, and advertisements were hastily pulled from the air and plans were reshuffled.
• The target market was initially thought to be 18-25 year old males who purchase aftermarket car stereos. The actual target customer ended up being men and women, 25-55 years of age.
• XM was the first to develop plug-and-play satellite radios.
• XM reached 4 million subscribers faster than the internet and cable television.
• XM simultaneously matched affordable technology with a wide range of unique content.
• Users could purchase both the service and hardware at retail outlets.
• XM was first to partner with automotive manufacturers such as General Motors and Honda, including a three-month trial with new vehicle purchase. Six out of ten trial users will continue service on a monthly subscription basis.

 Additionally, Mr. Panero offered the following advice to the audience: 

• Be selective on when to engage a competitor;
• Believe in your business model;
• Bring in new blood and infrastructure to support growth, and;
• Don't lose sight of your family friends, and health during your career pursuits.
• Finally, don't burn your bridges behind you.  Without the investment and confidence in Hugh from
  one of his former employers, XM might not have gotten off the ground. 

Mr. Panero's speech offered a great balance between business and life perspectives and was well received by the audience. The response from those who attended was positive with many undergraduate and graduate students enjoying the opportunity to meet faculty and alumni. For part-time and full-time MBA students who infrequently cross paths, the event provided an occasion to intermingle.

www.mbafinder.net
A new online service launched by the Dingman Center

A new service to match MBA students with area businesses looking for some good part-time and/or short-term consulting by MBA students was launched this month by the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship.  MBAFinder.net is a marketplace for temporary service to help small businesses and entrepreneurs find high quality graduate business school students to work on short term projects.

Any Smith MBA student who is looking for some short term, part-time work, whether for money or just for the experience, should check out mbafinder.net to see what kinds of skills are currently being sought.

Please provide any feedback about this new online service to Asher Epstein, at aepstein@rhsmith.umd.edu .