Announcing eWeek 2014

It’s April. The dogwoods are all in bloom in Chico as are the azaleas, so it must be time for eWeek, right? Yes, right! eWeek is back again and this year as PT Barnum or maybe Elon Musk must have said, it’s bigger and better than ever.

We start on Thursday April 3 with the finals for the Spring 2014 Business Concept Competition. There are twelve finalists whose ideas range from a safer pin for cross-country equestrian jumps to a new concept for a camera-based mobile game app to a listening device that doubles as an earring. The competition begins at 6 PM in Glenn 112 and the top two finishers will move on to The Future Four on Friday April 11 – more on that event in a bit.

A first for eWeek 2014 will be our initial entrepreneur-in-residence, Gary Bright, who founded Kangaroo Kourts here in Chico and eventually started three other health clubs in the North State plus a night club. Gary will available to all students in the Center’s office, 221 Glenn, Monday the 7^th through Friday the 11th. Check back for his hours.

Monday April 7 eWeek kicks into high gear with a 7:00 PM talk by Lance and Shelly Blanshei, founders and owners of the wildly successful T-Bar in Chico. The Blansheis’ talk promises to be quite interesting as they also launched Bidwell Perk and other ventures. The Blansheis will be appearing in Colusa 100 where all the other eWeek events will be taking place as well.

Tuesday April 8 is technology day. We will be hearing from two top executives at Bizness Apps: Zach Cusimano and Stephen Heisserer, who will be speaking on “A How-to Guide for Building a Startup in Chico" at 7 PM.  Quick bios on the speakers are as follow:

   Zach has been acting Chief Operating Officer for Bizness Apps since 2010. Originally from Las Vegas, NV, he graduated from Chico State in 2011 with a BS in Marketing.

   In helping to found Bizness Apps, Zach has been a jack of all trades. While overseeing the day to day operations and scaling up the company he has managed various departments including Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, VAR team, and HR.

   Stephen is currently the VP of Product at Bizness Apps. Born and raised in Hayward, CA, he graduated from Chico State in 2011 with a degree and certification in Project Management.

   What started out as an internship, quickly turned into a full-time critical role aboard the initial Bizness Apps team. Stephen currently manages a team of 30+ engineers comprised of both in-house and out-sourced developers. He is responsible for ensuring Bizness Apps' product maintains its position as the leader in the marketplace as well as pushing the envelope for the industry as a whole.

Wednesday, April 9 in Colusa 100 is Movie Night. We’ll be watching four episodes of the little seen but much loved Amazon prime series “Betas”. If you don’t have a Prime membership then this is your chance to see the rowdy, bawdy but semi-realistic view at running a start-up in the Bay Area. Definitely R-rated, but funny and worth seeing. The shows start at 7:00 PM and like all events during eWeek absolutely free of charge.

Thursday April 10 will be devoted to social entrepreneurship. We are honored to host Ambassador Obinna Adim, special adviser to the President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan on Youth Empowerment. 7 PM, Colusa 100.

eWeek culminates on Friday April 11 with the first-ever Future Four, a business concept competition featuring the top two ideas from Chico State (the winners of our Spring 2014 contest) against the two best from Humboldt State, Sacramento State and Sonoma State. If you have never been to a business concept competition then this one is not to be missed; they’re always fun, but this one promises to be over the top. The Future Four starts at 4:00 PM and once again will be in Colusa 100.