Cambridge Innovation Center to Add 52,000 Sq Feet in Kendall Square

The Cambridge Innovation Center, (CIC) where I work, has signed a new lease for 52,000 square feet of space on the 1st, 14th and 15th floors at 101 Main Street in Cambridge. 101 Main Street is two doors down from CIC’s current home at One Broadway. The new location is owned by RREEF Real Estate, the real estate investment business of Deutsche Asset Management.

CIC has already vastly expanded since I first started working there in the Spring of 2010; currently, some 450 companies and 1700 people rent space on seven floors.

According to a recent communiqué from the CIC, “ We have seen strong continuing interest from the CIC community to grow here in Kendall Square, as well as interest from many others not currently located at CIC. This new space will create increased space options and amenities for our current and future clients and most importantly, the space will create more opportunities for entrepreneurs to collaborate and flourish.

This is a 33% increase in the CIC”s total space — to a total of 207,000 square feet in Kendall Square. Occupancy of the new space will begin in early March.

With the expansion, I hope that the stellar CIC team and residents will be able to maintain the warm, friendly and stimulating community atmosphere that makes the CIC at 1 Broadway a wonderful place to work.

Anita M. Harris

Anita Harris is the founder and CEO of the Harris Communications Group, a collaborative team of experts in public relations, social media, content and marketing services for health, science, technology and energy, worldwide.

House of Blues Gala Benefit for The American Revolution

Here are photos I took at last night’s gala benefit for Bill Lichtenstein’s forthcoming film, “The American Revolution–a documentary on WBCN radio which Lichtenstein credits as instrumental (pun intended) in the political and cultural upheavals of the late 1960s.

The first part of the evening, deemed “The Folk Revolution,” featured Tom Rush, Kate and Livingston Taylor, Jonathan Edwards, and “Spider” John Koerner.

Up next during “The Rock Revolution,” were Al Kooper, Billy Squier, members of Boston, and The Uptown Horns . Also, Danny Klein of The J. Geils Band, Peter Case, Jon-Pousette Dart, Kate Taylor, Willie “Loco” Alexander, The Fools, Sandy MacDonald, Johnny A., Tosh1, Barbara Holliday, members of both Duke & the Drivers and Barry & the Remains, with the James Montgomery Band. Charlie “Master Blaster” Daniels, original concert emcee at the legendary Boston Tea Party, which stood on the location of the House of Blues, hosted the event. The concert included light shows from Ken Brown, who oversaw the “psychedelic cinema” films that were a staple at the Tea Party.

A couple hundred people in the audience included aging hippies, former (present?) dopers, professional and professorial types. As an aging something or other myself, my only complaint was that there were no chairs…and it was a four hour show!

Please forgive my including three photos of Bill–wordpress glitch.

Anita M. Harris
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a strategic PR/thought leadership/social media firm based in Kendall Square, Cambridge.

Cambridge Startups Among Those Featured At Boston’s Global Clean-Tech Meetup

Sorry I couldn’t make it to this year’s Global Cleantech Meetup but am pleased to post information provided by Harold Simansky about his company, 360 Chestnut , which provides resources for consumers and service providers in the home improvement market, and about WeFunder, a crowd investing platform for startups.

Both companies are headquartered at the Cambridge Innovation Center in Kendall Square, where I share space, although I have not yet met either Simansky or WeFunder cofounder and President Mike Norman.

Simansky says the two companies “stole the show,” but I’ll bet they got a run for their money (so to speak) from my friend and informal PR client, Christine Adamow, who announced that her company, EuphorbUS, which has produced pure fuel oil from tree seeds in Africa since 2007, is setting up shop in Hawaii. [Link to Euphorbus release.]

Simansky writes that WeFunder is the premier crowd investing platform for startups, while 360Chestnut is growing into one of the largest home improvement sites on the web.

Both startups were featured presenters at the two day conference: Norman gave the keynote address to the more than 500 attendees and Simanski spoke on home improvement and sustainability.

Simansky points out that 360Chestnut is using the WeFunder platform to raise its most recent round of investment, and in his keynote, Norman called 360Chestnut an “ideal company” to use crowd investing to fund its growth.

Simansky describes WeFunder as “a crowd investing platform for startups.” Using the platform, crowd investors can purchase stock for as little as $100 in promising new businesses around the country. With the passage of the US JOBS Act in April, startups will soon be allowed to solicit investment from small, “unaccredited” investors and sell small stakes in their businesses online.

He says that 360Chestnut is “a no-cost, trusted source” where homeowners learn what to do to make their homes more healthy, energy-efficient and comfortable; connect with qualified service providers, and access the more than 5000 rebate and incentives that will pay for this type of work.

For service providers, 360Chestnut is “a constant source of educated, nurtured customers; marketing & sales support; easy-to-use software and applications; online training; financing options and more. Service providers pay to join and may purchase products and service son the site.

–Anita M. Harris

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning public relations and online-marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA.

Photography Review: Edward Weston at the MFA

Over the weekend I paid a visit to the MFA in Boston — my first in over a year. In the hours I spent wandering through the museum’s impressive collections and newest exhibitions, nothing held my attention quite so raptly as one tiny room of black-and-white photographs by Edward Weston. Simple and luminous, many of his pictures capture the effects of American civilization on landscapes as varied as the green hills of Ohio and the white sands of New Mexico.

The collection — on loan from the Lane Collection — is titled “Leaves of Grass” after Walt Whitman’s masterwork, perhaps the greatest of American poems. In 1941, Weston was hired by the Limited Editions Club of New York to illustrate its two-volume limited edition of Leaves of Grass (of which a copy is available for display in the gallery). The photographer subsequently took off on a road trip that brought him and his wife from New England to the Southeast and back across the country to their native California.

Circling the collection, I could not look away from the image of a narrow road snaking its way through the moonlit fields of Connecticut farmlands — just as my attention was held by the picture of a Louisiana plantation house far into decline. Weston’s photographs in some way capture the thrill of being a traveler, of stumbling upon something that is at once new and ancient. It is the thrill of both discovery and recognition.

While Whitman’s poetry is often extravagant in its descriptions and range (and at times even a little rough around the edges), Weston’s photographs are controlled, subdued, and exacting. However, the subject of the collection is really no different from that of Whitman’s opus. Both these pictures and the poem are a meditation on America, in all its variety and contradictions. At the start of the exhibition, you can glimpse a quote from Weston that just about says it all: “I do believe . . . I can and will do the best work of my life. Of course I will never please everyone with my America — wouldn’t try to.”

Weston’s “Leaves of Grass” will be on view at the MFA on December 31, 2012.

Will Holt also blogs at Letters from a Bay Stater, where this entry was first posted.

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group–an award-winning PR and marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA.

Televised Panel on Web & Civic Engagement to include New Cambridge Observer

I am pleased to have spoken about New Cambridge Observer on a panel presented by Cambridge Community Television–and televised on Cambridge’s Channel Ten (CCTV) on April 13 at 6:30 pm! It’s now posted at http://www.cctvcambridge.org/Net_to_Neighborhood . My presentation is about 6 minutes in…after two introductions.

Here’s the scoop:

Using the Web to Connect Your Community & Encourage Civic Engagement in CambridgeFrom raising awareness about important local issues to gathering people for community events, ordinary people are making use of inexpensive, easy-to-use web tools to organize in their communities. We’ll cover strategic uses of blogging, web video, social networking, web sites, and more. Be sure to tune in to learn how six Cambridge individuals are using these tools for positive change in their communities, and how you can too!Panelists Include:

Moderator: Chris Csikszentmihályi, Director of the MIT Center for Future Civic Media;

Garrett Anderson, Cambridge Energy Alliance, on social networking tools;

Toni Bee, Area 4 correspondent for NeighborMedia;

D.C. Denison, Boston Globe technology writer, Porter Square Neighborhood Association webmaster;

Anita Harris, New Cambridge Observer blog, Harris Communications Group, former PBS journalist;

Mark Jaquith, East Cambridge correspondent for NeighborMedia;

Karin Koch, NeighborMedia correspondent and producer of Vida Latina.

The panel goes 6:30-8:30 at CCTV, 675 Mass Ave (enter on Prospect St), Cambridge. I hope you can make it!

–Anita M. Harris

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish Harriscom Blog and Ithaca Diaries Blog.

Rating Social Media Marketing Webinars

In the last few days, I’ve been in on several Webinars–some more effective than others.

Hubspot’s “5 Tips for Advanced B2B Business Blogging” was well organized and to the point. ****

Although host and Hubspot Marketing VP Mike Volpe insisted on calling potential customers “personae,” (in my book, the persona is the character telling the story as opposed to someone you’re trying to reach)–he did a good job of explaining that instead of using blogs to push your products, you should offer information that will interest potential customers in order to draw them in. Among other suggestions:

Offer a mix of posts–news, features, opinion, photos video, audio, lists, bold statements, funny bits, email or videocam interviews–and information about how to get photos, via flickr.
Format in a readable way
Be patient: this sort of marketing is a marathon, not a sprint,

The webinar video and slides are available at:
http://www.HubSpot.com/archive/b2b-business-blogging;
you can find a basic introduction to business blogging at
http://www.HubSpot.com/archive/blog-webinar

Elizabeth Marshall’s “Striking Content Marketing Cold” with Newt Barratt, Chris Brogan, and Paul Gillin, the authors of “Get Content Get Customers” was a bit roundabout. **

With four panelists, it was difficult to know who was speaking.          The authors, who also used (and perhaps coined?) that peculiar
term “persona,”   focused on what they call “content marketing,”
which involves using (or possibly employing the authors?)
to   use “story” to bring in customers.

Despite the confusing format, the authors must have done
something right because here I am spreading the word on their
behalf!

The webinar may be downloaded from:
h ttp://marketingmarshall.com/recommends/getcontent
Audio is available at http://authorteleseminars.com/audio
/getcontent1.mp3 and a written summary, in blog form, at
http://bit.ly/s2Jv

Vocus Teleseminar: -Build Your Proactive PR Strategy for 2009 , featuring the increasingly visible Peter Shankman founder of the Geek Factory and HARO (Help a Reporter Out )and Kim Keelor, PR Director of Gaylord Entertainment, was informative but included a few discouraging words. ***

The Vocus moderator, in good social media marketing form,
kept discussion of Vocus’ media relations outreach offerings to
a minimum.

I felt encouraged when Keelor pointed out that PR consultants
seeing “free media” stand to do well as dollars for expensive
advertising sink in the current flailing economy.

I also found the advice to target a few key reporters rather
than send releases to huge list and to use social media tools
like Twitter and Gawker to find out what reporters are
covering–to be right on–especially with reporter layoffs, and
remaining journalists increasingly assigned to numerous
beats.

I was not shocked when Shankman predicted the imminent
demise of the press release–to be replaced by social media
tools used to reach individual reporters who have specific
informational needs.

I was, however, taken aback when one speaker (perhaps the
unnamed moderator?) expressed anger when asked
how to find reporters’ Twitter addresses– because he’d
posted instructions several months ago, online. If you can’t
figure out how to Google to find that information,” he asked,
do you really belong in this [PR] business?

As a long-time PR practitioner who is relatively new to
Twitter, I have to ask whether insulting potential Vocus
customers–I mean… personae– who ask honest questions is
an effective marketing tool.

That webinar and others are available at
http://onlinepressroom.net/vocus/.

The New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, Massachusetts.