Tech Forward:

Leaders of small businesses are more hands-on and more involved in the daily operations of their businesses; many take on IT in addition to their other responsibilities, according to CDW’s Small Business Driver’s Seat Report released today. The study also identified some significant differences in technology strategy, experience and plans among women-owned small businesses.

The study found that 69 percent of executives of women-owned companies with five to 18 employees are “totally involved” in IT decisions, and 50 percent of executives of women-owned companies with 50 to 99 employees are “totally involved” in IT decisions.

Additional findings indicate that women-owned companies adopt core technologies in line with other businesses, but lag slightly in hiring dedicated IT professionals and adopting data warehouse/business intelligence tools.

For a complete copy of the CDW Small Business Driver’s Seat Report, please visit www.cdw.com/driversseat

The title of this post is the tag line for a new research panel called W-Biz Insight, being offered by the Center for Women’s Business Research, where I am an advisory council member.

If you are a woman in business and you’ve wondered how you can make your voice heard–not just to a bunch of other women sitting around and complaining, but to legislators, corporate diversity professionals and other corporate and government decision-makers–you owe it to yourself to sign up.

While your answers to the survey questions sent out will never be linked back to any one individual, you can bet that the aggregate results will be shown to people who are in a position to make our professional lives infinitely better.

To read more about the program, click here.

And, if you have any questions about the program, click here for answers to frequently asked questions.

Waste no more time. Click here to join the panel. It’s free, and it only takes three minutes to sign up. Do it for yourself and all the other women business owners who need a voice.

The creators of super lubricating oil WD-40 just thought they were creating a lubricant to help your everday person avoid having to sit through another summer with a wailing screen door. 

When it was discovered that WD-40 would remove crayon from walls, do you think the makers of WD-40 threatened to take legal action against whomever started using the product in this way? I don’t hardly think so.

Ok, I know that hacking a piece of proprietary digital equipment is not *exactly* comparable for finding new uses for WD-40 but, it’s the best analogy that could fit into my post-holiday weekend brain.

It’s a well known fact that the iPhone has been ’breached’. Hackers have found a way to remove the iPhone from it’s ‘mandatory’ AT&T-only network — and make it work on other cellular networks. 

Instead of AT&T being happy that people – ok, hackers- cared enough to hack the iPhone to have it operate independent of the AT&T network, AT&T is none too pleased.

Why? It’s the classic old school company with an old school model. That’s why.

We want all the ‘action’ from the iPhone so we figure we’re going to lock it down so no one can use any other networks but AT&T. AS IF!

For those of you who have teenagers…what’s the first thing they do when you tell them they can’t do something? Right. For those of you who don’t, watch an episode of Dr. Phil and you’ll see what I mean.

Instead of AT&T wafting legal threats through the digital air, I suggest that they:

1) Enjoy the free press.

2) Get rid of their PR company. They should have seen this coming, anticipated it and had a high-leverage, strategic, new school response at the ready.

3) Accept their street cred like adults. Be thankful that people still think the products they’re associated with are cool enough to warrant hacking.

Bottomline: Lesson to AT&T/Apple: Locks are made for honest people.

P.S. Wanna know what I really think of AT&T?

Full disclosure: I am on the Advisory Council of the Center for Women’s Business Research.  

The Center for Women’s Business Research, in collaboration with Babson College, will be in Dallas, TX on September 20, 2007 at the Westin Dallas/Fort Worth Airport hotel for the fourth Accelerating the Growth of Businesses Owned by Women of Color research forum!

I attended this event in Philadelphia and not only did I connect with women who will be life-long business colleagues but, I learned so much about what’s stopping my business from moving forward. We collectively developed strategies that would effectivley address our growth challenges and then put follow-up and check-ins in place to ensure progress. And, the goodie bag was fabulous! I whole-heartedly recommend this event to any woman of color entrepreneur. Don’t miss it.

The Center’s multi-year research effort engages women of color entrepreneurs in a dialogue about the factors that are preventing them from growing their businesses, and the actions that are necessary to meet and overcome those barriers.

Want to attend/participate? Be sure you qualify:

• Asian, Latina, African-American & other multi-ethnic women
• Own 50% or more of a business
• Have been in business three or more years
• Have annual revenues between $250,000 and $5 million
• Want to grow their business beyond their current level

And, then apply here: http://www.cfwbr.org/womenofcolor

If you have any questions about this event/project, please email Leslie Figueroa: lfigueroa@womensbusinessresearch.org

Last week Google announced that it is now going to let the people featured IN a news story comment about the story on Google News.

Many journalists – you know who you are – may not be happy to see journalism evolving in this way but I can say that as someone who is often on both sides of the journalism fence, I’m happy to see this web 2.0-based improvement to the way news is consumed. And, it looks like I’m in good company – Paul Gillin thinks the same.

Here’s why I feel this way:

Late last year I was interviewed by a reporter from a very large business publication. Of course, we all were excited that our company would be featured in such a prestigious publication.

In the first five minutes of speaking to the reporter, I knew she knew absolutely zippo about social media and could only cobble together what she had learned from other interviews.

Nevertheless, ready to impress, I gave the best interview of my life – an hour and fifteen minutes of information, URL’s, resources and explanations. Surely, this would get me some good ‘air time’ in the article?  Or, at the very least, a pithy quote?

No such luck. They even fact checked the article before they ran it. All the information they asked me about, I said that I attributed. But absolutely no attribution was given *AND* I was only given a quote about some arcane social media subtopic that seemed as if it were shoved into the article at the last minute! Humph!

We told everyone we would be covered and some people even went out to look for the publication the day it was printed. How embarrassing!

The only reason I haven’t outed the reporter to her editor is because the reporter was referred to me by a very close, respected colleague and I would never do anything to jeopardize that relationship.

I wish I’d had Google News then. Maybe we would have used it, maybe not. But, at least we would have had the opportunity to share our side of the story with anyone who was reading.

Because of this one, horribly wasted experience, we make our own audio recording of all interviews and we definitely plan to use Google News’ new service if this ever happens again.

Would you use the Google News comments to correct a news story about your company?

Note to publications: this is what happens when you send a generic writer to cover a topic that should clearly be assigned to a writer who specializes in the subject matter – as opposed to just lumping everything under ’small business’.