The Smoffice Is Earns Top Spot...In The World

Updated: 9:13, 10:14, 4/25

A walk down Main Street in Durham, NC will take one past many great restaurants, bars, and shops, as well as office and residential space.  One such place is Beyu Caffe, and there, in the window on the right, if one looks closely, is The Smoffice.

Durham Wins! Casey Steinbacher, Matthew Coppedge and
Adam Klein with $3,000 check and plaque.
Photo from Downtown Durham, Inc.

Such a cool idea this was, that it got national media attention, and applicants to occupy the space came from around the world.  The idea had undeniable panache, and people loved it.

The tenants of The Smoffice have since moved out, but the idea was entered into a contest to determine The World's Most Unconventional Economic Development Project.

Guess what.  It won.  At 25 square feet, The Smoffice bested contenders from around the globe at The World Chambers Competition at which chambers of commerce competed with their economic development projects.  Some of these were executed at the national level with massive budgets.  Despite the long odds and imposing competition, Durham did what Durham does...it roared. Again.

The competition was held in Doha, Qatar where Casey Steinbacher, Matthew Coppedge, and Adam Klein represented Durham.  Steinbacher is President of the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce, Coppedge is Chief Operating Officer for Downtown Durham, Inc, and Klein, formerly with the Chamber, is now with American Underground.

This is the first time the US has ever won this competition.

More details will be shared as they are available.  Some back story on the project is at the links below.

Really Small News
Smoffice Chosen As Finalist

Smoffice Chosen as Finalist for "Best Unconventional Chamber Project in the World"

Have you seen The Smoffice in the front of Beyu? It's that window on the right.  It made some big news when it launched, and it's making more news now. 

At 25 square feet, The Smoffice has been chosen as one of 5 finalists for Best Unconventional Chamber Project in the World.  Yep - the entire big blue marble.

The Smoffice will be competing for the worldwide title this April at the World Chambers Congress, a gathering of the global community of more than 12,000 chambers of commerce, their presidents and CEOs, business members, and influential world leaders.

The 2013 Meeting will be held in Doha, Qatar, where Durham will be competing against 4 others Chambers, three of which are national chambers:

• The Chamber of Commerce of Slovenia
• Korea Chamber of Commerce
• Chamber of Commerce of Nuremberg, Germany
• The Chamber of Commerce of Finland

For those who aren’t “in the know" The Smoffice was a national contest to give away the World’s Smallest Office Space.  The goal of The Smoffice was to begin to create greater national awareness of Durham as an entrepreneurial hub with the intent to significantly increase the density of startups in downtown.

The Smoffice received press on an international scale in 2012, being featured in TechCrunch, Startup Smart, WRAL Tech Wire, New York Times, Fast Company, Tech Journal South, Triangle Tech Talk and Smart Planet.  The chosen company, The Makery Project launched during their time in The Smoffice and continue to grow in Downtown Durham.

Downtown Durham Dec. 5 Annual Meeting to Feature Game Show with Crowd Participation and a Performance

The 2012 Downtown Durham Inc. (DDI) Annual Meeting, presented by American Tobacco, will be held on December 5th, at Bay 7 at the American Tobacco Campus in Downtown Durham.  The program will begin at 11:30am and run until 1:30pm, featuring the usual high-energy entertainment the DDI meeting is known for.

The program will begin with lunch and proceed with a presentation of the Annual Downtown Awards, including awards for Outstanding Downtown Business, Development Project, Renovation Project, Board Member and Downtown Visionary. There will also be a special holiday performance from Downtown Durham resident and Grammy nominee Nnenna Freelon.

The main event will feature a game show titled “The Amazing Downtown Showdown!”  To kick off the show, six tables will be randomly selected and each of these tables will choose a contestant to compete on their behalf. Three contestants will compete in Round 1, and another three in Round 2, with the highest scoring contestant from each round going on to the Final Downtown Showdown.  Highlights of major projects and openings over the past year, as well as a broad overview and future challenges will be interspersed between the questions during the show.

The table that wins the Grand Prize will walk away with a special “Night out in Downtown” package, which includes tickets to the Nutcracker at DPAC, tickets to Nnenna Freelon and John Brown at the Carolina Theatre, and a gift certificate to a Downtown restaurant.  DDI will also provide a giveaway item to all attendees. For more information and for tickets, contact Matthew Coppedge at DDI.

Durham is 299 square miles of great things.  Learn about more of them here.

Downtown Durham Inc Launches New Ambassador Team for Downtown

Part of Downtown Durham's charm are its old buildings, some winding streets, and most of all, the great people always willing to help. Now, that help is getting a formal boost from some folks charged with providing extra assistance to those moving around Downtown Durham, as well as ensuring that the area always looks its best.

Downtown Durham Inc (DDI), in partnership with the City of Durham, Durham County and downtown stakeholders from the private sector, is excited to launch the new Downtown Improvement District Clean & Safe Ambassador Team. This team will bring a new level of cleanliness, safety and hospitality to the streets of Downtown Durham, thus helping Downtown Durham to continue competing with the 1,000+ other cities around the country that already have enhanced downtown improvement services.

“We are excited about this new phase in Downtown Durham’s revitalization effort,” says Downtown Durham Inc President Bill Kalkhof. “Just like the DBAP, American Tobacco and DPAC were transformational projects for downtown, this new Clean & Safe Ambassador Team will help take our community to the next level of downtown revitalization, allowing us to continue to successfully compete with cities across the country.”

In partnership with Service Group Inc (SGI), a national leader in providing Improvement District Clean and Safe Services, and the City of Durham’s Economic and Workforce Development Department, DDI has put together a knowledgeable and personable team of Clean and Safe Ambassadors. In total, we will have 10 team members to begin the program; the Clean & Safe Program Manager, 6 permanent full/part time Ambassadors and 3 additional temporary ambassadors from City of Durham workforce programs. Nine of the new Ambassadors are Durham residents that were recruited directly from the City of Durham’s Joblink Career Center System, which assists businesses with recruitment efforts and job seekers with employment opportunities. Notably, the full time Ambassadors will be earning Durham’s Living Wage, and are eligible for full benefits after 3 months of employment.

The first hire of the team, Elizabeth “Liz” Wilson, will serve as the Clean & Safe Program Manager. Liz has been with SGI for 3 years, beginning as a pan and broom ambassador, then serving as a Supervisor for Downtown Jacksonville, FL, and most recently helping to launch the Hillsborough Street improvement district in Raleigh. She will bring the experience and knowledge to successfully launch and guide the new team. Liz was a 1999 graduate with Honors, from Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, KY, where she obtained a BA in Psychology and Women’s Studies. Her interest includes a wide variety of human and gender rights issues, solutions to Homelessness, and the barriers for mentally ill persons.

Under the management of Ms. Wilson, the Ambassador team will be cleaning and maintaining public
spaces, welcoming and assisting visitors, connecting those in need to social services, promoting
downtown amenities and business, assisting with special events, power washing sidewalks, weed & graffiti removal and much more. Our new Ambassador Team will be on the streets six days a week (Mon-Sat), with rotating shifts & zones and coverage on most days from 7am-10pm. In addition, the Ambassadors will also assist with for specials events and projects. (please see attached handout for a detailed list of services provided by the Ambassador team).

For stakeholders and visitors, we have established a new phone line and web address to report any
issues in downtown that need to be addressed, which are listed below.

Ambassador Hotline: 919-682-BULL (919-682-2855)
Service Request: Website

Calls to the Ambassador Hotline will be forwarded directly to an on-duty ambassador during regular
team hours and service requests will be entered into the system. Users can also go to the website and
enter the service request themselves and track the entire process, from the reporting of the issue
through the time when the issue is resolved.

Learn more about Durham online, and stay updated on all the upcoming events happening here with the Durham Event Calendar.

Durham's Centerfest Wants Your Input...Really

Centerfest has been a landmark event in Durham for dozens of years.  Having changed in format over the years, the event is now taking a one year hiatus to be envisioned anew - a process into which the public's commentary is welcomed.

The Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau, along with Downtown Durham, Inc and the Durham Chamber of Commerce, have offered their assistance to the Durham Arts Council in conducting focus groups and lending organizational expertise to help ensure that the new event is both representative of Durham's unique sense of place and brand values, as well being inviting to the modern event-going crowd.

"We're excited to help with this process because Centerfest, historically, has been such a major visitor draw," said Shelly Green, DCVB's President and CEO. "We're looking forward to working with peer organizations and the general public's input to refashion this event into one with national appeal and one that will garner a lot of visitation," she added.

The focus groups are open to the public.  Since Durham owns a reputation as being a place with great community involvement, it is hoped that people will come out and voice their opinions and share their input and ideas.  Six different focus groups, each with a different emphasis, will be held and details are available on the web.

Start to Finish - Entrepreneurialism in Durham, NC

Imagine a community welcoming to people with ideas, passion and the desire to start a business; a place where when people hear the ideas of others they respond with “How can I help?” instead of “Good luck;” a place where even failure is ok as long as the road there is lined with integrity.

That place is Durham, NC.

Durham, a city with deep entrepreneurial roots, has been garnering national attention for its progressive and innovative nature for hundreds of years. Durham is home to Research Triangle Park (RTP), the largest high-tech research and science park in North America.  In addition, Downtown Durham is home to over 60 startup companies employing more than 500 people.

The startup culture is hardly new. Durham has always been a hotbed of entrepreneurialism - the Great American Indian Trading Path ran through here; a route that was an early manifestation of entrepreneurial activity.  In the 1860s, Washington Duke started what grew into the mega-giant American Tobacco Company from pocket change.  Businesses like Durham-based Cree and Quintiles grew from a handful of employees 25 years ago to their current status as multinational companies with thousands of employees.   

More recently, in 2011, Durham was the first stop on the US Small Business Administration’s national tour of roundtable discussions called Startup America: Reducing Barriers. In other words, entrepreneurism is an essential part of Durham’s DNA. 

With the startup landscape flourishing in Durham, the future looks brighter every day.  An influx of small business incubators and accelerators has drawn entrepreneurs to Durham from around the world, all of whom have a dream and the drive to succeed.  Organizations like JoyStick Labs, LaunchBox Digital and Bull City Forward, to name a few. 

Much of the success of these small businesses can be traced to organizations and programs that help entrepreneurs thrive.  The Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Durham Inc. have hosted The Bull City Start-up Stampede, a competitive initiative matching start-up companies with free office space and technical assistance.  CED, the regional council for entrepreneurial development located in Downtown Durham also provides entrepreneurs with the necessary resources and tools to start and grow their businesses.  

Duke University recently launched a major campus-wide initiative in innovation and entrepreneurship led by Kimberly Jenkins.  A Duke alumna, Jenkins’ resume includes working with Microsoft’s Bill Gates back when it was a start-up company, leading the marketing department for Steve Jobs at NeXT, as well as stints advising companies such as Sun, Oracle and Cisco.  This effort will help keep bright graduates close by and further expand the societal impact of Duke innovations. 

Turns out, Durham is also a great place to be to work on stepping away from a business that has grown to great success, too.  Two of Durham’s entrepreneurs, Jess Eberdt and Doug Townsend, did exactly this and maneuvered away from the daily operations of their hugely successful business Parata Systems.  They started Tempus Durham, a firm that helps successful entrepreneurs do exactly as they have done, devise an exit strategy from a successful business to have freedom to pursue other things. 

Durham has myriad stories of dreams that became ideas that became realities that grew into great successes.  It’s really a city to be reckoned with when it comes to starting a business, routinely being named in the same breath as Silicon Valley.

Considering that more than 80% of relocating executives visit a location first before deciding to move their companies, the success of Durham as a visitor destination can only further encourage the natural evolution and current momentum that made Durham such a highly sought-after business climates in the U.S.