Does Live Trump Online?

My May 10 editor's note:

One of the first questions I got after we produced our prototype of Capital Business was "Looks great, but can you really sustain this week in and week out?"

"Sure," I responded confidently, though I would be lying if I said I had not wondered the same thing.

But just a few weeks into this new project, I no longer harbor any doubts. Of all the challenges that lie ahead of us in getting this new paper launched, finding news is not one of them.

Everywhere I go it seems stories are falling out of the sky, just waiting to be told.

On Wednesday, I stopped by the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce's big procurement conference and expo at the Universities at Shady Grove complex in Rockville. Some 700 people registered for an event that included 33 workshops with procurement officials from various government agencies.

It didn't take long for me to fill my notebook with story leads.

I even found an interesting tale in the conference itself.

Gigi Godwin, president and chief executive of the chamber, said the group organized the conference because even though the county ranks No. 2 (behind Fairfax) in the number of small companies doing business with the government, "there was nothing like this event on this side of the river."

So the Montgomery chamber has been busy revamping its programs to make up for the omission. The new emphasis has already produced some revelations. Earlier this year, the chamber held a conference in conjunction with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Hundreds and hundreds of businesspeople showed up. Godwin said she was so impressed with a presentation by NIST Director Patrick Gallagher that the chamber decided he should be given its "Visionary" award this year, the first time a federal official has been selected. NIST, it turns out, is responsible for producing the national protocols for cybersecurity, health IT and smart grid technology.

"We've seen the future and it is NIST," Godwin said.

It's a funny thing about such events. They seem as popular as ever, even in the age of e-mail newsletters, Webinars and social networking sites gone wild. For despite all those virtual connections, face-to-face networking is still the lifeblood of the business world.

"That's the secret sauce," Godwin said. "People like to do business with people they know and trust. And what better way to get to know someone than to meet them in person."

We're doing a lot of networking here at Capital Business, and it is an incredibly energizing experience.

A Print Grunt On TV

I took a turn on TV to talk about Capital Business. At the time, it felt to me like I was talking way too fast...

Capital Business Launches

WaPo's new business publication is live. You can see the result here.

As you can see in my first editor's note, I finally truly appreciate the life of a start-up entrepreneur!

By Dan Beyers
Monday, April 19, 2010; 24

It was the first day after we had gotten the green light to create a new weekly local business publication and my mind was racing. There was a mission statement to craft, staff to hire and people to see. The IT department wanted to meet pronto. Our meetings team wanted to talk about a launch event. We still had not settled on a proper name. And then . . .

Wham!

I smashed into the back end of a car on Interstate 95.

No one was hurt, thank goodness. The driver of the other car, an Internal Revenue Service manager, could not have been nicer as we exchanged insurance information. Perhaps that was because, while his car had a small dent, my front end was a shambles.

"Are you sure it's safe to drive?" he asked.

It had to be, I thought. I have a day full of meetings.

And that's when I realized that there really is nothing so consuming as getting a business off the ground. As I related my experience to others around town, I got only knowing smiles.

Dean Violagis, vice president of research at the real estate data firm CoStar Group in Bethesda, told me about how he helped the company build its first database, literally driving around Washington in 1989, writing down information about the office buildings he encountered.

"It was all basically done by hand," he said.

There was no satellite global positioning systems in those days, no geocoding. "I literally took out a map and put a dot on it," he said.

Violagis thought the company a little crazy when it asked him to take a photo of each building he documented. What would it do with the boxes and boxes of slides he accumulated?

To realize that work would one day form the basis of the computerized repository of real estate information that CoStar has become famous for is inspiring.

So is hearing Violagis talk about CoStar's efforts to extend its brand into new markets. The entrepreneurship never ends, even if the techniques of gathering data are now more advanced. "Every city, we have to start over again," he said.

Launching a business can be so daunting, the challenges so numerous, that friends and colleagues can be pardoned if they seem a little skeptical.

Gary Shapiro, president and chief executive of the Consumer Electronics Association in Arlington, remembers a time back in the mid-1980s when he and the late Ron Brown, who would later become commerce secretary, were sitting on a bus in Tokyo listening to David Rubenstein talk about his vision for a merchant banking firm that would one day become private equity giant Carlyle Group. At the time, the three men were all lawyers, fighting to protect the legality of the videotape recorder.

"Ron and I laughed at David, thinking he was just being fanciful," Shapiro said. "But then he did it."

Capital Business plans to tell many more stories like that in the weeks and months to come, for it strikes me that one of the things uniting our diverse business community is the entrepreneurial spirit stirring in companies big and small. The upheaval brought on by the recent economic downturn has a way of focusing the mind and encouraging people to consider new possibilities.

I pulled my wounded car into my downtown parking garage and smiled at the look on the attendants' faces.

"What happened?" one asked. "Are you okay?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

Never felt better.

New Gig

I'm off on a new adventure. The Washington Post is starting a new weekly business publication called Capital Business and I am its very first editor. This is really a dream assignment, being given a blank sheet of paper to re-imagine a business newspaper.

We're trying to create something that feels fresh, newsy and informative.

For now, we're putting the pieces in place, hiring a staff, and playing with designs all in a mad scramble to launch on Monday, April 19. Frankly, we've been operating at such a frenetic pace that I've had to cut back on my other interests but hopefully I'll be able to establish a new routine soon enough.

You'll find a sample of Capital Business bundled with your Washington Post for a few weeks. We hope you subscribe for $49 a year, about what some people pay for an expense account lunch.

Don't hesitate to let me know what you think.

UPDATE: You can find an interview with me on the new project here. Here's a story about our first hire from the Washington Business Journal.