Friday, June 01, 2007

Entrepreneur's Are All Winners

The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in Austin, Texas. Last night was the 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. While an international event in all major cities, locally the ceremony is the biggest night of the year in Austin. The business community looks forward to this spectacular black tie evening, and over 700 people annually fill the grand ball room of the Renaissance Hotel for a night of power networking and celebration.

Awards were given to:

Bill Imhoff - Intertech Flooring (Community Impact Award)

Pat Condon, Dirk Elmendorf, Lanham Napier & Graham Weston - Rackspace Managed Hosting

Jeff Zeigler - TechTurn

Bill Bayless - American Campus Communities

and

Steven Jackobs - Capital IDEA (Social Entrepreneur of the Year)

The festivities continued until the wee hours of the morning. For the past twelve years the lawyers at Andrews Kurth LLP host the "After Party" (this party was originated by the corporate lawyers at Brobeck, Phleger and Harrison. Full disclosure, I was once the marketing and business development director at Broceck and then at Andrews Kurth, and was in charge of planning the "After Party" for four years!).

Nearly 500 people cross the street following the banquet to dance and socialize at PF Chang's Restaurant. It makes the evening like the Academy Awards (Going to the ceremony is nice, but the real party takes place later at Spago!) There were still over 100 people eating gourmet mini-cupcakes and drinking wine when I left at 1 AM. I am sure there are many people in Austin who were late to work today!!!

Have A Great Day!

thom
www.thomsinger.com

***You can purchase my books, Some Assembly Required and The ABC's of Networking at Amazon.com. Thank you!!!

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