Nashville Post Techie 2016

SUMMER 2016

CHANGING THE GAME Inside the rescue and resurgence of Edgenet with Steve Proctor

EC Hall of Fame Capitalize on data In health care and well beyond

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Building capacity

Workforce efforts gather steam

Uncertain flight

On drones and property rights

MOST POWERFUL WOMEN

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INTRO

XXXXX

CONTENTS

INTRO

34 40 58 Drone-ing on

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles faces an uncertain flight

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In the Tech Space

The Post takes you on a tour of Nashville-based tech offices ‘on the cutting edge’

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Cutting through the noise

Digital Reasoning aims to help health care cross its data divide

ERIC ENGLAND

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Be Part the 2016Induction InductionCeremony!

Ceremony!

Be BeaaaPart Partofof of the the2016 2016 Induction Ceremony!

With a mission to honor men and women who have made significant and lasting contributions With With a mission a mission toto honor honor men men and and women women who who have have made made significant significant and and lasting lasting contributions contributions to the health care industry, The Tennessee Health Care Hall of Fame seeks to recognize and toto the the health health care care industry, industry, The The Tennessee Tennessee Health Health Care Care Hall Hall ofof Fame Fame seeks seeks toto recognize recognize and and honor the pioneers and current leaders that have formed Tennessee’s health and health care honor honor the the pioneers pioneers and and current current leaders leaders that that have have formed formed Tennessee’s Tennessee’s health health and and health health care care community and encourage future generations of health care professionals. community community and and encourage encourage future future generations generations ofof health health care care professionals. professionals.

DON’T MISS THE SECOND ANNUAL INDUCTION, DON’T DON’TMISS MISSTHE THESECOND SECONDANNUAL ANNUALINDUCTION, INDUCTION,

honoring these health carelegends: legends: honoring honoringthese thesehealth healthcare care legends:

Paul E. Stanton, M.D. Colleen Conway Welch, Ph.D., Jack O. Bovender, Jr. Henry W. Foster, Jr., Frank S. Groner, LL.D. Stanley Cohen, Ph.D. Paul E. Stanton, M.D. Paul E. Stanton, M.D. Colleen Colleen Conway Conway Welch, Welch, Ph.D., Ph.D., CNM, FAAN, FACNM JackJack O. O. Bovender, Bovender, Jr. Jr. Frank S. Groner, LL.D. Henry Henry W. W. Foster, Foster, Jr., Jr., Frank S. Groner, LL.D. Stanley Stanley Cohen, Cohen, Ph.D. Ph.D. M.D., FACOG President Emeriti, Retired Chairman and CEO, President Emeritus, Distinguished Professor CNM, CNM, FAAN, FAAN, FACNM FACNM M.D., M.D., FACOG FACOG President Emeriti, President Emeriti, East Tennessee State University Dean Emerita, Retired Retired Chairman Chairman andand CEO, CEO, Distinguished President Emeritus, President Emeritus, Distinguished Professor Professor Hospital Corporation Baptist Memorial Hospital Professor Emeritus and Former Emeritus of Biochemistry, Tennessee State University Tennessee State University Dean Dean Emerita, Emerita, Vanderbilt University Hospital Hospital Corporation Corporation Memorial Hospital Baptist Memorial Hospital EastEast Professor Emeritus Emeritus andand Former Former Emeritus Emeritus of Biochemistry, of University Biochemistry, Professor of America Dean, Meharry Medical College Baptist Vanderbilt Professor Emeriti of Surgery, Vanderbilt Vanderbilt University University School of Nursing of America of America Dean, Meharry Meharry Medical Medical College College Vanderbilt Vanderbilt University University Dean, Professor Emeriti of Surgery, Professor Emeriti of Surgery, East Tennessee State University Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and School School of Nursing of Nursing East Tennessee State University East Tennessee State University Clinical Clinical Professor Professor of Obstetrics of Obstetrics and and Gynecology, Vanderbilt University Gynecology, Gynecology, Vanderbilt Vanderbilt University University

BELMONT UNIVERSITY  CURB EVENT CENTER  OCTOBER 10, 2016 BELMONT BELMONTUNIVERSITY UNIVERSITYCURB CURBEVENT EVENTCENTER CENTEROCTOBER OCTOBER10, 10,2016 2016 10:30–11:30 a.m. Registration  11:30 a.m.–1 p.m. Lunch & Ceremony 10:30–11:30 10:30–11:30a.m. a.m.Registration Registration11:30 11:30a.m.–1 a.m.–1p.m. p.m.Lunch Lunch&&Ceremony Ceremony

Sponsorships information available at tnhealthcarehall.com Sponsorships Sponsorshipsinformation informationavailable availableatattnhealthcarehall.com tnhealthcarehall.com The Tennessee Health Care Hall of Fame has been created by Belmont University and The The Tennessee Tennessee Health Health Care Care Hall Hall ofof Fame Fame has has been been created created byby Belmont Belmont University University and and The McWhorter Society and is supported by Founding Partner, The Nashville Health Care Council.

The The McWhorter McWhorter Society Society and and is is supported supported byby Founding Founding Partner, Partner, The The Nashville Nashville Health Health Care Care Council.

Council.

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INTRO

CONTENTS

open

06 the journey Chris Korbey, Arcivr

08 DATA BANK

Growth opportunity and growing pains

09 THINKING OUT LOUD

Bryan Huddleston, Nashville Technology Council

Emma Harris leads an IT Girls mentoring session at John Overton High School Read more on page 25

10 YOU SHOULD KNOW

John Farkas, Golden Spiral

11 COMPANY & PEOPLE INDEX MOST POWERFUL WOMEN

12 MOST POWERFUL WOMEN

Our 2016 honorees discuss the tech industry’s growth

features

25 Opening up to possibilities

CA’s IT Girls program H exposes young women to career paths they may not have considered

27 Childhood engineering

Tim Estes and Marten den Haring of Digital Reasoning Read more on page 58

29 More building blocks

Tech Council adds to efforts aimed at growing students into qualified workers

30 Workingclass vision

XOEye founder pays tribute to blue-collar roots with eyewear software company

54 Aligning forces for interoperability

A discussion of key health care players’ efforts to define, build data-sharing standards

61 No time to waste

Tractor Supply melds oldschool approach with 21st century methods

33 intellectual property as intentional property

63 Value added

36 Street-wise

65 Healthy exchanges

Focus on what sets apart your business

Nashville in early stages of ‘smart roads’ infrastructure

37 Building smartly

Nashville shows potential for creating smart structures

38 Hitting the right note

EC’s Project Music accelerator aiming higher in its second year

50 Back from the Edge

How a former employee came back to jumpstart a SaaS provider

Internet of Things, data monetization hot tech topics

Local partnerships aim to help providers get a grip on medical data

66 THE EC HALL OF FAME

Inductees hail from nonprofit, sports biz, music worlds

CLOSE

80 THE BIG QUESTION

It’s time for some patience in the fast-paced world of tech

Demand for STEM education sparks new Nashville franchise, public-private partnerships

ON THE COVER

Steve Proctor of Edgenet photographed by Eric England.

Read more beginning on page 50.

top: mike king | bottom: daniel meigs

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5/12/16 11:04 AM

INTRO

EDITOR’S LETTER

editorial

Editor Geert De Lombaerde Managing Editor William Williams Contributing Writers Linda Bryant, Nancy Floyd, Cillea Houghton, J.R. Lind, J. Holly McCall Copy editor Lauren Langston Stewart

art

Art Director Derek Potter STAFF Photographers Eric England, Daniel Meigs

production

Production COORDINATOR Matt Bach Marketing art director Christie Passarello Graphic Designers Katy Barrett-Alley, Amy Gomoljak, Abbie Leali, Liz Loewenstein, Melanie Mays

publishing

PUBLISHER Jamie McPherson General Manager Mike Weir bUSINESS DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANT Jennifer Trsinar ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Maggie Bond, Rachel Dean, Michael Jezewski, Carla Mathis, Marisa McWilliams, Hilary Parsons, Ellen Skrmetti, Mike Smith, Stevan Steinhart, Keith Wright Sales Operations Manager Chelon Hill Hasty Account Managers Gary Minnis, Sarah Richmond, Annie Smith

marketing

MARKETING DIRECTOR Heather Cantrell EVENTS DIRECTOR Lynsie Shackelford PROMOTIONS MANAGER Wendy Walker Silverman

circulation

Subscription Manager Gary Minnis Circulation manager Casey Sanders

SouthComm Chief Executive Officer Chris Ferrell Interim Chief Financial Officer Carla Simon Chief Operating Officer Blair Johnson Executive Vice President Mark Bartel Vice President of Production Operations Curt Pordes Vice President of Content/ Communication Patrick Rains Director of Human Resources Becky Turner Creative Director Heather Pierce 210 12th Ave. S., Suite 100 Nashville, TN 37203 www.nashvillepost.com Nashville Post is published quarterly by SouthComm.

Advertising deadline for the next issue is Wednesday, August 10th, 2016. For advertising and subscription information, call 615-244-7989.

Copyright ©2016 SouthComm, LLC.

Precious traction

There’s no arguing that Middle Tennessee’s technology sector has taken big strides in recent years.

Enabled and encouraged by various investments in our region’s capacity, Nashville tech entrepreneurs have turned promising ideas into exciting ventures at a rate not seen before — and not just in health care. Yes, some have been more solid success stories than others. And yes, there’s much work to be done on a number of front to solidify and build on the gains the region has made.

But the traction and the energy are evident — they’re a major reason we finally pulled the trigger on doing a tech issue as part of our quarterly series — and are being fed by new arrivals, personal and corporate, and the ideas they bring with them.

Speaking of good ideas: Our Most Powerful Women honorees — the first group to all work in a specific industry — have plenty of them when it comes to elevating the role of women in tech and growing the sector as a whole. Check out our feature as well as related coverage on the topic of workforce readiness, one of the most important recurring themes we as a community face.

And even though this publication covers a great number of topics, there are many more we wish we could have included. Our ideas list for Techie 2017 is long already, chock full of fascinating concepts and brainstorms and growing by the day.

But first: Looking ahead to the rest of this year, we’ll again be tackling big questions about Nashville’s development in Boom and examining important health care issues old and new in Vitals. We look forward to those challenges and to your feedback and guidance.

Geert De Lombaerde, Editor gdelombaerde@nashvillepost.com

A big thank you goes out to the following members of our advisory board, who helped us define and refine many of the ideas in this edition.

Bryan Huddleston Nashville Technology Council Rachel Werner Girl Geek Dinner Nashville Tammy Hawes Virsys12 Amy Henderson Leankit Chris Bayham Change Healthcare Peter Marcum DevDigital Devin Carty Martin Ventures Todd Rosenblatt Frost Brown Todd

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OPEN

THE JOURNEY

THE JOURNEY

Chris Korbey Arcivr

Korbey started work on Arcivr, an app that organizes live photo streams from sporting and music events, in August 2013 after a “particularly tedious day of searching through old family photos.” Thinking there was a better way to organize such treasure troves, the 15-year veteran of brand development and commercial photography launched himself into the tech sector.

I approached building Arcivr like a design commission. I gave myself two weeks to research the space, design a prototype, talk to potential users, build a team and secure funding. Then I bought copies of Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment and Marty Cagan’s Inspired and posted up in a comfortable chair in Starbucks. By Sept. 15, I locked down a significant round of angel investment from Robert Turner (CEO of Wentwood Capital Advisors), hired Kevin McConnell (ex-director of engineering at Emma and lead software engineer at LivingSocial) and Arcivr became a company.

In December 2013, we launched Arcivr 1.0 – a 100 percent private, web-based, hi-res photo and video sharing platform where users paid a small monthly fee depending on how much storage space they used. As the name implies, users created a personal archive to store their memories and invited others to collaborate without Big Brother gathering and selling their personal data. Essentially,

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THE JOURNEY

we’d built a better Flickr.

One year in, our four-man team was on-boarding users, adding features and perfecting our pricing model. Steady growth and a host of loyal users were early validation of Arcivr’s product and the need it met. But further validation came in a less exciting form: competition. Dropbox launched (the recently shuttered) Carousel, Google launched Google Photos and Apple launched Apple Photos. No matter how valuable privacy was to our users, competing with free services built into Apple, Google and Dropbox’s ecosystems simply wasn’t going to happen.

Almost overnight, our conversations with users went from “This is so much better than Flickr!” to “Why wouldn’t I just use Apple Photos or Google Photos?” And with these conversations, new users became harder to attract.

It was immediately evident that Arcivr wasn’t going to succeed in its initial form. The thought of pivoting was daunting; we’d burned through countless nights and weekends and most of our initial investment creating Arcivr.

And the thought of admitting defeat was downright overwhelming.

Instead of abandoning Arcivr, we narrowed our focus. Our users loved Arcivr’s privacy and shared albums, but they wanted a mobile app to gather photos on the device they were taken rather than a website to upload and organize after the fact. With Arcivr’s recent crop of competitors still fresh in our minds, we looked for a niche that was too small for Google but large enough to become profitable. After a week of brainstorming, we chose weddings.

We had looked at the existing wedding apps and knew we could do better.

There were a handful of popular wedding tools that planned your wedding,

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decorated your reception, sourced bridesmaids’ dresses, and shared guest photos. They were complicated and surprisingly unsophisticated. So we became hyper-focused on what we knew best – gathering and sharing memories – and forwent the other features. We gave ourselves four weeks to build Ceremony, a mobile app that automatically gathered photos and videos from every wedding guest. It was the modern alternative to placing disposable cameras on every table and a more private alternative to the wedding hashtag. And it was an immediate hit. Over 3,000 couples in more than 60 countries have used Ceremony to capture guest photos since we launched last fall.

With a renewed energy, and some additional funding, we began looking for the next niche for Ceremony’s feature set. Being in Nashville, we naturally turned to the music industry.

With some database research, we found that couples that pre-populated their Ceremony feeds with baby photos, engagement photos, bridal shower photos and video messages to their guests have much greater guest participation. If you think of a concert as a giant wedding, why couldn’t musicians do the same for their fans? Share behind-the-scenes photos and videos before the show, then crowdsource fan photos during the performance. Fans build a deeper connection with their favorite artists and artists build a huge collection of fan photos.

Add sponsor promotions and links to ticketing and social sites and you’re on to something.

Lacking a huge PR/ad budget for another product launch, we needed a partner with a built-in audience. We found literally that in Jason Jenkins and Warner Music/Word Entertainment. With a bit of collaborative brainstorming and quick

OPEN

arcivr INDUSTRY photography DEVELOPER chris korbey FOR events, teams, and fans AVAILABLE arcivr.com

rebranding, we launched Arcivr 2.0 – otherwise known as “the non-wedding version of Ceremony.” Arcivr 2.0 hit app stores exactly one week before Jason’s K-Love Christmas Tour hit the road, and 40,000 fans were introduced to Arcivr 2.0 almost overnight. Instead of emailing hundreds of users for feedback, I was interacting with hundreds of users per night at venues across the country. The highlight of that tour was an Uber driver in Kansas City recognizing my Arcivr Tshirt. Not only did he know about Arcivr, his family and friends loved and used the app regularly!

By the time the Christmas Tour wrapped up in late December, Arcivr 2.0 was rolling full steam. Since then, Arcivr has been used at music and sporting events across the globe, including another tour with Warner Music and Sea Otter Classic, a week-long cycling festival and race that draws nearly 100,000 fans to Monterey, California. We have on the books large-scale events using Arcivr every week for the next four months.

Lately, I’ve begun receiving regular emails from burgeoning tech startups looking for advice. I’m still searching for the perfect nuggets from my experience with Arcivr to share and keep coming

back to one thing: There are countless books, websites, podcasts and conferences dedicated to tech startups. None of them know your users, team and product like you do. Talk to users early and often, in person wherever possible.

Prioritize your features based on their specific needs. And reward them as often as possible.

We regularly surprise Arcivr and Ceremony users with free prints, shirts and hats, gift cards, social shoutouts, bacon and barbecue sandwiches. Those little gifts have netted more user insight and referrals than any ad campaign, startup book, or conference. Those conversations aren’t always scalable or sexy, but they’re the fastest way we’ve found to find, build and launch a product that people honestly love.

Arcivr 2.0 has been live for five months and has grown every week since launching. We’re currently working with music and sporting industry clients to craft Arcivr 3.0, a full-featured, customizable event app for concerts, festivals and events of all kinds. The Arcivr team is still small and nimble with only three full-time employees and a handful of freelancers. And our best days are certainly in front of us.

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OPEN

DATA BANK

DATA BANK

Growth opportunity and growing pains

The IT sector will be one of the fastest-growing parts of the U.S. economy in the coming years and is forecast to grow by nearly 1.1 million job openings by 2024. In Tennessee, the average annual growth rate of STEM jobs in Tennessee between now and 2025 is estimated to be around 3.4 percent.

But that may not be enough.

Closing the STEM gap An MTSU study showed that Tennessee lags the nation by 1.3 percentage points when it comes to science, technology, engineering and manufacturing jobs’ share of total employment. Catching up, the study said, would have an economic impact of nearly $4.5 billion and create 16,000 jobs. But it will take a lot of work.

11,195

18,897

Estimated annual average STEM degree production

Estimated annual average demand for STEM workers

Time to rise Help wanted – yesterday A recent survey of more than 200 companies and other stakeholders from across Tennessee included questions about the positions they are finding hardest to fill. Here are the top 10, in order of difficulty.

1. Miscellaneous mathematical science occupations

6. Agricultural and food scientists

2. Natural sciences managers

7. Web developers

3. Industrial engineers

8. Mechanical engineers

4. Environmental engineers

9. Electrical and electronics engineers

5. Computer network architects

10. Computer programmers

In a report published last year, the Nashville Technology Council compared the pay for some key tech jobs in Nashville and many of its regional peer cities. The numbers weren’t pretty and recent reports and anecdotes suggest Music City’s compensation rates have risen significantly since.

Memphis

$36.27

Nashville

$38.42

Louisville

$39.95

Chattanooga

$40.13

Knoxville

$41.71

Austin

$46.78

Atlanta

$48.05 $49.77

Charlotte

Job title Jobs

Top jobs The Tech Council report also listed the top five IT jobs in Middle Tennessee as well as the number of openings for each.

Openings as % of total

Computer systems analysts

4,052

4.2%

Computer use support analysts

3,670

4.2%

Software developers, applications

2,553

4.3%

Network/computer systems administrators

2,503

3.0%

Computer/information systems managers

2,448

3.1%

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Nashville Technology Council, “Shaping Tennessee’s Future” by MTSU’s Business and Economic Research Center

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THINKING OUT LOUD

OPEN

thinking out loud

Bryan Huddleston Nashville Technology Council

Since taking over as president and CEO of the Tech Council in the fall of 2013, Bryan Huddleston has built out its staff while overseeing, among other things, the group’s efforts to fatten the region’s talent pipeline. Among the relatively recent hires is Alex Curtis, who is overseeing communications and public affairs. The latter is an area of growing importance to many players in the industry. Here, Huddleston discusses his goals for the Tech Council’s push into the policy arena.

People have come to realize that achieving great successes isn’t about business or policy. It’s business and policy. There have been a few things, such as the software-as-a-service tax and the data breach notification statute, that they didn’t recognize as important until they had happened. We see a real opportunity for us as the Tech Council to be a mechanism that helps put our members in touch with policy makers to make sure we have a good and safe environment for everyone.

The various groups in Nashville — and Tennessee as a whole — are really good at working together to make sure things don’t happen that might hurt some groups or industries. We’re nine months into a three-year program here and Alex has done good work putting in place the foundations.

We want to get to a point where we’re a thought leader, where a lawmaker will pick up the phone and say to us, “I’m considering this policy. What impact will that have on your members?” And we’ll either have someone on staff who can answer that question or we’ll convene a group to find out quickly.

That’s a broad statement but it’s a goal we have. We want the Tech Council to be able to influence policy in the same way we work toward our other goals of networking people, growing our workforce and promoting the sector to the outside world.

DANIEL MEIGS

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YOU SHOULD KNOW

YOU SHOULD KNOW

John Farkas Golden Spiral

Chatter about building out Middle Tennessee’s technology ecosystem typically focuses on adding to the funding options for exciting ideas and on deepening the local talent pool. (More on those topics elsewhere in this issue.) John Farkas wants to make sure storytelling isn’t left out as Nashville takes its next steps toward becoming a true tech hub.

Since founding marketing agency Golden Spiral in 2010, Farkas and his team have steadily narrowed their focus. First, they saw their expertise best suited to working with business-to-business companies.

Last year, they took that idea a step further by honing in B2B tech ventures, aiming to make “complex stories pragmatic, easy to understand and compelling to the market” and seeking to pay particular attention to the opportunities in their backyard.

Too often, Farkas says, tech entrepreneurs are far too eager to show off the “solutions” they have rather than focusing on the underlying pain points their clients and prospects face. With his laser focus, Farkas is aiming to have Golden Spiral be a key player in Nashville’s tech sector in the same way firms such Jarrard Phillips Cate & Hancock, Lovell Communications and ReviveHealth help export the story of Middle Tennessee health care.

Things are on track. Golden Spiral has helped the Nashville Technology Council overhaul its branding and also is working with promising locals Digital Reasoning Systems, InStream and OnSomble, among others.

“We are excited about how we are positioned to serve this market,” Farkas says. “Our team has the ability to understand the complexities of tech products and we know how to connect them to the right people at the right time.”

ERIC ENGLAND

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OPEN

INDEX

COMPANY/PEOPLE INDEX

A-B 24/7 Sports 67 Aaron Salow 30 Alex Curtis 9 Arcivr 6 Arrington Vineyards 67 Art Rebrovick 64

Credit Suisse 58

Jammber 38

Nasdaq 58

Sheila Dial-Barton 37

Cumberland Consulting Group 65

Jarrard Phillips Cate & Hancock 10

Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce 19, 27

Sherry Stewart Deutschmann 68

D-F

Jason Jenkins 7

Nashville Entrepreneur Center 19, 38, 66

Silver Lake Partners 58

Dan Crockett 68 Darrell Freeman 68 DataFoxTrot 63

Becca Stevens 68

Digital Reasoning Systems 10, 59, 72

Beth Hoeg 12, 14, 21

Ed Cantwell 54

Betsy Jones 64

Edgenet 43, 51

Big Machine Label Group 38

Emma 6, 47

Bill Carpenter 54 Bill Harlin 36

Engineering for Kids Foundation of Greater Nashville 27

Bill Nosal 59

EOA Architects 37

Bill Nutter 52

Federal Aviation Administration 34

Bob Murphy 36 Bryan Huddleston 9 Built Technologies 12, 24 Cal Turner Jr. 68 Casa Azafrán 66 Cerner 54

Fintech Innovation Lab 59

Jeff Balser 54 Joey Jacobs 68 John Farkas 10 John Overton High School 25 Jonathan Perlin 60

Nashville Health Care Council 54 Nashville Software School 24

SmartSpace 37 Snapwave 38 Sony Nashville 38 Spencer Donaldson 37 STEM 8, 14, 27, 34, 36

Jon Yarbrough 68

Nashville Technology Council 8, 13, 21, 23, 29, 72

Steve Blumenthal 56

Jose Gonzalez 66

Nicole Tremblett 12, 23

Steve Proctor 51

Karl Urich 63

Owen Graduate School of Management 23

Tammy Hawes 12, 19, 65, 72

Ken Levitan 68 Kix Brooks 66 Kristin McKinney 24 LeanKit 53 Lee Company 30 LifePoint Health 54

Floyd Shechter 37

Linda Rebrovick 12

Frost Brown Todd 33

Lovell Communications 10

G-I

Nashville Girl Geek Dinner 12, 24

Lydia Jones 63

M-O

P-R

Technology Advice 44 The Boyd Family 68 Tim Estes 59

Parallon 23 PENCIL Foundation 25 Project Music 38 Ray Danner 68 Renata Soto 66 Renova PCA 65 Resolute Capital Partners 52

Tod Fetherling 68 Tractor Supply 61 Trinisys 12, 15, 21, 65

V-Z Vanderbilt University Medical Center 54, 56

Center for Medical Interoperability 54, 56, 65

Golden Spiral 10

Marcus Cobb 38

Rob Mills 61

Vanderbilt University Students Consulting for Nonprofit Organizations 29

Chris Hefley 53

Goldman Sachs 58

Maria Clara Mejia 66

RoundingWell 48

Velox Consulting 19

Chris Korbey 6

Hal Cato 68

Mark Cleveland 35

RPM Transportation Consultants 36

Virsys12 12, 19, 65

Christian Oliver 63

HCA Holdings 23, 25, 54, 56, 60

Mark Green 35

Christine Skold 61 Clayton McWhorter 68

G.A. Hardaway 34

HealthStream 63 Heather McBee 38

Community Health Systems 54, 68

InSage 63

Compass Executives 64

Internet of Things 64

Concept Technology 40 Conexión Américas 66 Countdown Group 63

J-L Jack Johnson 34

Marten den Haring 59

ReviveHealth 10

S-T

Warner Music 7

Marty Paslick 25

Saint Thomas Health 54, 56

Maud and Benjamin Otchere 27

Sandi Hoff 29

MiKen Development 37

Vuzix 30

Wayne Smith 54, 68 We Build Tech Summit 29

Sasha Pickett 25

Mike Schatzlein 54

Scarlett Leadership Institute 19

Milton Johnson 54

Shannon Terry 66

MyFansDemand 38

Shareable 60

William Lamberth 34 Women in Technology of Tennessee 12 XOEye 30 Zane Burke 54

James Mackler 34

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MPW 16

DISCUSSION

Linda Rebrovick moderates the Most Powerful Women panel at City Winery. From left to right: Nicole Tremblett, Beth Hoeg, Tammy Hawes and Rachel Werner

‘Take your sail out of their wind’

The 2016 Most Powerful Women on the tech industry’s growth, developing future talent and the continuing need for encouragement The Post team in April hosted its sixth annual Most Powerful Women event at City Winery. For the first time in our series, the conversation brought together a group of women leaders from a single industry: Tammy Hawes, founder and CEO of Virsys12; Beth Hoeg, COO at Trinisys and president of Women in Technology of Tennessee; Nicole Tremblett, vice president of strategy and planning at HCA; and Rachel Werner, application engineer at Built Technologies and co-founder of Nashville Girl Geek Dinner.

The conversation, which was moderated by 2011 Most Powerful Women honoree Linda Rebrovick of Morgan Samuels, touched on topics ranging from creating opportunities for young women to carving career paths and leaning on support networks. Here are some lightly edited excerpts.

Rebrovick: Let’s start with the big picture: Nicole, how should women pursue positions as an entrepreneur within a big corporation? Are you seeing specific industries

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that are more available right now in Nashville for women who want to go into technology?

Tremblett: I think the opportunities are everywhere.

We’re known as Music City but we have a huge technology sector, automotive, health care — there’s just a lot going on in this town right now. It’s a really cool lively place to be. We also have 21 colleges and universities with 115,00 students and room for more, so there’s a lot of things going on in town. I think that women really have an opportunity to thrive.

You know, it’s all about finding the right company — the right fit — and a company that will allow you to work at the top of your talents. It’s important that you bring all of your talents to work every day, all your critical thinking, and let you have an opportunity to apply it.

And Nashville also is a fabulous city for getting involved. […] We have a lot of opportunities to be parts of nonprofits and there is just a really great opportunity for women to network and really understand what’s going on in Nashville.

Rebrovick: Tammy, can you take a stab at that question from an entrepreneurial perspective?

Hawes: We work with companies all over the nation in health care technology and then in the Middle Tennessee area and in the Southeast. When I started my career, only the large companies had technology. The small companies did not. And now, you can’t survive unless your company operates on technology. You can’t move at the speed you need to move at, so even the smallest ERIC ENGLAND

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DiSCuSSiON

company — in fact, sometimes the smaller companies are more agile — can make impact […] with technology, be strategic and get a competitive advantage. So I would say there are probably more opportunities now than ever in every business that’s out there.

Rebrovick: OK, here is an audience participation question: How many of you are in the C-suite in your companies? Alright, how many of you want to be in the C-suite in your company? That’s a good number, OK. So why do we see such a small percentage of women in the C-suite?

What’s keeping us from having more women in leadership roles and how do we change this?

Werner: I think a lot of the reason we don’t see a lot of women in C-suites is because there are barriers to entry.

I think there are external barriers to entry and internalized barriers to entry. When I say internal barriers, I mean a lack of confidence in our abilities. Ways to combat that would be expressing your desire to ascend to a higher level, networking with leadership, negotiating for those raises and promotions. I think getting on projects where you can shine and let the world know that you can do things is all seizing the moment. Try to get out there and show people that you can be in the C-suite.

But as far as external barriers, I think there are a lot and it’s different for every company and every person.

For example, I think we could do better jobs at having our leaders sponsor and mentor younger women into leaders. Sponsoring is a little bit different than men-

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toring; it’s where the leader takes an active role in the growth of the worker, trying to grow them in their confidence and [having them work on] projects that showcase their talents.

I think the leaders can set expectations in their companies and workplaces for how you should behave and help grow women — enabling and challenging women to take the lead and work to stamp out the unconscious attitudes toward women that we don’t really realize we’re doing. We’re coming out with studies every day that show that women increase the bottom line of a company. So why don’t we want more women in the C-suite?

Building a network for the future

Rebrovick: When it comes to talent acquisition and development, how do we look? Are we making enough progress to capitalize on the opportunities that we have here in Nashville? Beth, I’m going to ask you to give us some perspective on that.

Hoeg: I think we are making great progress. I don’t think we’re making enough progress [but] there are a lot of really fantastic programs in Nashville to encourage young women — but also young men — to go into the technology sector. The Nashville Technology Council has won fantastic grants so that they now have all these coding camps and we’re getting the word out to younger kids. Kids have to start deciding what they want to do with their career at the end of eighth grade — who knows what they want to do with their career at the end of eighth grade — but if you

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DISCUSSION

‘Having people coaching you along the way and taking the everyday moments is a big deal.’

Beth Hoeg

don’t even know that technology is an option, how do you know to pick that?

So all of those programs are really helping this next generation know and understand what the options are for them. WITT is doing a lot of work to help get those girls interested in technology and then having a forum for them when they come out of school so that they do, hopefully, not leave technology once they get in there.

There’s a great group of supporters and mentors and women that they can lean on to find out how they made their career.

We’re doing a lot of programs and we would love to be doing more, but our focus at at WITT has been to find out what all the other organizations in Nashville are doing and ask how can we either help them with what they’re doing or find a place where we’re lacking. I think some of that is scholarships; we have fantastic programs in the state for TNPromise and we have the Hope scholarships.

But if you look at the cost of tuition […] that is not even close to what it costs to go to a four-year school. So we’re going to be working on raising more money for scholarships and really targeting girls that have finished their sophomore year in school and know they want to go into technology.

And then we’d love to partner with companies that have internship opportunities for these girls so they can, while they’re finishing their degree, learn about what’s going on in the company and make that connection with a large company and really feel engaged. Then, when they come out of school, they have that network already so they’re not just out there.

All of the companies that we have been talking to really want a better, more diverse workforce but they don’t want to steal from each other. So how do we grow that organically? Our city is fantastic for recruiting, so getting them here, getting them through school, and encouraging them to stay here is really important. But that takes a long time, so there’s going to be something in the interim where hopefully [people will] be coming from other states to join us.

Audience question: I’m actually not in a tech field but I have a 13-year-old daughter who is very gifted and I will brag on her anytime. She always wins the math and science awards but she always thinks that one of the boys in her class is going to win the awards. She’s confident and she’s very feminist but there’s something in her that keeps saying, “Well yeah, but I’m not going to study that in college. I’m going to study history or I’m going to study literature or I’m going to study writing.”

So what would you say — or what was said to you — that you think would encourage her? What can I do as a mother to make that more believable? She feels very empowered, but at the same time there’s all of this societal belief that tech is a boy thing.

Hoeg: Obviously, I didn’t go into technology from school, so I can’t speak to that. But I would say there are so many great programs in Nashville that she could go to and see all these other girls that are participating and really know and understand it’s not a boys field. There are plenty of

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girls her age that are passionate about going into technology. The Technology Council would be happy to refer you to some coding camps this summer. They’re fantastic and these kids are accomplishing amazing things in these camps and they’re getting to know and meet other boys and girls who are just as passionate about technology as they are.

TWISTER at the Adventure Science Center is a fantastic event; there are 100 girls there. There’s also one at MTSU every year, where they take you around the campus and show you different careers that you can aspire to in all of the STEM fields. So there are a lot of really great programs in Nashville that she could participate in and see those others.

On lifting and being lifted

Rebrovick: I’d like to ask you to talk about some more personal things. Tell us about some of your pivotal moments. Who boosted you and what were the obstacles that you had to overcome? Tammy, we’ll start with you.

Hawes: I’ve been in this industry since 1983. Early in my career — I’d probably been in my career maybe seven years — I went through a divorce and I was a single mom and I worked very, very hard to be a provider for my children. They really drove me to excel.

I put my dreams on hold as well because I always knew that I wanted to have my own company at some point.

But I believe life comes in seasons and I knew for me it wasn’t the season, so I put all my energy into doing the best job I could possibly do for every organization that I worked for, knowing that one day would come and I would launch my own company. And so everything that I did, everything that I learned, every project that I was involved, in every challenge that I had, every failure I had, I tried to learn from that so I could bring that to the table when I started my own company.

And so I did. I started my own company,in 2011 and we’ve grown since then. I’m proud to say we are about half and half male and female. As far as who boosted me, probably half the people in this room. If I’ve met you for coffee or lunch or wine or whatever, you don’t even know how you’ve impacted my life. It’s those little things as women that we can do for each other to say, “You can do this” — whatever it is.

And I think maybe we don’t do that enough as women.

Maybe we see each other as competitors. Maybe we feel like there are not enough compliments to give out. But I do think that we can encourage each other and make a big difference.

I’ll put you on the spot a little bit, Linda. I don’t even know if you remember this, but when I was trying to determine whether I was going to leave my C-level position, where I was making a really good salary, I went to Linda and we met — I think it was at Panera Bread — and I said, “Oh, I don’t know if I can do this. You know, it’s really risky.” And Linda said, “You can do this.” And that’s all I needed to hear: “You can do this.”

I would say to anybody who’s out there today: Whether it’s that next promotion, whether it’s moving into technology, whether it’s starting your own company, I

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think you can do it. I would just encourage everybody: No matter who you meet and whatever their story is, don’t crush their dreams. Help prop them up.

Rebrovick: Beth, can you talk about that same question: What were some of your pivotal moments, who boosted you, what were the obstacles you overcame?

Hoeg: Well, I guess the biggest pivotal moment was when I decided not to be a social worker any longer and went to work in an IT department. Of course, I had no technology background, so I was very fortunate that I had a great team that was very collaborative. They were very willing to share their knowledge and help me be better at the job that I was doing. So that helped me move up within my career, get recognition for the team for the things that we were delivering and helped us have more projects.

There are so many people who boost me every day.

From those early days when I was joining the technology group, they encouraged me, inspired me, sent me to training, gave me the skills I needed to be able to do my job. You know, when you work for a large company and you’re really good because you know everybody and you’ve worked through the system, you have all of those social work skills to help make sure your projects get completed. To then go to another company is scary because you know you have the skills to be successful but do they translate, can you be successful? And so there were folks who encouraged me to go there and really broaden

my skill set and be successful there.

When I was ready to take the next step in my career, [Trinisys co-founders] David Box and Travis Gregg really believed in me and gave me the opportunity to help them grow their company. It’s their baby, right? So trusting someone with it and letting them help you grow their organization is phenomenal and it’s really been fantastic. Now Antoine Agassi, who’s our CEO, he teaches me something new every day. He brings me to meetings and I think, “OK, I’ve learned all I can learn this week” and then he’ll take me somewhere else with him. Really, everybody I work with is so willing to share their knowledge, which helps me be better in my job.

The same goes for the women in WiTT. If you’re not a member, you should really be […] because every time I think, “I can’t do this, I’m not doing this,” there’s one of those ladies who says, “Of course you can. You have to do it, you can do it.” When Penny Grogan, who is the former president of WiTT, she asked me to be her vice president — I was doing membership at the time — I barely thought I should be on the board, let alone one day be president. I thought, “Well, I can’t do that” and she said, “Of course you can.”

There’s just a phenomenal network here in Nashville of women who really want to help each other and, to your point, build them up. There’s plenty of recognition for everyone. Nobody needs to have it all because there are so many opportunities in Nashville where you can share that knowledge and inspiration with others.

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‘No matter who you meet aNd whatever their story is, doN’t crush their dreams. help prop them up.’

Tammy Hawes

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DISCUSSION

Rebrovick: That’s right. Nicole, can I get you to ad lib for me here? She didn’t know this question was coming at her, but you mentioned earlier that you had a boss that told you you were on a thin branch. Can you talk about that individual and why that’s so important to have someone who sponsored you in a big company?

Tremblett: Well first of all, I was very fortunate to land with HCA, which is full of thoughtful leaders and great teams. And so every time there was an opportunity that fit my skills or that people thought I could grow into, I was approached and asked about taking a chance and getting out on that thin branch. The thing about being out on the branch is that, if you know there’s somebody there supporting you, it’s a lot easier to take that chance. And we had that conversation probably four or five times in my career, so I’m still out on that thin branch and I recognize it every day.

So there have been a lot of moments and I’ll tell one story that I think is funny. Early on in my career — I think I was becoming a manager or a director — my boss at the time came to my office and he goes like this [makes a come-here motion with index finger] and so I get up.

He says nothing. I follow him all the way down the hallway, out the front doors, across Park Plaza and down the sidewalk.

He then points to this squirrel on the road. It’s smushed and I looked at him and said, “Are you telling me I’m the squirrel or the truck?” And he goes, “Figure it out” and leaves me standing there. So there are lots of great people out there keeping you real.

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Confronting the bad, old ways

Audience question: Twenty years ago at age 15, I started working in manufacturing and I currently work in marketing and we do marketing for manufacturers and industrials. In my career, I’ve come across a lot of people — primarily men — who have been very misogynistic, very sexist and have tried to put me in my place or make me feel small. I have let that inhibit me many times from moving forward and trying more and have sometimes just given up because I wasn’t quite sure — certainly when I was younger — how to deal with those situations.

One particular situation I was in was with a group of about 20 men and it was just me as the woman. A man started talking and he looks at me and says, “Write this down, sweetheart.” And I looked at another co-worker and said, “You write this down, sweetheart.” So I’ve dealt with it with humor but that can’t always work.

So have there been situations in your past where you’ve been treated in a sexist, inferior way? And how did you handle it? What’s helped you succeed when you’ve been presented with those situations?

Werner: I had a very disturbing comment made to me one time from a 76-year-old man who was my boss and the owner of the company. It was a very small company — I was literally the second employee there — and I was pretty much running the show there. We were walking up the stairs to his office and I had a skirt on that day and he said, “Nice legs.”

That’s not what you want to hear from a 76-year-old man who’s your boss and I was so turned off by that I im-

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mediately stopped and turned around and told him, “If you want me to continue making you money, then don’t be making comments like that.” I was very surprised that that was still happening in this day and age. But I was very proactive about saying straight to him that that was inappropriate.

Audience question: Were there any repercussions from saying that?

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love dearly, has been so impactful in my life. When I get wound up about anything, I’ll talk to him and he’ll say, “Tammy, take your sail out of their wind,” which means you do not have to get upset. You don’t have to let their comments or whatever influence you if you just have strength within yourself.

But I do feel that you need to speak up for yourself.

Otherwise, it’s just being passive aggressive and it just builds issues within yourself that will make you resent your job. That’s not going to be good for anyone.

Werner: There weren’t any. He just kind of acknowlRebrovick: And unfortunately some people — men and edged it and continued on with the day. But I don’t think women — say things and they don’t understand the rethat, in that situation, you shouldn’t say anything. You percussions. My very first day of work in sales at IBM in should definitely speak up for yourself. But I can undere Wworried Yo rthat k,when d.c., l o s1977, A NI G e l es N going d Yaround es, N A s hallvthe i l l e. walked in andAI’m meeting stand situations whereNyou’re you do sales reps. There was one crusty sales rep named Austin speak up, it’s going to put a bad taste in other people’s Davis, who was calling on all the banks. I reached out my mouths and you’re going to be looked at differently. But I hand to shake hands with him and he looks me in the just kind of handled [that situation] with strength. eye and says, “So when are you going to quit?” It’s my first hour at IBM and it just took me back. I said, “Why Hawes: I would just say the same. A good thing is, if did you say that?” He said, “Because every other woman you have a Southern accent like me, is that you can say, who’s been here the last two years in sales has quit and “You’re an idiot, bless your heart.” But I would say that married a doctor.” So I said, “Well, that’s sounding really you do need to stand up for yourself. But you can do it good. Find me a doctor and I’m out of here.” in a tactful and professional way and it probably won’t But long story short: I ended up saying to myself at happen again. And if it does, then you’re probably in that moment: “I’m going to show you and I’m going to the wrong position and probably in the wrong company. stay here until the day you’re gone.” And I did. Later on, There are plenty of companies out there where that’s not Austin — and he was a wonderful man but he didn’t realthe case. ize what he’d said — had a retirement event and invited My husband, who’s a great supporter and whom I

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the world—from right here in Nashville, Tennessee. With attorneys who have both law and MPW16_Transcript.indd NP_06-16.indd 17 17

technical degrees, and are members of the patent bar, we can differentiate and defend the ingenuity

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DISCUSSION

‘Go to the companies that have the culture that you want.

Don’t let them pick you.’

Rachel Werner

me to come. Everybody’s going around the room saying wonderful things to him and roasting and toasting him and it came to me. And I said, “I am SO glad you’re leaving!” and he just stood there and looked at me. And he said, “What?” So I told him, “Don’t you remember what you told me my very first day of work? And I swore I’d be here until after you had left. So here I am. And now, if I want to leave, I can leave.”

He did not remember saying what he did and he did not realize it. So the message there and to your point — to everyone’s point — is be careful about what you say to people. What you might think is funny or humorous or cute is not because it really affects people.

Audience question: First of all, I love hearing about stories like how you handle really insulting things with humor and grace and strength. I love that. So kind of on the flip side of that: There are a lot of men who recognize that there are some problems and are really excited about being an advocate. I’ve been fortunate to know many in my career and probably all the men in this room are here because they feel the same way. So what would you say to men who really want to be advocates for women in technology?

Hoeg: I would just say it makes a difference — it really does — especially when you’re younger. First, when you’re starting out trying to find your way, [it’s great to] have great thoughtful leaders around you that are encouraging you to take chances, that are encouraging you

to speak up and not wait to be spoken to. Just having people coaching you along the way and taking advantage of the everyday moments — a simple meeting, a hallway conversation, just encouraging you to be an active player in what’s going on in your organization and in your community — is a big deal.

Tremblett: I’ve had so many great men who have inspired and encouraged me and I thank them and I thank all the men who see that value in the worker — a woman or a man — who can do the best job and really inspire them to be all that they can be.

Hawes: I would say in my experience, the men who are in technology seem to be a lot more open-minded than the men who are not. So if you’re a man in technology out there, yay for you. I would just say find the organizations in which there are very good male role models that do support women and go to those companies and that will help change a lot of the old-school thinking.

Werner: I would agree with that point. Pick your companies wisely. Go to the companies that have the culture that you want. Don’t let them pick you. And as far as ways that those men can continue to help women: I go back to the sponsoring and mentoring idea. If men are out there vetting women and helping them grow and do projects that will let them shine, that’s great because there’s 95 percent of them in the C-suite. We need their help, too.

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HONOREES

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Tammy Hawes

Founder and CEO, Virsys12

by Cillea Houghton

MOST POWERFUL WOMEN

After growing up in a very small town and being one of only two women in her graduating computer science class from East Tennessee State University, you would think the odds of Tammy Hawes creating a thriving startup would be slim. But that is precisely what the Virsys12 CEO has accomplished. Hawes has worked in various software development positions throughout her 25-year career, making her way up through middle management and focusing primarily on health care. Soon after moving to Nashville, she was recruited by HCA and spent five years at the hospital industry leader, a time she says was a “phenomenal launching point.”

Hawes later worked as the president of Axis Accounting and was CIO/CTO of Paradigm Healthcare, among other positions. In 2011, she launched Virsys12 to provide technology solutions for businesses — again focused mainly on health care — in need of streamlining their processes.

Virsys12 hit the right note in Music City, garnering triple-digit growth in its first two years. Along with being one of the state’s largest Salesforce. com Cloud Alliance Partners, the company was in 2013 named the Technology Startup of the Year by the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce and the Nashville Entrepreneur Center. Hawes and the company also made history with the acquisition of Velox Consulting, making Virsys12 the first female-led technology company in Nashville to acquire another business.

Along with serving as a mentor at the EC, Hawes completed Belmont University’s Scarlett Leadership Institute, a program that aims to help participants grow in their positions and continue to hone the leadership and development skills required for executive-level roles.

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HONOREES

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Beth Hoeg

COO, Trinisys / President, Women in Technology of Tennessee

by Cillea Houghton

MOST POWERFUL WOMEN

To say Beth Hoeg is passionate about technology would be an understatement. Despite coming from a background in psychology and sociology, Hoeg found herself drawn to the IT world, a move that has resulted in a career of more than 20 years and includes both involvement in technology and broader organizational improvement initiatives.

As president of Women in Technology in Tennessee — she’s been on the organization’s board since 2011 — Hoeg also has been a strong voice for women in the growing Middle Tennessee technology sector. Earlier this spring, she was promoted to COO at Trinisys, the Brentwood-based developer of data automation software she joined in 2009. In that role and her previous position of vice president of operations, she handles internal operations and all professional service engagements for the company that serves industries ranging from health care to entertainment.

“Every day, I’m outside of my comfort zone doing new projects with new clients, learning new things,” Hoeg says. “I love executing projects that help solve problems for people so they can be better at their job.”

That expertise makes her a natural fit for WiTT, an organization that works to support women in all areas of tech while providing them with opportunities to give back to the community. Her civic involvement also includes a seat on the board of the Nashville Technology Council.

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Nicole Tremblett

VP of Strategy and Planning, HCA

by Cillea Houghton

MOST POWERFUL WOMEN

When it comes to variety, you could say that Nicole Tremblett has just about done it all in terms of technology — even though she has worked at the same company for two decades. A graduate of Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management, Tremblett has held numerous positions at HCA Holdings, the country’s largest for-profit hospital company. In her current role, to which she was named in the summer of 2013, she helps plan and strategize the priorities of an organization comprising more than 4,500 tech professionals.

Previously, Tremblett was CIO of Parallon’s Business Performance Group, a role that called on her to develop and implement initiatives focused on cost effectiveness, service quality and customer implementation within the support services division of HCA. Before that, she helped build the technology infrastructure of HCA’s physician services division.

“Health care is personal, right… It’s your family, your friends, you,” Tremblett said about the role of one of Nashville’s flagship industries.

Making her profession her passion is another element of Tremblett’s career. Like her fellow Most Powerful Women honorees, Tremblett is actively involved in the community, most notably as board chair of the Nashville Technology Council.

“Technology, it’s ever-changing, [it’s] challenging and [there’s] lots to do and big problems to solve,” she says of the field.

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HONOREES

Rachel Werner

Application Engineer, Built Technologies/Co-founder, Nashville Girl Geek Dinner

by Cillea Houghton

MOST POWERFUL WOMEN

You could say Rachel Werner has a love of technology in her blood. Her father was a network engineer who ran his own company, putting Werner in the position of assisting him on various projects.

“Technology was really in my genes from a young age,” Werner says.

In time, Werner also developed an entrepreneurial palate to the point where she started her own company and built a website selling handbags. Comparing the process of building a website to learning to paint, she says the experience taught her the value and power of being able to tap into the world of e-commerce.

“I think that’s what driven me to be involved in the tech world, because I can literally seize the moment,” she says.

A significant event in Werner’s career as a software developer was her enrollment in the Nashville Software School, an experience that helped sharpen her skill set and opened the door to a position at iostudio as a backend developer. Prior to that role, Werner’s resume included freelancing and working as a graphic and web designer and artist manager at Graham Artist Management. Last September, she made the move to Built Technologies, which markets software that simplifies processes for those in the construction lending sector.

In 2013, Werner co-founded with Kristin McKinney the Nashville Girl Geek Dinner, a local chapter of a worldwide movement aimed at inspiring women in the technology world. The group’s regular Nashville events aim to encourage local young women to purse careers in tech and bring together women in the field.

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HCA’s IT Girls program exposes young women to career paths they may not have considered

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You can’t be what you can’t see.

It was this simple idea — shared at a SXSW Interactive Conference session about the lack of women in the tech industry — that inspired Sasha Pickett to take action. The mother of three daughters and digital solutions manager at HCA Holdings immediately recognized the importance of educating young women about viable career paths, particularly in the field of technology. In an industry that is so male-dominated — 75 percent of the computing workforce is men, and the share of computer science degrees earned by women has dropped by more than half since 1985 — many women lack the confidence or tools to pursue a career in tech.

“The reason that there aren’t more women in computer science is because there aren’t more women in computer science,” Pickett says. Visibility is a major factor in encouraging high school and college-aged young women to even consider a career in the field, but unfortunately, most students don’t have access to successful female developers, designers or coders. In Nashville, Pickett set out to change that.

Aware of the success of New York City-based Girls Who Code, a nonprofit that recruits female leaders from the tech industry to provide intensive training and hands-on experience to the next generation, Pickmike kiNg

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ett reached out to HCA Chief Information Officer Marty Paslick to discuss the idea of creating a similar outreach to students in Nashville.

“I posted something [on Marty’s message board] and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could develop something like Girls Who Code at HCA?’ And Marty pretty much said, ‘Well, why don’t you?’” she recalls. “He was incredibly supportive. He encouraged some of his VPs to set up some meetings and put the word out to other people asking if they wanted to be involved.”

A committee of 10 started planning ways to make the vision a reality. HCA’s Community Relations department referred Pickett and her team to PENCIL Foundation, an organization that connects community resources to Metro Nashville Public Schools. The PENCIL team already had developed a college manual that could serve as a blueprint for a mentorship program targeting high school students. Thanks to the Academies of Nashville, an initiative of MNPS to provide students with advanced skills and real-world training in thematic courses of study, Pickett’s mentorship program quickly found a home at John Overton High School, the only school in the district to offer an Academy of Information Technology.

Pickett, with more support from Paslick, promoted the mentorship opportunity to other female employees in HCA’s tech department and hosted an informational kick-off meeting. Pickett is quick to share credit for her recruitment success with HCA’s service-centric culture and generous community service policy, which gives full-time employees 24 hours of paid time each year to perform the community service of their choice.

With 50 female mentors lined up, HCA’s IT Girls program launched in the fall of 2013, focusing strictly on Overton’s freshman class, which comprised 220 female students. Freshmen were exposed to each of the school’s four academies (Engineering, Health Sciences, Informa-

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‘it’s not just it but we’re trying to prepare them in other ways.’

Sasha Pickett

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tion Technology, and Event Management and Musical Performance) before deciding which one to enroll in for the rest of their high school tenure.

“Our hope was that by exposing them to women who worked in IT that we could influence their choice,” Pickett says. Over the course of the semester, she and her fellow mentors met with groups of one to six students for six 45-minute sessions.

Within the IT Academy are three focused areas: web design, web programming and networking.

Students choose between these three pathways to hone in one the sector of the tech industry that most appeals to their interests and skill sets.

For the 2014-15 school year, the program expanded to encompass both freshmen and sophomores. For the current school year, juniors were added. And this summer, students from all four grades will be mentored through IT Girls. The program now provides mentorship to 100 female students at Overton, working on professionalism and practical life skills as well as educating them about computer sciences and opportunities in the industry.

“When we meet with the freshmen, we go through how to look someone in the eye, introduce yourself and [give] a good handshake, and we practice” Pickett says. “So it’s not just IT, but we’re trying to prepare them in other ways.”

The HCA team also arranges job-shadowing opportunities for students to visit the company’s corporate campus. Fifty students visited for an afternoon in April to get a better understanding of the career opportunities available in tech and to be inspired about their future. As the most diverse school in the state of Tennessee, Overton High has students from 63 different countries, and Pickett says bringing them to a corporate campus is often eye-opening.

Still, not all of the young women are interested in pursuing careers in technology, but Pickett isn’t fazed by that.

“If you believe you’re going to have an impact on every single girl, you might be disappointed,” she says.

Instead, she continues to recruit strong, successful, capable female mentors and pair them with students. The program — which no longer needs as many people since Metro changed the academy model — now involves 25 HCA employees. Some have been involved since the beginning and others are new recruits.

“When you have a more diverse representation of employees, you’re going to end up ultimately with a better product,” Pickett says. “If you’re just drawing mostly on one segment of the population to develop something, they’re going to overlook things other segments might take into account. And the more diverse group of people we can have working on something, we will all benefit from that.”

ThE STATS

17%

Chief Information Officers at Fortune 500 companies are female

25%

Professional computing occupations in the U.S. are held by women

1985 2014 In 1985, 37 percent of computer science bachelor’s degree recipients were women. In 2014, that number was only 17 percent.

88

%

Information technology patents have male-only invention teams

74%

Women in technology who report “loving their work” Source: National Center for Women and Information Technology

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Childhood engineering

Demand for STEM education sparks new Nashville franchise, public-private partnerships

by Linda Bryant

The national, and local, focus on STEM continues unabated.

Nowadays, urgent calls to action to improve education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics are heard from a myriad of sources: top layers of government, C-suites of corporate America and even the offices of the Greater Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce.

Maud and Benjamin Otchere, the new franchisees of the Engineering for Kids Foundation of Greater Nashville, are tackling STEM issues at the grassroots level as local entrepreneurs.

The Otcheres, natives of Ghana who moved to Nashville from Milwaukee in 2014, say the franchise attracted them because Middle Tennessee is fertile ground for STEM-related businesses. They also liked the model of the for-profit EFK because it targets an underserved market, specifically young children who are not only grade school students but preschoolers and kindergartners as young as 4.

However, the Otcheres aren’t alone in seeing the need for focusing on the very young.

In April, the White House hosted a major event that promoted active STEM learning for the nation’s youngest children. In tandem with that effort, several for-profit comcourtesy Engineering For Kids

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panies announced their support and involvement in STEM education for the very young. For example, software giant Oracle pledged $200 million over the next 18 months to help bolster computer science skills for youngsters.

“There is absolutely a big need in Nashville to address STEM education,” Maud Otchere says. “The government is trying to encourage students to take on STEM subjects but is not always successful. I see for-profit businesses coming into this area to help boost interest and encourage more students to go into this field.”

Virginia-based EFK addresses this.

Launched in 2011 by former high school teacher Dori Roberts, EFK is a fast-growing children’s education entity with more than 150 franchises. It offers a range of handson classes including after-school programs, camps, evening classes, in-school field trips, workshops and birthday parties for kids ages 4-14. Activities are designed to be fun and include, for example, the designing and building of minirobots, hot air balloons and rockets.

The Otcheres — Maud is a veteran teacher who holds a master’s degree in sociology and childhood development while Benjamin is global operations controller at A.O. Smith Corp. — have an ambitious goal for their business.

“Our goal is to grow the program to all schools, homeschool groups and community centers in the greater Nashville area,” says Maud. “We’re also interested in working with nonprofits and churches.”

EFK of Greater Nashville currently operates in 18 schools and seven nonprofits in Williamson, Davidson, Wilson and Rutherford counties. They include some notable participants — Battle Ground Academy, Franklin Road Academy, Eakin Elementary, Harpeth Valley Elementary and Donelson Christian Academy among them.

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Maud handles the day-to-day operations of EFK as her full-time job, and Benjamin helps with accounting on a part-time basis.

“I’m a CPA and was interested to find out about how the numbers add up for a business like this,” Benjamin says. “All the research shows that STEMrelated fields have a very good growth potential.”

Wesley Hall, director of nonprofit group Tennessee STEM Innovation Network, says the demand for STEM skills in Tennessee is “huge.”

“Forecasts show that by 2018, our state will have over 100,000 STEM jobs, an increase of nearly 14,000 more STEM jobs from where we were in 2008,” Hall says. “Preparing students to be problem-solvers and critical thinkers with strong STEM skills will position us to be a ‘future ready’ Tennessee.”

Hall also sees significant opportunity for entrepreneurs and private industry innovators regarding the solving of the STEM education dilemma.

“STEM education is a natural area for the public and private sectors to come together,” Hall says. “We see private industry partners helping us provide real-world learning opportunities for students because they recognize that their future workforce is sitting in classrooms across the state.”

Janice Martin, director of extended day and after-school enrichment programs at Franklin Road Academy, says the school welcomes partnering with a for-profit business such as EFK. “Students always arrive smiling and eager to begin their project,” Martin says. “Parents are excited that we offer these programs after school as it enhances their STEM Lab experience. Engineering for Kids programs also support the mission of FRA to provide challenging educational experiences that allow our students to fully develop all of their natural curiosity and talents.”

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More building blocks

Tech Council adds to efforts aimed at growing students into qualified workers

by Geert De LombaerDe

Sandi Hoff calls it “a pilot program, part 2” and says the Nashville Technology Council is still experimenting with just how a series of summer coding and technology camps will look down the road.

But if the Council’s vice president of technology learning and development and her team hit the mark this summer, a possible third phase of the camp program should be quite impressive. After rolling out a limited set of offerings last year, the Tech Council is organizing 25 week-long camps at 15 sites in Davidson, Williamson and Sumer counties. If the camps sell out, 500 area children — versus just 123 in 2015 — will boost their skills in Scratch, Python and other languages as well as building web pages and robotics, among other things.

Hoff and Colleen Hoy, director of the Council’s We Build Tech initiative, say the camps — which cost $200 — hit a price point below others in the region and are broadening the appeal of tech work.

“The 2015 camps filled up quickly and we had interest from groups we hadn’t been trying to reach,” Hoy says. “We’re reaching students who might not have access to these types of programs during the year.”

To that same end, the Council will in July host its first We Build Tech Summit, a one-day gathering Hoff expects will draw 100 people, split evenly between area executives and educators looking to build bridges. A piece of that puzzle will come from Vanderbilt University’s Students Consulting for Nonprofit Organizations group, which is close to finishing a curriculum and related support materials — modeled after an HCA team’s work at Overton High School — that will guide both companies and educators through four years’ worth of productive partnership. Once finalized, the project will help ease the focus from running such a program to focusing on opening up the world of tech to young minds.

“Teachers want case-based learning,” Hoff says. “And looking at the big picture, we’re trying to identify metrics for these efforts. We want to measure impact, not output.” erIC eNGLaND

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WEARABLE

A Lee Company official using smart glasses with XOEye software

Workingclass vision

XOEye founder pays tribute to blue-collar roots with eyewear software company

by J. Holly McCall

Aaron Salow takes pride in his working class background.

So much so that the co-founder and CEO of Nashville-based XOEye has used his family’s experience to develop wearable technology to aid in the construction and HVAC industries.

“It’s always been about serving people,” says Salow (pronounced SAY-low).

“My dad and my uncles grew up in blue-collar environments,” he adds, noting the men are now in their 60s and showing a bit of the wear and tear that manual labor exacts.

Respectful of such work and wanting to create something useful for folks toiling in industrial jobs, Salow founded XOEye. The company develops software for smart glasses (think Google Glass for a more pragmatic use). Its products allow veteran technicians to upload content as a means of training green techs, as well as providing verification to customers of the service product.

In addition to developing the software for the glasses — which essentially serve as facial smart phones with screens and batteries scaled to fit — the Germantownbased company provides back-end systems for aggregating

and storing information, accessed through XOEye Vision, XOEye’s enterprise-grade, cloud-hosted platform.

As an example, Salow discusses XOEye’s partnership with Lee Company, the Cool Springs-based heating, cooling and appliance services company.

After circling each other from a technology perspective the last couple of years, Lee (which bills itself as having annual revenues of more than $150 million) placed XOEye’s single-largest smart glasses order in December, purchasing 500 pairs of the devices.

XOEye grew out of Salow’s early experience in manufacturing, with the entrepreneur having worked in a factory as a teen prior to college. As early as 2007, Salow recognized the need for the type of software he now develops, but he couldn’t find the hardware to support it.

By 2013, the hardware had evolved and XOEye announced a partnership with Vuzix early this year.

Based in Rochester, New York, Vuzix manufactures video eyewear and smart glasses products, serving much as an iPhone without apps would. In short, Vuzix provides the hardware while XOEye provides the software.

With the partnership now established, XOEye is fully focused on its technology. Salow gives a step-by-step account of how it works.

A Lee technician, for example, arrives at the site to service the HVAC unit, wearing the XOEye smart glasses. As the first step in the process, the tech takes photos of the work area and uploads them as part of the service ticket, providing visual evidence of the site before starting work.

The second step or use for the glasses is creating or accessing training videos — a particular passion of Salow’s.

“About 10,000 baby boomers are retiring each day, creating a huge training gap in skilled labor,” Salow says.

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“According to the U.S. Department of Labor, we are looking at a coming 10 million job gap.”

Master technicians can film videos as they work, documenting solutions gained through years of experience and not necessarily those taught in school. Those clips cannot only be viewed in real-time but also uploaded so that any technician in a given company can consume the knowledge.

In Lee’s case, the company is using XOEye’s technology to create and aggregate over 1,000 videos a week.

“It’s a great way to translate hands-on knowledge,” says Salow.

The tech on site can also use the glasses to call other technicians for guidance or phone the Lee triage center.

The latter is comprised of company veterans with 20-40 years of experience.

“They may not have the body to climb a roof, but they sure are smart,” Salow says. “They can say, ‘Move the blue wire left and red one right; I’ve seen that a million times.’”

Next comes a customer recap. As an example, a Lee technician was recently making a capital repair for a local government department. The tech live-streamed footage of the situation to his tech center, which then sent it to the agency’s chief financial officer. The CFO approved the estimated repairs instantly, a timely improvement that would normally take weeks or even months.

“The ability to share the intelligence to the customer increases trust and transparency,” Salow says. “There’s a lack of trust around the HVAC industry, a perception a guy is standing on your roof smoking a cigarette and

playing with his phone.”

XOEye products give “a level of trust. To be able to verify work is so important,” he adds.

Finally, the technician shoots a few photos of the finished job, a step that provides verification of the process to share with the client and subcontractors, as well as liability protection.

As significant as the Lee partnership is, Salow says there is much, much more to come, hinting XOEye will announce a couple of “huge” new partners in early summer.

Specifically, XOEye is one of a number of companies working to expand the use of wearable technology for industrial, military and health care uses. Most of those companies are based in the Silicon Valley and no others are located in the Southeast.

Salow says his team will continue to refine the company’s technology.

“What sets us apart from the competition is that we’ve built the kind of relationships with our customers so we can sit down with them,” he says. “We can go into the field with technicians, we can sit with managers.

When we refine, it’s customer-driven.”

What won’t change is XOEye’s position on the bluecollar vertical.

“Many people on our team came from that background — from construction, from manufacturing,” Salow says.

“We may move into manufacturing and utilities as we grow, but we will always be blue-collar,” he says. “It’s inherent in what we do.”

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5/12/16 9:25 AM

PROTECT

Treat your intellectual property like intentional property Focus on what sets apart your business

by DOUG SCHELLING

Each of the basketball teams in the NBA playoffs has the goal of winning it all, and each is very intentional regarding the steps it takes to get there. In fact, isn’t the whole purpose of setting a goal to take intentional steps toward reaching it? Otherwise, it would merely be a crockpot goal, where we “set it and forget it.”

In the business world, and particularly those in the technology sector, companies must act with intention to reach their goals, especially in the face of financial and budgetary restraints. This is especially true with regard to monetizing intellectual property assets.

While certain limited common-law IP rights exist in the United States — such as common-law trademark rights — the best protection for the technology at the heart of companies’ success comes from the intentional acts of filing patent, trademark or copyright applications or setting up and maintaining trade secret policies, as appropriate based upon the facts. With this in mind, companies should treat their intellectual property like intentional property.

In case your strategy thus far has been to ignore your IP and you haven’t filed applications or established appropriate policies, you have reaped the obvious short-term reward of keeping money in your pocket by not paying filing or attorney fees. This strategy, however, is likely shortsighted and can pose ample risk through missed opportunities and can leave you less than properly weaponized when attempting to efficiently and economically fend off a competitor in the future. Sometimes it is possible to clean up an IP matter after the fact, but often it is not. That said,

mopping up a mess often costs much more than proactively handling the IP matter on the front end.

In order to not inadvertently ignore your IP assets, you must identify them. The best practice is to take inventory of the reasons you are successful by considering the top three or four aspects of your business that give you an advantage in the marketplace. The following questions can help in the evaluation: • Which product or service name is (or will be) most recognized by consumers in connection with your product or service?

• With regard to technology, has your company come up with a particular improvement or methodology that makes its products or services stand out compared to the competition?

• Have your employees created works of authorship that, if copied verbatim or with substantial similarity by a competitor, would pose a problem to your business?

Doug Schelling, a member at Frost Brown Todd LLC, is a technology and patent attorney with more than 15 years of experience in areas including patents, trademarks, domain name disputes, trade secrets and IP licensing. fbtlaw.com

• Do you have a trade secret policy in place that requires certain information to be maintained as secret? Is that policy actively enforced?

When you have identified your most important IP assets, it is important to file as early as possible to procure a meaningful IP portfolio. Note that the U.S. patent system is a “first-to-file” system. In addition to the need for speed demanded by such an approach, the U.S. patent system also has certain rigid and unforgiving rules that could result in missed opportunities to obtain patent rights for your business if you delay filing.

For trademark and copyright applications, the strategy of early filing is supported by a host of reasons particular to each of those systems. By intentionally taking action, including negotiating favorable clauses with regard to the ownership and usage of existing and future IP, your resulting IP portfolio will ensure that you are equipped to achieve the best possible result from any future enforcement activity.

Acting with intention is critical to reaching any goal. And unlike the NBA playoffs that crown a single champion, the world of business allows many companies to end up champions — after they take the necessary intentional steps.

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Drone-ing on

Use of unmanned aerial vehicles faces uncertain flight by j. holly mccall

The drone debate continues to intensify.

During a period in which use of unmanned aerial vehicles is becoming an accepted tool in various industries — from agricultural to entertainment to emergency services — local entrepreneurs, STEM educators and enthusiasts are expressing concern that recent state legislation may hamper expansion of drone capacity and even infringe on personal property rights.

The critics’ concern comes, no less, as Tennessee schools are offering cutting-edge aerospace education, rendering the legislation limiting UAVs usage as less-than-ideal timing.

At issue locally are Senate Bill 2106, sponsored by Williamson County’s Jack Johnson, and corresponding House Bill 1811, sponsored by Cottontown’s William Lamberth and G.A. Hardaway of Memphis. Both were signed into law by Gov. Bill Haslam and take effect in July.

In short, the bills make a criminal offense of flying a drone, sometimes called an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), within 250 feet of critical infrastructure facility “for the purpose of conducting surveillance or gathering information about the facility.”

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Critics say the law is redundant and steps on federal regulations. They argue drone operators may unwittingly run afoul of the new law if infrastructure isn’t clearly labeled.

Even worse, they add, if personal property abuts such a facility, flying over their own land may constitute a criminal offense.

The law “infringes on property rights,” says attorney James Mackler of Frost Brown Todd.

Proponents of the legislation say it’s a reasonable step to take in today’s global terrorism climate.

Johnson sponsored the legislation after being approached by several advocacy groups concerned about drone use for terrorism and espionage, he says. Those groups include the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Tennessee Manufacturers Association, whose members include chemical storage facilities. Other groups working with Johnson on the bill were the Tennessee Sheriffs Association and management for the Tennessee Titans franchise.

The Titans, Johnson says, brought concerns about copyright issues. Law enforcement has issues with drones flying over crime scenes.

Despite the disparate interests of the groups working on the bill, Mackler says there’s likely a common root.

“Drones provoke a visceral reaction,” says Mackler, a national expert on the use and regulation of drones. “People get scared.”

A U.S. Army veteran of combat and the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG), Mackler says he gained an appreciakatie turner

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tion for how drones can be used for risk assessment while serving as a helicopter pilot in Iraq during several tours of duty following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Around 2012, Mackler foresaw the development of new regulations governing UAS and is now a national expert on their use and regulation, advising clients as diverse as government agencies and hotels.

Tension between state and federal agencies on drone regulation allowed the legislation to arise, he says.

The Federal Aviation Administration has taken a deliberate and incremental approach to integrating UAS, saying on the agency’s website the introduction of drones is “challenging for both the FAA and aviation community because the U.S. has the busiest, most complex airspace in the world.”

The FAA is clear in regulation of drones for public agencies, issuing a Certificate of Waiver or Authorization that permits agencies to operate or use a defined block of airspace. A COA includes special safety provisions and is issued for a specific time period.

Many states decided to take action and not wait on the feds. In 2015, 45 state legislatures considered 168 pieces of drone legislation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In 2016, 41 states were considering drone-related bills. At press time, seven states had passed 11 pieces of legislation.

Most bills were restrictive, but Alaska adopted a resolution supporting the aviation industry and urging the governor to make state land available to develop UAS technology.

Tennessee’s legislature did clarify in HB2376 that it’s permissible to use UAS on behalf of public and private institutes of higher education. That’s no doubt a nod to Middle Tennessee State University’s new concentration in UAS operations, offered through the school’s aerospace department. It’s the first such program in the state and one of only a handful of similar programs in the U.S. In fact, Mackler says, creation of new legislation may confuse drone operators and make the airspace more unsafe, as passage of the new laws creates a patchwork of state and federal guidelines.

“Early on, the federal government said [to states], ‘this isn’t going to work,’” Mackler says, pointing out that 500 feet above land is the point at which air becomes federal air space.

To backtrack a little, Mackler and entrepreneur Mark Cleveland became aware of the legislation when they began working with MTSU and Williamson County Schools’ officials on the creation of a UAV program for the new Nolensville High School. (See sidebar.)

Cleveland, co-founder and former owner of Elicit Brands LLC, maker of Swiftwick socks, now owns Hobby Express, an online company that builds and sells radio-controlled drones and airplanes.

“In order to get all that done, James and I were studying the authority the county needed to have in place to do it,” Cleveland says of creating the Nolensville curriculum.

Cleveland was involved in two pieces of legislation. One, sponsored by Sen. Mark Green of Clarksville, himself a veteran, is from 2015. Cleveland characterizes that bill as “good all the way through,” as it provides for safety training.

But after Johnson asked for his comments on SB2106, Cleveland studied the bill and what he read troubled him.

Cleveland submitted written comments stating the bill has “two fatal flaws . . . this bill in it’s (sic) current form creates a bad precedent going past established Federal Aviation Administration law to impose a new and purposeful intrusion by Tennessee on private property rights.”

At best, drone advocates say, it’s ‘feel good legislation.’

At worst, it’s government overreach and unnecessary, as Mackler says Tennessee is already leading the nation in drone legislation. To wit, it’s now a criminal offense for a drone to operate over hunters and fishermen, presumably to prevent surveillance by animal rights activists.

“The existing regulatory framework is pretty good,” says Mackler. “If someone flies a drone by your window to spy on you, you’re already protected by privacy laws.

We don’t need to create a new law specifically for drones.”

He adds the FAA claims jurisdiction over all airspace as soon as a craft leaves the ground, invalidating the need for state control.

There are several faults with the new law, Cleveland agrees.

“Who owns the space over my garage, my land?” he asks. “Do I own the grass? Do I own nothing above that?

Can I control the 200 feet above my house?”

No ethical drone operator would fly her or his craft over obviously labeled critical infrastructure, Cleveland says. But, he adds, the new law contains an expansion of the definition of ‘critical infrastructure,’ moving beyond electrical sub-stations or petroleum refineries to include chemical storage in warehouses — not such an obvious call, as warehouses may not be sufficiently labeled. “[The state] is attempting to extend state jurisdiction over neighboring property in clear conflict with federal principles about air space regulations that the federal government has published,” says Cleveland.

“Ignorance of the law isn’t a defense, but I’m sure there would be prosecutorial discretion,” Johnson says of innocent mistakes. “And maybe these facilities need to be more adequately labeled.”

But also, it’s naïve to suppose the law would protect the public from terrorists, opines Cleveland.

“That logic that a terrorist would use a drone to openly surveil a warehouse is thin,” he says. “Stealth and surprise is the element of terrorism, not flying a drone in plain sight to be accosted by a police officer.”

Mackler’s unease over the proliferation of legislation is economic.

“I’m concerned the proliferation of complicated legislation could create an economic impact and push businesses to other states,” he says. “Other states have reduced barriers. We are close to Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL) and Huntsville, which has a lot of air and space industry, and we have a lot of health care businesses. They also have potential applications.”

Johnson says continuing dialogue is key as drone use becomes pervasive, and Mackler has hopes for the future.

“What I’d like to see is an environment that encourages innovation and encourages people to come here for research and development,” he says. “We have a large entrepreneurial culture that would take advantage of it.”

‘Drones provoke a visceral reaction.’

James Mackler

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Street-wise

Nashville in early stages of ‘smart roads’ infrastructure

by WILLIAM WILLIAMS

Mentally visualize Nashville in, say, 2035 and you are being transported in your self-driving car along the city’s bustling streets — by this time lined with towering office and residential skyscrapers offering eye-catching ground-floor restaurant and retail businesses.

Pedestrians fill the sidewalks. Massive electronic video billboards are commonplace. Maybe — if we are so lucky — mass transit is evident.

In this Music City of the future, the vibe suggests Tokyo (on a much less-grand scale, of course).

Now take that visualization to the next level by picturing those streets and their accompanying elements (street lights, traffic lights, the aforementioned video billboards, etc.) as part of a “smart roads” infrastructure system efficiently powered by wind and solar technologies.

Difficult to imagine? No doubt.

But nationwide technological strides are rendering streets with a level of intelligence. Much work remains to be done and nobody truly knows where the effort might take us. However, the thought of having streets that literally take care of themselves, and yield safer and more productive vehicle and pedestrian movement, might be closer to reality than we think.

“Metro Nashville and the Tennessee Department of Transportation currently use intelligent transportation systems applications, such as the SmartWay cameras on the interstates, to effectively monitor and respond to traffic con-

gestion and roadway incidents,” says Bob Murphy, president of RPM Transportation Consultants. “Expanded applications of ITS are planned over the next several years.”

Though there are various elements of smart roads, perhaps the key characteristics include glow-in-the-dark roads, interactive lights, wind-powered lights, electric priority lanes and solar roadways. Driverless cars are a component, too, according to some. Much of the focus, to date, has been on highways and non-urban roads. But the technology, in theory, can be applied anywhere.

With interactive lights, for example, motion sensors will allow for a more noticeable brightness for a specific road segment when a vehicle approaches that particular stretch.

When the vehicle passes, the street lights will slowly dim.

Such technology could create greater safety, while reducing energy consumption, on Nashville’s pikes at certain latenight hours (say, 11 p.m. to 3 a.m.) when vehicular travel is less intense than it is earlier in the evening.

The aforementioned electric priority lane could be more universally applied — in terms of both time and place — in Nashville. Drivers can charge their electric vehicles simply by driving in those lanes. Specifically, the so-called induction priority lanes will offer embedded magnetic fields that allow for charging on the go.

As to the immediate future, Murphy says adaptive traffic signal control systems are seeing more use nationwide. They use real-time data from traffic sensors to identify current traffic conditions and incrementally adjust signal timings in response to traffic demand and system capacity.

“ATSC will be implemented soon for specific corridors in Mt. Juliet and Franklin,” he says. “In the future, it could also be implemented in Nashville on appropriate corridors to improve intersection performance.”

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Building smartly Nashville shows potential for creating smart structures

by WILLIAM WILLIAMS

Nashville is not a national leader in “smart buildings.”

But Floyd Shechter, president of locally based SmartSpace, sees potential to address that deficiency.

“Repurposing existing buildings provides the most cost-efficient means of creating smart buildings,” he says.

A smart building renders major energy savings by deploying technology and materials that offer hyper-efficient appliances, electrical systems, HVACR, plumbing and structural elements.

It is worth noting, that smart buildings and environmentally friendly buildings (often called green buildings) are not necessarily the same thing — though many of the latter incorporate elements of the former.

Specifically, smart buildings are controlled by a building automation system (BAS), the automatic centralized control of a building’s systems — including heating, ventilation/air conditioning, lighting and communication systems. If met, a BAS yields maximum occupant comfort and energy consumption efficiency.

Spencer Donaldson, chief financial officer of Nashville-based MiKen Development and co-founder of mobile parking management application company Meter’d Inc., notes two key area smart buildings: the Music City Center, for which Bluetooth Smart (low-energy) wireless technology’s way-finding app provides conference attendees with directional information and Nashville Fire Station 19, equipped with smart energy management panels that monitor energy. The station is U.S. Green Building Council Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design LEED platinum-certified, the first of its type in the Southeast.

Donaldson says Nashville is “relatively behind the times” regarding smart buildings.

For that to change, the city will need to see a continued influx of technology companies while simultaneously having those who seek new or adaptive reused building see the value in technology-driven systems and infrastructure, according to Sheila Dial-Barton, a principal with Nashville-based EOA Architects.

“Architects and engineers are taking the lead educating our clients to the new technologies available,” Barton says. “Some clients are hesitant to try a new system or new technology if untested in the market while others want to be on the forefront, leading the way.”

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LEED-CERTIFIED Shechter says Gulch Crossing, a Gold LEED-certified eightstory structure that offers a mix of office, retail and parking space, and Two Rivers Corporate Centre I, II and III are quality examples of local smart buildings.

“Gulch Crossing is one of the few local examples of a ground-up ‘Chicago School’ urban-style smart building in both its form and interior function,” Shechter says. “The building is smart technologically and environmentally.”

SMART CONTROL “Just as sustainable materials and technologies were more costly years ago, with more stringent energy codes along with a broader market, these costs are continuing to decline,” Barton says. “This can also be said of things like LED (lightemitting diode) lighting or VRF (variable refrigerant flow) mechanical systems. We have advanced through the years to digital thermostats, and now it is commonplace to see Nests (smart thermostats) or similar controls.”

Even better: While the overall cost of building automation systems has traditionally been a big hurdle for owners of smaller or mid-sized buildings, the emergence of Internet of Things technologies is lowering the price. One study showed that using wireless sensors can cut deployment costs by 30 percent.

CLEAN AIR “MiKen is implementing the Trane CleanEffects Whole House Air Filtration System at our Treaty Oaks Cottages development in The Nations,” Donaldson says. “The system uses patented technology to eliminate up to 99.98 percent of allergens. This is a no-brainer since Nashville is regarded as a city with above-average allergens.”

top: ERIC ENGLAND, middle: courtesy nest, bottom: courtesy MiKen DEVELOPMENT

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Hitting the right note

EC’s Project Music accelerator aiming higher in its second year

by Holly McCall

‘We realized we needed to help Nashville be THE place to take your music tech startup’ HEATHER McBEE

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When Chicago native Marcus Cobb was told the best place for him to develop his music technology business was through Project Music in Nashville, he was taken aback.

“We were skeptical about Nashville,” says Cobb, of Jammber, which markets a suite of administrative tools for music industry members. “There wasn’t a lot of information about Project Music at the time. We said, ‘We’ve got families in Chicago.’”

As it turned out, Cobb says his experience in Project Music’s 2015 accelerator program was ‘a magical ride’ — so much so that he changed the entire premise of Jammber and moved his family here.

Now in its second year, Project Music is a vertical of the Nashville Entrepreneur Center dedicated to growing and launching startups at the intersection of tech and music. The program is directed by music industry veteran Heather McBee, who joined the EC in late 2014 and says the initial goal was to pull together a 14-15week accelerator as the downtown incubator has done with other industries.

Less than two years later, Project Music has grown to offer year-round support with pre-flight programs three times annually.

“We realized we needed to help Nashville be the place to take your music tech startup,” she says. “You can’t be successful at it if you are only supporting music tech and music entrepreneurship 14 weeks out of the year. You need to do something year-round to help foster the ecosystem.”

The first class featured eight businesses, mostly in the idea stage. This past year, Project Music received 144 applications that started with a survey comprising more than 20 questions. A group of EC staffers, key mentors and industry experts took a first pass at them, evaluating the concepts’ core technologies, their fit with Project Music’s aims and the level of their development. In-person meetings helped McBee and her team whittle down the candidate list to around 25. Their concepts were then handed to Project Music’s investor group for the final cut.

The process, which started in September, produced a cohort of seven businesses by early this year. Most of them are — as opposed to the 2015 class — in early stages of product development, with beta products in the marketplace and real, actual users. Two of the start-

ups, image-guided music discovery venture Snapwave and concert merchandise play MyFansDemand, are now based in Nashville. Others hail from San Diego, Montreal, Ukraine and places between.

The startup teams are going through a program that has been refined since the program’s inception. Their first week was a boot camp featuring 45 speakers. Since then, the structure has loosened, giving participants the chance to work at their own pace on a curriculum that combines hard skills such as building financial models with customer development and learning how to build an advisory board.

Cobb, with a background in technology, music and fashion design, credits McBee and Project Music for spurring him to overhaul his business model and helping Jammber build a roster of about 130 clients.

“Heather is one of the most connected people in the Nashville music scene,” Cobb says. “She brought opportunities we still have. We got to pitch in front of businesses we would have had to cold call.”

Launching it in August 2013, Cobb originally conceived of Jammber as a LinkedIn for the music industry.

Through Project Music, he realized people in the industry weren’t interested in another social network. The frank talk opened his eyes to the flaws in his business.

“Accelerators are intense,” Cobb says. “They will tell you your baby is ugly to see if you care about your baby.”

In Week 11 of their 14-week program, Cobb and Jammber executed a complete pivot. After learning how complicated it can be to pay musicians, he realized the need for a simplified platform to facilitate paperwork such as union-related forms, tax documents and various things for record labels. For artists, Jammber now markets a platform for talent discovery, team building and document execution. Labels have access to data services, payroll services and publishing administration. Payment processes that used to take months can now be handled in two weeks via Jammber.

“We had to tear it down and pitch all over, but we got a lot of support from Nashville and even New York,” Cobb says.

Earliest of all to provide backing was Sony Nashville.

Another early client, Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Label Group, remains a client. Jammber now has a regional operations office here and Cobb has hired three more people in Nashville. On top of that, his team has raised $500,000 locally — at a time, he says, when he was told “there’s no money in Nashville” for ideas such as his.

“The community will tell you what they want. Project Music was all about listening at a time when you think you have figured out,” he says. “If you submit to that process, good things happen.”

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In the Tech Space If technology is largely about being “on the cutting edge,” then it makes sense that many office spaces home to technology companies are rather edgy themselves. For these spaces, staidly applied carpet, decorative wood furniture and oil paintings depicting nature scenes simply would not work.

It’s all about the sleek, airy and hip.

Not surprisingly, many Nashville-based tech companies work within such offices. Allow the Post to take you on a visit to a few. > William Williams ERIC ENGLAND

ERIC ENGLAND

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cool Concept North Nashville’s BowTruss Building borders on the industrial. And Concept Technology’s office with the structure highlights that vibe with purpose.

Exposed mechanicals, suspended lights, concrete floors and a large bar give the space an open and inviting feel, spurring employees of the managed IT services provider to maximize their productivity — and have fun doing so. A bonus: garage doors that allow for light and air circulation.

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On the office Edge[net] Is Sidco Drive becoming, dare we say, trendy?

The past few years, the 100 Oaks-area industrial street has landed some high-profile tenants, including craft beer stalwart The Black Abbey Brewing Co. Edgenet, a software-as-a-service provider, has operated from Sidco for only a few months, and the company’s work space still has a fresh and clean feel.

Marked by light neutral colors, a spiral staircase of sorts and highly contemporary furniture, the Edgenet space seems perfect for folks in the content management and product sales configuration solutions business.

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Table tennis Technology Even in 2016, any work place that has pingpong tables is, to put it bluntly, worthy of praise.

Throw in a lime color element and you’ve got an office of sheer beauty.

Such is the case of the work space at TechnologyAdvice, whose gritty South Nashville location near the Tennessee State Fairgrounds is well suited for young tech-savvy workers who might find a suburban setting anything but stimulating.

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PreEMMAnently presented Rolling Mill Hill-based email marketing platform Emma offers a work space that is as eye-catching as its logo of a bespectacled and bob-cut young woman.

Brick walls, a variety of flooring types (including stained concrete and contemporary checked carpet), exposed mechanicals and lots of metal and wood yield an earthy yet sophisticated aesthetic.

The company’s Trolley Barns space also is extremely open, creating a nice flow and visuals.

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Well-Rounded work space RoundingWell could have a depressing office — yet still be a cool place to work thanks to the Midtown building from which it operates.

The health care tech company, which provides a Webbased system connecting patients and clinicians, occupies the top floor of the Chris-More Building, a handsome vintage masonry structure located at the northwest corner of Church Street and 17th Avenue North.

Highlighted by a high ceiling and lots of exposed brick, the space’s multiple windows offer employees strong views of Midtown’s fast-changing built environment.

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ERIC ENGLAND

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Back from the Edge

Proctor helps jumpstart Nashvillebased SaaS company

by Linda Bryant

In June 2014, Edgenet was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and facing a dubious future.

Roll forward to 2016 and the Nashville-based softwareas-a-service company — one of the city’s first and most storied within its industry — is experiencing a dramatic turnaround worthy of a screenplay.

CEO and co-owner Steve Proctor shares a quote from Rocky IV to describe the experience: “It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward.”

Proctor, unquestionably a prime-time player in the company’s resurrection, was a longtime employee at Edgenet before it was sold for $70 million to New York investment group Liberty Partners in 2004. He left the company in 2008 to take a position as technology sales manager at Oracle, where he oversaw accounts for Nissan, Genesco, Asurion and several other multi-billion-dollar customers.

Proctor’s transition to Oracle wasn’t easy but it was ultimately successful. Of the company’s sales representatives, he ranked in 2013 among the top 1 percent for sales.

“I’m glad I left Edgenet when I did, but it wasn’t the soft landing I anticipated,” says Proctor, who would in June 2014 team with a group of investors to acquire the company for $7.98 million. “I was able to stay in Nashville, which was like being the Pluto of the Oracle world. Oracle’s sales culture is one of the most revered — and the toughest — in the world. One of the lessons I took away was learning how to swim with the sharks. I call it my ‘have-to moment.’ I learned a ton, and I ended up bringing it back to Edgenet.”

Proctor says he couldn’t have predicted that he would end up buying his former employer. But when he saw Edgenet struggle, his passion for the company and its employees began to take over. The Chapter 11 bankruptcy was the last straw, and he realized he was willing to go to drastic measures to try to buy — and hopefully save — the company.

“Yes, I’d left the organization, but I was always keeping tabs about what was going on,” Proctor recalls. “It felt like

some of their executives made decisions that ended the careers of a lot of talented people.”

Watching from the sidelines

Edgenet traces its origin back to the mid-1990s when it began as a dial-up Internet service. At its height, the company had almost 300 employees and brought in over $30 million in yearly revenue. Over time, the company moved from a dial-up service to a SaaS operation with clients that included retailers, distributors, media websites and suppliers in the home goods, automotive and sporting goods industries.

One of those clients, Home Depot, ended up being a major factor in Edgenet’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy. After several years of doing business with Home Depot, the two companies wound up in court battling over a major copyright infringement lawsuit for which the verdict ended up going Home Depot’s way.

The facts of the case were that Home Depot had contracted in 2004 with Edgenet to develop a classification system to organize the former’s product database. Under the contract, Edgenet retained ownership of the system but granted Home Depot a license to use it as long as Edgenet remained Home Depot’s data-pool vendor.

Home Depot ultimately decided to build its own inhouse database, and in 2009 the Georgia-based company moved to end its Edgenet contract and exercised an option to acquire the perpetual license by sending Edgenet a check for $100,000.

Not surprisingly, the news didn’t go down well with Edgenet.

The company filed a copyright infringement suit alleging Home Depot started developing its own database before exercising its payout option. In 2011, a court ruled that Home Depot had obtained a license to use the platform in any way it pleased. Since then, the case has become a bit of a poster child for the dangers of unrestricted licenses.

Meanwhile, Proctor was watching — and growing increasingly concerned — from the sidelines. He says losing the Home Depot legal battle was a big blow, one compounded by other problems.

“There had been a lot of changes at Edgenet,” he says.

“There was a new management team and they burned through a lot of cash and talent. Management was opaque and not very transparent and it affected morale.

“Here’s a company that once had almost 300 employees that had been through over a dozen RIFs (reduction in force),” he says. “They were down to about 50 employees?

Can you imagine what it felt like [to work there]?”

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An unlikely return

Cash-strapped and losing clients quickly, Edgenet had originally planned to pursue an out-of-court sale as a solution. But the company, instead, sought Chapter 11 protection in Delaware bankruptcy court in January 2014 after creditors began fighting over how to divvy up the proceeds. At the time, Edgenet has 55 employees and was valued at only $5.5 million, a mere shell of its self from 10 years earlier when it sold for $70 million.

Proctor spent from January to May 2014 trying to get from Edgenet the financial data needed to help the investor team raise capital to buy the company’s assets.

But it felt like the deck was stacked against the group.

“We hired lawyers at our own expense to try to make them give up the information,” Proctor says. “They finally released all this data [in mid-May], and we only had a couple of weeks to make things happen. I’m sure they were thinking if they held it off long enough, we wouldn’t have a chance.”

A dramatic scramble to find investors and go before a judge before an early June 2014 auction date for Edgenet followed. A couple of investors declined to participate, and it didn’t look as is there was sufficient time to make the deal happen, he says.

With time of the essence, Proctor met investor Bill Nutter of Nashville-based Resolute Capital Partners (formerly 10th Street Capital). An affable and sharp entrepreneur, Nutter wanted to invest. So the pair sought a two-week extension from the court to work on their bid. However, the judge gave them only four days, which forced Nutter to drop out. At the time, Nutter needed the services of an unidentified third party to create the required documentation for the bid. But the company was tied up with another transaction and, as such, could not complete the documentation within the strict fourday timetable.

Then at the last minute, the entity was able to participate, thus allowing Nutter to resume his effort with Proctor.

The hustle to get the correct documentation to the court on time was, as Proctor describes it, a frantic scene that suggested the deal would fail. The judge needed the documentation for a 9:15 p.m. June 6 deadline and the papers were submitted in person, barely meeting that time requirement.

There were two bids, made via auction, for Edgenet, with Laguna Hills, California-based Parallax Capital Partners also bidding. Proctor’s team won after the bidding concluding at about 3:15 a.m. Other investors at the time included Tim Choate, Chris Dowdy (Edgenet chief financial officer), Jim Spalding, Tim Stafford (Edgenet executive vice president) and Ernie Williams IV. “Bill Nutter and Resolute Capital were crucial,” Proctor says. “Without Bill and his partners, it’s unlikely Edgenet would be a Nashville-based tech business.”

Reviving company culture

Since the mid-2014 date Proctor and the investor group acquired Edgenet’s assets, the company has been on the upswing. As a part of the bankruptcy filing, Edgenet’s debt was eliminated or restructured, allowing the com-

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pany to restart with a clean slate — and in decent financial condition.

Much like a remodeler who is confident in the bones of a house that needs work, Proctor says the company’s core products when he bought it were strong and viable. He thinks that’s likely the one positive result of the company spending so much in the years after it was acquired for $70 million by Liberty Partners.

“Some of that money went into the products,” he says. “And the products were in pretty good shape. But our customer base was leaving in droves. We grabbed them by the shirttails and said, ‘You’re not going anywhere.’”

To address the problem, the company created Edgenet Academy, a hands-on training program aimed at helping customers learn how to best use Edgenet products. And since it was clear many customers were discouraged or disengaged, Edgenet made them a deal hard to refuse.

“We basically bribed them,” Proctor says with a laugh. “We said, ‘We’ll fly you to Nashville and put you up in the Omni Hotel. We’ll show you all our best practices and how this thing should work.’”

Proctor says he knew Edgenet Academy was a winner when one of the company’s most “curmudgeonly” customers was fully converted, so much so that he ceremoniously donated the jacket off his back as a symbol of his gratitude.

“Every organization that’s been here for the academy has written something unprompted about how great the experience was,” Proctor says.

Case in point: Mark Berner, catalog department manager at Troy, Michigan-based Continental Automotive Systems Inc., wrote this to the company in an unsolicited note: “It’s no secret that our relationship with Edgenet in the past was rocky, at best. So going into the Edgenet Academy workshop, we had no idea what to expect. To our delight, we found the workshop to be very insightful, thought-provoking, action-driven, and it greatly exceeded our expectations. It was very clear that the Edgenet team was committed to working not only improve the processes, but to improve the working relationship with [participating] companies. That’s huge.”

‘Unwinding the PTSD’

Because the remaining Edgenet employees had been demoralized, taking care of them became a major focus of the new management and ownership.

“In our very first meeting we said, ‘We’re not going to hide valuable information,’” Proctor says. “‘We’ll show you how we’re doing every month. It’s confidential information, but we’ll share it.’”

In 2015, Edgenet moved from its former Brentwood location to a new 10,000-square-foot headquarters on Sidco Drive in South Nashville. The work space is cool in a “techie/Google offices” kind of way. There’s a meditation area, a yoga room and a soon-to-be completed rooftop deck at which a songwriters’ night will be scheduled once a week.

“The first year was really just unwinding all the PTSD

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has been quality leadership is the primary reason for the turnaround.

“It feels disingenuous to say any one person or executive or team of executives is responsible for it,” he says. “It’s taken trust throughout the organization, and that’s really what’s responsible for it — everyone working together.”

Nutter, the aforementioned Edgenet investor, describes Edgenet’s turnaround as a “game-changer.”

“Since we’ve invested in Edgenet, the company’s transformation has truly been remarkable,” Nutter says. “When my partners and I began working with Steve and the Edgenet team in 2014, they pledged to create a culture of customer focus and service enhancement — and that vision has come to life. We feel its future as a leading technology enterprise is stronger than it has ever been.”

Other locals have taken notice, too.

“We’re thrilled to see Edgenet flourish as a tech enterprise,” says Chris Hefley, CEO and co-founder of Franklin-based business-to-business project management company LeanKit. “The Nashville tech community is closely intertwined, so when one thrives, we really all benefit from their successes.

“Edgenet’s accomplishments drive notoriety, tech talent and innovation inside our city limits,” Hefley adds. “It expands the pool of potential top-tier employees, investors and other stakeholders for LeanKit and other tech businesses.”

that goes along with a company that was shrinking at such a fast rate,” Proctor says. “We talked about changing our name, but we just decided to take on the ‘sprinters-with-ankle-weights’ past. It would have been too easy to win with a different company name.”

Indeed, Proctor sees the Edgenet name as a badge of honor.

“I want people to know there’s a company in town that’s employee- and customer-focused,” Proctor says.

“A company that’s innovative with the very best products and who works with incredible partners like Google and large manufacturers and retailers. A company that’s doing the right thing and it’s paying off.

“There’s amazing electricity here,” Proctor adds.

“There’s a brackish element where people who have worked here for 20 years are working alongside employees just out of college. It’s like a start-up culture but with a lot of history and experience. We’re attracting some of the youngest and best talent in the city.”

Edgenet now has well over 80 employees, and Proctor says the company has been profitable every quarter since its reboot.

“We had an ecosystem of about 1,300 manufacturers in the first part of 2015,” he says. “By the end of 2015, it was close to 6,000. Our 12-month annual recurring revenue will have grown between 40 and 50 percent over the next six months.”

Proud of Edgenet’s non-hierarchical and “flat” company culture, Proctor doesn’t believe what many feel

With a 360° perspective, we are with you at every turn.

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The Nashville Health Care Council panel discussion with Zane Burke, left, and Mike Schatzlein, right, moderated by Ed Cantwell.

Aligning forces for interoperability A discussion of key health care players’ efforts to define, build data-sharing standards

In what seems like very short order, interoperability — the concept of getting health care IT systems to efficiently communicate and share data with each other — has become one of the hotter topics in the sector. Last spring, local power players HCA Holdings, Community Health Systems, LifePoint Health, Saint Thomas Health and Vanderbilt University Medical Center launched the Center for Medical Interoperability to be a providerside advocate for such efforts and to look to line up with CommonWell, a coalition of vendors.

The Nashville Health Care Council recently hosted a panel discussion on the challenges with and opportunities arising from bringing together so much data housed at the nation’s health care providers. The conversation was hosted by CMI Executive Director Ed Cantwell and also featured Zane Burke, president of IT giant Cerner, and Mike Schatzlein, senior vice president and group ministry operating executive for Ascension Health, the parent of Saint Thomas. Here are some excerpts from their chat.

Driving change, surrendering a competitive advantage or two

Cantwell: What’s the return on investment of interoperability, which as an ex-CEO just scares me, right? It’s like asking what’s the return on investment for electricity because, believe it or not, that’s a pretty good analogy of what we’re doing. Electricity has enabled innovation on both the device side and the system side.

So let’s talk about the barriers. Dr. Schatzlein, what do you see as the key barriers to achieving this goal?

Schatzlein: If we could come together and create a lab that would certify standards while working with the various vendors and acknowledging and using the work that they’ve done, we are in a position then to go ahead and implement that technology and, frankly, sort of enforce that technology. Because folks that can’t get to those standards are going to be less appealing to us for cost and safety and other reasons.

So I think the main barrier of calling providers together and then getting commitments from the crucial providers — [HCA Chairman and CEO] Milton Johnson’s sitting right in front of me but also on the board are [CHS Chairman and CEO] Wayne Smith, [LifePoint Chairman and CEO] Bill Carpenter, Jeff Balser from Vanderbilt. Of the board, five of us are Nashville people.

We represent the biggest of the health care companies and so, by coming together and funding this on a membership model and setting up the labs here in Nashville to do the testing, I think that opens up the possibility.

It’s been very heartening to see that folks like Cerner are bringing the technology, the intellectual property Donn Jones

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that they’ve developed in this space to the table. We will develop standards that are much better because of the participation of the vendors who are actually making the devices.

Cantwell: Just a fine point — not a commercial for the Center — but the disciplined process of using procurement power to drive transformation, but not in a draconian way, in a way where vendors know what to bill to and where the R&D risk is reduced. Almost every other industry does this very well so that there’s predictability on what to invest in. There’s an acknowledgement: Don’t invest in the plumbing. Appropriately commoditize the plumbing, invest in the innovation.

So from a solutions provider point of view, what do you see as the key barriers? Hopefully, we will have removed one of them.

Burke: Interoperability means a lot of different things depending on your vantage point, and for us as it relates to the device world ... If there’s a standard, we can go innovate on that standard in a very robust way and even partner with third parties and venture capitalists to go do some of that work as well because there’s some amazing work to be done.

We actually direct a project, which some of you may be familiar with, around meaningful use, which was around secure email for physicians. We actually came up with that idea and donated the 150,000 lines of code to do that project, so that was kind of one of our first donations into the public domain.

From a broad-scale EMR perspective, one of the things we’re very passionate about is the lack of a national patient identifier. Just politically speaking ... the legislation gets deferred every single year to actually have a national patient identification, and the lack of that means that it is incredibly challenging to match who the person is that’s receiving the care. We are part of a consortium called CommonWell along with about 40-plus other companies, really driving standards around the national patient identifier. We’re part of the Argonaut team, which is working around how do you create open standards for development on EMRs It’s in the infancy level. There are barriers on the provider side in that true interoperability business model-wise is not good, historically speaking, for the providers. So I’ll just say that. The connectivity in their own network has been one of the competitive advantages. “How do I get physicians closer to my hospitals?

How do I connect them and make my referral network stronger?”

Those are real challenges in my own business model.

We’ve gotten paid for interface for a long time. We all are going to have to say that this is about a greater good for the clinicians so there’ll be an experience around that at the clinician level, for the patient and we’re headed toward an at-risk world. And the closer we get to that at-risk world, the more we’re going to have to have interoperability because we’re going to have to have access to the data. I look at it and it says, “He or she who has the data will win.”

‘Industry has solved these problems in every other space’

Cantwell: What should the government do? What do we want out of the legislative side of the government and what do we expect of the regulatory side?

Schatzlein: [Sen. Lamar Alexander] has been in communication with President Obama over the precision medicine initiative and is tying this all in with that.

They would all rather that there be a private-sector solution. It gets very Big Brotherish when government gets into this area so whether you’re liberal or conservative, you probably don’t want the government in this area. I am less familiar with the patient identifier initiatives than maybe some others here, so I’m going to steer us back to interoperability, but that’s sort of an area where we can establish standards as providers.

We can establish labs here in Nashville to test against those standards […] But I don’t think we need the government to help us with any of that. Now moving over to the regulatory agencies, they have had their toe in these waters here and there, and lab equipment is a perfect example of where they’ve been involved.

The FDA has been involved, the FTC, some others have been involved in creating some standards. And I think that we would hope that they would recognize that, if we can stand up a strong private-sector, provider-based entity that can develop these standards, that they’ll sign on with them rather than competing with us in the standards development area.

We’re trying to make things not only safer for the patient, but easier for the innovators. I sat next to a young innovator at a similar function — I think Ed was there — maybe six or eight months ago. He’s got a company building something he can’t get it by the FDA. He and his venture capital funders are going to take a bath because he’s got a great idea that ought to be able to work. But the cost of getting by that regulatory barrier for him were too great.

Burke: We have to really move past the government engagement in this space. Industry has solved these problems in every other space. You look at Bluetooth: You get in a rental car at Avis and it pops up on the screen “Would you like to connect your phone?” This should not be any different than that and it’s up to the collective we to get our stuff together, so to speak, and really agree on those standards.

I look at government […] as a supportive role. So support the standards, help facilitate the standards.

But this is a problem that should best be solved by us and the collective us is the providers and the vendor community. I think that, particularly in this case, this one is solvable. When you look at some of the other interoperability pieces, there’s some really big challenges in there. This one is very solvable and if we can get everybody just to stay on the same page around the standards piece of that, I think the innovation will be amazing. […] We can really begin to unleash some of the power of that core plumbing if we can get the innovation lined up next to it.

‘We can really begin to unleash some of the power of that core plumbing if we can get the innovation lined up next to it.’

Zane Burke

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The recent physical changes in Nashville’s landscape have been stunning — and there’s more to come.

But growth also continues to change the MSA’s outlying areas. Those factors have created new development questions to answer and challenges to meet. Boom will tackle these topics and more.

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More than baby steps

Industry groups, government agencies appear to be getting on the same page

Aiming for a lasting moonshot

‘We’re trying to make things not only safer for the patient, but easier for the innovators.’

Mike Schatzlein

Cantwell: Should this be a moonshot? The patient safety movement is a movement focused on preventable deaths. I recently spoke at their conference; their goal is zero preventable deaths by 2020. Lofty, right? But admirable.

So one of the things we have in front of us — and really, it will be our boards and our members’ decisions — if we get enough concinnity to […] say, “By 2020, by 2018, we will start to build to an open platform.” So I’ll put one of my vice chairmen of the center on the spot: Should it be a moonshot or should it be a marathon?

Schatzlein: Well, I’m impatient when it comes to patient safety and you know I used to be a surgeon and it’s open, fix, close. It’s not a big, complicated, long process. On the other hand, it has to be sustainable.

So it kind of needs to be both. If you look at the moonshot, we got a lot out of the moonshot and then we never went back to space in the next two decades or three decades.

I think we need to set goals for the 2018-2020 period to get the standards out there, to get the lab up and be testing to the standards. But we’ll never be done.

The mission will never be over. So I’d like to see lots of resources put to it a quickly as we can, recognizing that it’s going to have to be both. We’re going to have to run the first 200 yards real fast and then go the rest of the 26 miles at a more sustainable pace.

The push for more efficient and productive handling of health care data got another boost earlier this year at the industry’s high-profile Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society convention. There, 17 major health IT developers, 16 large healthcare provider organizations and 17 healthcare associations and medical societies added their names to a list of players who have pledged to work toward greater interoperability.

Soon after everybody returned home from HIMSS, the Nashville-based Center for Medical Interoperability announced it is partnering with the Healthcare Services Platform Consortium, a similar organization based in Arizona. Together, the groups will work together to leverage the voices and purchasing power of their members — which include HCA Holdings, Saint Thomas Health, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Intermountain Healthcare and LSU Health — toward the development of technological platforms that can better accept and share patients’ health information.

“There is a natural handoff between our work at the medical device and enterprise service levels, and HSPC’s platform for interoperable clinical applications,” Ed Cantwell, executive director of the Center for Medical Interoperability, said at the time. “We look forward to working with HSPC to ensure we both get it right.”

The leaders of HSPC say they are taking a software architecture approach — similar to the iOS and Android mobile device platforms — that will support services and models on which providers and vendors can more quickly build applications. Oscar Diaz, HSPC’s CEO, said in March that his group’s membership, combined with CMI’s, “represents a strong market force to achieve cross healthcare interoperability.”

Commenting on the HIMSS announcement, Waller Partner Steve Blumenthal struck a similar note, saying regulators appear to be veering away from a top-down approach that “has proven to be akin to using a jackhammer to dig a garden.”

“The federal government appears to have realized that the next phase of work toward interoperability would be better achieved by having all of the gardeners sit down together with their seeds and hand trowels and collectively figure out the best way to plant the garden,” Blumenthal wrote. > Geert De Lombaerde NASHVILLEPOST.COM

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The

Black Abbey Fellowship Hall Pints, Flights, Tours, Fellowship

Cutting through the noise

Cognitive computing success story Digital Reasoning aims to help health care cross its data divide

by J. Holly McCAll

Some answers to great problems come from quite inauspicious beginnings.

In the case of Tim Estes and Digital Reasoning Systems, one of the highest-profile technology companies to come out of Middle Tennessee in a long time, repeated unsatisfying experiences with the perennial foil of writers and texters — autocorrect — started a journey into cognitive computing. Less than two decades later, Estes and Digital Reasoning have taken a lead in complex problem-solving at the highest levels of national security, finance and, more recently, health care.

The genesis of a business that has raised more than $70 million was in Estes’ frustrations with the popular software he was using to write his papers at the University of Virginia in the late 1990s.

“It was something that seemed dumb. But you know, you can do a bullet list and if you backspace, it undoes all the bullets,” he says. “No matter how much you fix it, it never gets smarter. I thought, ‘Why is this software unable to learn?’ ” A self-described tech junkie and Byte magazine reader since his youth, Estes was struck by an overarching principle: Someday, all software will learn — and that which doesn’t will be of limited value and become to software what the typewriter is to hardware.

He founded Digital Reasoning to create such software in 2000, while still an undergraduate. The company, along with others, gained some early traction shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, helped by our collective realization that the intelligence and law enforcement communities had been unable to connect the dots they had collected.

Security and national intelligence remained Digital Reasoning’s bread and butter for years. In 2004, it won a contract to work for the U.S. Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center and six years later, the Central Intelligence Agency’s venture capital fund became its first major outside investor. But even as early as 2002, Digital Reasoning’s thinkers were exploring applications for other in-

dustries. But they were too early; a critical mass of demand was lacking.

“There were a lot of people hoping for it but not a compelling enough reason for people to spend money on it,” Estes says. “For years, we were proving stuff in the government space and dabbling in other spaces.”

Following the CIA investment, things moved quickly. Estes set up a Washington, D.C., office in the summer of 2011 and later that year secured more than $4 million in funding led by Silver Lake Partners, a leader in technology investing. At the time — three years after the 2008 economic crash — the focus was on finance, specifically new regulations being rolled out to shore up the stability of the sector and deal with bad behavior that had cost institutions immense amounts of credibility and billions of dollars in market value.

“These are all things that had real consequences,” Estes says. “A lot of (financial institutions) were starting to look at the systems they had in place to review emails and chats.”

What they found was rudimentary compliance software programs that relied on static lexicons of inappropriate words or phrases suggesting suspicious activity. But only about one of every 100 alerts they generated was accurate; the Production rest were false positives.

B&W Logos.

Enter Digital Reasoning with software that could B&W Logos should be printed at 100% Black teach a computer to learn the context and ambiguity NOT select a B&W Logo for of bad of language and thus flagDOmore emails indicative Process work behavior. As a presentation by Chief Product USE THE PROCESS LOGOS. Officer Marten den Haring, who joined the company in March DO NOT Skew these logos at all! of 2013, put it before a 2014 investing industry conference: The company’s software was all about “Reducing Noise. Increasing Signal Quality and Timing.”

Now, between 30 and 40 out of every 100 alerts prove accurate and Estes says the software will evolve to an even higher level of accuracy. Not surprisingly, such results will catch the eye of some big names: In the fall of 2014, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse joined the ranks of Digital Reasoning’s investors to the tune of $24 million. And early this year, Nasdaq and Digital Reasoning officials announced a strategic alliance pairing the exchange’s surveillance technology with Digital Reasoning’s software and also involved Nasdaq contributing to the company’s $40 million Series D investment round.

Bill Nosal, vice president of business development for Nasdaq and a compliance expert, says he learned about Digital Reasoning through several channels almost simultaneously. Initially, he heard of the company when it graduated in 2012 from the Fintech Innovation Lab, a 12-week mentorship program in New York. Around the same time, several Nasdaq customers spoke up about e-communication

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Thursday: 3:30pm til 8pm.

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Saturday: Noon til 8pm.

Sunday: Noon til 6pm.

2952 Sidco Dr .

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monitoring and mentioned Estes’ product. Completing the serendipity, Nosal learned that both he and Estes were graduates of the University of Virginia and that a favorite college professor had joined Digital’s board.

Nosal says Nasdaq leaders were sold on Digital Reasoning because of its “people, product and possibilities” as well as the feedback from customers.

A natural next step

Not altogether surprisingly given that Nashville is a hub for health care, the Digital Reasoning team also has made some major moves into that industry — albeit not to ferret out nefarious behavior — and gained the support of the biggest name in town.

HCA Holdings invested $5 million in Digital Reasoning in late 2015, a deal that involved Jonathan Perlin, the hospital giant’s president of clinical services and chief medical officer, joining Digital Reasoning’s board of directors. Estes’ software is being layered into HCA’s systems that digitize doctors’ notes, making it easier to interpret all that data holistically and analyze all the notes on patients for contextual similarities to determine, for instance, if a patient’s condition is deteriorating.

“What HCA is collaborating on is a whole slew of applications that can take the digital notes of doctors and radically improve the quality of care,” says Estes.

“We always hoped we’d get to impact real lives.”

A part of that plan: The January acquisition of fel-

low Nashville company Shareable (formerly Shareable Ink), which markets a mobile clinical documentation platform that captures patient data. Shareable CEO Hal Andrews is sticking around to be president of Digital’s budding health care group and oversee the marriage of the documentation and analysis products.

“Security was our past. Health care is in some ways our present and our future,” Estes says. “We’ve picked up some great people. We get a chance to find a different way to save lives.”

Similarly, Nasdaq’s Nosal — harkening back to his ‘people, product, and possibilities’ comment — says the possibilities in his company’s relationship with Digital aren’t limited to surveillance. It’s not a stretch to see the software analyzing mountains of info to better gauge investor sentiment or market turns.

“We see opportunities to extend DR’s capabilities to other Nasdaq offerings that can provide value to our 17,000-plus customers across the globe,” Nosal says.

Looking to the big picture, Estes anticipates a future in which his company’s cognitive computing prowess helps free people of monotonous work and creates new types of jobs.

“Computers do many things fast, but things that require a measure of decisioning, creativity — those are areas where computers don’t play right now,” he says.

“Hopefully, this type of computing will lead to higherquality work […] We’ve grown up a little, but we have a lot more to build than we’ve already built.”

Proving that technology in Nashville can thrive beyond healthcare since 2000.

We admire the success of our city’s health care technology sector, and have a lot of friends there.

But we took a different path 16 years ago. And that has made all the difference.

We grew from one of Nashville’s first Internet Service Providers into one of the largest Software as a Service providers in the retail industry, managing more product data than is under the jurisdiction of several entire countries. And we continue to grow – increasing revenue more than 50% in the last six months, and building new offices on Nashville’s budding tech row, Sidco Drive.

Thank you, Nashville.

2948 Sidco Drive edgenet.com | 877.334.3638

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No time to waste Tractor Supply melds old-school approach with 21st-century methods

by J.R. Lind

Tractor Supply Company works in a very old-school industry.

Yet traditional businesses often must transition.

A national powerhouse in the rural lifestyle retail business, the Brentwood-based company offers a customer base that is wedded to the land. Respectful of that, Tractor Supply wants to be the one-stop shop for that clientele.

Specifically, those customers — the farmers, the ranchers, the large-lot landowners — are very need-based.

If the tractor requires a part or the chickens are hungry for feed, immediate attention is necessary. And, by and large, those customers know their needs. Whereas a startup urban gardener may require a lot of hand-holding, the veteran farmer who must get the back 40 plowed by Thursday does not have the luxury to delay doing so.

In the old days, the affable owner of the local general store or co-op knew his customers by name, face and requirements. In a very 21st century way, Tractor Supply is replicating that, aiming to do so in a way that is scalable across 1,500 stores in nearly every state (and planting zone) in the country.

A major part of that challenge falls on the shoulders of Chief Information Officer Rob Mills.

“We’ve evolved our thinking in a technology-specific way,” says Mills, who joined Tractor Supply in 2014 from cosmetics retail chain ULTA Beauty. “How do we leverage data to make this more science-based than art-based? I had to take a step back and see what was working well and what were ERIC ENGLAND

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changes we need to focus on. We put a focus on upgrading and retiring legacy systems.”

A key change was a re-imagining of the store website.

Like most retailers, Tractor Supply’s site focused on ecommerce. Though that element has been retained, it is no longer the be-all and end-all of the online presence.

“Customers come to our website to research and gather information about products or in-store availability,” Mills says. “It could be an immediate need: ‘I want to know that the item is waiting for me so I can get back to do what I need to do.’ “ So now, instead of pushing for an online order, the site emphasizes in-store location and onsite pick up.

“They want to make sure when they drive to our store, that it is there,” he says. “They are need-based and usually need [the product] now.”

That is a fairly simple, even obvious, change, but it pays dividends and feeds into an analytics loop that drives traditional brick-and-mortar retail.

By and large, the merchandise mix at Tractor Supply is identical across all stores with 85 percent of the offerings the same store to store. What differs is the depth of supply.

“We stock more outerwear in the North versus far South,” says Christine Skold, Tractor Supply vice president of investor relations and corporate communications. “There are also differences in localizations with things like galvanized bolts on the coast. Our customers know what they need.”

Some of that supply mix is intuitive. And with an expansion of distribution centers, Tractor Supply has been able to get even more specific, recently shifting from three seasonal rollout dates to a system based on the tried-and-true United States Department of Agriculture planting zone.

But, Mills says, there is still a “people aspect” and that has led to a growth in attribution, both through the web-

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Tractor Supply CIO Rob Mills in the company’s IT lab.

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site and in-store purchases. On the Web, it is fairly easy, with keyword-based analytics that show, say, customers in Kansas start looking for mowers on one date while those in Ohio do so on another date.

That is a little more difficult to pin down in the store, particularly because so many of Tractor Supply customers pay cash. The traditional method of tracking purchases via credit card billing addresses doesn’t supply the depth of information it does for other stores.

As such, a unique customer relationship management system was necessary.

For cash customers, spending over a certain amount triggers the CRM (customer relationship management), with the cashier asking for ZIP codes. Just that small change has increased attribution from 35 to 50 percent during the last 18 months.

“Once we got more data we were able to send direct mail to neighborhoods where our best customers are and able to show the stores we’ve been able to target the best customers. We can show them direct benefit and that’s what keeps our attribution rates up,” Skold said.

“It goes to the belief of putting more science in our decision point ... and discussion about what is best for the customer, either in a specific store or across the nation,” Mills added.

And because the needs of a Tractor Supply customer are often time-sensitive — this fertilizer needs to be added at this time, chicks need this medication at this point in the life cycle, etc. — Mills and his cohorts, along with the company’s

marketing team, are starting to develop highly target emails.

Mills says this makes more sense for consumers.

“Our customer wants us to know them and know their property and they are dependent on their equipment and animals and lifestyle,” he says. “We don’t do mass market email just to do them. We are trying to track their needs more closely. Our focus is how to capture our data to serve them and educate them.”

Tractor Supply is also training its employees on using mobile devices to better serve customers and continues to occasionally hire from its client base. The company — just like the general store owner did a century ago — prides itself on its associates knowing the needs of the folks that shop at Tractor Supply stores.

“The vision is, How do we arm that team member with more in-depth information with that customer and use content from the website like videos and additional product information? That is information that wouldn’t be readily available and now they can leverage their mobile device to help the customer,” Mills says.

The Tractor Supply future will not be one of conflict between old-school methods and modern technology.

Rather, either approach will help the other, thus allowing Tractor Supply to find solutions specific to its customers without having to use CRM and web technology that works in big-box stores.

Simply put, the retailer that prides itself on knowing its customers best is finding ways to know its customers better.

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Value added

Internet of Things, data monetization hot tech topics

by Linda Bryant

The term “data monetization” may not roll off the tongue or be as widely recognized as a well-known technology term such as the “cloud.”

But Lydia Jones says it is fast becoming a front-andcenter topic for many companies.

As founder and president of three-year-old consulting firm InSage, the Nashville-based attorney and entrepreneur is helping businesses figure out if they are sitting on data that may ultimately hold more value than they otherwise would know.

That value may be about selling the actual data.

However, much of the time monetization is less direct.

It can be about making internal business processes run more efficiently, incentivizing behavior that can impact a company’s bottom line or revealing the true nature of an asset.

Jones recently hosted a three-hour data monetization workshop in Nashville with colleague Karl Urich of DataFoxTrot, an Albany, New York-based specialist in helping companies identify and monetize their data assets.

Jones and Urich hope to take the workshop on the road. And if reaction to their first effort is any indication, they’ll likely do so. Held in April at Loews Vanderbilt Hotel, the workshop was attended by high-level executives

and consultants from an array of prominent Nashville companies and agencies.

Jones says there is a fundamental shift regarding how data collection is considered, used and applied.

“In the beginning when data was being collected, it was usually for a website. It was about establishing a corporate presence,” says Jones, who also serves as an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University. “There are more opportunities now. Technology has developed in a way that’s more data dependent. For example, our apps are hugely data dependent. In order for an app to function, you have to give it personal information.”

Christian Oliver, vice president of product management and data products at HealthStream, attended the workshop as a participant and presenter. He says data monetization is top-of-mind for his work at the company.

Data monetization, Oliver says, is most often an ongoing process that needs to be customized to the individual company.

“You have to decide what your strategy is,” he says. “If you have a giant data set that’s valuable to people, then you should just go ahead and sell it. There’s no shame in that. At HealthStream, we felt like that wasn’t our best approach. We really need to be a partner with our customers and figure out how to help them achieve their outcomes.

“We’re taking the data we have, adding value and making it into products or solutions that involve multiple components like training content, testing solutions and survey solutions,” Oliver adds. “We are interested in using the data to help [clients] solve a problem or achieve specific clinical or business outcomes.”

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Lydia Jones and Karl Urich speak to guests of the Data Monetization Workshop at Loews Vanderbilt Hotel

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‘The breadth of what you can do with the data is vast. It can be monetized for public good.’

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HealthStream’s clients, typically hospitals and post acute care organizations, often need to improve their skills in certain areas. They might want better CPR results, need to identify their top performers or train or retrain workers in new techniques and procedures.

“Our goal is to help those organizations care for people efficiently and effectively and keep costs down,” Oliver says. “We have done lots of data collecting over the years and quite a bit of it is training related. We’re also interested in incorporating that data into a wide variety of products we sell.”

Oliver believes data monetization is quickly becoming a mainstream issue.

“At this point, the concept of Big Data — and by association, data monetization — is culturally accepted whether people understand it or not,” Oliver says. “Many different kinds of companies are using — or going to use — data to help them sell their products. But it’s much more than that. They are building data into their products to make them more interesting to the consumer.”

The “Internet of Things” is becoming an increasingly hot topic of conversation both in and outside of the workplace. Perhaps more than any current issue in technology, IoT is driving the data monetization conversation, Jones says.

Briefly defined, the Internet of Things is about technology that goes beyond the connectivity of computers, tablets and smartphones. It refers to a world where just about anything can be connected and communicates in a technologically intelligent fashion. The physical world becomes one massive information system in which energy-powered physical objects and devices such as refrigerators, exercise equipment and cars receive and collect data and communicate that data to people or other physical objects.

“The rise of the Internet of Things and personalized wearable products presents a new opportunity for businesses to innovate new products and insights based on personalized information,” Jones says. “If businesses are transparent about their data collection use and sharing practices and if consumers are voluntarily providing personal data in order to receive the benefits of new technology — including, for example, smart cars and wellness apps — then businesses can be much more proactive about data-driven initiatives based on personal information.

“And these initiatives can yield numerous benefits for the individual consumer — from informing individuals about their unique habits to developing more accurate insights about how public perceptions of individuals and individual behavior may be misunderstood,” she adds.

Betsy Jones, partner at Countdown Group, a Nashville-based consulting firm that commercializes intellectual property and ideas for corporations and individuals, says her clients are waking up to monetization opportunities.

“A lot of people say the Internet of Things is the biggest change that’s coming,” says Jones (who is not related to Lydia Jones). “We weren’t having these conversations five years ago. We’re not used to the idea that all of our devices might be talking to us or about us. But this new

realm of data is opening up a whole new world of possibilities for monetization.”

Although Jones doesn’t work exclusively with clients who are exploring data monetization, she says she attended the April workshop because she’s picking up more and more clients who are either ready to monetize on some level or who want to start a conversation about it.

Art Rebrovick, president of Compass Executives, echoes Jones’ interest.

“My clients are interested,” Rebrovick says. “It’s a hot topic.”

Oliver agrees that the conversation around the IoT is ramping up.

“I use a Fitbit device that’s collecting data about me every day — my heart rate, how much I walk, how I exercise and what I eat,” Oliver says. “Data is being generated by the movements of my body. That data might not be interesting to anyone but me. But if a drug manufacturer could get a hold of it and use it to identify people who might eventually have heart conditions, you can begin to see its value.

“The real question is, ‘How do you identify the value in collected data and what strategies do you use to acquire it and add value to it and/or ultimately make money from it?’” he adds.

Where do companies that want to explore data monetization begin?

“I think every company needs to inventory its data monetization assets,” Betsy Jones says. “The question is, ‘Do we have data we can turn not into information but into intelligence that can be used strategically within our business? Can it be monetized? Can it be offered in a way that makes us more attractive to investors or to potential partners without drawing us away from our core business unless we decided there’s a more lucrative route to go?’”

Lydia Jones, who was an early pioneer in Internet law in the 1990s, says privacy concerns are often a stumbling block for companies due to potential legal ramifications.

However, she says the apprehensions about privacy needn’t overtake the opportunities being presented.

“The evolution of privacy is what enables monetization,” Jones says. “It’s about keeping the data in line with what the authorized and permitted uses are. In the future, we are going to be monetizing from information being generated at the personal level. That’s very different than what’s been going on.

“We’ve wanted to keep that kind of information aggregated and not identified with anyone,” she adds. “That’s a strategy that won’t last given the fact that we are moving into a highly personalized technological world. Also, you can reconceptualize data monetization to mean more than leveraging for revenue and make it more about leveraging for value. The breadth of what you can do with the data — and how it can be monetized — is vast. It can be monetized for public good. I encourage people to look at it within that broad context.

“While businesses sometime shy aware from monetizing personal data — sometimes because of privacy risks and sometimes because of consumer perception — I think they should re-think that often times kneejerk approach.”

NASHVILLEPOST.COM

5/12/16 10:17 AM

Data

FEATURES

OUR GOAL IS PROTECTING YOURS

Risk Assurance & Advisory Services » Network & Cyber Security » Internal Audit » IT Audit

HealtHy excHanges

Local partnerships aim to help providers get a grip on medical data

by Geert De LombaerDe

Whether through the Nashville-based Center for Medical Interoperability or other overarching industry groups with big-name members, there’s been plenty of encouraging talk and a good bit of movement of late when it comes to the productive sharing of medical data.

Local players also are making a lot of progress in the trenches. In May, automation and integration software developer Trinisys announced a partnership with fellow local technology company Virsys12 that has resulted in the development of V12 Connect, a Virsys service that lets health care organizations organize and integrate more than a dozen different formats of data sets.

The launch of V12 Connect builds on the health care focus developed by five-year-old Virsys12, which specializes in work on the Salesforce platform. V12 Connect can be based in the cloud or on site and, using Trinisys’ data integration technologies, filter both structured and unstructured information.

“At the heart of change for health care is the ability to easily exchange health-related data between systems to meet interoperability goals,” says Virsys12 CEO Tammy Hawes, who founded the company in 2011. “V12 Connect is a HIPAA-compliant and flexible

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interface engine with pre-built templates allowing rapid access to needed data from previously inaccessible electronic health records, electronic medical records, insurance claims, prescription, encounter, lab records and more.”

Fellow Nashville company Renova PCA, which provides chronic and transitional care management services, has tested V12 Connect, which was expected to go live on the Salesforce AppExchange soon after the product announcement. Linking up with Renova was a natural fit: The Franklin-based company serves as a communication and information hub for patients’ care plans, documenting the patient’s progress, and monitoring changes between appointments. In doing so, it ties into the various EMR systems of doctors’ offices.

Word of 12-year-old Trinisys’ tie-up with Virsys12 came shortly after the company and Cool Springsbased Cumberland Consulting Group said they are teaming up to market legacy data management services to organizations figuring out just what to do with all their old information as they upgrade to new systems or buy other firms with a different setup. The premise there is simple: Rather than continuing to invest in old infrastructure just to make sure the info it houses doesn’t disappear, Trinisys’ Convergence platform will securely archive the data while Cumberland’s consultants across the country advise clients on a new structure.

Through such work, care providers may finally begin to whittle down the number of systems they use and develop a market-driven set of standards. And those best practices could — and admittedly ever so gradually, maybe should — begin to unlock new insights into the health of their patients.

» SOC Engagements » Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance » HIPAA & HITECH Compliance For more information, contact: Gina Pruitt gpruitt@kraftcpas.com (615) 782-4207

kraftcpas.com

5/11/16 9:05 5/12/16 6:40 AM PM

FEATURES

EC HALL

The Nashville Entrepreneur Center

hall of fame

The Nashville Entrepreneur Center is now entrenched as a place for visionary business people and companies — with that permanency highlighted by the center’s hall of fame recognizing local entrepreneurs.

This year’s group of inductees includes one entity and two individuals: Conexión Américas, which provides various services to Nashville’s fast-growing Hispanic community; Shannon Terry, founder of sports recruiting website 24/7 Sports; and musician/winery owner Kix Brooks.

The Post commends the three for their work, the legacies they have created and the collective impact they have made on their community. > J.R. Lind

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SUMMER 2016

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Conexión Américas

Jose Gonzalez | Renata Soto | Maria Clara Mejia Between 1999 and 2000, Nashville’s Hispanic population grew 446 percent.

Not surprisingly, existing nonprofits in the heretofore relative Latino population-lacking Nashville were overwhelmed and unprepared for the demographic surge. In fact, at the turn of the century, there was no organization specifically dedicated to serving Hispanics.

In 2001, Renata Sota (then a grant writer at the United Way), Jose Gonzalez (founder of entrepreneurship consultancy CIMA Financial Management) and Maria Clara Mejia founded Conexión Américas, now recognized as the leading advocacy group for Middle Tennessee’s Hispanic population.

(Soto and Gonzalez are pictured above; Mejia no longer lives in Middle Tennessee.)

The programs offered by Conexión Américas are deep and broad,

maintaining the mission of the social, economic and civic integration of Latino families in Middle Tennessee. The nonprofit provides everything from tax and legal assistance, English instruction and classes, and assistance for those folks looking to start a business or buy a home.

For example, within Conexión Américas Casa Azafrán Community Center, at the gateway to the city’s so-called International District spanning the bulk of Nolensville Road, there is a full-scale commercial kitchen available for budding restaurateurs, with assistance available from an onsite culinary incubator manager.

The genius of Conexión Américas is that it is a one-stop shop for the community it serves. The tenants at Casa Azafrán work together, integrating the programs to achieve that holistic vision that spawned the nonprofit in the first place.

NASHVILLEPOST.COM

5/11/16 6:43 PM

EC HALL

Shannon Terry 24/7 Sports

Most entrepreneurs would be happy with one success story.

Shannon Terry is on a winning streak that would make nearly any startup addict green with envy.

Four years after graduating from Lipscomb University, he founded AllianceSports, the first subscriptionbased network of college team and recruiting sites. Rivals eventually acquired Alliance.

After the collapse of the dotcom bubble sent Rivals reeling in 2001, Terry led the effort to purchase and license its assets, re-launching it as Rivals.com. Under his leadership, the online site grew to 180,000 subscribers with more than 2.5 million unique visitors each month.

That success spurred Yahoo to purchase Rivals in 2008 for roughly $100 million.

Not one to sit on the sidelines, the former Lipscomb basketball play-

er in 2010 teamed with colleague Bobby Burton to found 247Sports. com, which quickly became a leader in the world of collegiate recruiting information, focusing on old-school, shoe-leather, deeply sourced reporting and not just throwing rumors against the wall.

Late last year, Terry once again undertook a sale. This time CBS acquired 247Sports for an undisclosed amount.

Terry is also involved with ComicBook.com, which has become the leading site for information on comic book-infused pop culture, with page views surpassing even those of top comic publishers.

In the last decade, companies founded or cofounded by Terry have generated more than $250 million in online revenue.

There is no doubt Terry is looking for his next blue chipper.

Kix Brooks

Musician, Arrington Vineyards As half of Brooks & Dunn, Kix Brooks had 20 No. 1 country songs, and won 17 CMA Awards, 26 ACM Awards and two Grammys.

But there is no reason why success in one field can‘t yield positive results in others.

In 2003, Brooks and a partner purchased a 25-acre hog farm in rural Williamson County and began planting grapevines. The next year, the vineyard expanded to a neighboring farm and what would become Arrington Vineyards was born.

In 2007, the first vintages were bottled and Arrington opened its doors. Since then, the wines have won numerous Best of the South awards, with the winery having expanded its offerings to include a tasting room and a popular underthe-stars summer concert series.

The growth derived, in part, from a partnership with Vanderbilt

University’s Accelerator Summer Business Institute. Brooks teamed with VU business students to find ideas that would expand offerings without jeopardizing the original oenological mission.

Brooks is focused on helping the community via his involvement with, for example, the Country Music Association, Operation Finally Home, Veterans Matter, Tennessee Tourism Board and the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. In December 2014, he was named the first recipient of the Country Music Association’s Humanitarian Award.

Brooks‘ combination of business acumen and Music Row connections led to him being named a founding director of Avenue Bank as the then-de novo focused its efforts on providing financial services to the music industry.

NASHVILLEPOST.COM

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SUMMER 2016

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CULINARY TEAMBUILDING

FEATURES

EC HALL

The Nashville Entrepreneur Center

hall of fame PAST indUcTEES

In recent years, the Entrepreneur Center Hall of Fame has enshrined an impressive group of Nashville-area business builders who made their name in everything from the well-known music and health care sectors to retail, finance, distribution and others. Listed here are those honorees along with the entity they were leading at the time of their induction.

BLIND TASTE GE CHALLEN

TEAMBUILDING WITH THE CHEF & I Breaks down walls Promotes healthy competition Encourages teamwork Addresses conflict resolution Great for employees, social groups, committees, boards, & organizations

Boyd Family

R.H. Boyd Publishing

Dan Crockett

Franklin American Mortgage

6900 Lenox Village Drive, Ste. 14, Nashville, TN 37211

e rica@thechefandicatering.co m 615.73 0. 8496

www.t h ec hefand ic atering.com

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Hands On Nashville

Ray Danner Shoney’s

Sherry Stewart Deutschmann

Tod Fetherling

LetterLogic

Stratasan

Darrell Freeman

Joey Jacobs

Zycron

Acadia Healthcare

Cordia Harrington

John Ingram

Tennessee Bun Company

• TEAMBUILDING • CATERING • INTERACTIVE RESTAURANT • COOKING CLASSES

Hal Cato

Ingram Industries

Ken Levitan

Clayton McWhorter

Wayne Smith

Rev. Becca Stevens

Vector Management

Community Health Systems

Cal Turner Jr. Dollar General

Clayton Associates

Thistle FarmsMagdalene

Jon Yarbrough

Yarbrough Capital

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LEGAL

Julian Bibb — Member, Stites & Harbison: Banking, finance and real estate law expert known for land preservation efforts. Helped secure Battle of Franklin sites and assisted Land Trust for Tennessee in preserving open spaces.

Our Leaders issue earlier this year included an incomplete version of the Legal section of our In Charge list. Here is the complete version:

LEGAL Jane Allen — Chairman, Counsel On Call: Launched legal services company 15 years ago to fill a need by working with corporations and law firms to lower costs and get results. Recently passed CEO torch to Vince Verna to focus on career paths and lifestyles of firm’s attorneys.

Kathryn E. Barnett — Managing Partner, Nashville, Morgan & Morgan: Leads one of the city’s best-regarded plaintiffs-only firms and, during first year in charge, has grown Nashville office from four to 16. Areas of practice include consumer protection, personal injury and torts, and defective products.

Charles W. Bone — Founder and Chairman, Bone McAllester Norton: Represents clients on matters ranging from mergers and acquisitions, financial institutions and government relations.

Ross Booher — CEO, Latitude Legal Solutions: With health care exec Ken Clarke, former Bass Berry attorney started firm that provides seconded attorneys and legal operations consulting to companies and law firms.

Robert E. Boston — Partner, Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis: One of the state’s top employment lawyers. Handles compensation and compliance disputes. Represents employers in complicated wrongful termination issues.

Matthew Burnstein — Chairman, Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis: Named chairman of powerful firm in 2014.

Shepherds companies ranging from health care giants to emerging tech firms through transactions.

Scott Carey — Managing Shareholder, Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz: Top dog in Nashville office of prestigious Southeastern firm. Expert on transportation law and general counsel for Tennessee Republican Party.

IN CHARGE

Mark Chalos — Managing Partner, Nashville Office, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein: Noted for work in personal injury and negligence cases, including leading the litigation against wrongdoers in the deadliest fungal meningitis catastrophe in history; Nashville office colleagues Kenny Byrd and John Spragens have also won major verdicts in Big Tobacco cases.

James H. Cheek III — Member, Bass Berry & Sims: Maestro of public company legal representation. Retained to probe New York Stock Exchange operations after SEC required it to hire a non-conflicted auditor.

Chase Cole — Partner, Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis: Major player in legal community regarding corporate law and mergers and acquisitions. Served as lead outside counsel on the largest IPO ever conducted by a Nashville-based company (HCA).

Dan Elrod — Member and Managing Partner, Nashville Office, Butler Snow: Represents more than 40 Tennessee health care institutions on regulatory issues and advocates for the interests of clients before the Tennessee General Assembly.

Craig V. Gabbert Jr. — Shareholder, Harwell Howard Hyne Gabbert & Manner: Among the top bankruptcy practitioners in the Southeast. Involved in such major corporate cases as SouthEast Waffles, Nu-Kote Holdings (twice) and Regal Cinemas. Will move to Bass Berry & Sims in the spring.

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Latitudelegal.com (615) 550-3500

5/11/16 9:07 5/12/16 6:46 AM PM

IN CHARGE

Our firm has thousands of partners.

We call them clients.

Working together isn’t just another way to discover the best solutions for our clients’ employment and labor law needs, it’s the only way we know.

At Littler, we take the time to learn about your company because exceptional client service starts with understanding your business.

Littler is the largest global employment and labor law practice with more than 1,000 attorneys in over 70 offices worldwide.

LEGAL

Stacey Garrett — Founding Member, Board Chairperson, Bone McAllester Norton: Concentrates practice in higher education, corporate transactions, health care and government affairs. Represents several institutions of higher education.

Alberto Gonzales — Dean, Belmont University School of Law: Former U.S. attorney general tapped by Belmont as first leader of its law school. Serves on Governor’s Commission on Judicial Appointments.

Bob Goodrich — Partner, Burr & Forman: Considered city’s top creditors-rights attorney in bankruptcy and insolvency matters. Director of Mid-South Commercial Law Institute. A coveted and wellregarded lecturer and writer on bankruptcy law.

Chris Guthrie — Dean, Vanderbilt University School of Law: Has served as dean of VU law school since 2009. Nationally recognized expert on behavioral law and economics, dispute resolution, negotiation and judicial decision making.

Aubrey Harwell — Partner and Co-Founder, Neal & Harwell: Practice centers on commercial litigation, white-collar criminal defense and crisis management. Has represented Bridgestone/ Firestone and former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo in various matters. Recently turned over reins as chief manager to Phil Irwin.

Lela Hollabaugh — Nashville Managing Partner, Bradley Arant Boult Cummings: Expanding on role as team leader for firm’s business litigation team, was named managing partner of BABC’s Nashville office in September. Regarded as one of the South’s top lawyers in gas-pipeline matters. General counsel for Nashville Bar Association.

Kolin Holladay — Partner in Charge, Adams and Reese: Serves as team leader of corporate, securities and mergers and acquisitions groups as well as Nashville point man for the firm. In addition to traditional commercial law matters, advises various entertainment clients.

Phil Irwin — Chief Manager, Neal & Harwell: After three decades with the firm, succeeded founder Aubrey Harwell in December. Primarily a civil litigator who is active in the community, serving on numerous boards, including that of his alma mater Lipscomb University.

William C. Koch Jr. — Dean, Nashville School of Law: Respected jurist who served on the Tennessee Court of Appeals and State Supreme Court, giving up chance to be chief justice to lead NSL, where he has taught since 1997.

Brad Lampley — Partner, Adams and Reese: Former office managing partner with particular experience in transportation, energy, health care and insurance. Ex-University of Tennessee scholar-athlete who was appointed in 2013 to the UT system’s Board of Trustees.

Ed Lanquist — Managing Shareholder, Patterson Intellectual Property Law: Focuses practice on patent and trademark litigation, IP counseling and trademark prosecution. Has filed more than 1,200 trademark registration applications and about 150 patent applications.

littler.com 333 Commerce Street Suite 1450 Nashville, TN 37201 615.383.3033 NPOST_Makegood.indd NP_06-16.indd 70 70

Tom Lawless — Attorney, Lawless & Associates: Bankruptcy and creditors’ rights specialist who has helped numerous area lenders digest foreclosures and other so-called special assets.

David Lewis — Of counsel, Miller & Martin: Former chair of firm’s health care practice group and expert on regulatory and transactional health care law with more than a quarter century of experience.

Mark Manner — Managing Shareholder, Harwell Howard Hyne Gabbert & Manner: One of the few biotech legal experts in the city.

Also handles complex M&A deals, securities and capital formation.

Will move to Bass Berry & Sims in the spring.

Jerry Martin — Partner, Barrett Johnston Martin & Garrison: Former U.S. attorney focuses his practice on representing whistleblowers exposing fraud and abuse, as well as employment litigation and civil rights cases.

Bob Mendes — Member, Waypoint Law: Past president of the Nashville Bar Association whose practice focuses on representing debtors, creditors, creditors’ committees, trustees and purchasers of assets in bankruptcy cases. Elected as at-large Metro Council member in 2014.

E. Marlee Michell — Partner, Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis: Expert in equity and debt offerings, private placements, joint ventures and VC financings. Began legal career at Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance.

Mekesha Montgomery — Member in Charge, Frost Brown Todd: Member of firm’s labor and employment law practice group. Represents management in the areas of employment discrimination and wrongful discharge, union negotiations and arbitration.

William L. Norton — Partner, Bradley Arant Boult Cummings: Has represented just about every kind of client interest regarding bankruptcy cases. Represented creditors against Robert McLean, a $50 million Ponzi schemer.

Larry Papel — Lead Partner, Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough: Regarded as a national leader in land-use and real estate law. Has made strong contributions as a board member of the Nashville Civic Design Center and Watkins College of Art, Design and Film.

Bob Patterson — Managing Partner, Bradley Arant Boult Cummings: Visionary who spearheaded the eyebrow-raising plan to move the then-Boult Cummings Conner & Berry from the central business district to Roundabout Plaza, helping spark attention on Midtown.

William L. Penny — Partner, Burr & Forman: Former Stites & Harbison member moved to Burr in early 2015. One of Middle Tennessee’s top experts on environmental law, chairs firm’s practice group.

Brant Phillips — Partner, Bass Berry & Sims: Focused on complex litigation and public policy. Is co-chair of the firm’s securities and shareholder litigation group and member of the executive committee.

Tom Potter — Partner, Burr & Forman: Corporate and securities law expert and former aide to Mayor Richard Fulton. Made 2015 splash by recruiting big team from Stites’ local office, then turned over managing partner role to Stephen Price.

5/12/16 11:40 11:34 AM

LEGAL

Patsy Powers — Partner, Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis: Returned to Waller as a partner after a long stint as senior associate general counsel at Vanderbilt University, where she primarily represented the medical center.

Perhaps predictably, she joined Waller’s expanding health care practice group.

Stephen Price — Managing Partner, Burr & Forman: Former partner at Stites & Harbison was one of the earliest recruits of Tom Potter, who led the massive growth of Burr.

Price replaced Potter and expects aggressive expansion to continue.

Gregg Ramos — Partner, North Pursell & Ramos: Emphasis is personal injury, employment law and workers’ compensation. Serves on many community boards. Past president of the Nashville Bar Association, Catholic Charities of Tennessee and Conexion Americas.

David Raybin — Co-Founder, Hollins Raybin & Weissman: Heads firm’s criminal defense section, which includes criminal trials, criminal appeals, parole hearings and civil rights litigation.

David Rivera — U.S. Attorney, Middle District of Tennessee: In time as the federal government’s chief prosecutor in Nashville, has led the charge in multiple fraud and whistleblower matters in health care.

Jennifer Robinson — Office Managing Shareholder, Littler Mendelson: Leads Nashville branch of world’s largest labor and employment firm. With practice primarily focused on the food and beverage industry, has successfully defended scores of wage-and-hour suits.

Todd Rolapp — Managing Partner, Bass Berry & Sims: Became managing partner of one of the city’s most prestigious law firms in January 2013. Previously served as chair for the firm’s corporate and securities department.

Robert Sartin — Member, Frost Brown Todd: Former managing partner of Lexington-based firm who relocated to Nashville in 2011. Leads firm’s automotive industry team and serves on nine-member executive committee.

Tom Sherrard — Founding Member, Sherrard & Roe: Practice includes mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance and corporate and securities law. Influence extends deep into Metro circles, as former chair of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce.

Joycelyn Stevenson — Shareholder, Littler Mendelson: Defends corporate clients in discrimination matters and handles frequent work in the business immigration realm.

President of Nashville Bar Association.

Gif Thornton — Managing Partner, Adams and Reese: Regularly tops rankings of effective lobbyists in government relations trade publications. Well connected, has served on

IN CHARGE

numerous boards. Prior to law school, served as a foreign service officer.

Byron Trauger — Partner, Trauger & Tuke: Attorney, close friend and adviser to former Gov. Phil Bredesen.

Rhodes Scholar whose practice is concentrated in health care, complex civil litigation, general business matters, government relations and regulatory agency work.

Vince Verna — CEO, Counsel On Call: Recently took over day-to-day leadership of on-demand legal services company from Jane Allen. Comes from a workplace solutions and IT background and is charged with improving the company’s operations and marketing.

Jack Waddey — Partner, Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis: Former Waddey Patterson founder and noted IP expert joined Waller in early January 2015, bringing four colleagues with him.

Leigh Walton — Member, Bass Berry & Sims: Former cochair of firm’s health care practice group and active in corporate and securities law matters. Work with public companies includes securities, M&As and corporate governance matters.

Edward M. Yarbrough — Member, Bone McAllester Norton: Former U.S. attorney widely credited for restoring the Middle Tennessee office to prominence. Leads Bone’s criminal defense and government investigations division.

Your Trusted Tennessee Legal Advisor Advancing and protecting your interests in Nashville and Statewide

P: 615-351-7839 | tomlawless@comcast.net

6:46 PM

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CLOSE

BIG QUESTION

THE BIG QUESTION

It’s time for some patience in the fast-paced world of tech Let’s be honest for a minute: We’ve become a bit spoiled, we Middle Tennesseans.

We look around at the many construction sites and marvel at how quickly new landmarks arise, affirming that we’re still It City. We pat ourselves on the back about the number of talented people and prestigious businesses relocating here and still beam just a bit when yet another best-places ranking shows Nashville at or near its top spot.

And so it shouldn’t be a big surprise that some among us have grown a little impatient with the fact that our technology sector isn’t a world-class competitor. It shouldn’t take this long, they say, to develop some really big winners, reinvest the profits from their sales and build out a thriving sector that competes for the best talent and capital. After all, we did that with our health care and music ecosystems, right?

Let’s take a collective breath and acknowledge that those comparisons fall very flat very quickly and that we’re still writing the first few chapters of a long book. (By the way, HCA will celebrate 50 years in business in 2018.) Plus, talent, capital and ideas are more mobile than ever — thanks, technology! — which means they inevitably will be more dispersed. We have

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many, many more competitors vying for True Tech Hub status than Music Row ever had in the entertainment world.

And sometimes, ideas and companies and tech hubs simply take some seasoning. Look at Digital Reasoning Systems, whose leaders have attracted more than $70 million in about six years — after a decade of figuring out just what they wanted the company to be when it grew up.

Our unsolicited advice: Be patient and remember what’s important.

Let’s make it a point to keep Nashville a place where great ideas can be heard and vetted in incubators, coffee shops, coworking spaces and beyond. As Tammy Hawes, one of our Most Powerful Women, says in this magazine: Don’t crush people’s dreams; help prop them up. If those dreams are worthy, the money and the talent will flock to them.

Let’s continue to invest in our education system’s capacity to produce tech talent. It won’t deliver the answers to our workforce deficit by next Christmas, but it will grow into a huge asset if we stay the course — both within and outside our public school systems.

And let’s keep our eye on the bigger picture. Regulations such as the software-as-a-service tax enacted last year could put Tennessee at a disadvantage in terms of growing and recruiting tech companies. Building trust and productive conversations between the industry and Capitol Hill, something the Nashville Technology Council is working on, also takes time.

In the course of planning and researching this magazine, our team heard from so many industry players that there’s a real sense of camaraderie in Nashville’s tech sector, a sense that together, we truly can be stronger. If we don’t lose that spirit, even the impatient among us will — over time — get what they want.

5/12/16 10:30 AM

Better together.

Avenue and Pinnacle will soon be joining forces, bringing together two local banks recognized as Top Five “Best Banks To Work For” in the country by American Banker magazine. Separately, we’ve spent years serving our clients, empowering our people, and adding value and growth to our community. Now we’re bringing Nashville the best of both banks, blending the knowledge of our past experiences with the possibilities of our future. And that’s a powerful combination.

We hope to see you there.

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WWW.AVENUENASHVILLE.COM

5/11/16 1:59 PM PM 4/5/16 3:51

Nashville is growing fast.

And AT&T is growing with you.

Our investment in Nashville goes deeper than you thought.

Underground and overhead, we’re building a cutting-edge fiber-optic network in Nashville. Giving businesses the speed and flexibility they need to compete, create jobs, and thrive for years to come. We’re making Nashville AT&T Fiber Ready.

Learn more about business fiber at att.com/fiberready

© 2016 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved.

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Services not available everywhere.

5/11/16 1:26 PM