It saddens me to bid Austin adieu as we announce that OrgSync is moving to Dallas on April 30^th.  I am thankful and happy though to take a moment to reflect on how wonderful Austin has been and all the support this community has given to our company since our founding in 2007.

Exactly three years ago, my co-founding partners and I moved into a 5-bedroom house in Avery Ranch (northwest Austin) with the intention of bootstrapping the start-up of our company, OrgSync.  We did not have any money beyond what our credit cards would hold, and so we decided to move in together and live off the company.  Rent was only $1,650 and with all our bills and food, the five of us figured out how to live on roughly $2,500 per month.

We had heard of other entrepreneurs bootstrapping their companies out of their houses and apartments, so it seemed like a good idea.  I’m pleased to tell you, three years later, that it was the best decision we ever made!  In fact, I would go as far to say the past three years literally living OrgSync have been the best three years of my life.  We did run into challenges along the way, but at the end of the day, we strongly believe it was that intense level of devotion that enabled us to self-fund and grow our company as fast as we did.  Austin was absolutely the best city with the most supportive community to do something like that.  I recommend to anyone thinking about starting a company to consider doing it in Austin, out of a house.

Beyond bootstrapping, the Austin community has been extremely friendly providing my team and me continual support and encouragement.  Everything from the Austin Tech Happy Hours to South by Southwest (SXSW) to all the social media meet-ups; the opportunities to network and meet new people are endless!  The best part of Austin is the people that make up this city.  Almost everyone here is genuinely interested in what others are doing and always willing to help out.  It’s that type of support that is extremely crucial for startups as you grind out and overcome the seemingly never ending hurdles of starting a new business.

So why are we moving the company to Dallas?  There are a few primary reasons we have chosen Dallas for the next stage in OrgSync’s life:

• New Executive Management – for the past three years my father, Don Fortenberry, has served as our virtual CFO, and has agreed to come on board full-time if we moved the company to Dallas.  Furthermore, we have hired one of Don’s former business partners and close friends, Michael Schwartz, as our Chief Operating Officer.  In order to maintain OrgSync’s rapid growth, we recognize the importance of having the right, experienced people around the table to ensure we continue to build OrgSync in a healthy and sustainable manner.  And since the right people, who we know and trust, are permanently located in Dallas, then that’s where we must go.
• Access to Capital – in Dallas our CFO and COO were able to raise a substantial amount of capital within two days, and now we have some great corporate leaders serving on our advisory board.  Fund raising was not nearly as feasible in Austin.
• Strong Corporate Environment – we have secured a great office in Dallas that is affordable and meets our needs as a small and growing business.  We are also very excited about the corporate environment that Dallas has and believe it will be a great opportunity for us to network with several larger businesses as we continue to grow ourselves.
• Close Proximity to More Clients – we have numerous clients in the DFW area (UTD, UTA, TCU, UNT, UNT Health Sciences, TAMS) and want to be as close to them as possible.  This will provide us the opportunity to frequently visit with these clients, conduct focus groups, provide lots of training, and take new employees on-site to visit with clients and organizations using OrgSync.

With all that said, we are still very sad to leave the Austin community.  Austin will always be OrgSync’s birthplace, and we will never forget our roots.  Even though we are moving our corporate headquarters, we will continue to have a large presence in Austin and will continue to attract talent and supporters to assist us in achieving our corporate mission.

On behalf of my entire team, I want to thank each and every Austinite that we have met and exchanged stories, advice, and memories.  We will keep you close in our hearts and wish everyone in Austin the very best with your current and future endeavors.

Sincerely,

Eric Fortenberry, Founder & CEO

Cindy Royal is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Texas State University in San Marcos.  Cindy and I met on Twitter, when I volunteered to be interviewed by one of her student bloggers during SXSW Interactive.  You can view the OrgSync SXSW interview here.  We were excited to see social media being taught in the classroom and were even more excited to help students get hands on experience using social media!

As another SXSW Interactive comes to a close, I am pleased to be asked by OrgSync to provide some of my observations from this year’s event. I have attended the festival for many years, and this was the second year that I invited a team of student bloggers to cover the event. Our coverage, including photos, videos and archives of live stream interviews can be found at www.sxtxstate.com. SXSWi is such a fantastic opportunity for students to engage with concepts we discuss in the new media concentration in which I teach at TX State University in San Marcos. It is the most important conference that I attend each year, introducing me to new ideas that will be affecting media in the future.

This year’s programming was outstanding. From impressive keynote speakers like Chris Anderson, editor of Wired and author of two important books, The Long Tail and Free, and Tony Hsieh, the CEO of the online shoe retailer Zappos to outstanding panel discussions dealing with the future of social media, trends in journalism, Web design concepts and the direction of overall online experience, SXSW once again proved that Austin is the place to be in March. Additional highlights for me included discussions by Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV and Kathy Sierra. Their enthusiasm for online endeavors is infectious and inspiring.

Overall, I think two broad themes emerged from this year’s festivities.

The first is the focus on the user experience (UX). Where five years ago content was considered king, now it’s about what your users get to do on your site. The interaction must be two-way, and it must be relevant to the communities you support. The second theme has to do with the ubiquity of social networks. In her talk entitled “The Future of Social Networks: Social Networks Will Be Like Air, ” Charlene Li explained that we are moving to a universal identity and single social graph in our usage of these networks, and that we will eventually no longer use fragmented platforms and identities. This goes beyond a mere aggregation of existing platforms and requires a few major players to emerge as focal points of this interaction.

In regard to the activity of my students at the festival, I am very proud of the work they did on the blog. I was energized by their enthusiasm coming out of panels and discussing topics, asking questions and interacting with attendees. They worked extremely hard to not only gain knowledge for themselves, but to share that knowledge in the various ways that they have learned in our program, through blogs, video, photos and social media; lots of simultaneous learning and practice. The weeks prior to SXSW included the design and development of our site, promotion via various social media platforms including Twitter (@sxtxstate) and Facebook and the creation of content in the form of previews and tech news updates relevant to SXSW topics. While this activity was supervised by me, the students were completely in charge of the direction and execution. For this, they have a lasting archive of their experiences and something they can reference in the future.

We even tested live stream capabilities by doing a live interview from the convention center each day. You can find the archive of these interviews under the Live Stream tab on the site. We met Jeff and Eric of OrgSync on Sunday, and they were kind enough to spend some time with us talking about their collaborative online campus offerings. In addition, we interviewed panelists from The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, as well as business owners who were in attendance to gain new insight into technology trends.

The SXSWi team, of which several of my former and current students are a part, put on an amazing event each year, and continue to improve with each successive year. I don’t know how they’ll top 2009, but I’m already looking forward to March 2010. If you deal with technology and media in any manner, I highly recommend attending SXSW. And, if you can stick around for the second part of the week, the music’s not too shabby either. See some of the pictures and videos I shot during some of the music showcases at www.onthatnote.com. Hope to see you in Austin next year.

OrgSync’s first year at the SXSW Interactive Festival was a great success! We met many people interested in advancing technology in Higher Ed. Many shared our goal to accelerate student success through out of classroom involvement and innovative service learning. We also met many companies interested in partnering to help spread our services.

Saturday was an exciting day, OrgSync CEO, Eric Fortenberry and Jeff Jackson, Director of Client Services and Leadership Development, were interviewed by Texas State professor Cindy Royal. They told the “OrgSync Story” and went on to discuss how our online hosted tools will help universities communicate better with their students and help students get engaged on campus. The interview can be seen here.

The Festival’s opening remarks were made by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. He emphasized the importance of a strong company culture and always working to make the customer service experience the best it can be. It was very interesting to see how similar the Zappos company culture and core values are to ours at OrgSync. We both understand the importance of customer service, flexibility and innovation to revolutionize our customer experience.

It was very exciting to meet some of the nation’s most innovative and successful entrepreneurs. Team OrgSync had the pleasure of meeting Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg and Alex Albrecht co-host of Diggnation. As well as many other great entrepreneurs such as Pete Cashmore, founder of Mashable, blogger Robert Scoble, and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki.

Later that day, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht hosted Diggnation live from Stubbs BBQ. The OrgSync Team got to watch the show from the VIP balcony alongside other entrepreneurs mentioned in Sarah Lacey’s book, Once You’re Lucky, Twice Your Good; a company favorite!

Even more exciting was meeting John Schuman, Senior Worldwide Evangelist and Megan Stewart, Director Worldwide Higher Education for Adobe Systems. We discussed how we work with student organizations’ webmasters and how we’re interested in figuring out how to partner with Adobe so we can further provide student webmasters with the tools and experience they need to succeed.

One of the discussions held on Sunday consisted of a Higher Ed Panel focused on the challenges of the web in higher education. The panel discusses small budgets, and the generation gap between faculty and students as hindering the advancement of technology in the Higher Ed community. We were very pleased to see such a large audience working to bring advancements in technology to the classroom. Many agreed that students need to get involved more outside of the classroom to complement their academic studies and accelerate their success. We also tried to advance these discussions by sponsoring the 3rd annual SXSW Higher Ed MeetUp/ TweetUp at Buffalo Billiard’s.

Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed attending and exhibiting at SXSW and are already excited about next year’s Interactive Festival.

OrgSync is excited to sponsor the 3rd Annual Higher Ed MeetUp/TweetUp on Sunday night from 6:00-10:00pm at Buffalo Billiard’s on 6th & Brazo’s. Catch up with your colleagues in the education field and meet new friends at this great networking event.

If you get lost call Jeff at 512-970-6585

Map to Buffalo

Also be sure and attend Brad J Ward and Dylan Wilbank’s panel on the “The Web In Higher Education: What’s Different?” this year at SXSWi.

The 22nd Annual South by Southwest Music & Media Festival has begun! The OrgSync team will be exhibiting at the SXSW Interactive Festival this weekend at the Austin Convention Center. SXSW Interactive celebrates the best minds and the brightest personalities of emerging technologies. We will be at booth #710 on the fourth floor of the convention center in the Trade Show on Saturday & Sunday 12-6, and Monday 12-4. Please stop by our booth if you are planning to be at SXSW!

OrgSync will also be sponsoring the 3rd Annual Higher Ed MeetUp/TweetUp on Sunday night from 6:00-10:00pm at Buffalo Billiard’s on 6th & Brazo’s. Catch up with your colleagues in the education field and meet new friends at this great networking event. Also be sure and attend Brad J Ward and Dylan Wilbank’s panel on the “The Web In Higher Education: What’s Different?” this year at SXSWi.

We hope to see you at our SXSWi booth, The Higher Ed MeetUp/TweetUp and/or the panel discussion!

As a past officer of a UT business student organization, I know the challenges of communicating with 120+ members on a moments notice. Any student organization officer can tell you, it takes time, effort and skill to know each member, obtain member preference information, and inform them of last minute event details and changes.

What is the solution to these timeless organizational communication challenges? Simply put, OrgSync. On one hand, this Austin based company, OrgSync, Inc., hosts a platform to equip universities with the tools to oversee and manage their students and student organizations. On the other hand, OrgSync’s platform can also be used by student leaders, like me, to manage our organizations, committees, members and events.

My executive council initially wanted to use our website and our forum to inform and interact with our members. One entire year was devoted to creating a new “user friendly” website, and in the end that idea was scrapped because of time consuming inefficiencies with updating web content on a continual basis. After all, we were not a computer science organization teaching our members how to write code to build and manage a website. Our main purpose is to mold our members into young professionals with leadership experience.

After realizing that our website would not be an efficient method of communicating with our members, we focused on communicating through email and sending our entire member list serve [very lengthy] weekly emails, which listed out all events’ detailed information. Needless to say weekly e-mails were very tedious and time consuming and were merely a band-aid to our communication problem.

As a student and an officer, I know the importance of being time efficient and cutting out unnecessary tasks. Our time consuming communication efforts could have been cut in half simply by using OrgSync’s platform.

OrgSync’s SMS/Texting tool could have been the quick and simple solution to informing our members of event updates and details. We would have never needed to dabble in finding, creating, and managing a forum that never held up to our standards. Instead, we could have used OrgSync’s poll feature to interact with our members and to obtain unbiased and anonymous opinions and feedback on events. We would have even had an alternative to the pesky weekly emails. With OrgSync’s event and meeting tools, any officer could have uploaded event information and segment event invitations by specifying which committees and members to invite to specific events and meetings.

Kennie Blanco a graduate from the McCombs School of Business and a past President of a student organization said, “Finding a centralized and user friendly medium of communication was difficult. Our website was never advanced enough to facilitate communication effectively… it was not very easy for a member to go online to find information or to even ask questions about an upcoming event.”

In fact, OrgSync offers everything suggested by this experienced officer. With the tools that its platform provides OrgSync efficiently facilitates communication within organizations. I would recommend it to any school and organization looking to have a higher level of efficiency and effectiveness when communicating and interacting with their constituency online.

We reached our goal to raise $1,500 to provide drinking water to those in need. Thank you to everyone who donated. Please continue to help us spread the word for this amazing cause!

This month people from cities across the globe are uniting for a much larger cause to raise money to provide drinking water for those in need. Today the OrgSync team has set out to support this effort by harnessing the power of social media to raise $1,500.

Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all sickness and disease, and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Only $20 can provide one person in a third world country clean, safe drinking water for 20 years.

In an effort to help us provide a basic necessity to those less fortunate, we ask you to donate a small amount (even $1 will help) which will be personally matched by Eric Fortenberry, Founder and CEO of OrgSync. Eric has agreed to match the first $1000 raised because as a leader, Eric is passionate about leveraging his understanding of social media to unite the online community for such a great cause.

Please click the icon below to donate.

Also, please help us spread the word about this cause to anyone you may know. Thanks for everyone’s help!

Why Water Relief?
Charity: Water promo featuring “Time Bomb” by Beck from Charity: Water on Vimeo.
Watch this short video to see how 1 in 6 people don’t have access to safe, clean drinking water. To learn more visit Charity Water.

Keep track of how much money we raise throughout the day:
Twitter: Follow @OrgSync
Facebook: Friend Eric Fortenberry
Blog: blog.orgsync.com
Flickr: OrgSync

We would like to thank the following individuals for donating!

Major Donors ($50 and above):
Karen Andreas $100
Michael and Phyllis Jurica $100
Melody Fortenberry $100
Katherine Haas $100
Phil Andreas $50
Keith and Evie Katz $50
Debra Cerda $50
Daniel Ware $50

Donors:
Michelle Greer
Cayce Stone
Jami Darden
Nicole Andreas
Mike Pearson
Jon Bolden
Aaron Wallis
Jeff Jackson
Clifton King
Matthew Buck
Andrew Katz
Leanna Laskey
Peter Vincent
Darryl Graham
Steve Lyons
Chelsea Lyons
Wesley Faulkner
Katherine Katz
Debbie Pesses

OrgSync announces our plan to support Susan G. Komen For the Cure by participating in the Race for the Cure on November 2 in Austin, TX. OrgSync is committed and dedicated to enhancing the Austin community, as well as supporting the efforts of Susan G. Komen for the Cure in the fight against breast cancer. The OrgSync team will race in honor of Karen Andreas, the mother of an OrgSync founder who is a survivor and continues to battle breast cancer.

“We’re really excited to participate in the Race for the Cure to support the cause and one of our team members,” said OrgSync Founder and CEO, Eric Fortenberry. “We are always looking for opportunities to help give back to the Austin community.”

We ask for your support of the OrgSync for Susan G. Komen fundraising efforts by visiting the site to make a donation. All donations will go directly to the foundation. Additionally, if you are interested in participating on race day with OrgSync, you can sign up for Team Karen or contact Leanna Laskey at leanna@orgsync.com. We welcome all team members who are dedicated to making a difference in the community and in the fight against breast cancer.

This past week we attended the Texas Council of College Instructional Leaders conference in Austin, Texas. It was a great opportunity for us to learn more about community colleges around the state of Texas and their unique student needs. Community Colleges have a large commuter population, which has made it difficult to have an active student body outside the classroom in the past. They have been looking for a way to engage students in a manner that they are familiar with. It was exciting to share how OrgSync builds an online community that campuses can use to improve communication with their student body.

Our ability to provide co-curricular transcripts for students quickly became the talk of the conference. Schools are excited about how co-curricular transcripts can give their students a competitive advantage when transferring to a 4-year institution or beginning a career. Universities have been looking for a viable solution to offer their graduates co-curricular transcripts and the benefits they offer after graduation.

We look forward to working with more community colleges to provide their campuses with the right tools to help meet their unique needs.