Yesterday's Boston Business Journal article highlights a trend we have been witnessing for some time - the growth in European tech companies looking to gain a foothold in the U.S.

This has become somewhat of a specialism here at March - we have launched numerous European companies into the US market and have seen a significant increase in opportunities coming through our various European networks.

As a result, we have developed a solid understanding of the issues and opportunities for overseas companies trying to gain traction in the US market, whether relocating HQs or simply opening a regional office. 

Either way, its important to be seen to be making a commitment to the US market in order to be taken seriously by the media and the business community as a whole.  There is also an increasing openess and a growing recognition that US business can benefit from the experiences of overseas companies where certain technologies just taking off in the US have already been tried and tested.

Do get in touch to find out more...

Cognisco will also be exhibiting at SHRM next week in Chicago, the Society for Human Resource Management's annual conference.  Cognisco recently exhibited at ASTD, the American Society for Training and Development's annual conference, in San Diego. 

Tideway made a name for itself by enabling optimization and relocation projects in the large, complex, and availability-critical IT infrastructures of major global financial institutions, and has developed expertise along the way in the particular nuances and concerns of financial services IT. In this video feature from Finextra, you can see Tideway's Founder and CEO, Richard Muirhead, along with Wachovia's former senior VP and Chief Architect, Tony Bishop, discussing Wachovia's high-profile data center relocation project and the economic/technological/environmental pressures that are causing more banking institutions to rethink their data center strategy.

Richard has spent the past week at the annual SIFMA Technology Management Conference, live-blogging his thoughts, discussions and trends spotted from the show floor. His posts have been smart, insightful, and just a little bit cheeky - check out some of the highlights, linked below:

SIFMA: Pre-Show Thoughts (6/9/08)
Boiled Sweets; Hand-Rolled Cigars and John McCain (6/10/08)
Grand Theft Auto and Zero Tolerance (6/12/08)
Data Center Survival! (6/13/08)

Since 2006 we've been successfully supporting Exigen Services' (formerly StartSoft Development Labs) US PR push.  In fact a hit in eWeek at the beginning of the campaign resulted in a number of leads.  Since then we've been working to position Exigen Services as a next generation application outsourcing provider through research with Forrester and hard core media relations.  Recently we built a network of agencies for Exigen Services in the UK, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Latvia and Lithuania.  We are managing the strategy, process and output.  It's going extremely well and we're all off to London for a global PR agency summit in June.  Eric is particularly excited about going to London!  Having built out Cisco's EMEA PR agency network back in late 90s it's good to know some things change and some things stay the same.  Partnering with the Globalcom network (Spreckley in the UK, Globalcom in Germany and Infocomp in Sweden) has been productive and good fun.  Thanks team.  Our other networks include ION (Octopus' Network) and Bandwidth (Band & Brown's network) where we share a handful of clients with each network.

What have we done for them so far? Built key relationships with media / analysts, raised the issue of WLAN security to (IN)Security Magazine's and Security Matters' readers, and informed Best Security Tips', Dark Reading's audience about key solutions from NCP (far more than this of course, like the review eWeek is conducting and the full tech briefing John Girard of Gartner has requested).

Security isn't new to the team - with a combined experience representing McAfee, Verdasys, @Stake (now a Symantec company), Texas Instruments RFid Systems, Caveo Technology, PDA Defense, and many others.

So our practice is officially off the ground and the team is excited about the challenges ahead.

"Get Published" Competition, sponsored by Cognisco: www.cognisco.com

Are you studying industrial and organizational psychology, occupational psychology, organizational behavior or organizational management?

Do you want to get some extra exposure for your dissertation or class research project?

Cognisco, a global market leader in online employee assessment solutions with offices in New York and London, has launched its Get Published competition to undergraduate and graduate university students.

Cognisco is interested in student research about one of the following main topic areas:

• Employee understanding and competence in their role.
• The advantages and disadvantages of evaluating employee performance.
• How learning and training can be assessed effectively.

All entries will be judged by a distinguished committee including Cognisco's in-house team of organizational psychologists and experts, top university professors, and corporate HR executives.

Winners will get their research published on the Cognisco website. A grand prize will be given to the person whose research is downloaded the most.

For a full list of topic areas or to download the entry form and brochure with the competition requirements, visit http://www.cognisco.com/published.asp or join our Get Published discussion group on Facebook.

Competition Closes: May 31, 2008
Winners Announced: June 9, 2008
Download Period: June 10 - July 26, 2008
Grand Prize Winner Announced: July 30, 2008

Cash Prize: $1,500 to ten first prize winners; An additional $3,000 to the grand prize winner who has the highest number of downloads.

Contact Stephanie Rubino / Lillian Dunlap
(617) 475-1574 / (617) 401-2611
cognisco@marchpr.com

Cognisco is a global market-leader in online assessment and learning solutions working with clients such as Bank of America, Johnson & Johnson, Shell, Xerox and Daihatsu. Cognisco provides custom-built online assessments that measure employee knowledge, understanding and competence in order to increase employee performance and reduce business risk.

www.cognisco.com

 Cory Doctorow, co-author of the popular blog Boing Boing, talks to InformationWeek about what it takes to get posted on a blog.  One of the best ways to gain publicity and generate buzz is to tell these bloggers what you are doing.   

Doctorow discusses the dos and don'ts of the blogosphere.  And since Boing Boing is "pretty darn popular" (one of the five most popular blogs according to Technorati), you might want to pay attention:

• Link, don't stink: If you want bloggers to write about you, it must be on the Web. Cory mentions that this could be a soccer tournament, a protest march or your upcoming TV show. (You will find my co-worker's Blog in my Favorites list, check it out, great way to catch up on American Idol if you've missed a performance) Avoid flash, PDF files and streams, they just annoy the bloggers.
• Graphically Speaking: It's a good idea to offer high-resolution graphics and images on your website, that way the blogger can play art director and crop images as desired. Including your URL on the bottom of these images also makes it easy for bloggers to reference back to the website.
• Privacy, Please: Don't upset the bloggers...there is no legal right to control who gets to link to your website. "The lawyer who advised you to put up a "linking policy" describing the "terms and conditions" under which the world is allowed to link to your site is an idiot who owes you your money back. Standing on your lawn, shaking your fist at the airplane flying overhead and shouting "Get out of my sky" makes you look like a dork -- so does threatening text about linking to you."
• Live By the Rules: When submitting a suggestion to a blogger, pay attention to how they would like to receive information. Some sites have email addresses while others have submission forms. Remember, bloggers live and breathe the internet, avoid misfired suggestions.
• "Fair Use" Realm: Almost all information on blogs (90%) is potentially illegal under copyright law. Creative Commons is a nonprofit effort to create a series of standard, universal copyright licenses. "If you want people to talk about your stuff online (and online "talking about stuff" is basically the same thing as "copying stuff") a Creative Commons license is de rigeur."