Nominations are open for the Ernst &Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2012 Awards, celebrating the country’s most innovative business leaders

Ernst & Young LLP is calling for nominations for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2012 Awards, recognized as one of the most prestigious business award programs in the country. The deadline for applications is March 9, 2012, with the Mountain Desert Awards ceremony scheduled for June 28, 2012 at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Awards are given to entrepreneurs who have demonstrated excellence and extraordinary successin such areas as innovation, financial performance, and personal commitment to their businesses and communities. Self-nominations are encouraged, and there is no fee.

Now in its 26th year, the program has honored the inspirational leadership of such entrepreneurs as Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Michael Dell of Dell Inc., Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, Fred Smith of FedEx, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Richard Schulze of BestBuy, Andrew Mason of Groupon, Mindy Grossman of HSN, Inc., Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn, and many more.  Regionally the program has honored the inspirational leadership of entrepreneurs such as Larissa Herda, tw telecom; Charles Ergen, EchoStar; Roy Dimoff, ViaWest; and Dan Caruso, Zayo Group.

All regional honorees are then invited to the national Entrepreneur Of The Year gala, hosted by
Jay Leno, on November 17, 2012 in Palm Springs, California. The gala is the culminating event of the Ernst & Young Strategic Growth Forum®, the nation’s most prestigious gathering of high-growth, market-leading companies. For more information on the Ernst & Young Strategic Growth Forum, please visit www.ey.com/us/strategicgrowthforum.

For more information and nomination forms contact:  Courtney Story, Program Manager, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® Mountain Desert Awards, at 720-931-4411 or courtney.story@ey.com. Information is also available at www.ey.com/us/eoy.

CTP Chairman Named by COBIZ as one of Colorado’s 10 Most Powerful Salespeople

Communications Technology Professionals is pleased to announce that the organization’s Chairman, Joshua Holmberg, has been selected by ColoradoBiz Magazine as one of Colorado’s 10 Most Powerful Salespeople.

Joshua is currently Vice President of Sales, BroadSoft Inc.

What he does: Holmberg represents communications service providers at BroadSoft, which provides voice-over-IP application software and cloud-based communication services. His year-over-year sales growth in 2010 was nearly 200 percent, placing him within the highest percentage achievement in worldwide sales.

Background: Holmberg, who has been with BroadSoft for four years, was a key contributor to product development, marketing and support at industry solution providers, including Hewlett-Packard, Veraz Networks, Agilent Technologies and Empirix.

Career preparation: "I have a bachelor of science in electrical engineering, and a master's degree in business administration. A lot of what we're talking about is very technical, so both my degree and my experience give me credibility. I can translate that technical information to the real world."

Ditch the sales pitch: "In general, I think sales gets a bad reputation. I don't consider myself a salesman. I consider myself an advocate of my customers' needs and my company's ability to meet those needs. A good salesperson needs to spend a lot of time generating relationships that are built on trust. Building trust is critical. It may not lead to immediate sales, but over time it will pay off."

More information on Joshua and the other winners selected by ColoradoBiz Magazine is available online at:

http://www.cobizmag.com/articles/colorados-10-most-powerful-salespeople/page-2/

Liberty Global CEO Fries ponders past, future - The Denver Post

Liberty Global chief executive Mike Fries, recently named by the Communications Technology Professionals as the 2010 Communications Executive of the Year in Colorado, leads one of the world's largest cable-TV operators.

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_17815304

Congratulations to the 2010 CTP Award Winners!

Congratulations to the 2010 Communications Executive of the Year Mike Fries of Liberty Global, Inc. and also to the 2010 Ascent Award winner Aircell!

Unified Communication and Green Tech

Click here to listen to this interview on W3W3.com. 

Larry Nelson sat down with co-chairs of the programming committee for Communications Technology Professionals (CTP), Tim Sisneros and Debora Langer, and discussed the ever-changing and convergence of IP technologies. With their backgrounds and careers they had a great deal to share. Tim Sisneros works for Polycom, a Silicon Valley based unified communication company providing both voice and video solutions to the market today. Tim is very heavily involved in the VoIP market in Denver. Tim explained both voice and video, hence the new term we're hearing "unified communication", there's a lot more to it these days. Debora Langer is with Green Energy Corp, newly merged to include Magpie which is a company that has been around for about ten years. "Now we create software solutions for communications, the smart grid and the utilities." Debora said, "With our foundation in Bell Labs and our heritage in communications, it is a nice blend of what's happening in the smart grid industry". Larry asked them about the trends they're seeing. Debora replied that even with the down turned economy, Debora is seeing a resurgence in activity and buzz in the industry. As you go out to industry events there seems to be higher attendance, there's definitely more energy around this space and CTP in general attendance at our events have gone up. Professionally we're seeing more deals and projects be larger in volume, so it seems like that whole telecom industry is coming back. Tim added, "It's really a convergence of a lot of different technologies that are all becoming one. Where you used to hear a lot of discussions around people having jobs in the data field or jobs in the voice field or even software, they all kind of come together over the one thing that is common - IP technologies." Larry said, "How is CTP different than other organizations? You work with Silicon Flatirons, the Cable Center and various other organizations, how are you different and how do you compliment these other organizations?" Debora likes that CTP is so focused. It's specifically Colorado, it is specifically communications and technology it is a very collaborative organization, and it has a very strong community feel. Tim noted that CTP is 100% non-profit organization. The connections that are made both personally and professionally are very rewarding - Tim and Debora were recently named in the Top 25 Sales People by Colorado BIZ Magazine. One of the things they talked about was how important it is to get involved and to give back - get on a board, get on a committee, just participate. Get yourself out there and make connections.