Innovation + Job News

For nearly a decade, a quiet but dynamic partnership between the University of Cincinnati and Cincom software has grown in prominence, through a business plan completion that prepares the winner for the international stage.

The annual UC Center for Entrepreneurship Spirit of Enterprise Graduate Business Plan Competition kicks off Feb. 23, and is an intense 36-hour contest where graduate students from across the country and Canada have their business plans poked, prodded – and for the best – rewarded.

The top plan wins the $10,000 Cincom Spirit of Champion Award, and earns an automatic bid to the international 2012 Venture Labs Investment Competition, formerly the Moot Corp competition at The University of Texas at Austin.

This year teams from 16 universities will compete at the UC event, which will be held at Cincom Systems Cincinnati headquarters. In addition to UC students, teams from Brigham Young, Johns Hopkins and Carnegie Mellon universities will compete as well, says Cincom Finance Director Dan Vogel.

Vogel, who has served as a competition judge in the past, says the contest is open to any type of business idea. Entries have been varied, from medical devices and software to a new liqueur. In recent years, more of the entries have focused on biotechnology and research-based medical devices.

“We get some partnering of MBA students and the medical research department testing out ideas to see if they are commercially viable,” Vogel says.

The plans represent a shift in Ohio’s economy, one that relied on traditional manufacturing jobs to one that increasingly is turning to innovation, technology and research in job creation.

“In the Midwest in particular we are evolving from an economy based on manufacturing to one that is more services and researched based, and when you look at the number of top research schools in Ohio, Michigan and Illinois, a lot of time and money is being devoted to research,” he says. “The universities are fostering that environment and we are trying to jump on board.”

In addition to the Grand Prize, the competition awards $3,000 the first runner up, $2,000 to the second runner up (sponsored by Queen City Angels First Fund) and a $1,000 to the third runner up.  

The team with the top plan will move on to the Venture Labs Investment Competition in May where they will pitch to potential investors from across the globe and compete for a a prize package worth $135,000. The students will compete against 40 teams from more than 12 countries including Thailand, Norway and Brazil.

By Feoshia Henderson
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ShareThis, the Cincinnati-founded company behind the ubiquitous green button that lets you quickly share web content, is expanding its relevance through a social analytics tool.

The company created the Social Quality Index, which measures the quality of websites by measuring their sharing activity across 27 content categories.

“The whole point of SQI is to be able to give advertisers more bang for their buck," says ShareThis Social Media Manager Tom Spano. "What we’ve done is come up with a grading system based on an algorithm that measures the quality of a website’s content (via sharing).”

The Social Quality Index comes as web analytics tools are becoming more sophisticated, and search engines like Google and Bing are emphasizing websites with quality and relevant content over ones arbitrarily stuffed with keyword and links.

The SQI will also help measure the quality of pages on social media sites like Facebook by looking at metrics like content sharing engagement, which tells advertisers more than a pure number of followers. It also identifies users with higher purchase intent and those more likely to share content widely.

“It’s basically a quality versus quantity tool,” Spano says.

The ShareThis tool determines a site's social traffic score by looking at metrics including outbound share and inbound clickback traffic, and comparing them to page views. The SQI could prove valuable to advertisers as a number of studies have shown that people trust shared content more than traditional placed advertising.

“There is a definite need for this in the advertising space. It’s a great struggle to wonder if the ads are getting in front of the people who need to see it,” Spano says.

By Feoshia Henderson
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In December 2011, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services selected 73 individuals, including Margaret Namie, of Mercy Health, to the Innovation Advisors Program.

Namie works as divisional vice president of quality for Mercy Health, a network of  more than 80 hospitals, senior living communities, outpatient centers and physician practices based in Cincinnati. Mercy will receive $20,000 to help support Namie’s work as an advisor. Candidates range from physicians to nurses to allied health professionals to instructors. The CMS, created by the Affordable Care Act, looks at criteria, such as career achievements, the organization's commitment to their work and skill sets.

“I have long advocated finding and sharing best practices in patient care as a way for healthcare providers to improve the health of the communities they serve,” Namie says. “The opportunity to learn from and share ideas with healthcare leaders from across the country will help us improve the health of men, women and children throughout the United States and right here in Cincinnati.”

The program is part of CMS’s wider effort to transform the healthcare system both financially and operationally. Chosen from 920 applicants from around the country, advisors will go through an intensive orientation then test new models of care and build partnerships to share ideas and outcomes both locally and nationally. By attending in-person meetings as well as remote sessions, advisors can deepen their knowledge in health care economics and finance, population health, systems analysis and operations research.

In its first year, the Innovation Advisors Program hopes to appoint 200 people to create a network of healthcare professionals and organizations working towards the same goals.

By Evan Wallis

Editor’s note and full disclosure: This is the first in a series of posts from Megan McAuley, a participant in the current SpringBoard session at ArtWorks. Megan is also a former UC journalism student of Soapbox Managing Editor Elissa Yancey, who is one of those nagging, I mean, encouraging, voices in the customer line at Coffee Emporium.

I am a 24-year-old political science graduate from the University of Cincinnati. I live in Over-the-Rhine and work down the street at a coffee shop called Coffee Emporium. I, like many other 20-something’s with a liberal arts degree, am barely getting by as I ponder my next big move. In college, I wanted to leave the country and save the world, but somewhere between there and here, I fell in love with OTR and decided it needed some saving, too.

My job at Coffee Emporium was supposed to be temporary. An enjoyable one to two-year stint as I mapped out my future. A future that entailed things like law school, working for a non-profit in foreign country or moving to some progressive city like Seattle or Boulder. Nothing about my future involved opening up a rock climbing gym in Cincinnati or creating an outdoor educational program for inner-city youth.

My path to budding entrepreneurship has been oddly comparable to my first time driving around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It has been, at times, overwhelming, intimidating, and directionless, yet navigable, exciting and pleasantly challenging. A series of unforeseen events culminated in my participation in the SpringBoard business planning and development program. On the first night of class, when asked how why we had pursued the program, I responded, “Because ArtWorks put up so many flyers in my café.”

My idea was like a seed, tossed into the air, half-jokingly, where it landed in an environment unexpectedly conducive to its growth. Since day one, Coffee Emporium has been a wealth of information, encouragement, networking and motivation for me. In OTR, I have found a community of people who truly believe in the potential our neighborhood has to grow and flourish. I have made genuine friendships with my customers and co-workers who have continually poked and prodded me to pursue an idea I once considered laughable.

In Tony and Eileen, my bosses, I have found the inspiration to create a workplace where customers and employees flock because there are still people on this planet who value doing things the right way. And in SpringBoard, I have found a group of facilitators and co-entrepreneurs who are providing me with the tools to make my idea a reality.

I am immeasurably excited to see what happens over the course of the next 8 weeks as I glean every bit of information I can from the SpringBoard course to pursue my business idea. Please join me for the ride.

One downside to traveling by bike is the lack of cargo space, especially if it’s produce to sell at Findlay Market or other farmers’ markets.

Permaganic, the Over-the-Rhine non-profit that sustainably grows produce and teaches teenagers gardening techniques, is pairing with a lead volunteer of Mobo, a volunteer run, bicycle co-op, to build a pedal-powered produce cart. The cart will be another asset for Permaganic’s youth internship program, which pays inner-city teens to work the garden. In turn they learn how to grow, sell and cook with fresh garden produce. Luke Ebner and Angela Stanbery, founders of Permaganic, approached Mobo about building the cart.

The cart will help Permaganic lower their carbon footprint, as well as remove barriers between customers and sellers for a more intimate interaction. The cart will be hand-built by Rob Grossman, a volunteer at Mobo and freelance designer. Once finished, it will serve as both a produce transport and an interactive point-of-sale, complete with a cooler that can hold a couple of hundred pounds of produce, a blackboard, shelves and an awning that is collapsible when not in use.

“We are trying to add to the overall charm of the city,” Grossman says. “We hope people will walk into Findlay Market and see this big, colorful tricycle and want to approach it and find out more.”

Grossman will also create a jig to help in production of more produce carts in the future. For funding, Grossman and Permaganic launched a Kickstarter campaign. The overall goal is $4,000. The cart is a couple years in the making, but Grossman remains optimistic. If the Kickstarter campaign doesn’t raise the funds, Grossman says they will still move forward with the produce cart, but maybe not make it a top priority.

“We’ve drawn out the design and researched all the parts we need,” Grossman says. “It’s going to happen, it’s just a matter of when.”

By Evan Wallis

The next phase of Covington’s growing life sciences corridor got a boost from Duke Energy, which has awarded the city a $100,000 urban renewal grant for its bioLOGIC accelerator.

The grant will go toward an expansion at bioLOGIC’s 7,000-square-foot second floor at its Russell Street headquarters. The addition will include office and lab space, along with classroom facilities at the life science accelerator. The building’s 5,000-square-foot first floor is at capacity.

bioLOGIC houses seven life sciences companies. Its growth is being fueled in two areas: through expanding existing companies and attracting new companies to locate or relocate to Covington.

The accelerator has a pipeline of nearly a dozen companies looking to locate in its space, either temporarily or permanently, says bioLOGIC Managing Director Keith Schneider. The organization hopes to secure more funding through grants or private investments to complete the build out, which could be finished late this year.

The Duke Energy Foundation’s Urban Revitalization Pilot Program grant is designed to help spur job growth and retention in urban core communities served by Duke Energy. Ohio and Kentucky serves as the young programs pilot area. Duke operates in five states in the southeast and the Midwest.

Duke has been investing in the region’s economic development for years, says Rhonda Whitaker, company director of government and community relations. Traditionally, Duke focused more on large manufacturing and industrial projects, but realized in urban areas such projects are rare.

“We have a Site Readiness program that helps prepare large tracts of land for manufacturing projects, but local leaders said they didn’t meet an urban community’s needs," Whitaker says. "And the urban core is significant and important in our area. Successful regions rely on a strong urban core. And this is really an effort to concentrate on those community’s job growth and sustainability."

The Duke Foundation chose Covington’s bioLOGIC because it was an emerging, successful innovator in the growing life sciences arena. From its inception, it’s been a private, public partnership that relied on private and government investment and support.

“It’s an effort to harness the power of entrepreneurship in the region with space for training and creates a targeted, skilled workforce,” Whitaker says.

By Feoshia Henderson
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Cincinnati sports enthusiast and blogger Eddie Maisonet has upped his game with The Sportsfan Journal, a website devoted to all sports news.

The publication launched about two months ago, and expands on Edthesportsfan.com, Maisonet’s edgy, fast-paced personal sports blog. He maintained (the now dimmed) blog with help of two writing partners. Those partners, Kenny Masenda, of Dallas, and Phil Barnett, of Bakersfield, Calif., have joined Maisonet in this new endeavor, which is updated more frequently and now has a cache of a half-dozen writers.

“We are a full online sports and culture publication. The site is updated multiple times a day; it’s more interactive and keeps pace with the changes in the sports news world,” says Maisonet, also a regular contributor to SLAM basketball magazine.

The Sportsfan Journal features a mix of news, columns and video revolving around sports as varied as football, basketball, hockey and wrestling. It also features Maisonet’s ongoing, one-hour Unsportsmanlike Conduct show on Blog Talk Radio Wednesdays at 9 p.m. EST.

Like Edthesportsfan.com, Maisonet’s describes The Sportsfan Journal as a place where sport is the star, not gossip about athletes' private lives or the latest off-the-field antics.

“It’s not salacious like you might see in a lot of other well-read sites. We don’t want to go that route. That might lose us some readers, but that’s not what we’re about,” says Maisonet, whose site had 25,000 unique page views last month.

While the site is expanding, it’s also increasingly hitting a little closer to home. Maisonet is planning to write more about Cincinnati’s sports culture and stars. He is also working toward bringing is Blog Talk Show to the Cincinnati airways, as well as pitching the site to potential advertisers.

“There are some good sports writers here, but I think there is room for more voices than are currently reflected in the city of Cincinnati,” he says.

By Feoshia Henderson
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Cincinnati-based peer lending technology firm SoMoLend is up and running with a $1 million-minimum lending commitment from KeyBank.

The Web- and mobile-based service allows small businesses that are credit worthy but may not be eligible to receive traditional bank loans to borrow money today from corporations and lending institutions, and eventually from family, friends, customers and neighbors, at low rates.

“It’s exciting that Cincinnati small businesses will be the first that get to take advantage of the KeyBank loans,” says Candace Klein, CEO and founder of SoMoLend.

“With the launch of the beta version of www.somolend.com and actual money to borrow, small businesses no longer have to be intimidated by walking through the doors of a traditional bank.”

While Cincinnatians may be the first who get to take advantage of this money, the company has garnered a lot of press both locally and nationwide, including at www.americanbanker.com and the online Wall Street Journal.  

“We’ve gained relevance in the U.S. banking world recently, and we truly think we have the technology to change the way small businesses obtain capital,” Klein says.

And although other online loan facilitators have failed to truly change the market, she says, SoMoLend has unique features that will make borrowing and lending money much more personal.

“The mobile and local aspect of our service encourages borrowers and lenders in the same geographic area to connect with one another,” Klein says.

“We have worked hard to offer a service that complies with all current state and federal laws, but we also see significant opportunity for individual lending with legislation currently proposed in Congress,” she adds.

This federal legislation would allow individuals to lend to unrelated but attractive small business requests on the site.
Until that happens, SoMoLend has signed with a second institution, is in active conversations with two more and has begun conversations with local cities and chambers of commerce to lend money to SoMoLend borrowers, creating new revenue for them and also serving their constituents.

SoMoLend was founded in May 2011 with a $470,000 seed-stage investment from CincyTech, Queen City Angels and private individuals.

By Sarah Blazak, CincyTech

University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music has added another degree to its already nationally esteemed programs for the upcoming fall semester.

Applications have come in from all over the world for CCM’s newly announced Commercial Music Production degree. The highly selective program will only enroll about 10 students per year. The degree will mix music theory, composition, studio techniques and film scoring and be paired with a minor in music business entrepreneurship aimed to give graduates all the training they need to run their own, studio.

“They will learn how to write music from the ground up,” says Scott Belck, director of the commercial music production program. “In a strong sense, it’s a music writing degree, but then they will know how to go out and be their own recording studio.”

The possibilities for careers after completing the degree are varied, but Belck says many graduates might produce original content for use that could range from movies to commercials to albums.

“So much of the technology needed to make music is accessible and affordable anymore,” Belck says. “A graduate will be able to work on their own in whatever space they have.”

Three weeks after opening up the application process, CCM has received applications from all over the world. Faculty is looking for the best young potential in the world. Applicants have sent Youtube videos of their singing/songwriting style, while one applicant from Thailand sent a fully completed film score.

“We’re going to prepare them to be successful in the recording business,” Belck says. “We’ll follow their creative side, regardless of style.”

While some schools such as Belmont New York University and USC have programs similar to the Commercial Production degree, Belck says it is the first of its kind in the region.

By Evan Wallis

A small Fort Thomas credit and debit card processing company will nearly double its size with major expansion plans that include hiring 25 employees.

OMEGA Processing Solutions was founded in 2003 by business partners and industry experts Scott Anderson and Todd McHugh. It recently received preliminary approval for up to $325,000 in incentives from the Kentucky Economic Development Finances Authority for its expansion, which also includes doubling the size of its Northern Kentucky headquarters. The company will invest $475,000.

OMEGA Processing Solutions is an electronic point-of-sale processing company that specializes in credit and debit cards. The company has been steadily growing, and was named to the 2011 Inc. 500|5000 list in August.

"I've been in the industry since 1981, and I love the business and find fascinating the changes that have happened in it. The way people in world decide to pay for things continues to evolve and change, so it's an exciting place to be," says CEO Anderson.

The company plans to complete its building expansion by early spring, and will soon start hiring, Anderson says. He'll be adding employees to customer retention, customer service and support and more.

Anderson is a native of Iowa who lives with his wife, a Northern Kentucky native, in Fort Thomas. Anderson moved to area for a previous job with VeriFone Systems, a large international electronic payments company. Anderson caught the entrepreneurial bug while working there. He eventually decided to start OMEGA with McHugh, who has an MBA and more than 20 years of management and administrative experience in the credit card processing industry.

Anderson credits the company's growth to hiring great employees, treating them well, making the work environment fun and strategic company investment.

"We aren’t ones to highly leverage ourselves. We look at areas to expand in and will invest a dollar if we can make a dollar in 10 cents. We make sure training programs in place. We make sure it's a fun environment to work in. We work hard and we play hard," Anderson says.

By Feoshia Henderson
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If you’re wondering where you can find some of New York’s brightest contemporary classical musicians, look no further than Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center. Jan. 21, the CAC presents Future Shock, an evening of electro-acoustic chamber music featuring artists William Brittelle, Clarice Jensen and Nadia Sirota.  
 
Composed by William Brittelle for ACME, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble, Future Shock promises to enchant the ears and provoke the intellect of concertgoers. The music combines elements from conventional classical music with contemporary drum programming and synthesizers to create a futuristic sound for a new millennium.
 
“Future Shock is really a survey of the type of music that is being created and performed in Brooklyn right now,” says Brittelle. “The show features music you can think about and feel. It’s amazing to open the world to this type of music in a very exciting way.”

Set to make its New York premiere in spring 2012, Cincinnatians can take advantage of a special opportunity to see Future Shock in the backdrop of the Contemporary Arts Center.
 
\William Brittelle is a composer of “electro-acoustic art music” whose work on the albums Television Landscape and Mohair Time Warp has been the subject of critical acclaim in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, NPR’s All Things Considered and more. Brittelle has performed all across the United States and is the co-director of New Amsterdam Records and New Amsterdam Presents, a recording label and presenting organization based in Brooklyn, NY.
 
Cellist Clarice Jensen holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from The Juilliard School and is currently the artistic director for ACME. She has performed with an impressive list of artists, including the New Juilliard Ensemble, the International Music Ensemble, the Avian Orchestra and Columbia Composers, in addition to pop and rock musicians such as The National, Grizzly Bear and Silversun Pickups. She has recorded with the likes of Arcade Fire, Ratatat and Hole among many others.
 
Violist Nadia Sirota also holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The Juilliard School. She is a founding member of ACME, yMusic, and Wordless Music Orchestra, and has commissioned and premiered works by composers Marcos Balter, Caleb Burhans and Nico Muhly. Her impressive and extensive credits include performances with Max Richter, Johann Johannsson and Stars of the Lid among others. In addition to her classical performances, Nadia’s work can be heard on albums by The National, Grizzly Bear and Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs.
 
Future Shock features no vocal performances. The audience can expect to hear modern works by Nico Muhly, Missy Mazzoli, and Judd Greenstein, as well as a world premiere by William Brittelle.
 
Tickets are $10 general admission, or $8 for CAC members. To purchase tickets, visit www.contemporaryartscenter.org.
 
By Deidra Wiley Necco

Deaconess Medical Monitoring is marketing a suite of products designed to allow senior citizens to be more independent as they age.

These products, developed in partnership with Guardian Medical Monitoring, come as Deaconess continues to evolve from a hospital to a senior services and product provider.

Products currently available include the Personal Emergency Response System (PERS), which alerts a personal emergency responder if a person falls or faces a home security breach. Subscribers wear a necklace or wristband that they can activate in an emergency.

There's also the Medication Management System, an electronic medication dispenser that helps people manage multiple prescriptions or complex medication schedules. Users can load a month's worth of medication at a time, then be alerted when it's time to take correct doses. After they take their medicines, users hit a blue button on the device to signal they've taken the medications. If they don't hit the button after a certain time, the device withdraws the medicine and notifies a person identified as a first responder.

The goal of the new products is as simple as it is necessary. "We are trying to help people age in place and stay independent in their own homes as long as possible," says Deaconess Medical Monitoring Coordinator Holly Williamson.

Other products like internet video monitoring and GPS-powered personal location devices help seniors and caretakers transition from a hospital to home. Lack of a successful transition often means repeat trips to hospitals, which translates into seniors more likely to lose their independence while racking up higher healthcare costs.

Deaconess Medical Monitoring products are being marketed to individuals, hospitals and senior living facilities, and there are more products being developed, Williamson says.

Deaconess Medical Monitoring is an affiliate of Deaconess Associations Foundation. Deaconess Associations, Inc., the parent company for all Deaconess affiliates, owns and operates Deaconess Long Term Care facilities in Ohio, Kansas and Missiouri.
 
Deaconess Hospital closed in 2010, and has evolved into a  health care campus with health-oriented products, services and resources. The hospital building is leased to University of Cincinnati Psychiatric Services; Regency Rehabilitation Hospital ( a long term rehabilitation hospital); and other other private offices and research facilities.


By Feoshia Henderson
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Northern Kentucky University received a $22,000 grant from the AT&T Foundation to kick start hands-on environmental programs at area middle schools.

NKU's Center for Environmental Education will work with five middle schools to develop real-word, school-based programs that promote "reduce, reuse and recycle" waste management initiatives.

The initiatives will be student-led, with guidance from teachers and administrators, and developed to respond to each school's unique circumstances. Students will inventory their schools' current waste management programs, including conservation, recycling and disposal of waste. They'll then suggest improvement projects.

Particiapating schools will be Turkey Foot Middle School, Holmes Middle School, Tichenor Middle School and St. Thomas Middle School. NKU is waiting to confirm a fifth school.

"Students at this age level become very excited about participating in activities that are meaningful and show evidence that they can make a difference," says center director Steve Kerlin, PhD. "Excitement and participation in school-wide programs, such as school recycling programs, provide students with a sense of ownership in their school and their education. As students feel part of their school community, they are likely to become empowered to continue to be engaged in their learning and school community through graduation."

This project is part of the Kentucky Green and Healthy Schools Program, a nationally recognized, state-wide program that is the only one of its kind in the nation. Its broad aim is to encourage "students and staff to move their school toward becoming safer, healthier and more environmentally sustainable" by making schools a learning lab for problem-solving.

"This partnership, which meets at the intersection of education and environment, will help us to build on our commitment to supporting sustainability efforts across the U.S. We look forward to working with NKU to make a better tomorrow," says David McFaddin, regional director of AT&T Kentucky external and legislative affairs.

The grant was awarded as NKU expands its School- and Field-Based Environmental Education Program in the next five to seven years.

By Feoshia Henderson
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Cosmopolitan magazine reaches more than 18 million adults each year and remains the most read magazine by college women in the United States.

Facebook membership is well over 800 million users and growing.

Chicago native Brette Borow has joined the two -- combining the power of print media with the accessibility of social media -- to create GirlsGuideTo.com, “the Cosmo for the Facebook generation.”

GirlsGuideTo is an online forum that supports and engages young women on topics of life, work, relationships, health and beauty. The site allows users to tell stories, ask questions, post links and videos that other users can then respond to with advice or experience, providing women the answers they need and the reassurance that they are never alone.

With Ohio State University, the University of Cincinnati, Indiana University and the University of Kentucky as well as dozens of smaller schools within 200 miles of downtown Cincinnati, the city seemed a logical place to locate a Web and mobile application geared toward college women.

After months of talks with Borow and a commitment to move the company here from Los Angeles, CincyTech invested $200,000 in GirlsGuideTo as its thirtieth portfolio company.

The investment is part of a larger seed-stage round, led by CincyTech, that will allow Borow to move the headquarters of the company to Cincinnati, launch additional features on the site, grow members and hire a sales and marketing staff in the region.

Borow created GirlsGuideTo when she graduated from Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film & TV.  She moved into her own apartment and realized there were so many new things happening in her life as a young woman that she wanted to share with friends or ask questions about to people who had been in her shoes.

The site that now boasts more than 50,000 registered members and more than 130,000 Facebook users began as a simple blog between Borow and her friends. The young women would tell stories about everything from paying bills to bad dates and ask each other questions when caught in sticky situations.

GirlsGuideTo first gained national press in 2009 when it was praised for its use of Facebook Connect, an application that allows Web users to login to a site using their Facebook account. Although this application is now widely used on the Web, GGTo was one of the first to jump on board.

Borow was always a fan of the app because it not only allowed her to collect important demographic information, but it prevented men from trolling the site to meet young women.

“Borow’s early independent success shows us that she is meeting an unfilled need for this demographic,” says Rahul Bawa, director of digital and software investments for CincyTech, who is working with Girls Guide To. “Being located near several major universities will help Borow grow her business quickly and efficiently.”

By Sarah Blazak
CincyTech

Aurore Press’ story might begin on a night in 1984, when then-new-to-town Betsy Young was driving around Newport Ky with an address written on a piece of paper, stopping people on the street to ask if they knew where to find a place called the Jockey Club.

Or it may begin two years earlier, when a 15-year-old named Chuck Byrd was digging through the punk section at a local record store and got invited to his first show there.

Young and Byrd eventually met at the Jockey Club, moved to San Francisco and married. They returned to Cincinnati and, in 2007, decided to start a publishing house out of their Northside home.

"We were really amazed at how passionate and multi-talented our friends were, and thought it would be a great outlet to showcase their talents,’" Young says.

Young had skills with layout and design, and Byrd had a knack for catchy titles - and access to discounted printing rates and materials at the printing press where he worked. They named their company Aurore press, after their daughter Aurore (pronounced aurora) and founded it on principles rooted in punk rock culture that encourage people to take the independent initiative to put ideas into the world that aren’t typically heard, they said.

Their first work was a chapbook titled “Country at War: Reflections on the War in Iraq," sharing many angles of criticism and experiences of the Iraq war. All proceeds were donated to Disabled American Veterans.

Aurore's next title, "Stories for Shorty: A Collection of Recollections from the Jockey Club," compiled stories, photos and memories from the colorful scene at the Jockey Club in the 1980's. It was a former casino owned by an old man named Shorty that played host to about every big name in punk rock, including Black Flag and The Ramones, and whole lot of small ones too.

Aurore has published books every year since 2007. Each has been a compilation of material from a wide variety of local writers, launched with an event at a local bar, printed and bound with different materials. The books have a decided boutique feel, some with an authenticity rooted in punk fanzine culture. One book, “1st Hand Stories from 2nd Hand Stores,” was bound with colored Duct Tape.

In 2012 the pair will change their format and introduce “The Aurore Press Writer’s Series,” with each book featuring one or two authors. Byrd was recently laid off from his job at the printing press, so printing costs have gone up, but the two said they will continue developing their business model to keep local authors’ work available in an affordable format.

“Like I was saying about some of the guys we like to publish, they just do it because they must, and we keep publishing because we have to,” Young says. “I can't tell you why we have to, its just that we have to. Its like it just feeds your soul, or it puts your true self out there.”

By Henry Sweets