Confer has been invited to Midventures25, a Chicago-based startup demo-day and conference. On March 11th, the top 25 web and tech companies from Chicago, Madison, Cleveland, St. Louis, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Bloomington, Champaign, Ann Arbor, Cincinnati and every city across the Midwest, will be showcasing to entrepreneurs, VCs, angels, bloggers and media. Our friends from Corkshare will be joining us at the event. Check back for updates as they happen at the conference.
-Jay
Now you can make groups inside of your Confer network! Groups can be private or public and can be created by any user to help organize discussions by topic, department, time-frame, and more.
We’ve also released numerous other updates and fixes including multiple upgrades to chat, creating and editing posts and more! Look for news on our mobile web product in the coming days.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@getconfer.com with any questions you might have.
-Ed
We just wanted to say thanks again for using Confer! We received tremendous feedback and lots of great ideas from you guys. We wanted to take a second to fill you in on a few updates that we released over the weekend:
Edit Post Function - We have given you the ability to go into a post that you created and edit the content.
Direct Messages - You can now send another user a Direct Message by navigating to the “Direct Messages” option under the Streams link at the top of the application. Once there, you will see a text box at the top of the application. Just add the name of the user as you normally would ( @username), and the message you’d like to send. Then presto! A secure message sent to that user, and no one else!
Direct messages will appear in “My Stream,” as well as the brand new “Direct Messages” stream.
In addition to the new “Direct Messages” stream, we have also added a “Mentions” stream, so that you can see the specific threads in which you were mentioned.
We have also worked some magic on our chat functionality, tagging, linking and text hiding.
Please continue to give us your feedback, as it is invaluable to the development of Confer.
Feel free to contact us with any questions or thoughts!
By BOBBY WARREN [Via The Daily Record: http://www.the-daily-record.com/news/article/4759514]
WOOSTER — East Liberty Street might be far from Silicon Valley, but don’t tell Ed Buchholz or his team of software developers at Confer.
Buchholz, 29, is president of Confer, which is both a company and a product. He started the company with Keith Kauffman, 28, and John Siladie, 31, who are vice presidents of engineering.
Confer is a high-tech software development start-up that recently had the public launch of its business collaboration program. The product is Web-based, part of the industry known as software as a service, and it allows businesses to communicate internally and externally via a Twitter- and Facebook-like interface.
Depending upon the audience, Siladie describes Confer as an online social collaboration tool for business or “Facebook for business.”
Instead of calling up a specific customer from a customer relationship management database, and then selecting the correct input field, someone using Confer’s product can enter a message in a dialogue box similar to those used by social media/microblogging sites Facebook and Twitter. By using the @ symbol, users can identify a contact and access all communications with the person. By using a hashtag, the # symbol, users can easily tag a company, subject or project for rapid recall later.
Another service, which is scheduled to be added at the end of the first quarter of this year, is the ability to call someone through Confer’s software, and the conversation will be recorded and stored. The software will generate a record of the call.
“It feels like Twitter, Facebook, Google Wave and Salesforce.com mashed together in a completely secure environment,” Buchholz said.
Users also can add files, links and tags to messages.
The service will have e-mail integration. Most people have five or six e-mail accounts, and they will be able to integrate all of those into a single feed through Confer.
“We’re trying to bring contact tracking into the new century,” Buchholz said. Whether people are connecting via phone, e-mail, social networking or chat/instant messaging, “We bring the entire day into one place,” Buchholz said.
Confer got its start as a side project. Buchholz began coding the program in his spare time last February when he was still with Rearden Commerce, and Kauffman helped with the development.
The trio worked together at Rearden Commerce, which had acquired ExpenseWire.com, a product developed at SamePage Solutions.
Buchholz left college to work at SamePage Solutions in 2000 as a customer service representative. He eventually worked his way up to director of product development. He worked on the ExpenseWire project. After the acquisition in July 2008, Buchholz said his options became limited, and he set out to build Confer.
“I was trying to bring the same simplicity (of ExpenseWire) to communications, and bring it into one environment,” Buchholz said.
Those early days were scary for Buchholz, Kauffman and Siladie. However, with youth on their side, the three decided it would be a worthwhile risk to create a start-up company.
They spent many long days coding at Buchholz’s place, then Kauffman’s before finally settling in the basement at Siladie’s home.
After striking out on their own, they attracted $250,000 in seed money from a local investor. They established an office on East Liberty Street in the FirstMerit annex. It was not uncommon to start working on the program at 9 a.m. and wrapping up at 3 or 4 a.m. the following morning.
“We were trying to do something companies with stock symbols would take years to do in months,” Buchholz said. “It was a lot of hard work in a short period of time.”
It helps the three like each other, work well together and have fun together.
“We all wear many hats,” Siladie said.
Confer is expected to raise more money in a second round of funding, which Buchholz said should be “significant.”
The company was approved for the Ohio Technology Investment Tax Credit program. Investors in the company will receive a 25 percent tax credit for every dollar invested. Another Wooster company, ABS Materials, was also approved for the program.
About 25 companies and organizations provided feedback during the beta testing of Confer. Since the public release, more entities have signed up to try the service. While most are U.S.-based, there is a client in Ukraine utilizing the software.
That businesses from around the globe are using the product is both pleasing and surprising to Buchholz, Kauffman and Siladie, who are all from Ohio. Buchholz graduated from Wooster High School in 1999, Kauffman graduated from Smithville High in 2000 and Siladie graduated from Lake High in Uniontown in 1997.
“It’s important for our area to have a high-tech presence,” Buchholz said.
The company has attracted the attention of software giant Microsoft. Confer is the only Midwest company (from among seven) invited to participate in the first-ever SharePoint 2010 SocialFest at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus.
The Confer developers will build their applications on top of the SharePoint 2010 platform in a one-week competition, scheduled for the week of Jan. 25.
“These companies were selected because they demonstrate strong potential to extend the SharePoint 2010 platform in one of the fastest growing areas of enterprise software — social computing,” according to Lynda Ting of Microsoft.
Confer is part of Microsoft’s BizSpark program, which provides software, support and visibility for software start-ups. Buchholz said Confer would not exist without Microsoft technology. He is excited about being invited to participate in the SocialFest.
To learn more about the Confer product, visit www.getconfer.com.
Starting a company is a lot of work. Just ask any of the seven companies that attended Microsoft’s SharePoint 2010 SocialFest last week. With solutions ranging from enterprise micro-blogging to email integration to business intelligence, these companies assembled with the goal to build the next great SharePoint integrated application.
My company, Confer [http://www.getconfer.com], provides enterprise communication tools and attended with the intention to build our first SharePoint integration points. Being a technology startup, we’re used to working our tails off, and the event went right along with that mind-set. SharePoint 2010 SocialFest was a five day marathon of training, developing, discussion, and general hackery culminating in pitches to a group of top-tier venture capitalists, SharePoint product team members, and MSFT executives.
SharePoint 2010 is in beta, so we have been incredibly fortunate to have product stakeholders and technical evangelists working shoulder-to-shoulder with us. Traveling from Mountain View, Redmond, and beyond, they’ve been available to answer questions, provide feedback, and relate deep insights into upcoming features, fixes, and programs.
We’re a young company and our product is built entirely on Microsoft technology, so SharePoint 2010 SocialFest has given us a great platform from which to launch our SharePoint integration and get our larger Microsoft integration roadmap rolling. Microsoft’s BizSpark program has also been instrumental by providing no-cost software licenses and access to Microsoft staff members and resources. It’s clear that Microsoft is deeply invested in helping startup companies develop and thrive utilizing their technologies.
[Content via Ed’s guest post to Microsoft’s Startup Zone: http://www.microsoftstartupzone.com/Blogs/alpa_agarwal/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=3edaaabe-aec1-4aba-913c-7de550468b5d&ID=15]
We can build a sweet communication/ collaboration app, but we can’t figure out how to brew a single cup of coffee.
Final presentations at SocialFest
Dinnertime at SocialFest
Pitches at SocialFest.
VC panel at SocialFest in Mountain View