Another Year Over

Every year, in celebration of the Holiday Season, IdeaStar employees and friends gather to celebrate the closing of another year. We especially like to celebrate growth, prosperity, and client satisfaction.

This year IdeaStar has grown significantly, expanded into a beautiful, new office, and built and maintained a strong base of satisfied clients! We have a right to celebrate! Here are some photos from our party!

Everyone was looking so festive, we couldn't miss the opportunity to take a group photo. Good thing our staff photographer was available! Can you spot him?

Adrian played it cool, but couldn't completely hide his excitement about the buffet. Here he poses with his plate after a second trip through the food line.

New IdeaStar employee John O'Donnell (Left) chatted with Scott Largent and Mike Wise.

Phil and Maung. Two programmers in a pod! They seem to be having fun!

Three smiling faces! Bottom to Top: Laurel Baldwin, Susanne Bailey-Svette, and Christy Svette snuggle and smile for the camera.

Happy Holidays!

Copyright © 2005 IdeaStar Inc.

IdeaStar Santas Strike Again

For the fifth year in a row, IdeaStar employees have donated generously to make the Christmas season brighter for children at The Phillis Wheatley Josephine Kohler Academy in Cleveland. And this year was the most amazing so far. Eighty-two students at the academy received shiny Christmas packages from their IdeaStar Santa.

Employees were eager to participate in this annual donation, and have been busy wrapping, taping and curling ribbons. Our workshop...er...Conference room has been the busiest spot in the office lately.

Earlier this week, all eighty-two gifts were loaded and delivered to the Academy. What a success! Santa duties officially completed until next year!

The office Christmas tree was overflowing with gifts!

Copyright © 2005 IdeaStar Inc.

What a great trip it's been! Climbing the Weatherhead 100 list

Last night IdeaStar was officially recognized as a Weatherhead 100 company. We are the 54th fastest growing company in Northeast Ohio over the last five years. Our growth rate was 144% which is amazing considering there was 9/11, the tech bust and a recession in the last five years.

One of IdeaStar’s clients, MemberHealth, is the top company this year. Chuck Hallberg, its founder, told me he has no idea why they did so well. He said, “I just get up every morning and go, go, go!”

Some mornings I would get up and say, “No, no, no.” But it’s the people at IdeaStar and the customers that always turned that “no” into “go” for me.

Ellis Yan, president of Technical Consumer Products Inc., was a top-ranked Weatherhead 100 company in 2002. He told me once that when things got tough he would lay on a couch feeling miserable and thinking about how it would be better. And it did get better. TCP is now one of the largest companies in the area.

There are so many people to thank for this award. Two in particular are Wayne Largent, CTO, who is the backbone of all the development done at IdeaStar plus so much more. And Susanne Svette, General Manager, who is the glue that keeps this organization going.

Our Winning Staff.

Our talented, dedicated and unselfish staff is a big part of our success. I would like to mention all of them here in this blog post but I’ll wait until our Holiday Party next week to let them hear it from the “Fish’s mouth.”

Wayne Largent, Laurel Baldwin and Jim Fisher.

You can’t have a sustained sales growth without a supportive client base. Our clients are great and we want to do all we can to please them. Many clients have been with us since the beginning of IdeaStar and have delighted in watching us grow. Many more are recent clients who noticed us in the last few years and you’ll find some of their names on the Weatherhead 100 list. We thank them for sticking with us and helping us grow.

Our thanks also goes out to our accountant, our lawyer, our banker and our investors who have been so helpful to us in staying on the right path. Special thanks to Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan and Aronoff who proudly listed IdeaStar as a client in their advertisement in Inside Business.

A Happy Fish(er).

So life is good. We got a nice shiny plaque that we’ll put up on our wall and make sure everyone who visits sees it. Soon we’ll be getting calls from financial advisers and insurance agents who will want to help us manage all the money we must have. But for today, I will go to Wendy’s for lunch and get a chilli and salad for two bucks, and I’ll wonder, if this is the present, what great things might the future hold?

Happy Holidays to all,

Jim Fisher

Copyright © 2005 James D. Fisher
All rights reserved.

He likes the Pixies and Jasmine rice. He must be a software developer.

IdeaStar would like to warmly welcome John O' Donnell as the newest member of our staff. He is a valuable addition to our Web development team and we are thrilled to have another great programmer onboard.



If you see John in the office, stop and say hello!

The scoop on John:

- He has a degree in Psychology from the University of Dayton. He assures us that cognitive psychology and programming compliment each other.

- His favorite band is the Pixies

- In high school his favorite class was art.

- His favorie food (lately) is rice. "Right now I'm very interested in rice...Jasmine rice is so good, you can eat it with just a little salt. And it's really sticky which makes eating it interesting."

- He is really excited about his new job! "I'm not used to being surrounded by people who actually understand what I'm saying when I discuss my work."

Copyright © 2005 IdeaStar Inc.

The Paul's - Things You Never Knew

Paul Breitzmann, Project Manager

What college did you attend?
I have a degree in Computer Information Science from The Ohio State University.

What was your first job out of college?
I was hired as a Web lackey for FourthChannel Inc., a now defunct B2B commerce provider.

What did you do before you started with IdeaStar?
I worked for Penton Media as a Web Developer, building websites for various publications.

Do you have a hobby that you ever considered making a career?
Politics! Somehow, I don't ever see it happening, but I really do enjoy political theory, and staying up to speed on various issues. There's a project in my neighborhood which I got involved with recently, and it's been very educational.

What job was your favorite and why?
IdeaStar has been great. I work with a really great group of people.

What would be your ideal job?
It would probably be running a small technology company or a nonprofit geared towards instituting more democratic systems in our government, like Instant Runoff Voting.

Paul Fresty, Creative Director

Where did you go to college and what was your major?
I went to Cleveland State and Kent State. Graduated from Kent with a degree in photojournalism.

What was your first job out of college?
I got a job at a newspaper called the Valley News Dispatch in Pennsylvania as a graphic artist/photographer. I thought I was rich. It wasn't long before I realized that you can't live on $12,000 a year.

Do you have a hobby that you ever considered making a career?
A couple. I have played guitar my whole life and wish that it could be my career sometimes. I would also like to be a chocolate tester. Who wouldn't?

What job was your favorite and why?
I definitely enjoyed newspaper photography thing. Being AT the news was always thrilling, and I knew I was doing something that affected so many people. That was pretty cool. Still, I really enjoy my current position at IdeaStar. It is creative and fast-paced which is a requirement for me, and it gives me the opportunity to create something that the public uses constantly.

If you could choose to have any other job than the one you currently have what would it be?
I would be a guitar player in a touring band. I don't really need to be the star... but it would be cool to do that. Then I would have enough money to buy all the camera equipment I wanted. For now, I play in two bands just for fun. Echo Grove & Revolution Pie