ProAce and Sparksight Bringing Web2point0.TV to Future of Television-East Conference

Video partners also streaming conference online in HD to virtual attendees

NEW YORK, New York -- ProAce and Sparksight are bringing Web2point0.TV to this week�??s Future of Television-East Conference.  Web2point0.TV is a broadcast network which showcases the hottest executive interviews from major conferences across the country.  At this year�??s Future of Television-East Conference, leading television and media executives will address the latest Web 2.0 trends affecting broadcasting and online media.  Click here for a closer look at past Web2point0.TV events.

ProAce and Sparksight will also be streaming the Future of Television-East Conference this year to all virtual attendees who cannot participate in person.  The video stream will be broadcast in high-definition.

What:              Web2point0.TV at Future of Television-East Conference

When:             Tuesday, November 18 and Wednesday, November 19

Where:           36 Battery Place, New York, NY 10280

Who:               Erik McMillan, CEO, ProAce; Chris Justice, CEO, Sparksight

Events:           Web2point0.TV interviews with leading television and media executives about Web 2.0 trends (Tues-Wed)

About ProAce
PROACE Technology Services, Inc. is a full service technology and marketing consulting company committed to delivering innovation that provides proven technology that helps our clients generate revenue, reduce costs and access
the information necessary to operate their business on a timely basis. With a client list including Fortune 500, medium, and small businesses across a wide array of industries, we have the experience and dedication to help solve your business and technology challenges.  For more information, visit us at www.proace.com.

About Sparksight
Sparksight® offers interactive marketing and event management services that help organizations deliver compelling experiences online and in-person.  Sparksight uniquely expands the reach of event planners to deliver online events that leverage unclaimed assets surrounding conferences and provides comprehensive production facilities to broadcast audio/video from sessions from instructional or commercial purposes.  For more information, visit us at www.sparksight.com.

Rackspace Announces Full Suite of Cloud Hosting Offers
Acquisitions of Jungle Disk, Slicehost and Launch of Cloud Files Enable Company to Expand Cloud Hosting Portfolio

AUSTIN, TEXAS - Oct. 22, 2008 - Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE:RAX), the world's leading hosting services provider, today unveiled its cloud hosting strategy which extends the company's technology and service leadership to cloud hosting. In support of its new cloud hosting strategy, the company announced it has agreed to acquire Slicehost and Jungle Disk, and has established relationships with Limelight Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: LLNW) and Sonian Networks to provide more robust service offerings. Today's announcement will be made at a customer event hosted at the Austin City Limits stage which can be viewed via live video stream at www.rackspacecloudevent.com.

"Cloud computing offers tremendous benefits to our customers that complement our traditional managed hosting services," said Lanham Napier, CEO, Rackspace Hosting. "Being a leader in hosting means being a leader in the cloud. Today, we made clear our intent to have the best suite of cloud offerings. Our new offerings are part of a strategy to bring cloud benefits to all businesses with simple, cost-effective products that everyone can use, backed by the best customer support that only Rackspace can deliver."

Rackspace's acquisition of two innovators in the cloud community, Slicehost and Jungle Disk, bring proven solutions to the suite including on-demand, virtualized servers and online storage software and services, respectively. Slicehost is a leader in Xen-based virtual machine hosting with more than 15,000 "slices" online today. Jungle Disk offers reliable cloud storage solutions that allow users to easily share an unlimited amount of cloud storage between multiple users through a secure, mountable network drive and automatic backup. Over time, Rackspace intends to integrate their capabilities into its complete hosting portfolio to provide business customers a suite of hosting solutions to meet all of their IT needs.

"On-demand computing is the new foundation of hosting," said Jason Seats, founder, Slicehost. "Rackspace gives us the ability to expand the Slicehost offer and meet the needs of the corporate world whose interest in cloud technologies has only just begun. In addition, no one else shares our customer first service philosophy more than Rackspace. It is an obvious fit."

"Rackspace is a natural fit for the next evolution of Jungle Disk," said Dave Wright, CEO and founder, Jungle Disk. "We are creating a set of storage solutions that will help solve rapidly-growing storage problems for businesses. We believe that no one could take this solution to the business world better than Rackspace. Together we will push the cloud revolution and make simple and cost effective storage solutions available to businesses of all sizes."

Rackspace is quickly developing one of the most comprehensive hosting solution suites ranging from dedicated managed servers and hosted email solutions to highly scalable cloud hosting and storage services based on open standards and technologies. Combined, IT departments and small businesses now have a full range of tools to power their computing needs.

Cloud Hosting Portfolio

Rackspace's cloud strategy is supported by three core offerings, all part of Mosso, Rackspace's Cloud Hosting Division. The company's existing Hosting Cloud and CloudFS storage offerings have been re-branded to reflect the company's newly integrated approach:

Cloud Sites�?� -- Rackspace's flagship cloud offering, The Hosting Cloud, is now Cloud Sites. Developed by Mosso, Rackspace's cloud division, it offers a scalable platform for handling huge traffic spikes and a pay-as-you-grow pricing model. Cloud Sites is a heterogeneous environment, supporting both Windows and Linux.

Cloud Files�?� -- Rackspace's internet-based storage service, CloudFS, is now Cloud Files. Cloud Files gives developers instant access to an enterprise-grade storage infrastructure and reduces overall investment and IT costs while providing infinite scalability. Cloud Files offers an industry leading SLA and a highly competitive pricing model with replicated storage starting at $0.15/GB. Also later this year, Limelight Networks will team with Rackspace to allow developers to easily distribute content to millions of end users around the world and bring scalable content delivery and application acceleration services to the masses. While continuing to support the Amazon S3 platform, Jungle Disk will port to Rackspace's Cloud Files system in the coming months. Jungle Disk comes in both desktop and workgroup editions across the Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

Cloud Servers�?� -- This new hosting solution, which will deliver on-demand server capacity to businesses of all sizes, will leverage key technology developed by Slicehost, which uses Xen virtualization software. Slicehost will remain as the company's developer brand, creating innovative new features driven through shared intellectual property in conjunction with development initiatives from Rackspace. As part of the announcement, Slicehost also announced new, larger slices for high performance computing, lower prices as well as IP sharing for high availability computing.

Rackspace also announced widespread community interest in their cloud suite. A wide set of cloud tool companies have expressed intent to support the Rackspace cloud. The list of companies includes RightScale, CohesiveFT, rPath, SOASTA and Vertica. In addition, Sonian Networks, the leader in cloud mail archiving solutions, and Mailtrust, the Email Hosting division of Rackspace announced they had reached an agreement to offer low cost archiving to Mailtrust's 100,000+ business domains. Through this agreement, Sonian Networks will also port their solution to the Rackspace cloud suite.

The purchase price of the combined acquisitions is approximately $11.5 million payable in cash and stock, with the potential for up to $16.5 million in additional payouts of cash and stock based on certain performance criteria. �? 

For more information on Rackspace's Cloud Hosting offerings, please visit: www.mosso.com.

About Rackspace Hosting

As the world's leader and specialist in hosting, Rackspace Hosting is changing the way businesses worldwide buy IT. Rackspace delivers computing-as-a-service, integrating the industry's best technologies into a flexible service offering, making computing more reliable and�? affordable. A trusted partner to companies of all sizes, Rackspace enables IT departments to be more effective. Rackspace is distinguished by its award-winning Fanatical Support®, furthering the company's mission to be one of the world's greatest service companies. Rackspace is recognized as one of FORTUNE Magazine's 100 Best companies to work for, ranking number 32 on the 2008 list. Rackspace's portfolio of hosted IT services includes managed hosting (www.rackspace.com), email hosting (www.mailtrust.com) and cloud hosting (www.mosso.com).�?  For more information on Rackspace Hosting please visit www.rackspace.com or call 800-961-2888.

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of Rackspace Hosting could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including any statements concerning expected development, performance or market acceptance associated with the products and services of Slicehost, Jungle Disk, or cloud hosting portfolio products or services; anticipated operational and financial benefits from the acquisitions of Slicehost and Jungle Disk or cloud hosting portfolio products or services; Rackspace's expectations regarding the closing of the acquisitions; expected integration results of the acquisitions; any other statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks relating to the acquisitions include (i) the ability of Rackspace Hosting to complete the acquisitions in a timely manner, or at all, and the difficulty of assimilating the operations and personnel of the acquired companies into Rackspace; (ii) our ability to integrate the acquired services or technologies with our current services, products, and technologies; (iii) the potential disruption of our ongoing business caused by the acquisitions; (iv) difficulty in maintaining controls, procedures, and policies of the acquired businesses; (v) the impairment of relationships with employees, suppliers, and customers as a result of any integration. These risks could prevent us from realizing expected benefits from the acquisitions. Additionally, risks associated with our new cloud strategy and offerings include (i) the reliability, quality or compatibility associated with the offerings, (ii) changes in technology which adversely affect the benefits of the offerings, (iii) slowdowns in the general economy or technology industry that impact consumer spending habits, and (iv) other internal strategy decisions that impact those products. These risks could prevent us from realizing the expected benefits from our cloud strategy and offerings. Other risks are described in Rackspace Hosting's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2008, filed with the SEC on September 10, 2008. These forward-looking statements are based on information available to Rackspace Hosting as of the date hereof, and except as required by law, Rackspace Hosting assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

Innotech, the Business and Technology Innovation Conference and Expo, came to Austin in mid-October for a day of networking, innovative ideas, and the latest technology. Sparksight was there throughout, managing the Web2point0.tv stage and video production crew, while roaming the exhibitor�??s hall taking names and getting one on one interviews with key exhibitor staff members.

Web2point0.tv, powered by ProAce, wanted to broadcast live interviews from the Innotech show floor. With the help from the awesome guys at AboutYou Productions, Sparksight�??s production team built a stage, set up lights, and brought in a camera crew�??practically building a production studio on-site to allow Web2point0.tv to stream live from the Austin Convention Center.

ProAce and Sparksight also teamed up to shoot company profiles on the expo floor. The Sparksight crew roamed the expo with Austin personality Erica Calderon, interviewing technology vendors who wanted to show off what they have to offer. The company profiles are available for viewing at Web2point0.tv  

First Annual Inbound Marketing Summit a Hit with 300+ Marketers

News Facts

• The First Annual Inbound Marketing Summit, held on September 8, 2008 in Cambridge, Mass. was a resounding success. More than 300 marketers and business executives showed up to watch David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan kick off the event, followed by the highly anticipated keynote by marketing guru Seth Godin.
• The Inbound Marketing Summit drew more than 300 attendees, 1,300 live stream viewers, 10,000 website visitors, and 100,000 social media connections.
• The event included a slew of expert marketers and business executives discussing inbound marketing tools and strategies ranging from podcasting to social media and closed loop marketing to SEO 101.
• Out of those who were not able to attend the sold out event, over 1,300 viewers tuned in to watch the live web broadcast streamed at http://HubSpot.tv .
• Videos of each of the sessions will also be available on the Inbound Marketing website by the week of September 22, 2008. In the meantime, the breakout session slides are available in PDF format at http://www.inboundmarketingsummit.com/agenda .
• The event got a lot of buzz in the social mediasphere, including on Twitter, where the event hashtag #IMS08 was listed as one of the top three trending topics on Twitter Search throughout the day. Tweeters had this to say about the Inbound Marketing Summit:

  @tomdog: #IMS08 thinking about applying David Meerman Scott's gobbledygook list to some stuff I'm writing today

  @pc4media: talking to @JenniferMorrow for internet marketing people, #ims08 best conference I've ever been to with the best line up

  @laurelmackenzie: back from #IMS08 http://www.inboundmarketingsummit.com/ - what a great adventure. thanks, hubspot!

  @MarketingProfs: @onstartups At one point I sought you out, Dharmesh, but then got distracted by someone bright/shiny! It was a great event, congrats! #ims08

  @chrisrobertson1: #IMS08 What a great summit. HubSpot roped in some talented speakers and brought it with a vengeance. Killer job.
  o @chrisbaggott: On flight from Boston back to Indy. #IMS08 was well worth it

  @svalasek: is putting everything she learned at #IMS08 to work!

• All event photos, blog posts, and other web content is aggregated on the Inbound Marketing Stream page http://www.inboundmarketingsummit.com/stream .
• Inbound Marketing Award winners BatchBlue Software, Digital Influence Group, and Zeer were also recognized at the event, showcasing companies who have successfully implemented inbound marketing to benefit their business.
• The Inbound Marketing Summit was sponsored by HubSpot, CorporateInk, Longbow, Marketwire, Nowspeed Marketing, PR 20/20, Compendium Blogware, and Emma.

Links for more information:

Inbound Marketing Summit Agenda

Inbound Marketing Summit Sponsors

Inbound Marketing Summit Blog

Inbound Marketing Stream

Quote, attributable to Brian Halligan, CEO, HubSpot

"The Inbound Marketing Summit was a great success! We were filled to capacity and just based off listening to the hallway conversations and seeing hundreds of people twittering live about the event, it seemed like attendees had positive feedback about all the sessions. It's great to see marketers excited and learning about inbound marketing and implementing effective strategies for their business. We're looking forward to expanding the event and seeing even more people at next year's Inbound Marketing Summit."

About Inbound Marketing Summit

The Internet has transformed the nature of shopping and the sales and marketing funnel. In order to remain competitive, businesses needs to be found on the web and leverage inbound marketing techniques to reach customers with targeted messages that customers seek out, not ignore. The Inbound Marketing Summit is a marketing conference bringing together experts in the field of inbound marketing to share the latest strategies, tools, and best practices to utilize inbound marketing methods to grow your business. The Inbound Marketing Summit can be found online at http://www.inboundmarketingsummit.com .

HubSpot Takes Top Spot at Annual Search Engine Marketing Conference

 

SEMforSMB / 2008   Enlarge Image

Search Engine Marketing for Small and Mid-market Businesses

 

Austin, Texas (PRWEB) June 20, 2008 -- Mark Dobosz, vice president of development for SCORE - Counselors to America's Small Business; Todd Friesen, vice president of search strategies for Visible Technologies; and Kent Lewis, president of Anvil Media, Inc. will keynote the SEM for SMB 2008 (Search Engine Marketing for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses).

Dobosz, Friesen and Lewis will address the current strategies emerging companies can use to generate more qualified opportunities using search engine marketing tools and techniques. This triple play keynote will energize, entertain, educate and leave attendees alive with possibilities during the event.

The SEM for SMB 2008 conference, to be held July 16th and 17th, 2008 in Austin, Texas, will teach attendees how to make better choices when marketing online by uniting SMB owners and entrepreneurs through prescriptive group and one-on-one sessions. Approximately 300 attendees, representing some of the country's leading small and mid-market businesses from throughout the nation are expected to attend.

"By providing small and medium sized businesses with the knowledge and insight to develop their Internet marketing strategy, the conference hopes to stimulate economic growth for the most critical segment of the U.S. economy," says Mark Dobosz, vice president of development for SCORE - Counselors to America's Small Business (http://www.score.org).

"Business owners need to empower their staff to understand and execute online marketing campaigns and maintain their corporate reputations online," said Todd Friesen, Vice President of Search Strategies for Visible Technologies (http://www.visibletechnologies.com/). "This event definitely offers a rich educational curriculum in search engine marketing."

"Search engine and social media marketing strategies are now an essential requirement for building a successful business or marketing career," Kent Lewis, president of Anvil Media, Inc (http://www.anvilmediainc.com). "We will give attendees the necessary strategies, tools and techniques to exploit the wealth of online resources for their own business goals."

"In 2008, there are hundreds of thousands of organizations that claim to provide search engine marketing and social media services," Christopher Justice, Chairman of SEM for SMB and CEO of Sparksight, Inc (http://www.sparksight.com). "Business owners are consistently challenged to evaluate, qualify and measure these companies or learn the skills to perform these functions for themselves. The SEM for SMB conference will serve as a primer to initiating or outsourcing an Internet marketing strategy."

SEM for SMB 2008 will have several presentation formats, including:

�?�    Keynote presentations from established industry experts

�?�    Community sessions with peer-to-peer working groups

�?�    Networking sessions to create new business relationships and technical contacts

�?�    Workshops with detailed examples and step-by-step instruction

�?�    One-on-one sessions with experts who'll work in real-time on your Website or marketing strategy

�?�    Demonstrations of the latest online technologies in action

SEM for SMB 2008 conference serves:

�?�    Established businesses, non-profits and government organizations looking to improve and grow with online marketing

�?�    New businesses that want to learn proven strategies and minimize their risks when marketing online

�?�    Professionals who are interested in becoming self-sufficient with search-engine marketing

�?�    Entrepreneurs looking for global and regional visibility through the Internet

�?�    Retail and service businesses who want to capitalize on the local search options that cost nothing, and increase visibility and revenue

�?�    Individuals with interest in interactive and search engine marketing skills for new career opportunities

About SEM for SMB 2008

SEM for SMB is aimed at small to medium sized businesses throughout the world at all stages of growth. The conference caters to businesses that depend on public websites, local advertising and search engines for visibility. Conference participants will receive highly targeted presentations with no sales pitches. Speakers have been carefully selected for their style, expertise and practical experience with search engine optimization, search engine marketing, pay-per-click advertising and social media.

About Sparksight

Sparksight offers interactive marketing and event management services that help organizations deliver compelling experiences online and in-person. Sparksight uniquely expands the reach of event planners to deliver online events that leverage unclaimed assets surrounding conferences and provides comprehensive production facilities to broadcast audio/video from sessions for instructional or commercial purposes. Sparksight employs the most talented and inventive graphic designers, videographers, web programmers and writers in the industry.

Dr. Moshinskie, Accenture Professor of Human Performance Improvement at Baylor University and president of Mo, etc. eLearning, will demonstrate samples of his national award-winning eLearning courseware he developed for such clients as Toyota, Black & Decker, Boy Scouts, and David Weekly Homes. Dr. Moshinskie has managed over 300 large eLearning projects and will share implementation and marketing strategies that have helped corporations improve learner competition rates, and show how smart content approaches have substantially increased learner retention. He will also share some of his research results concerning return on elearning investment benefits.

"We're excited by the presentation by Dr. Moshinskie and the interest of highly regarded experts in eLearning", said Sanjay Nasta, CEO, MicroAssist. "We've added additional meeting space to provide more focused implementation, budgeting and course design sessions. Our goal is for attendees to leave with actionable strategies, rather than just examples."

Sponsors of the event include MicroAssist, Sparksight, Lava Studios, Simply Interactive, The Intergovernment Training Council, and Central Texas Lectora User Group.

The eLearning Symposium was organized to create a link between professionals in the fields of education, technology and communication and help organizations leverage the efficiencies and the boundless reach of the Internet in order to deliver education.

2008 eLearning Symposium details:
Where: Doubletree Hotel Austin
When: April 23rd, 2008 from 7:30 AM -- 5:30 PM
To register: http://www.elearningsymposium.com

Individuals with state and local government agencies may contact the event organizers for reduced registration fees and special payment needs. Earlybird discounted registration ends April 9th, 2008.

About eLearning Symposium 2008
The 2008 eLearning Symposium is designed to help professionals and key decision makers execute eLearning programs within their own organizations. The conference is essential for professionals who create web-based education programs in healthcare, government, higher education and corporate settings.

The conference is open to anyone and will be of specific benefit to Chief Learning Officers, Senior Directors, Directors of Human Resources (HR), or Directors of Training. Agenda topics cover an end-to-end spectrum of technology and processes as they are being applied to eLearning and distance learning projects. Attendees will have the opportunity to network with key influencers and implementation specialists from successful eLearning projects throughout the State of Texas and beyond.

About Simply Interactive
Simply Interactive specializes in taking complex corporate training materials and converting them in to interactive e-learning sequences. Using adult learning principles and new research-based models developed by Dr. Moshinskie, Simply Interactive helps corporations reduce their content into the exact need-to-know material, and then designs fast-paced learning experiences using the latest technologies to achieve specific and measurable performance outcomes. Since 2002, Simply Interactive has delivered over 5000 projects for 150 companies from small private companies to Fortune 100 companies. For more information, please visit www.simplyinteractive.net.

About MicroAssist
MicroAssist is one of the countries most experienced training centers. Since 1988, they have been providing real-world, real-workplace instructor led training to public and private clients in Texas. MicroAssist has trained over 70,000 students for 140 different corporate and government agencies, commissions and bureaus, as well as a wide variety of corporate clients. MicroAssist offers 200 standard training classes and frequently offers custom-designed curricula for their clients. For more information, please visit www.microassist.com.

About Sparksight, Inc.
Sparksight offers interactive marketing and event management services that help organizations deliver compelling experiences online and in-person. Sparksight uniquely expands the reach of event planners to deliver online events that leverage unclaimed assets surrounding conferences and provides comprehensive production facilities to broadcast audio/video from sessions for instructional or commercial purposes. Sparksight employs the most talented and inventive graphic designers, videographers, web programmers and writers in the industry. For more information, please visit www.sparksight.com.

eLearning has re-emerged as a solution for delivering significant value to corporations, educational institutions and governments. Attendees of the conference will learn how to capitalize on existing and future courseware and how to monetize knowledge investments to reach larger audiences. The conference will also provide techniques to take advantage of distance learning through online and mobile platforms.

Austin, Texas (PRWEB) March 27, 2008 -- Chief learning officers, senior directors, directors of human resources (HR), and directors of training from across Texas will meet once again in Austin for the annual eLearning Symposium, presented jointly by MicroAssist and Sparksight. The conference, to be held April 23, 2008 at the Doubletree Hotel in Austin, will seek to create a link between professionals in the fields of education, technology and communication and help organizations leverage the efficiencies and the boundless reach of the Internet in order to deliver education.

"We anticipate participation from some of Texas' well-known and most innovative education, human resources or distance learning professionals," says Sanjay Nasta, CEO of MicroAssist. "The success of 2008 eLearning Symposium is its ability to bring together the most promising companies and technologies in the region. Not only will attendees have the opportunity to network with key experts in the design, budgeting, technology selection and course development fields, but will leave with proven and successful implementation formulas for eLearning."

"There are millions of hours of knowledge that lie unused within state, local and educational institutions," says Christopher Justice, CEO of Sparksight. "The 2008 eLearning Symposium will bring a collaborative environment where educators, trainers and businesses can develop strategies to harness the value and opportunities of eLearning."

Justice suggests that eLearning hasn't fully matured until now. He continued, "Today eLearning software can be acquired at no cost. Moodle, a free, open source course management system for online learning, is a well-established example. The challenge is assembling the curriculums in the correct manner to serve the needs of a distributed audience. The eLearning Symposium will give attendees the knowledge to be more successful."

Visit eLearning Symposium (http://www.elearningsymposium.com) for additional information and to register. Individuals with state and local government agencies may contact the event organizers for reduced registration fees.

About eLearning Symposium 2008

The Texas 2008 eLearning Symposium is designed to help professionals and key decision makers execute eLearning programs within their own organizations. The conference is essential for professionals who create web-based education programs in healthcare, government, higher education and corporate settings.

The conference is open to anyone and will be of specific benefit to Chief Learning Officers, Senior Directors, Directors of Human Resources (HR), or Directors of Training. Agenda topics cover an end-to-end spectrum of technology and processes as they are being applied to eLearning and distance learning projects. Attendees will have the opportunity to network with key influencers and implementation specialists from successful eLearning projects throughout the State of Texas and beyond.

About MicroAssist, Inc.

MicroAssist is one of the countries most experienced training centers. Since 1988, they have been providing real-world, real-workplace instructor led training to public and private clients in Texas. MicroAssist has trained over 70,000 students for 140 different corporate and government agencies, commissions and bureaus, as well as a wide variety of corporate clients. MicroAssist offers 200 standard training classes and frequently offers custom-designed curricula for their clients. For additional information, visit MicroAssist (www.microassist.com).

About Sparksight, Inc.

Sparksight offers interactive marketing and event management services that help organizations deliver compelling experiences online and in-person. Sparksight employs the most talented and inventive graphic designers, videographers, web programmers and writers in the industry. For additional information, visit Sparksight (www.sparksight.com).