Resources & Helpful Links

Are you a budding entrepeneur? An established, growing tech business?, An IT professional? Below you’ll find a whole host of resources to help your business and your profession.

Just click a category of interest below. Have a great resource you use? Let us know about it and tell us why it’s great: info@wyominginnovationsnetwork.org

 Business Planning | Finance | Human Resurces | Marketing | Programming/IT | Sales | WTO Member Directory

BUSINESS PLANNING

• Small Business Development Center – Great resource for business plan development and much more.
• Wyoming Business Council - The WBC is your one-stop shop for everything business including a business resource center.
• Wyoming’s Incubator (aka, the Wyoming Technology Business Center) is open for business and can help you.
  Contact Incubator CEO Jon Bensen.
• Manufacturing-Works™ - Provides technical assistance to manufacturers and technical oriented business at their locations.
• All Wyoming Directory - Source for supporting you in your quest to service others within the state and outside as well.

  Protecting and Licensing Your Idea
  Need to protect, license and market that technology? We have a shortage of patent attorney resources within the state. There is, however, a fantastic service that is available to any Wyoming company that needs assistance with an idea or invention. Best of all the service is free!

• The Wyoming Research Products Center is a one-of-a-kind service for Wyoming tech companies and inventors.
  Contact Tony Nevshemal and his top-notch group at: WyomingInvents@uwyo.edu or (307)766-2520 in Laramie.

FINANCE

• Venture West Network - provides networking & educational opportunities that enable entrepreneurship to thrive.
• SBIR Program - assists qualified Wyoming small businesses and individuals in accessing funding opportunities provided by the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Programs; ~$2 billion annually!

HUMAN RESOURCES

The following links have been pre-configured to search for technology-related jobs currently available in Wyoming. Once at these sites, you may customize searches to best suite your areas of expertise. These sites are excellent resources for Staffing/Training/Retaining Employees.

MARKETING

• WTO SEO Toolkit ^New!
• Best Bets!
  • MarketingSherpa.com - Publishes Case Studies, results data, & best practices for everything marketing.
• Blogs
  • Stephen Spencer's Blog - Scattered wisdom of a scientist turned web marketing virtuoso.
  • Seth Godin's Blog - Lots of rants, raves and useful information.
• Email Marketing
  • ConstantContact.com | Vertical Response - Send professional email announcements & newsletters.
• Market Research
  • Wyoming Market Research Center (WMRC) - Provides low to no cost market information to Wyoming businesses including competitive analysis, marketing lists, custom demographics, and much more.
  • Urchin | Webtrends | ClickTracks - Web analytics service providers.
  • Survey Monkey - create professional online surveys quickly and easily.
• Public Relations
  • PR Newswire | MarketWire - Press release distribution services.
• Publications / Books
  • Purple Cow (book) - Is your product or service "remarkable?
  • Crossing the Chasm - How to win mainstream markets for technology products.
  • The Big Red Fez (book) - How to make any website better.
  • Fast Company Magazine - A monthly publication for how smart people work.
  • MarketingProfs - Publisher of marketing articles, tutorials, perspectives, features, and tools.
• Web Marketing
  • Google Adwords | Yahoo Search Marketing | Miva - Pay-per-click, targeted text-based ads.
  • NetConcepts Link Check - Check for inbound links to your site.
    NetConcepts URL Check - Check which major search engines have included your site in their index.
  • Yahoo Search Marketing Keyword Tool - See search engine traffic to keywords related to your business.
  • Google Rankings - Check the ranking of your web pages in Google, MSN & Yahoo.
• Wyoming Web Marketing Resources
  • Stuart Hill, Internet Consultant - Casper, WY
  • Brandy Thaler Evans, Web & Graphics Design - LaGrange, WY
  • Brandesigns Web Solutions, Website development - Wapiti, WY
  • M.Williams Online Marketing , Internet Marketing Consultant - Cody, WY

PROGRAMMING / IT

This may be a surprise, but the best place to start with a technical question is a search engine (like Google). Try specific search terms, and refine your query if you don't find what you are looking for. You may be surprised by how often you come up with exactly what you're looking for. If you can't find answers that way, then try specific technical sites. These sites often have 'forums' or 'message boards' crawling with really smart people who are eager to help out. As with everything on the web: use caution, not everyone knows what they are talking about.

• Gotdotnet - A great resource by members of the team developing .net with helpful people and a solid message board.
• CodeProject - Looking for code to do something in particular? There's a great chance you'll find an example here.
• Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) - The online documentation and articles for MS products.
• ASP.Net - Great site dedicated specifically to web development using ASP.Net.
• W3Schools - Tons of info, tutorials, and links all focused on web development.
• W3C - W3C is the organization that defines the spec for many web technologies.
• XMLFiles - All about XML and the things you can do with it.
• SQLJunkies - Microsoft-specific site for anything that has to do with SQL.
• Books (you know, the ones made out of paper) are also a great resource!

SALES

• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie – This should be at the top of every resources page.
• Jeffrey Gitomer – The Little Red Book of Selling and be sure to subscribe to his Sales Caffeine Newsletter.
• The Articulate Executive by Granville N. Toogood - Excellent public speaking manual that will help in everyday life too.
  

WTO MEMBER DIRECTORY

Soon members of the Wyoming Innovations Network will be able to login and search the entire directory of companies and individuals that represent technology-driven companies in Wyoming. To be notified when the directory is live, send an email to: info@wyominginnovationsnetwork.org

Wyoming Innovations Network Member Directory

Wyoming Technology Companies (Download) (Word)