The Roanoke Times highlighted the NCTC Tech Expo and Virginia Tech Football Pep Rally on September 5 in today’s Sunday edition. Thanks to business editor Chris Winston for writing this piece.

The NCTC will be holding its Tech Expo at the Roanoke Civic Center Special Events Center on Friday, September 5 from 3 - 6 pm prior to the Virginia Tech football pep rally. There will be at least 40+ local companies in attendance. Check out the companies.

If you are interested in technology, looking for job and business opportunities, and are a fan of Virginia Tech football, then this event is for you whether you live in the region or are coming in town for the first home football game.

I read on Tech Crunch about Fwix - a regional aggregator of data among many common website such as Twitter, Craigslist, Flickr, etc. In other words, the site let’s you get a snapshot of activity in your local region from users of these sites. The beta version has 5 large metro areas. If you visit the site it will look a lot like Facebook. Part of the reason is the guy who created Fwix was with Facebook in the early stages of the successful web company.

I emailed Fwix asking them to include Roanoke/Blacksburg and I got an email back quickly saying they are releasing 20 more cities next week. Again, we asked for them to consider adding our region to the mix cause we suggested we needed this technology more than the larger metros. As a result, they agreed to add Roanoke next week!

“I’ll add Roanoke to the cities we’re launching next week.  I can’t promise a very interesting feed for that area though because there isn’t much activity in your area quite yet on these sites.  Maybe yelp and a couple others but we’ll see.”

If you do not think this is important, then do you remember our region without Craigslist? People looked down on our region cause we did not have a listing. When they added it, didn’t it really feel good?

Therefore, Roanoke and Blacksburg community, here is an opportunity. Please register and sign up for Fwix. Once Roanoke is launched, then blog about it, invite your contacts to Fwix, and let’s get a first-mover advantage on this new site and showcase to the world our region. Next week, we are going to be one of only 25 cities in the U.S. featured on this site.

Recent Radford University graduate Chris Pund offers his take on why to start a business in smaller markets. This very insightful aspiring entrepreneur pulled off one of the more impressive student-run entrepreneurship seminars I have attended. He brought to the small campus in southwest Virginia, Oprah’s Big Give star Cameron Johnson and entrepreneur guru Michael Simmons.

Having more emphasis on starting businesses while in college or soon after is very important to our overall regional economic growth. Thank you Chris for being a leader in your age group.

In today’s Roanoke Times, Jenny Boone did a fantastic job telling the story of one job seeker, Alex Ballin, and is proactive approach of doing something different and unique to make himself stand out among everyone else by standing on a street corner in Roanoke with a sign asking people to hire him.

This type of creativity is exactly what is needed, especially since he is a recent graduate with a social science degree who quite frankly does not have billable skill sets that are in demand in the local regional economy. Although, he does have good skill sets as seen in the story, and as a result, he is doing exactly what he must do to get noticed. Ultimately, this act will propel him in a position and his career will eventually take off.

Congratualtions Alex!

If you are interested in a career in human resources for a large firm in the Roanoke Valley, then click this job opening and read the description.

The Roanoke Times website has a fantastic resource you can use to identify companies according to a specfic industry. It appears this is a direct link into their internal database. Thank you Roanoke Times for creating this resource and sharing it to our job seekers in the region.

Buffalo’s Old Home Week is a more elaborate version of Roanoke’s Holiday Career and Lifestyle Fair held in late December in each of the last two years. The purpose of both events are to re-connect native sons and daughters to the region by identifying job opportunities and new lifestyle amenities.

Buffalo had a fantastic spokesperson for their event in the above video - the late Tim Russert. Roanoke needs a similar spokesperson for its modest event. Who shall that celebrity be? NBC news and former New York Giant and Roanoke native Tiki Barber? Oprah Big Give contestant Cameron Johnson? Who is the most famous Roanoker who can be the posterchild of our campaign to attract and retain young adults?

Moseley Real Estate Schools, Inc. has an immediate need for an energetic and highly organized individual to join our rapidly expanding corporate office in Roanoke, Virginia. We provide state-mandated real estate education and career services to current and prospective real estate professionals. Core responsibilities for this entry level position include providing exceptional service to customers in a professional manner; developing customer service policies and procedures to ensure consistent customer satisfaction; troubleshooting and resolving non-routine customer issues; and serving as a liaison between customers and various internal departments related to product development, production and shipping issues. Promotional opportunities exist for the ideal candidate who has: a bachelor’s degree or who is actively pursuing a bachelor’s degree; outstanding written and oral communication skills; and excellent computer skills. Interested applicants should email a resume and a cover letter to Tom Marvin, Director of Programs at tom@moseley.org

While reading one of our favorite blogs, it talked about the importance of taking an online community offline. If you have read our blog in the past, you know we have talked about online Roanoke and offline Roanoke and the two needing to connect. The positive attributes of both communities must be incorporated in each community (i.e. open communication for offline and face-to-face relationships for online). It is our belief that those groups who are able to create a sound offline identity and online identity will create rapid word-of-mouth, buzz or viral presence, which yields greater effectiveness without spending additional time.

Therefore, I would be curious to know if this blog community would like to schedule an offline meetup sometime soon to further discuss social and professional opportunities for young professionals in the Roanoke and New River Valleys of Virginia. If yes, then please comment or email us at stuartmease@gmail.com.