But two years after Joplin was struck by a massive tornado, things have improved dramatically, O’Brian said, and that message was part of what he delivered over the weekend to his counterparts in Moore. He was accompanied by Larry Warren, the new chairman of the board of the Joplin chamber.

The two men traveled to the Oklahoma community that was hit by an EF-5 tornado a week ago today. They presented $20,000 to the Moore Chamber of Commerce so it can start its own business recovery fund, similar to what happened in Joplin after the 2011 tornado.

“That speaks louder than any wind or any noise that could have been happening on the day of the tornado,” Brenda Roberts, president of the Moore chamber, said Saturday after the presentation.

“We will pay it forward.”

The $20,000 is from 36 contributors who wanted to help Moore, according to Joplin chamber officials.

Roberts said the Moore chamber had no final tally on the number of businesses that were hit or the number of jobs that were affected.

“They are still assessing that,” she said.

O’Brian said the Moore tornado, like the one that hit Joplin, cut through a key retail area on its long path of destruction. Even many businesses that weren’t hit could find themselves struggling because of everything from the loss of power to the death of an employee, he noted.

O’Brian said that after the 2011 tornado, Joplin was in similar shape, with 530 employers having been hit or sustaining substantial damage. But two years later, 450 of those are back in operation, he said.

He also recalled the outpouring of help the Joplin chamber and Joplin businesses received from other chambers and businesses after May 22, 2011.

O’Brian said about $1.7 million has been donated to various recovery funds for Joplin businesses, and out of that, 26 loans have been made so far, saving or creating 208 jobs.

O’Brian said he and Warren wanted to let members of the business community in Moore know they are not alone.

“Like Joplin, they kind of dusted themselves off and said, ‘We’re not going to let this get us down,’” O’Brian said after his visit. “We just felt it was important to be there with them and talk with them.”

Donations to the Moore Business Recovery Fund are being accepted as long as the fund is needed. Every dollar of the contributions through the Joplin Chamber Foundation (a not-for-profit organization) will go directly to the Moore Chamber of Commerce for use in rebuilding efforts. Details are available at www.joplincc.com/help_moore_business.html.

Keeping doors open

“ONE LESSON THAT WE LEARNED after the May 2011 tornado is that businesses will need help today and in the future,” said Rob O’Brian, president of the Joplin chamber. “A business recovery fund can help make sure businesses have the resources they need to keep their doors open.”

Two trustees accused the chamber of blackmail because the chamber wouldn’t support the bond issue unless the district adopted a firm deadline for a plan to address the problem of underenrolled schools. The majority of the trustees at first softened the deadline, but the chamber’s education leadership quickly withdrew its support, prompting trustees to call a second vote and agree to the June 2014 deadline.

Monday night’s flip-flop likely caused some damage to the bond campaign, political watchers say, but it was likely the biggest resistance the district will face in passing the bond package, the largest ever attempted by a Central Texas school district. The package is larger than the last two district bonds combined.

Turnout is expected to be low for the May 11 election — the May 2010 Austin trustee election turnout was 9,463 voters, or 2.52 percent, and political consultants predict an even smaller turnout this spring. The district’s employee union and the chamber give the pro-bond crowd a wide base of support.
“The support of any community organization is paramount to getting that bond passed,” said Steve Rivas, a local political consultant.
Rivas, who supports the bond, campaigned for three of the four new trustees who were elected in November.

“It’s a difficult time to get voters to the polls traditionally,” he said, and the chamber’s support is key.

The president of the Travis County Taxpayers Union, the only group that has publicly opposed the bonds, agrees.
“The chamber has always been considered very important; that’s a no-brainer,” said Don Zimmerman. “How can we ask businesses to oppose it if they belong to the chamber?”

At Monday night’s meeting, some trustees expressed concern that they couldn’t meet the June 30, 2014, deadline to adopt a facilities master plan that will address underenrollment on some campuses. The board voted 8-1 to soften the deadline, and the chamber’s leaders announced they were withdrawing their support.

Word spread quickly, and less than two hours later, Trustee Lori Moya requested a reconsideration by the board. Three trustees — Cheryl Bradley, Gina Hinojosa and Robert Schneider — objected to calling the issue back for a new vote.
“Right now, I’m feeling strong-armed,” Bradley said. “I believe this city loves their children and will come out and vote for this bond. I don’t believe that we should let anyone, anyone, dictate how we do anything when it comes to this bond. So if they don’t want to participate, then don’t participate. But how dare you think that you can come up here and try to twist our arms with some nonsense? I just won’t stand for it.”

But in the end, the board unanimously adopted the hard deadline, a recognition that the district is relying, at least in part, on the chamber to get the bond package passed.

Rivas said the district avoided a land mine.

“To withdraw support right in the middle of the (meeting), I can’t tell you how dangerous that is for this bond election,” Rivas said. Rivas said that, while the chamber ultimately gave its support, its wavering plants seeds of doubt among some voters, who are just now forming opinions about the bond issue.
Ken Zarifis, president of Education Austin, the educators’ labor group that represents about 3,000 members, said he believes the community wants high-quality schools and would have voted to fund them “regardless of the chamber’s demands.”

Despite being tired of putting students into “the political crossfire of special interests,” Zarifis said the group’s members will move beyond Monday’s “misstep” by the chamber’s education committee.

“The goal is still the same: to get the bond to pass so we can improve our facilities and bring jobs to the community so our kids benefit in AISD,” he said. “We will continue as we always have, to put the kids of AISD ahead of politics and gamesmanship.”

Chamber President Michael Rollins had a slightly different read of the situation.

“It’s a working relationship,” he said. “There are times there will be disagreements expressed, but, at the end of the day, everyone is working toward the same goal. In this case, it’s working to improve the education of our young people.”

Source: http://www.statesman.com/news/news/chambers-hard-won-support-key-to-school-bonds-chan/nXBJZ/

Visual voicemail company YouMail is ending development on its BlackBerry app. YouMail CEO Alex Quilici said in a blog post that the decision was “bittersweet,” because BlackBerry “got us our first million registered users and put us on the map as a company.”

YouMail’s app is currently among the top-10 most popular apps in the “productivity” category of BlackBerry’s App World store. But Quilici says the customer base has collapsed.

As he wrote on YouMail’s blog: “On many days we’re now getting fewer BB users than Windows Phone 7 users, and we don’t even have a Windows Phone 7 app!” (YouMail’s apps for Windows are developed by third parties that license YouMail’s API.)

“When we began to see that trend, it definitely made us think,” Quilici told CNNMoney.

YouMail, based in Irvine, Calif., is growing rapidly on Apple’s (AAPL, Fortune 500) iPhone and Google’s (GOOG, Fortune 500) Android platform, Quilici said. Almost 2.5 million people are currently registered app users.

“Our company is only 10 people in total, and they’re all development or customer support,” Quilici said. “We need to focus on where we see growth. And right now, it’s not BlackBerry.”

BlackBerry CEO: ‘Substantial change needed’

It’s a long way from the former YouMail-BlackBerry love affair. YouMail started out as a Web-based service in 2007, then added mobile in 2009 after BlackBerry users requested a handset app. Research in Motion (RIMM) gave YouMail a lot of support, Quilici said, by highlighting it several times as a featured app in App World.

But the customer base started dwindling, and development was taking exponentially longer for BlackBerry than for iPhone or Android.
“A feature that took two to three days to build on Android and the iPhone took two to three weeks on BlackBerry,” Quilici said. “The platform is getting long in the tooth.”

RIM did not respond to a request for comment. Quilici, who reached out to RIM on Monday after news articles began appearing about YouMail discontinuing its BlackBerry support, said he also hasn’t heard back.

One developer leaving obviously isn’t a death blow. But it’s an ominious sign for RIM, which is struggling to stay relevant in an industry it once dominated.

If BlackBerry can turn itself around — or if RIM was willing to foot the bill for app development, a tactic Microsoft is using to seed its Windows Phone app store — Quilici said YouMail would gladly come back to the platform.

“We’re all rooting for BlackBerry over here,” he said. “IPhone was a success because it was different and cool, while Android got attention for being largely free and open. I hope RIM finds something like that to differentiate itself.”

Source: http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/17/technology/youmail-blackberry/index.htm?hpt=hp_t2