On August 12, wild game food aficionado and creator of Nevadafoodies.com Kristy Crabtree will host a guest chef night featuring wild game recipes.  Kristy and Bistro7 are working together to create a menu that showcases the very best Nevada has to offer. Working with unusual meats such as elk and geese, Kristy brings an interesting and fine dining twist to such game and integrates it into dishes of all nationalities.

GAME NIGHT DETAILS:

• DATE: August 12, Thursday
• TIME: 5:00PM – 9:30PM
• RSVP: Call (775) 851-WINE
• PRICE: $35/PP

WHAT’S  ON THE MENU:

• BBQ Duck Kabobs
• Baked elk-n-sage ravioli
• Red wine carnivore chili w/ house salad
• Shepherd’s pie (or) venison meatloaf
• Cobbler

RSVP: Call (775) 851-WINE

Watch video clips from the 2010 Social Media Discussion Panel. Honest transparency with Value!

• Question 1
• Question 2
• Question 3
• Question 4
• Question 5
• Question 6
• Question 7
• Question 8
• Question 9
• Question 10
• Question 11
• Question 12
• Question 13
• Question 14
• Question 15
• Question 16
• Question 17

If you are going to start teaching it …you better be doing it too… and with that said, Kathy Carrico launches www.KathyCarrico.com - a Business Education & Development Blog.

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June 12, 2010
Let the Bloggin Begin
by, Kathy Carrico

I’ve been planning to launch this site, at least in my mind, since last October. As they say, thinking about something and actually doing it are two separate things. Being a huge advocate of planning helped me tremendously. I gave myself six months to prepare, knowing well that once my blog site was published I would have to be prepared to, well, blog. Read more

Canon EOS 7D
18 MP CMOS Digital SLR Camera with 3-inch LCD – the camera is amazing…. and eventhough it has twice as many gizmos and gadgets – it’s still pretty easy to figure out. It was a good upgrade from my original Canon EOS Digital Rebel.

Canon EF 17-40mm 1:4L USM
Ultra-wide Zoom Lens – I use this lense all the time. Mostly because it takes such wide shots that allow me to crop more than less of the image out of the frame.

EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
Standard & Medium Telephoto Lens – I adore this lense for its sharpness and blurring affects. I use this lense for portraits and for all of my food shots.

EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM
Telephoto Zoom Lens – This is a heavy lense but manages to get some great close up shots of subjects that are just sometimes to far to get close to.

Digital Photography Never Looked So Analog

The Hipstamatic for iPhone is an application that brings back the look, feel, unpredictable beauty, and fun of plastic toy cameras from the past. http://hipstamaticapp.com

For just a buck ninety nine, you can download the Hipstamatic iPhone App and have the ability to play with three lenses, 2 types of flashes and 2 types of film that give your images an old school film look and feel.

I have to say it’s a fun app but it does take a little time to get used to. After becoming more familiar with the app – I could see how it would allow me to be more creative with my compositions and my overall end photograph.

There are additional lenses, flashes and film that you can purchase as add-ons that give you a more advanced output.

Web-design Firm Offers Help to Small Companies

Jul 23, 2008 – By Marian Bond • business@rgj.com
RGJ Business Section: July 22, 2008

After being a Web design developer for a local company, Kristy Crabtree decided to open her own company. Westward Strategy & Design Group was established to offer professional services to the small companies that might not want to invest large sums of money to get onto the Internet to promote their services or products.

“I had worked my way up in 13 years with my employer, from an apprentice to director of professional services, and I was managing 12 to 15 technical and creative designers,” Crabtree said. “I wanted my company to be more of a boutique agency. More intimate with the customers. Because I have low overhead, I have more time to spend with my clients. I wanted to target a different audience.”

Crabtree started her company from a home office two years ago. She now shares a 2,200-square-foot building in Sparks with ACS Business Insurance Services.

“The technical people do the heavy program duties, set up shopping carts. Things like that,” Crabtree said.

Her customers range from sole proprietors to companies with 15 to 20 employees. “I don’t go after the larger clients. There is a place for them. I did not believe anybody was facilitating the niche market I want,” she said.

Crabtree says that a new customer coming to her needs to understand who his or her audience is. Clients also need to have goals and objectives they want to sell or the service or product they are offering. She stressed that so much is happening on the Web these days that anyone in business needs to have a presence or they will miss out on clients.

Another plus to having a Web site, according to Crabtree, is that analytical reports can be produced to show activity on the site. This type of tracking helps with marketing goals. Her company will produce monthly or quarterly reports as required.

“The typical site will have a home page that tells about the company or information about the team that works with the product or services,” Crabtree said. She also likes to set up a news page that tells more about the company. The Web site will be set up to provide fresh information.

She also advises each company to have its own domain name and to maintain ownership.

Clients interested in art or photography can get stock photos on Web sites. “They are very reasonable in price. If you search long enough online, as we do, you know which photos have not been used,”

In planning for a Web site, the company has to decide if it wants to reach a local area or a global audience.

Crabtree said she often has companies with existing sites come for a redesign.

“We first ask if they have any analytical tools to get information as to how a Web site is performing. We find out if anybody has been going to the site. We like to sit back for about a month so we can get information. We will create basically how I would plan to help fix (the site). We don’t want their money to go down the drain. We’re a small business, too. We understand money is important to everybody.”

Crabtree said she is always eager to accommodate the customer’s needs. Her company can set up a Web site in just a short time, but generally takes about two months to finish a detailed product.

The cost of a Web site with Westward Strategy & Design Group runs as low as $500, but depending upon the content and intricacy can also run $10,000 or more.

Doug Kurkul, CEO of the Reno Sparks Chamber of Commerce, said that last January he entrusted Crabtree’s company to redesign the chamber web site www.renosparkschamber.org and he said he was quite satisfied with the results.

“I’ve dealt with Web designers for 13 years now,” Kurkul said. “I believe that Westward Strategy & Design is one of the best I’ve ever dealt with. They are easy to work with and they have outstanding skills on both technical and on artistic aspects of web design.”

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Westward Strategy & Design Group, LLC.
www.westwardstrategy.com
Phone: (775) 626-8330

CorpsJD
ONLINE WETLAND DELINEATION GIS MAPPING & REPORTING SOFTWARE SERVICE
Due to the tremendous interest in CorpsJD, the initial Pilot Study was changed and the launch date moved up to May 17, 2010 for sales, training and support. Between May 17 and July 4, 2010 introductory pricing is available on individual and package pricing. Please call CorpsJD for more details at 888-771-0462 (888-7Q1-0INC). You can also visit their YouTube Channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/CorpsJD.

www.JohnsonPerkins.com

Some handy uses why I use Google Alerts:

• monitoring a press release I posted about my business or myself
• monitoring a press release that I might have been part of that somebody else published
• monitoring when Google indexes my blog posts 
• monitoring who’s linking to my website and what are they saying (this is kind of sneaky)
• monitoring who else is talking about my business and what are they saying (you can patrol
• monitoring who might be stealing your content)
• monitoring and staying current on a competitors (this can be fun)

http://www.google.com/alerts

Here’s the email I get whenever my name or my business name get’s indexed by Google. This can give you a lot of insight into how often you come up in conversation online.

I am liking Picasa more and more these days. There are so many integrated really cool features that Picasa and Google have combined. I can easily upload my images of Nevada through Picasa’s desktop interface or through my Google account login. I can then add a title and description, place a marker for the location and share to multiple social networks. How cool is that.

My 2010 goal is to upload all of my Nevada photos to all places we travel and see if I can’t cover the entire state of Nevada!

Download Picasa for your Desktop Today!
Download the Facebook Picasa Widget Today!