FDA is, well, Confusing

So today I started researching what kind of FDA approvals we would need for some new products that we're currently working on developing. Needless to say the FDA is the same as every other government organization: confusing and hard to navigate. If searching for this information isn't hard enough on the FDA's website it's even more confusing when they throw around all of their crazy acronyms for approvals (i.e. 510(k), CFR, GMP, etc.). Now I'm fully aware that these could all be fairly common acronyms that every adult would know but as an undergraduate student I'm pretty oblivious to the world still.

Anyways, on the business end of things we (NFS and a few other companies) were chosen as the recipient of a $2.4 million grant! Yay for more money for NFS! If you want to check out the grant click here.

Until tomorrow, we out here spinning!

Houston, We Have A Problem

Today my CEO asked if Dave and I would be willing to draft an outline for a business plan for the new market that we are trying to crack into. There's only one problem with that... Neither Dave or myself have even seen a business plan let alone write one!

However, we realized that this would be a great experience and said that we would make an effort toward this project. We Googled templates for business plans and started researching the market that we were creating the plan for. One of the first sources that I found, was exactly what we were looking for. It laid out the past finances and made predictions for the next 5 years! There was only one problem with this report: if you wanted to read it, it would cost you almost $2,000! Yes I counted my zeroes correctly, two thousand dollars. Ridiculous. 

Nevertheless we are still drafting this outline now and hope to have a very rough draft by the end of the day so wish us luck!

Until tomorrow, we out here spinning.

Here Comes the VP

Today in Columbus, VP Biden is speaking literally right across the street from NFS! While this exciting (for all you Democrats) and good press for Columbus and Biden it does conflict with all of those companies here in the TechColumbus incubator. To protect the VP, they're not letting anyone in or out of our parking lot between 3:30 and 5 pm. So many employees (including myself) have a decision to make: leave work early or risk sitting in the crazy traffic that will ensue after the VP speech is over at 5.

While I understand the need for the highest levels of protection for the VP during his entrance and exit from the area, I don't understand why the can't let those of us that work here out of our own parking lot? All I want to do is to leave work and drive away from the area.

In the business side of life, Dave and I spent yesterday and today crunching some data and from what we saw it looks rather promising and from it we will be able to further enhance our patent-pending electrospinning techniques in order to make it perfect.

Well since I hate driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic, I'm thinking I'm going to leave work here pretty quick. Until tomorrow, we out here spinning.

Why am I a Minnesota Sports Fan?

Being from Minnesota, I have a deeply rooted love for all of my teams up north (i.e. Vikings, Twins, Timberwolves, Wild, etc.). As many of you know Minnesota hasn't historically had the best of sports teams (no super bowls, no stanley cups, no NBA titles) but we can usually fall back on our beloved Twins to pick us up during the summer (2 World Series titles and in my lifetime more division titles than I could count). However, the past two years have been a failure in Twins standards (especially with building a sweet new stadium!).

This season has not been any better with the Twins posting an embarrassing 37-52 record and are already 12 games out of first place. While losing has not been easy this year there are moments of the old Twins coming back to life. The most recent example of this was the Twins victory over the Orioles. While the Orioles have not had very good seasons in the past, they are above .500 this year and in contention for their division title. The victory was nice but it was the score that really shocked me: 19-7.

How can you score 19 runs in a game against a decent team and be 12 games out of first place at the All-Star break? So frustrating. Welcome to the life of a Minnesota sports fan.

On the business side of things, the business hasn't gone bankrupt or burned down yet with Dave and I running things in the office so that's good! Outside of that not much new to report. 

Until tomorrow, we out here spinning!

The Mayan Were Right!?

well im back,

This week I am busy contemplating the legacy of the Mayan's, with the lengthy power outage after a freak storm, the train exploding in columbus and Lebron James winning the NBA title, I have to say that the end of days seems near. Its quite an amazing feat that the Mayan's were able to predict the end of the world. Its especially amazing that there was no accounting for the leap year today's Gregorian calendar. I wonder how they were able to do it...

well there you go Aliens.

Putting all science aside it seems, not just plausible, but completely true

Not putting science aside, well you get an answer that really dosent fit the them of this post, so I wont put it in

when the world starts going to shambles well be ready over here.

As we are in the market of regenerative medicine, I think the Mayan Prophecy will be good for business.

So when December 21 2012 rolls around and you need some...uh...regenerative medicines give us a ring. Thanks

And now for a part called Dave's best game [ he could find in a short amount of time] about the mayan end of days (again you might want to check any science at the door)

http://www.flasharcadegamessite.com/24089-Choose-Your-2012-End-of-The-World.html

Until next time and through December 21 2012 well be out here spinning

Friggatriskaidekaphobia

Friggatriskaidekaphobia, for those of you who don't know, is the extreme fear of Friday the 13th and since that would be today I figured that I would say my opinions on this "disease". First of all, there is apparently people who suffer from this so badly that they founded a treatment center for people that are superstitious. While many people (including myself) scoff at the fact that somebody would be superstitious enough to pay the exuberant fees charged by these "doctors", the treatment center continues as a lifeline to those suffering from this chronic illness. 


My big question with superstition, is how/why are people afraid of Friday the 13th? Just because they saw a movie with the same title as a kid and think that every Friday the 13th is as terrible as in the movie? A week ago was a Friday and nobody complained about that. June had a 13th day but, once again, I didn't hear anybody freaking out about that day either. So why is it Friday the 13th that freaks people out? Just food for thought.


Well on the business side of things, our Senior Product and Marketing manager is leaving tomorrow to go spend a week in Myrtle Beach, SC! Anybody know what that means? That means that Dave and I are in charge of all marketing, sales, communications, etc. for the business for the week!!! Now that will be some good experience if you ask me! I'm very excited but also nervous at the same time. Hopefully all goes smoothly!


Until Monday, we out here spinning!

A Magician Without A Rabbit?

Today we were experimenting with creating nanofibers with a new polymer. While we didn't quite have the correct manufacturing specifications we were able to create a scaffold. One of our material engineers brought it to the office to show us and give us a sample of the texture and consistency of the new polymer.

Now comes the real story...  Our Senior Product and Marketing Manager was given a sample to inspect. He looks at it for a while and then tries to put it back down. I say try here because he wasn't able to put it on the table. Now you may be a little confused at how this happened and I was too, thus convinced that he must have some magical talents that I didn't know about.

However, after closer inspection we discovered (much to my disappointment) that it was not magic at all. A few of the nanofibers got caught on his fingernail and caused the rest of the scaffold to appear to float in midair. Our fibers are so thin that from even a few inches away, I couldn't see them at all!

In conclusion, the Marketing guy wasn't a magician without a rabbit or a magician at all. Just a crazy optical illusion exhibiting the wonders of our nanofibers!

Until tomorrow, we out here spinning!

P.S. Still no sign of Dave......

The Cup is "Half" Full

Well today officially marks the halfway point of my internship here at NFS and I couldn't be more grateful for the opportunity that the CEO and CTO have given me to come out to Columbus and work for them. It truly has been an amazing opportunity and while not every day has been the most fun, it definitely beats working at Quizno's again all summer!

Big news in Columbus today is the train that derailed and exploded just East of the Ohio State Campus (and our headquarters!). Thankfully nobody was seriously injured! If you want to read more on the story click here.

From a business perspective, things are going quite well still. Outside of Dave not willing to contribute to the blog, we're helping the head Marketing guy with a bunch of stuff. Today we finally finished up the first in a series of webinars that will be going up on our website very soon! We are currently in the process of revamping the entire website so if you have suggestions let us know!

Until tomorrow, we out here spinning.

Man, I Feel Like an Intern

So far throughout the summer there have been very few projects that I've felt like simply an intern and just doing all the crappy work that nobody else wants to do. However, with the couple big projects for this week, I definitely feel like that. The head honcho got a list of people that attended a meeting but the list didn't have any names on it, just company name and position held. So my job is to go through that list and try to come up with contact info for all these people. Much much harder than it sounds. Apparently people don't put their contact info on their company websites anymore and I can't imagine why. Can't they just put their email address on the internet for people like me to find so that we can send them all of the info about our company? Yes it would make their lives terrible but it would make my life easier and I think the life of an intern at a startup company is much more important than a CEO at a big name corporation. Don't you?

On the business side of things, our CTO was featured in the business magazine here in Columbus which was awesome!! Here's the link if you want to check out that article. Outside of that we have some high school kids coming on a tour of TechColumbus today and we were lucky enough to get to show them our office/labs, yay. Other than that it was a super slow week last week with the holiday and it's just starting to pick up again this week.

Until tomorrow, we out here spinning!

P.S. Still disappointed in Dave for only blogging once so far. This whole "Tale of Two Interns" thing was his idea too. I expected better from you Dave.

Breaking the Bank

Today, I registered to take the GRE at the end of August. My only problem with it is that it's $175! I mean how in the world can it cost that much money just to take a test! Yes it is an important test to get into grad school but the ACT was important to get into college and that was like $50. I know that at least part, if not all, of it is online so it's not like you have to pay for paper or shipping or anything like that. Yes, there are tests, like the MCAT that are even more expensive but the overarching theme here is why are the tests this expensive?

On the business side of things, it's been pretty slow here the past week because of the 4th of July. It seems that a lot of people have just decided to take this whole week or most of it off. Yes that's great for you but I mean how am I suppose to get in contact with potential customers that I want to sell our nanofibers to? Well remember to check out our website (www.nanofibersolutions.com) for all of your nanofiber needs!

Until tomorrow, we out here spinning!

The REAL Decision

First of all I would like to congratulate Dave on his huge accomplishment of FINALLY creating his first blog post. I feel like it really adds a sense of expertise (in Star Wars, NBA, and GIMP not Microsoft Word) to our ever expanding blog.

While I must applaud Dave on his reference to the decision I must question whether or not his decision was actually as difficult as he made it out to be. While it is true that he took his "talents" to Columbus for the summer, it's more of he returned his "talents" to Columbus since it is actually his home town (yep I just blew his cover! :)). So really this big ordeal over his Decision 2.0 was really "I'm going to return home from college and work for the summer".

However, my decision, from henceforth referred to as Decision 1.5 was much more difficult. Being born, raised, and attending college in Minnesota, where to employ my talents for the summer was much more of a difficult task. After much debate and decision making with my family and friends Decision 1.5 went something like this:

"Ken, where will you be working this summer?"
"I have decided to take my talents to the 'South Beach of Spinning'"


Then at my welcome party, I promised all of our consumers that we would be able to secure not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven, not eight, not nine, but ten patents during my time here. So far, it hasn't quite worked out like that (similar to another promise I remember hearing two years ago). 




Until tomorrow, we out here spinning! 

The Decision 2.0

Well here it is, after some complaining from Ken I have decided, or rather been told, to write a blog post.

First off I would like everyone to know that I have decided to take my talents to Columbus, OH this summer.

“Columbus?!” you ask

“Columbus!” I would reply, “its the Miami of nanofibers. The South Beach of Spinning.”

If you don’t believe me check us out.  

Well enough of the decision 2.0 (Lebron James reference), as you may know we have conquered the GIPM program last week. The gimp program was a miry maze of mischievous menaces set up to look like buttons on a computer program, but we persevered and conquered it, creating a number of nice looking banners in the process. But I have discovered an even more treacherous program…WORD! Yes word. It works fine for typing but any attempt to do more, like create a brochure with various backgrounds and multiple images sends the whole paper out of wack.

To this point I’ve tried all the tricks in the book I could think of with little avail.

I even booted up an old computer to consult the Yoda of Word himself… Clippy

But after consulting Clippy for an hour I remembered that Mr. Clip was actually quite worthless (for those pining for another Star Wars reference id say hes more of a Jar Jar than a Yoda).

On a final note a happy (early) birthday to you America from all of us at Nanofiber Solutions

until next time we out here Marketing 

You're Killing Me Smalls

So remember how I had said that Dave AND I would be blogging about our experiences here as interns? Well if you look through the blog it seems to me like there is approximately zero posts by Dave! Slowly this blog has now become "A Tale of One Intern" but that doesn't seem to have the same ring to it. I asked him why he hasn't been blogging and his excuse was "I don't know what to say", apparently his time here at NFS has been pretty boring...

Well anyway enough of me complaining about my coworkers. In Columbus this past weekend we had two major storm systems go through and produce baseball size hail and up to 100mph winds. This left over 100,000 people without electricity for days and has caused much damage to homes and vehicles around the city. So I got all excited because since half the city doesn't have power then NFS must not have power too which means I get to work from home today! Oh wait. We have backup generators. Lame. I can't complain too much since I blog, update facebook (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nanofiber-Solutions/219033978136515) and update twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/NanoSol) as part of my job.

On the company's side of things we're making progress in partnership/OEM talks with other companies, which will really help get our products (http://www.nanofibersolutions.com/products.html) out on the market! We also just finished recording our office/lab staff and products to send over to Germany for a documentary about the patients in Russia! So hopefully they include us in that as well.

Until tomorrow, we out here spinning.