Published: October 30, 2009 04:22 pm      

10-31 Business: in brief

EDMOND — ProCure Proton Therapy Center named most promising new business

The ProCure Proton Therapy Center in Oklahoma City has received the prestigious 2009 Most Promising New Business award from the Oklahoma Business Roundtable, a statewide organization that promotes Oklahoma’s economic development by encouraging business investment and jobs. The award was announced at the Venture of the Year banquet Oct. 26.

The ProCure Center opened in July and is one of only six centers in the country providing proton therapy to patients with cancer. Proton therapy is an alternative to X-ray radiation that spares healthy tissue and results in far fewer short- and long-term treatment side effects. More than 3,200 of the 18,000 Oklahomans diagnosed with cancer this year would be considered candidates for proton therapy.

The 60,000-square-foot facility contains four treatment rooms and, at full capacity, will be able to treat 1,500 patients each year. About 100 full-time people will be employed at the center. Clinical care at the center is being provided by Radiation Medicine Associates, one of the state’s leading radiation oncology practices.



November Lunch & Learn to discuss last-minute holiday advertising

The Edmond Area Chamber of Commerce’s November Lunch & Learn is slated for Nov. 12. The topic is “Last Minute Holiday Advertising.” Lunch & Learn is a bi-monthly brown bag luncheon, which features topics of interest for Edmond’s small business community. Lunch & Learn is at the Chamber Office and is from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Lunch & Learn is presented by Coppermark Bank.

The panelists will be Jim Reynolds, KFOR; Wendy Linke, KOKH; Gweneth Burbank, COX; and Karan Ediger, advertising director, The Edmond Sun.

The Lunch & Learns are free of charge. Participants are encouraged to bring their own lunch and the Chamber will provide beverages. No RSVP is required.

For more information on Lunch and Learn, visit the Chamber Web page at www.edmond

chamber.com.



Droid by Motorola arrives in Oklahoma City next week

Verizon Wireless and Motorola this week unveiled Droid by Motorola, the first smartphone powered by Android 2.0.

Droid has a solid exterior, intelligent interior and is one of the thinnest full-QWERTY slider phones available. It is a no-fuss, high-tech, location-aware, voice-recognizing, over-the-air updating, multi-tasking machine — and it is available just in time for holiday wish lists.

Droid features high-speed Web browsing, voice-activated search, a customizable large screen, access to thousands of Android applications and hundreds of widgets.



Using social media to build your business is topic of workshop

Social networking can help you build a customer base of loyal, happy people who will tell others about your business. This will be the topic of a workshop from 11:15 a.m. to 1 p.m. Nov. 5 at the Presbyterian Health Foundation Conference Center, Symposium Room, 655 Research Parkway, Suite 100, Oklahoma City. The workshop is being coordinated by the Women’s Business Center of Rural Enterprises of Oklahoma Inc.

This hands-on workshop will be taught by Jessica Miller-Merrell, author of “Tweet This! Twitter for Business.” Miller-Merrell is a blogger, new mother and human resources professional with a passion for recruiting and all things social media.

Participants will find out how to calculate their Social Media ROI and how to achieve Twittertopia in 30 minutes a day or less.

There is a fee of $10, which covers the cost of lunch. Registration deadline is Nov. 3 and may be made online at www.ruralenterprises.com. For more information, call Lori Broyles at 319-8190.

OG&E’s smart grid project selected to receive $130 million stimulus grant

Oklahoma Gas and Electric Company was notified this week by the U.S. Department of Energy that its application for $130 million in stimulus funding to accelerate the Positive Energy Smart Grid program has been accepted for award, pending final negotiations next month.

At the same time President Barack Obama was in Florida, announcing all of the recipients included in the $3.4 billion Smart Grid Investment Grant awards program to improve the nation’s electricity infrastructure.

The stimulus grant would cover more than 40 percent of the cost of a rollout of OG&E’s smart grid program across the utility’s entire service territory. Receipt of the grant monies is contingent upon approval by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission for matching fund recovery and successful negotiations with the DOE on final details of the award.

OG&E applied in August for the matching funds to speed up the deployment of smart grid technology across its 30,000-square mile territory in Oklahoma and western Arkansas. A smart grid requires the installation of smart meters (digital electrical meters) at customer premises to replace existing electric meters.

The meters transmit information about electricity use to the utility company via a newly installed wireless communications network. The network equipment can be located on streetlights, utility poles and/or other towers in the vicinity of the smart meters. In addition, automation technology will be installed on key distribution power lines to provide automatic power restoration capability and improve service reliability to customers.