Now's your chance, smarty pants

They're out there somewhere: would-be technology entrepreneurs with great ideas bouncing around in their heads but no clue how to start a business.

Or else they're making a go of it but still wouldn't know a business plan from a grocery list. If either of the above categories describes you,

Tech Park U, a nine-month entrepreneur-training program offered by the Louisiana Technology Park in association with Business Report, is still accepting applications for the program's eight or 10 slots. The idea is to wring success out of potential and give Baton Rouge's fledgling high-tech sector a solid kick-start. It's no secret that Baton Rouge and Louisiana in general are late bloomers in terms of establishing a technology sector and that we need all the help we can get.

The nine-month odyssey is made up of two parts: an intensive 10-week course using a wildly popular "FastTrac" curriculum leads students stepby-step through the intricacies of putting together a business plan; and a month-long second phase during which participants will get a chance to work independently on those business plans with the help of tech park staff and local business experts.

Those selected for the program will have 24-hour access to tech park resources, including cubicles, phones and fax, high-speed Internet, e-mail, secretarial support, meeting rooms and all the other amenities necessary to conduct a business. They'll also have access to exhaustive online business libraries that Stephen Loy, the tech park's executive director, characterizes as "Lexus Nexus on speed."

Each member of the class will pay $99 a month for office space and all the support services. The ninemonth program will end with a business plan competition, the winner receiving a $2,000 grant.

After that, Loy says, ideally every one of the program's graduates will take up residence in a business incubator somewhere-preferably the tech park if they meet the necessary criteria.

"We'd more be more than happy to have them once they've gone through the process," he says. "The longterm goal is to help promote entrepreneurialsm in the city."

It's conceivable that not every brilliant idea will pan out. Regardless, every student, if they do their homework and follow through on their lessons, will have learned how to build a rigorous, thorough business planwhether it validates their original idea or not.

The business-plan crash course uses FastTrac TechVenture curriculum, one of a number of FastTrac programs originally created at the University of Southern California in 1986 but offered nationally through the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation since 1993. The programs have been a hit, with 300 organizations in 49 states offering them and 165,000 aspiring or current entrepreneurs going through them since 1993.

The purpose is to accelerate entrepreneurship by showing students how to create and maintain a business, or if they're already in business, how to research and map out and expansion. The Small Business Administratron in 1968 awarded FastTrac its Model of Excellence Award for entrepreneurial education.

Rick Mekdessie is president of RAMware, a sales tax software firm that took up residence in the LTP a year ago, having been driven out of New Orleans by flooding. He was a "simple programmer," in his words, when he enrolled in a FastTrac course at the University of New Orleans a decade ago to improve his business skills.

Mekdessie says the course took him step-by-step through the process of developing his idea and business plan, forcing him to do the study, do it well and put his assumptions to the test. Mekdessie doubts he would have put the same effort into setting up his business had he not taken the FastTrac course.

"It should be mandatory," he says. "It helped me as far as feeling more comfortable starting the business and knowing what the opportunities were and What the risks were."

Vickie Waller, FastTrac coordinator for South Carolina, says the state has embraced FastTrac in its push to reinvent itself and cultivate entrepreneurialism in response to a desiccated manufacturing base and shuttering of the Charleston Naval Complex.

She calls FastTrac an "awesome program" for any community trying to create more entrepreneurship. It can help new ventures find out whether they have a chance in hell of succeeding, and existing businesses whether market share and other factors favor expansion.

South Carolina dabbled in FastTrac for a couple of years before the legislature awarded a $250,000 grant to grow the number of sites teaching the programs around the state.

"We've had really good success with it," Waller says. "In fact, the grant went so well the first year they renewed the grant for three more years--a quarter of a million a year. The results are just phenomenal."

Loys says the key to the experience will be a SWOT analysis-strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Information on such -things is hard to come by if you're not taking college business classes or otherwise plugged in somehow.

"This doesn't make it simple, but it does make it lot easier," he says. "It makes it manageable."

Loy, who'll facilitate the FastTrac program with the help of local experts in various fields related to business, says the plan is for Tech Park U to continue operating after the first class of students graduates. As the tech park's executive director, he hopes it will help high-tech entrepreneurialism blossom in the Capital City.

"It would be nice if we could say people were people banging down our doors, but we're not the [North Carolina] Research Triangle Park," he says. "We're heading in the right direction, but it just doesn't happen overnight. Whatever the community can do'to encourage entrepreneurialism needs to be done."

Tech Park U starts Jan. 10. Applications are being accepted until Nov. 17. Find out more and apply online at techparku.com.

BUSINESS BOOT CAMP

Class size: 10

Start date: Jan. 10

Class times: 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesdays

Place: Louisiana Technological Park, 7117 Florida Blvd.

Tuition: $99 a month

Deadline to apply: Nov. 17