Stamford Hospital launches campaign to raise $500M

Committee passes building permit fee hike

Budget to offer savings to drivers, consumers

Legislators let drivers keep their cell phones

Advocate publisher receives Heart of Gold

CTE sponsors dialogue on poverty

Will online banking click for GE Capital?

Group sees strenght in dot-com numbers

Sophomore hurler leads Stamford to win

Stamford's Vitti no-hits Westhill

Business Editor

Dot-coms of the area, link up!

That's the word from Mark Pruner, organizer of the Connecticut Internet Association's inaugural reception, to be held from 6 to 8 pm. Tuesday at the University of Connecticut's Stamford campus.

"The whole name of the game on the Internet is partnering," said Pruner. "With the explosion of companies with good ideas in this area, there's no reason you have to partner with companies from Silicon Valley. There may be a company right here that you can partner with."

One company with something to sell online might need another's e-business software, according to Pruner. Or an experienced e-exec might find a challenging company to manage or invest in.

Pruner has counted about 800 dot-coms in the area, ranging from sole-proprietor, garage-based startups to Norwalk-based Priceline and the huge Internet efforts of Stamford-based GE Capital Corp. He hopes to get members of the industry cluster learning about and talking to each other at the gathering.

"You can't do synergistic partnering unless you know who the other companies are. They could be across the street," Pruner said. "When it comes to building business relationships, it's still best to do it face to face."

Over the past five years, Pruner, who also operates the Stamford E-Center, a dot-com incubator at the corner of Summer and Broad streets, has collected a running list of area Internet companies from personal contacts, newspaper stories and other sources.

More than 700 are located in the Stamford-Norwalk corridor alone, Pruner said. Take in the rest of southwestern Connecticut and they could easily number more than 1,000, he believes.

"The number certainly is between the mid- to high-three-figures and the low thousands. Exactly? It's impossible to know," he said.

Those he has contacted are excited about the opportunity to network with each other. "Everybody that we've talked to likes the idea," Pruner said.

Al Case, group vice president of e-business intelligence at Gartner Group Inc., said the Connecticut Internet Association could help build and nurture the industry locally, and bring the area to greater prominence as a center of Internet commerce.

"If what you want to do is build up Fairfield County, make it well known, publicize that it's a good area for dot-com companies, this is a great thing," Case said. Such an organization would help companies "locate resources, learn who's coming and who's going, and build loyalty to the community," he added.

Perhaps because the e-commerce industry has sprung up so quickly, there's been little chance for organized networking, according to Case.

"I haven't seen a lot of specific Internet asociations per se, but there is kind of an industry association that puts out the magazine 'Silicon Alley' in New York," Case said.

Based on the response so far, Pruner expects the inaugural meeting of the group to be well-attended and something on which to build the organization's future.

"Even the people who've said they can't come are siging up for the next one," according to Pruner.

On Tuesday, Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy will give a keynote address on the city's educational efforts to meet the needs of Internet ventures in Stamford and Fairfield County. The reception, in UConn's main auditorium, will also include presentations of the 10 hottest Web ventures by local companies

"We expect to have the Gartner Group, Felicite.com and Secretaries2000.com make presentations, but the final line-up of hottest ventures will not be decided until Monday, as companies continue to register their presentation ideas," Pruner said.

For the companies that don't make the cut, additional presentation facilities will be set up in an adjacent conference room.

Sponsors include the Stamford E-Center, Robinson & Cole LLP, People's Bank, Chubb Executive Risk Division, Business Environment, Sonitrol Security Systems and the Connecticut Information Technology Institute at UConn.

Registration for the event can be done at the CIA's Web site, www.connecticutinternet.org, or via email at attendeeconnecticutinternet.org.