Cognition Media got some nice press on Saturday from the Times Herald Record, who made us the cover story! The story talks about the tough time recent college grads are having in finding a job, and how some (us) have turned to starting their own company.

The national unemployment rate might be on the decline, but tell that to Kristen Said and Joe Casabona, two recent college graduates who got tired of hunting for jobs that didn’t materialize and decided to start their own business.

We want to thank the Record for running the story. Read it here.

I’m happy to finally announce that yesterday we at Cognition Media moved into our new digs at the Scranton Enterprise Center in downtown Scranton. Our address is: Suite 226 201 Lackawanna Ave. Scranton, PA 18503.

While we’ve been working sans-office up until this point, we feel now that we’ll be operating in the same place daily, we’ll really be able to start making the moves we need to get Cognition off the ground. We are also really excited to share a building with great, very helpful people, like Blackout Design (who did our awesome logos) and the GVTA. We’d like to especially thank the GVTA for our desks, which they gave us free of charge.

We’ve posted up some photos of the office on our Facebook page- you can view the album here. While you’re over there, also be sure to become a fan!

After months of development, we are proud to announce the official launch of Burke Catholic High School’s new website, the first website powered by Minvera CMS. Burke got a custom designed theme suited for their needs and all of the featured included in this first version of Minerva. Their theme also has hooks into Minerva to manage the rotating images featured in the header on each page.

This version of Minvera, RC1, offers the following:

• Full content management for pages, images, videos, and podcasts
• A fully function blog with RSS (with special functionality built in for sports news and emergency announcements)
• Photo gallery
• Events calendar
• Athletics Manager
• Alumni Manager
• Forms Manager
• Activities Manager

You can visit the site here. If you have any questions about Minvera, you can contact us via the Contact page.

Joe all dressed up

May was a big month for the Cognition Media team. We found out that we received funding to start this business and got put on the fast track to get the ball rolling. On top of that, all three of us were winding down with school and at the end of the month we all graduated. Now that we are officially done with school, it’s time to get down to business.

We are currently in the process of incorporating, which should take place within the next two weeks. In the mean time, we are launching the world’s first Minvera driven site. After a short training session Kristen and I are giving to our Alma mater, we are officially launching the new face of burkecatholic.org. More on that when it happens. Meanwhile, Matt and I have begun planning the cooler features of Minvera- the course management features. Development on all of that will begin early next week.

All-in-all the entire Cognition Media team is very excited to have this oppertunity and hope we can truely make a difference in helping high schools upgrade their technology to make them more efficient and well connected- both to the Internet and the community.

We received third place in the Great Valley Technology Alliance’s Annual Business Plan Competition. This means we get to start our business, with office space in Scranton, with the support of many in-kind services. The Scranton Times has a write-up here.

We are currently working on our presentation for the Great Valley Technology Alliance Business Plan Competition. Cognition Media’s flagship product, Minerva, was selected as one of the top 5 business plans in the competition, which means that we have a chance to win over the judges and start our business in NEPA.