(WisBusiness) TUES News Summary — 31 Mar. 2009

From WisBusiness.com …

— Widen Enterprises has what some might consider the perfect business plan: Create a problem for your customers and then get them to pay you for a way to solve it.

That, in a nutshell, is what Widen has done with its Digital Asset Management software, which helps customers manage their digital media and videos.

“Through our pre-press services, we were creating massive files,” said Matthew Gonnering, the new 32-year-old CEO of Widen. “Then we were giving files back to the customers and they didn’t know what to do with them.”

Starting back in the mid-1990s Widen began creating software to help clients search and locate specific files through a Web browser, he said. Gonnering said the software side of the company — which now makes up 30 percent of its business — is booming.

It has posted annual growth rate of more than 27 percent a year since 2004 by acquiring new customers. That growth should only continue, even in a down economy, because of the “exploding” need to search, store and manage images and video files flooding the Internet, he said.

Read more in a new WisBusiness interview with Gonnering: http://www.wisbusiness.com/index.iml?Article=153837

— Addressing recent goverment action regarding struggling U.S. automakers, Gov. Jim Doyle said President Obama has laid out “some pretty tough markers” for the auto industry, but “they are markers that need to be there.”

”I really appreciate the fact that we have a president that isn’t trying to sugarcoat this,” Doyle said.

Obama announced Monday that the restructuring plans offered by General Motors and Chrysler do not go far enough to warrant more federal investment. Obama said his administration would work with GM on a “better business plan,” examining brand consolidation and the company’s debt structure, among other issues. He said Chrysler “needs a partner to remain viable” and said international car company Fiat would make a good match.

Doyle said he didn’t catch Obama’s address, but got a call from the White House about an hour before the speech. He said he has spoken with Obama personally about the issue, and knows the president is committed to having a healthy domestic auto manufacturing industry in the long-term.

With Doyle and other state leaders trying to get General Motors to re-open the idle Janesville assembly plant, the guv said “it’s very unlikely” that car companies will be making “any big new investment in the near future.”

See more: http://www.wisbusiness.com/index.iml?Article=153827

— Doyle handed Dane Co. Exec. Kathleen Falk a $4 million check for expansion of a taxiway at Dane County Regional Airport to improve efficiency and safety. The check is made possible through federal stimulus money, officials said.

Doyle said he has been working with the Obama administration and the state’s congressional delegation on recovery efforts since the day after the November election. Though economic times are very tough, now is not the time “to crawl under the covers,” he said.

Airport director Brad Livingston said without the federal recovery money, the project would have been delayed a few years. The FAA has recommended the improvements to enhance safety.

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WISBUSINESS.COM LUNCHEON FEATURING PAULA BONNER OF THE WISCONSIN ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

4/6/2009- 11:45 a.m.

The Madison Club, 5 E. Wilson St., Madison.

The event is organized by the Madison Club, Madison Magazine, and WisBusiness.com .

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