Tech conference carries on after death of co-founder

After Microsoft quit hosting an applications conference in the Twin Cities in 2006, Farhan Muhammad and Luna Ahmed, the husband-and-wife co-founders of ILM Professional Services, stepped up.

Their Minnesota Developers Conference drew about 500 attendees to the annual event last week in Bloomington.

"This conference is about building enterprise applications, and Farhan said the Twin Cities, such a technology center, needs a conference like this," Ahmed said.

The conference also marked another step forward for CEO Luna Ahmed, 42. Muhammad died of a heart attack in March at age 41.

"It was extremely difficult for me when I found my husband dead," Ahmed said last week. "We ran ILM side by side for 12 years, and we ran this conference together."

Ahmed never questioned continuing the conference. Or hanging on to ILM, an Edina technology consulting and application-development business.

"We treated the company as our first baby," Ahmed said. "In 2007, we had a son, and Farhan called him our second child, and a daughter, in 2008, our third. He was a technologist, and he wanted to build something. ILM is our company, our baby. We're going to love it and grow it.

ILM's staff of 35 technologists and others is on course to deliver about $6 million in projected revenue, up from $4.5 million last year.

"Farhan had said this team will take us forward," Ahmed said. "And the last six months was a testament to the team. We have quality people. They took us forward."

Muhammad, who grew up in Pakistan, and Ahmed, who is from Bangladesh, met 20 years ago while studying computer science at Minnesota State University at Mankato.

They left corporate IT jobs in 2002 to start ILM, their entrepreneurial dream.

Percoa USA, a finalist in the energy/clean tech category of the Minnesota Cup in 2013, is focused on a path to commercialization.

Pomerleau, 48, started in on his dream technology in 2009. And Percoa just received a federal patent on his "precast pervious" concrete that avoids stormwater runoff.

Pomerleau, assisted so far by friends and family, said it's too difficult to get financed by early-stage investors, so he's talking to concrete-product manufacturers about licensing agreements.

Percoa's porous cement, which comes in different shapes and colors, is engineered with an open-cell structure to allow rainwater to drain directly through its surface. The water percolates into a stone aggregate substrate and then infiltrates the soil. Percoa's products can be used new or be retrofitted to existing concrete or asphalt surfaces, such as parking lots, driveways and patios.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation has monitored and tested Percoa slabs. And the product has gotten favorable reviews from two local engineering firms. Take a look at: www.percoausa.com.

The several dozen retired engineers, businesspeople and other volunteers at St. Paul nonprofit Compatible Technology International (CTI) hit their four-year goal with their low-cost CTI Water Chlorinator. It now provides safe water to more than 250,000 people in 474 Nicaraguan villages.

These simple machines, which cost less than $200 apiece, are operated, maintained and repaired by villagers. It costs the average family about $1 per year for drinkable water. Better health means kids get educated, people can work and economies improve. Nicaragua is the second-poorest country in the neighborhood behind Haiti. CTI designs tools with low-income farmers and villagers to improve food and water security in developing nations. Learn more at: www.compatibletechnology.org.

Up to 100 Twin Cities business and community leaders will bed down in sleeping bags downtown tonight to raise $200,000 to help shelter kids. The "Night of Hope" benefits YouthLink, a Minneapolis nonprofit that helps homeless youth advance through housing assistance, education and career support.

"On any given night, homeless youth could fill over half the hotel rooms in downtown Minneapolis, yet these young people are often invisible," said Executive Director Heather Huseby. "This problem affects all of us whether we realize it or not."

Statistics show youth who fail to graduate from high school may cost the community $750,000 over a lifetime in lost tax revenue, health care costs, incarceration and social services. That's bad for them, our community and our economy. The event starts at 5 p.m. with a tour of the city that includes stops that highlight a day in the life of a homeless youth. Participants include Steve Cramer of the Downtown Council, Todd Klingel of the Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce, Joanna Koenig of CliftonLarsonAllen, Jeff LaFavre of Coldwell Banker Commercial, John Luke of Hilton, Bruce Nerland of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Tim Marx of Catholic Charities and Charlie Weaver of the Minnesota Business Partnership. Learn more about YouthLink at: www.youthlinkmn.org.