Happy New Year everyone! I have been fortunate to spend the past several weeks enjoying the snow in Colorado with my family, but I am excited to get back to work preparing to officially launch iMedExchange in just a few short months.

Reflecting back on 2007, the growth of our team and of iMedExchange has been rewarding. While we have been in various stages of Beta development, the enthusiasm from physicians has been very encouraging. Doctors of all practice types, specialties and geographic regions have joined us in our goal of building the most useful online resource for physicians. We have a ton of work to do in the coming months, and I look forward with great anticipation to reaching our goal.

From the iMedExchange team, I wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year!

iMedExchange continued to move its way up the Seattle Startup Index to close out 2007 at position 143 out of 243, up 10 spots from the previous month. This is especially good news since we have yet to even publically lauch or even do much at all in terms of marketing! Of course, the SSI is hardly a statistically accurate indicator of... well... anything. But it's fun to watch and I thank Marcelo Calbucci at Seattle 2.0 for keeping it going month after month.

Today in Seattle is Blue Friday in honor of the Seahawks upcoming playoff game this weekend. Despite public opinion, we at iMedExchange are very excited for the Seahawks and think they have a great chance at Green Bay this weekend! Here we are showing our pride.

I know it looks a little strange that a bunch of us tried to stand in one cubicle. We really wanted a picture with the 12th-man-flag on top of the Space Needle in the background. That didn't quite work out, so here's a separate picture of the flag. Please use your imagination and picture one very dramatic, award-winning photo with all of us standing in front of the space needle and flag. Go Hawks!!

The development team in San Francisco came up to our Seattle offices for a few days of meetings and fun times. The pictures of the meetings are pretty boring, but we all dressed up one night and went to Teatro Zinzanni - and that picture is exciting enough to share. What a great event! If you're ever in Seattle, I highly recommend it. We even got Tobin to wear a boa - now that's a good CEO. Thanks for the visit guys - hope to see you again in person soon!

We announced a new partnership with MDNG New Media on Friday. Their banner is now on the iMedExchange home page, and our Drs. Stanley and Patel are featured in a rotating banner on their site. Welcome MDNG visitors! Here's the announcement of the partnership. And here is our information as you'll see it on their site:

I spent this past weekend with about 120 other Seattle startup enthusiasts at Startup Weekend, a 54-hour marathon to build a web product company from concept to launch in a single weekend. Startup Weekend was founded by a group of entrepreneurs in Boulder, CO, just last summer and already the concept has been executed in a total of 14 cities in the US, Canada and Europe. The organization, and the Weekends, are run by Andrew Hyde.

The Seattle Startup Weekend team built SkillBit.com, a tool that helps groups better understand and leverage the skills, knowledge and experience of its members. The team was divided into core groups representing software development, business development, sales and marketing, program management, user experience and graphic design. For my part, I was home-roomed with the user experience team but had privilege of working as a liaison and contributor to virtually all of the teams.

Startup Weekend was a great opportunity to connect with the local startup community as well as several successful entrepreneurs who flew into town just for the event. I am proud of all of the folks who rolled up their sleeves, built a great company and had a fabulous time while doing it. Seattle has a vibrant and talented startup community -- a great place for iMedExchange to call home.