Innovative Program for Innovative People

A workshop that looks like a mixer, with good eats, too.

Putting our heads together and harnessing the brainpower in our hills places the Vermont Region on the technology mind-map. This event is a modest experiment in boosting our self awareness of the VT region as having a surprising volume of high tech stuff going on when you add it all up.

We have very accomplished folks in numerous knowledge-based endeavors both in business and academia. Unlike, the bigger and better known tech centers, however, we’re still young at really harnessing the collective intellectual energy and commercial pizzazz we have.

Recognizing that the best learning comes from each other, this session offers training & professional development in a networking format with value for smart people with interest or accomplishment seeking R&D funding through SBIR/STTR/BAAs or other mechanisms. It provides a chance to do your own mentoring and mentor-seeking with others in our area who have succeed well, modestly and not yet in these important programs. We’ll also offer several mini-sessions on significant commercialization topics and introduce new resources. In addition to the value You and others create, the program includes:

• Short commentaries on specific Vermont tech firms’ adventures in commercialization

• Dave Metzger presentation and Q&A on “Four Paradigm” and data rights issues (via live interactive video conference from his DC law offices)

• Practical IP discussions

• Working with Research Institutions (like UVM)

One noted VT entrepreneur told Mark Blanchard a few years ago something to the effect that the outfit he should have worked with was right here in Vermont, “but we didn’t know about them because a mountain was between us.” So we can do with a little “Flat Earth” here.

Markets for our technologies and many of the partners we need will be located away. But there’s a lot of creativity and synergy we can find here if we only look a little harder. We have very accomplished tech enterprises that have a lot of learning to share on how they navigated the challenges of getting into the game. We have a bunch of very innovative people entering the game of creating new or better solutions for the world based on their technologies.

We’re all relatively close, let’s exploit the asset of our smallness.

Registration Information:

Cost: $25 (including food by New England culinary Institute)
Cash Bar Available.

To register for this event, please e-mail the following information to Heather Gonyaw at hgonyaw@vtsbdc.org

• Name
• Company Name
• Address
• Telephone Number
• Please indicate primary Scientific or Technical discipline involved in your work.

To pay for this event by credit card, please call Heather at (802) 728-9101.

To pay for this event by check, please mail payment by December 5th to:
Vermont Small Business Development Center
P.O. Box 188
Randolph Center, VT 05061
Attn: Heather Gonyaw

Presented by VtSBDC and VT PTAC and run by YOU

The Small Business Development Center is partially funded by the U.S. Small Business Administration.  SBA's funding is not an endorsement of any products, opinions, or services.    All SBA funded programs are extended to the public on a non-discriminatory basis.  Arrangements for persons with disabilities will be made at all times in accordance with the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 and associated amendments.  Arrangements for persons with special needs will be made if requested two weeks in advance.