On Thursday March 14 (Pi Day!) NHTI, Concord’s Community College, will proudly host the first annual Girls Technology Day, an initiative of the New Hampshire Department of Education’s Career Development Bureau.  With over 175 girls already signed up to attend (and six more high schools on the waiting list should spaces open up), demand for the program has far outstripped its capacity, and there is already talk of moving to a larger venue next year.

“In New Hampshire, as in other states, there is a severe shortage of women pursuing technical careers,” says conference chair Mary Laturnau, who works in collaboration with the Career Development Bureau.  Fewer than two percent of students pursuing computer science degrees in NH colleges, for example, are women.  Girls Technology Day is one step toward trying to reverse that trend.

Laturnau says that the enthusiasm for the project across the state has been inspiring.  “This has truly been a collaboration of every level of education in New Hampshire,” including high schools, community colleges, universities.  The event is funded by a Perkins Grant for non-traditional career development.

The group decided to focus on grades 8, 9 and 10, because that is that age at which many young people begin focusing on interests that may ultimately become career paths.  Paradoxically, it is also the age at which girls often seem to get “turned off” to math, science and technology.  Invitations went out to New Hampshire high schools, but educators were urged not to make the event a mandatory field trip.  “We want the girls who want to attend,” says Laturnau.

Girls Technology Day will open with a keynote address by Catherine Blake of the University of New Hampshire’s Peter T. Paul School of Business and Economics.  A marketing professional with over 20 years’ experience with Fortune 500 companies, Blake now runs her own firm, Sales Protocol International, and serves as a mentor to young business people.  Her community group, “MarketPlace Connection,” works to raise the bar for ethics and integrity in the business world.  She also serves on the Board of Directors for the New Hampshire High Tech Council.

After the address, the girls will break up into a series of hands-on workshops exploring various high technology topics.  Students will be able to attend four out of ten available sessions, including:

• 3-D Modeling
• Building Mobile Apps with HTML, CSS and jQuery Mobile
• Careers in Technology Round Table
• Cisco VoIP demo / class
• Cyber Security
• Game Programming with Greenfoot
• Inventing Apps for Android Phones
• Kodu Game Lab
• Making Ethernet Cables 101
• VEX Robotics

The workshops will be led by educators and business leaders from various New Hampshire universities community colleges and industries.

The group is now soliciting donations of items the girls can take home at the end of the day as mementos of their experience.  Monetary donations are also welcome.  Businesses and institutions interested in supporting Girls Technology Day can contact Mihaela Sabin, coordinator of the Computing Technology program at UNH Manchester, mihaela.sabin@unh.edu, 400 Commercial St, Manchester, 03101.  Checks should be made out to UNH with “Girls Technology Day” in the memo area.

In this market, they probably do. Fortunately for some, bootstrapping is still in vogue.
For others, it’s incubate until you hatch. The New Hampshire High Technology Council’s
Entrepreneur Forum’s last event featured Jason Syversen, CEO of Seige Technologies
and Jeffrey Vocell, co-founder of Trendslide for a fun evening with a live audience and
two panels of experts. The challenge for both of these entrepreneurs is how to get more
shekels without the shackles.

Seige Technologies is a cyber security/warfare firm with the goal of delivering
technology commercialization. What gives them credibility? A wealth of DARPA
experience plus a record of engagement with other U.S. Department of Defense
agencies and leading defense contractors, plus all the right security clearances.
Seige Technologies has a few focus areas: R&D to yield new technology, patenting
components, and licensing components while maintaining ownership. Think about the
Berkeley UNIX C shell, the royalties (clams) were rolling in for years.

For CEO Jason Syversen, there are no shackels. He’s bootstrapped the operation and is
looking at a 100% self-funded growth rate per annum. There are three R&D initiatives
he’s focusing on: Portcullis (Data Exfiltration/Malware detection), Trebuchet (x86/64—
bit Security Hypervisor), and Trebuchet Mobile (RISC/Mobile Security Hypervisor). Even
the names are dungeons and dragons-esque. Portcullis is the medieval lattice gateway
that fortifies the entrance to your castle and can lowered for defense when under siege.
Equally draconian, a trebuchet is a siege engine that was employed during the Middle
Ages to catapult burning objects, ballistic weapons, or dead horses into a castle to kill
the enemy’s army.

The company name is Siege Technologies. What they do is quite the opposite. Like its
medieval counterpart, Trebuchet can be used to protect operating system functions
and mission critical applications. It seamlessly rides between OSI layers by dynamically
hoisting the running operating system into virtual machine mode. Trebuchet Mobile
is lightweight hypervisor for mobile devices (RISC Processors – Android & iPhone) and
covers all memory & I/O. It protects critical operating system functions and applications.
The commercial relevance is protecting mobile devices for enterprise, DoD, and mobile
AV/security markets. Portcullis arrests malware attackers from accessing and stealing

files with a reputation of 100% accuracy. One encrypts the other, so they work together
when you’re under siege to lock down and secure your devices.

Our distinguished panel consisted of Peter Antoinette, president & CEO, Nanocomp
Technologies, Marc Smith, vice president & general manager, Gentex Corporation
and Bill McQuaide , executive vice president of products and strategy, Black Duck
Software and formerly of RSA Security. The question to the panel was should Siege be a
product or service company? One of the panel gems was to solve the BYOD (bring your
own device) security challenge and focus on mobile. With more devices being added
to the mobile network and more mission critical apps being pushed to the endpoints,
security becomes a huge concern – especially for vertical markets such as military and
healthcare. The need to secure the devices themselves in a more robust way is on
everyone’s minds. Delivering a licensable security hypervisor that becomes the de facto
standard for sensitive government and commercial environments would enable Seige to
seize the market.

Next we heard from Jeffrey Vocell, co-founder of Trendslide, a software company
in the personalized business intelligence market. The Trendslide app for iPhone or
iPad securely aggregates data from the cloud using third party API’s. The end result
is aggregated trends vs. pages of data to drill through. The Enterprise version allows
multiple mobile devices to connect. Any application can push data outbound for
Trendslide to aggregate. Supported platforms are Oracle, HubSpot, SalesForce.com,
Constant Contact, and Facebook. The results can be tailored to the trends you want
to follow and pushed to you at whatever frequency you choose. Trendslide is initially
targeting corporate sales teams who are watching their numbers and want to keep their
fingers on the pulse of revenue.

Our esteemed panel included Ric Pratte, director, Agency Partner Program at
Meltwater Group, Jason Alexander, managing partner at BANK W Holdings, and Ross
Abellera, president and CEO for BIS3, an Oracle Gold Partner. The sage advice of the
panel was right data, right people, right time: find the early adopters and give it away to
onboard them. Next, look for what data they need to track from their mobile devices,
and then make Trendslide the interface. Trendslide has gamification in its favor. It is
easy to use, provides instant trending data relevant to the user, and it’s addictive.

One application that immediately comes to mind is for hospital patient monitoring
devices. What if nurses could be notified on their iPhone if the patient three rooms
down need immediate care? There certainly are others. How about busy investment
advisors? What if they could track certain stocks and make buy or sell decisions
instantly between meetings? Or online retailers? What if you could monitor sales
using Trendslide and respond by posting a promotion from an airport lobby? Anything
needing an immediate decision based on trends is a perfect fit.

Both companies are part of the abi Innovation Hub, a non-profit
organization designed to grow the economy in New Hampshire by
mentoring and growing technology start-ups. These are desirable shackles,
because guaranteed, the shekles will follow. If you missed this one, be sure
to join us at our next Entrepreneur Forum!

Catherine Blake, President
Sales Protocol International

cblake@salesprotoocol.com
www.salesprotocol.com

580 Bay Road
Durham, NH 03824
603 828 7312
cblake@salesprotocol.com
www.salesprotocol.com

Copyright © Sales Protocol International
All rights Reserved

New England Footwear Manufacturing’s goal is to disrupt the paradigm in manufacturing and materials through their lean manufacturing process that uses no cement and results in a light, breathable, durable product. The best part? Made in America. Contrast that with 98 percent of athletic footware today, which is made in Asia using the cut, cement, stitch method creating significant waste. Design-wise, the mass manufactured athletic shoes lack New England Footwear’s secret sauce: “Surface 3D.”
CEO Doug Clark defined Surface 3D as directly applying (molding) material to the exterior of the shoe using a low pressure, low temperature process. How lean is it? According to Doug, ten times more productive versus cut, cement & stitch. And, he should know. Doug was the Chief Innovation Officer at Timberland and has 30 years experience designing footwear at global leaders like Nike, and Reebok. His partner and president, Jim Sciabarrasi was the former vice president of sourcing, logistics & quality at New Balance and is a lean manufacturing supply chain expert. Surface 3D is like having your skeleton on the outside of your body, instead of on the inside. Their designs are sleek and modern.

Our distinguished panel consisted of Frank Allen, Senior Vice President of Global Sales for Saucony, Dr. Mark Hecox, Professor of Sports Management, Southern New Hampshire University, and Kevin Hynes, Senior Vice President of Product Development of Collective Brands. One brilliant idea that came from the panel was to change the future model by selling the Surface 3D process in a B2B model rather than selling shoes in the current B2C model. Other recommendations were to focus on an application market such as medical footwear or the diabetic market. In the company’s favor is the reported 15-18% cost increase in China and uncontrollable annual cost creep (cost of petroleum). The good news is keeping things in America helps. Currently, the preeminent design trend is “minimization,” like the guys seen running barefoot or in five finger shoes. If New England Footwear Manufacturing can trend toward taking more out of the shoe to make it even lighter and more flexible going forward, then they can better race neck-to-neck with leading brands…fewer bones, more sole!

Next we heard from Derek Hopkins, President of Liquid Health Labs, who is about to change the way we drink bottled water. His proprietary technology, PowerCap® is in a category called dosing cap delivery systems. Take the water bottle on your desk, screw off the plastic top, and screw on PowerCap infusing a vitamin, immune support, or flavor mix, shake, and drink. PowerCap can be applied to the sports beverage, Pharma/OTC, veterinarian, and cosmetic industries.

One scenario for PowerCap is hangovers. Check out their brand, appropriately called “Last Shot.” What causes the feeling of a hangover and how does Last Shot help protect you? Toxins, dehydration, and electrolyte imbalance, of course. Other applications are premeasured medicine doses for over-the-counter drugs, veterinary meds, and instant health and beauty elixirs. How about cleaning products? With their three styles of caps, you can decide if the PowerCap push, twist, or universal cap works best for your application. Also, storing the active ingredient in the cap keeps it fresh whereas water mixes can lose their effectiveness during shelf life. Plus the caps are 100% recyclable.

Our esteemed panel included Gerry Martin, Vice President of Marketing for Polar Beverages, Bob Wilkins, Founder of Freepricealerts.com, and Ned Desmond, Senior Beverage and Food Consultant. Not surprisingly, the unanimous advice was licensing over branding. Focus on the technology rather than trying to compete with large national brands. Let them figure out what to do with the caps and remarket them either alone in an end-cap, no pun, strategy or as part of a new beverage. According to Mr. Martin, it takes over $1 million to get a new consumer beverage off the ground, Red Bull being the exception. No one mentioned a Red Bull, Grey Goose, Last Shot bundle – now we might be onto something.

Like all of our Entrepreneur Forum events, we all walk away a bit smarter with principals we can apply to our own businesses. And in this case, with a new start on good health and a bit of sole!

I had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Schultz speak at Harvard Business School during the Onward book tour. What an amazing man! He commands respect, both for making tough decisions but for “doing right by doing good”.

One of my favorite excepts was from his friend #BONO, who he as partnered with on the RED, the Global Fun for Aids:

“The great companies will be the ones that find a way to have and hold on to their values while chasing their profits, and brand value will converge to create a new business model that unites commerce and compassion. The heart and the wallet…The great companies of this century will be sharp to success and at the same time sensitive to the idea that you can’t measure success on a spreadsheet -” @bonovox_

And finally from Howard Schultz himself:
“Grow with discipline.
Balance intuition with rigor.
Innovate around the core.
Don’t embrace the status quo.
Find new ways to see.
Never expect a silver bullet.
Get your hands dirty.
Listen with empathy and over communicate with transparency.
Tell your story, refusing to let others define you.
Use authentic experiences to inspire.
Stick to your values, they are your foundation.
Hold people accountable, but give them the tools to succeed.
Make the tough choices, it’s how you execute that counts.
Be decisive in times of crisis.
Be nimble.
Find truth in trials and lessons in mistakes.
Be responsible for what you hear, see, and do.
Believe.”

Onward!
#starbucks

MMIS provides a cloud based secure collaboration platform within the enterprise and to external third parties. Their focus is the health industry federal transparency requirement. Effective January 1, 2012, certain medical device and pharmaceutical manufacturers will be required to disclose payments or transfer of value to a covered recipient. What this means is that all of these transactions will be in a public database for the world to see. Thank you federal government, you have found yet another way to make public every dime spent by a bio medical company in the name of research. Business lunch? Yes, that must be tracked – who you ate with and what you discussed.

There are two problems with this, for the doctors in private practice; their every move can be tracked by watch dog groups. For life science, and bio/medical device companies, they have to identify what needs to be tracked and report it for the world to see. Michaeline Daboul, President & CEO of MMIS explained that their cloud based dashboard aggregates and posts data that is compliant with state and federal regulation to make this process more seamless through their secure PPN (Physician Professional Network). Their service essentially prevents inaccurate data from being reported by pharmaceutical and medical device companies to the government. Also, as a safety net, they can track and dispute payments before they are reported to the Federal Government and instantly become public record.

Our distinguished panel consisted of Michael Balmuth, General Partner, Edison Ventures Donald C. Crandlemire, Attorney, Shaheen & Gordon, P.A., and M. Weston Chapman, President and CEO, PCD Partners. Overall, the feedback was that security is a huge concern between providers and hospitals, so a cloud solution makes sense however for many health care professionals, these this type of reporting is not part of their culture. Training is a must. And no one wants to remember another password. Who is paying for this? So far it’s free to physicians, so the reporting parties would foot the bill which is an affordable $ 250K within three years with MMIS instead of per year. Finally, simplicity is a must. The channel strategy is AMA, who is interested in branding the platform. One final pearl of wisdom – find a well healed angel to complete the development and get the $ 32 billion market “love back” with a mammoth like Ascension Health.

It’s all about love for Mosaic, cloud based storage for professional photographers. Our second presentation was enthusiastically delivered by Gerard Murphy, founder of Mosaic, and a photographer himself. When professional photographers take thousands of pictures two things happen, they quickly run out of local digital storage and they have trouble finding photos once stored. What’s more, Mosaic has created a plugin to Adobe Lightroom, the de facto standard for cataloging thousands of digital images used in post-production and asset management workflow.
Digital file security, data integrity, and indexing are huge needs for busy photographers and most are not IT savvy. Mosaic takes care of this though enterprise level SAS 70 data storage, redundant data centers, RAID 6 in both locations, proactive hard drive failure monitoring and data synchronization using 128-bit encryption. For you techies, you’ve figured out that the secret sauce is in synchronizing metadata. Now let’s go take pictures.

Our panel of experts consisted of Gary Samson, Chair, Photography Department, New Hampshire Institute of Art, Bill Becker, President & Chief Executive Officer, Recordsforce Management, and Tom Elliott, Founder & Director of the Idea Greenhouse. The overall feedback was that the concept is solid. The challenge is convincing photographers to use the platform. A cloud based platform for digital photography is enviable; in fact, Adobe has announced this statement of direction already, making them the 800 pound gorilla.

Gerard Murphy walked away with some great advice from this panel who recommended that he find a Michael Jordon or in this case, an Annie Leibovitz of the industry to adopt Mosaic. Second, to focus on agencies and institutions who have a need for storing client images. (Imagine Harvard University or Dartmouth and the loads of images they keep in-house for historic purposes.) And finally, with Adobe on your heels, you need to “show the love” to your customers so they love you more than Adobe. Can Mosaic do this? Sounds like they are already on their way.

See you at the next Entrepreneur Forum!

• Why? Because when we are put into the position of leadership, we are responsible for others and sometimes the “lives of others.”

• Are we inspiring them to act congruently with sound moral and ethical values?
Are we standing on truth?

• Are we setting the right example with our behavior when no one is looking?

As a person of faith, I believe we blessed. And with these blessings comes responsibility:

• To be the voice for people around the world who can’t advocate for themselves.

• To use our wisdom and passion to turn up the heat on legislation for important issues.

• To use extend our hearts to “the least of these” and show compassion.

Recently I had lunch with teenager that I am doing some mentoring with. She had razor blade slashes up each arm and the word “death” printed on her hand in black ink. It’s moments like these when leadership kicks in and we find ourselves digging deep for inspirational words to change the tide. Can I lead by example to redirect her course or save her life? So far, so good.

The ROCK of successful leadership is built on TRUTH.

Job John Maxwell’s 360 Leadership suggests that we can lead from wherever we are. What this means is that it doesn’t matter if you are “in charge” officially and people in your organization are being paid to follow you – you can influence people’s minds and hearts no matter where you are serving.

Example) As marketing director for a high technology start-up company,I received a phone call one day from a prospective business partner. She told me in confidence that one of our executives had approached her with an unethical deal. I was put in the awkward position of having to act. Sometimes we are put in the position of making tough decisions because they are the right thing to do.

Brand Leadership becomes our personal brand. Why? Because Leadership begets leadership. The more you lead, the more you get asked to lead, and the more you lead, the more you become known as a leader.

How do we become better leaders?
1. Read everything about leadership
2. Learn from other leaders
3. Community: Learn from other Leaders in action
4. Lead anything

What is the test of true leadership? Ask yourself, “Is anyone following you who isn’t paid to?”

Character Character is the root of leadership. It’s the rock we stand on, rooted in your beliefs or the tenants of our faith. Our belief system drives our character which in turn, guides our behavior. We “act”, lead, and behave according to what we believe to be right, morally and ethically.

Example) Trust is a huge part of leadership. When we donate to organizations we believe in, we do so because you “trust” the moral fiber and character of their leadership.

Conclusion: Leadership is our job, our brand, AND then it becomes part of our character

Revolution Energy provides energy infastructure to reduce the carbon footprint with an unique twist – they own the equipment at your site and either sell it back to you or to the grid. You get energy credits and/or have the option of using your own sustainable energy at a reduced cost. Why? Because you don’t have to pay for the equipment. Clay Mitchell, co-founder of Revolution Energy explained that municipalities, non-profits, and businesses alike are seeking clean, sustainabile energy, but have found it cost prohibitive. Revolutionary? Americans take notice. China has 95% solar array’s atop every building and is now is the planet’s leader in renewable energy technology (537 Billion kWh per year 2008 vs. 393 for the United States.) One solar array is architecturally arranged to look like a giant dragon defending it’s skyscraper. We need to get creative and clearly, Revolutionay Energy has.

Our distinguished panel consisted of Tony Grappone, Partner, Novogradac & Company, John Harper, Founder, Birch Tree Capital, and Curtis Whittaker, Shareholder, Rath, Young, Pignateli. The question on the table was how can Revolution raise the $ 4.2 million it needs to grow the business.

Our expert panel made several key recommendations. First to simply the structure for customers so that it’s akin to home financing – the forms are filled in, just check the appropriate boxes, sign, and off you go. Second was to tap into local investors who have a stake in New Hampshire and want to see our state lead renewable energy initiatives for New England. Local investors equal local benefit. Third was to re-structure the financials vis-à-vis sources of debt, and tax credit programs, and lower interest rates generating a triple bottom line yield for investors. Now Revolution Energy just needs to focus on which dragon to sleigh fist.

Our second entrepreneur, Dick Andersen, President of NextChoice is delivering self-service technology to retailers. How much do you like to wait at the deli line on a busy Saturday morning? NextChoice’s Intelligent Self-service System (NISS) provides world-class interaction between the shopper and the enterprise-class computing power of national retail chains. What’s more, this technology is scalable so if you’re shopping experience is on an iPhone, kiosk, or drive though – you can place the order and pay lickety-split. The Wall Street Journal’s recent article entitled, “Check out the future of shopping” by Ann Zimmerman details all the gizmo’s we’ll be using as we zoom through the grocery store paying speed-pass style as we head for the door, bags and kids in-tow saving 20 minutes per store visit. According to the Journal, further automating the shopping experience creates the urge to spend 10% more. Would you like fries with that?

NextChoice integrates with retail point-of-sale systems and inventory management platforms so that when you order a ham and cheese sandwich, it can calculate the fluctuating price of pork bellies according to the commodities market. The have found a market entry niche today in supermarket delis. This gets their foot in the door for floral, bakery, seafood, or other counter-type venues where you have to take a number and wait, something we’re not very good at anymore.

Our expert panel consisted of Eduarto Alvarez, Founder and President, Vigix, Randy Dow, Co-founder, BDP Technology, and Tim Sweeney, Business Development Manager, Telequip Corporation. What impressed the panel the most was the ability for NextChoice to gather market intelligence about our shopping habits – something retailers want to know. By tracking our buying habits down to the deli counter, or the flower department – they can suggest items, offer incentive programs, and target consumer habits for overall marketing.

The panel was overwhelmingly supportive of the technology given that ROI is easily measurable for “productive vs. non-productive labor time”. If you can walk up, punch in your super bowl week-end deli order at a standing kiosk, finish your shopping, and grab your bar-coded deli order as you head for check-out, you’ve created a lean, efficient, and more profitable deli counter.

Furthermore, with airlines, grocery stores, and other consumer-centric self-service systems in place, the learning curve is almost flat. We are smarter shoppers and generally prefer to get-in and get-out. NextChoice’s challenge will be convincing the enterprise CIO to spring for a pilot. Dick Andersen and the NextChoice team might need to leap-frog to the iPhone app and leap onto the coattails of Scan It and others who are proving that point, scan, and bag is here to stay and that retailers are laughing all the way to the bank, affinity marketing data and loyalty card in hand.

Sounds like both Revolution Energy and NextChoice should heed our panelist’s advice about keeping “them” (engineers) in the office so the Legos don’t spill. This way we can sit back proudly and say, “Yep, I heard that started in New Hampshire”.

Catherine Blake, President
Sales Protocol International
cblake@salesprotoocol.com
www.salesprotocol.com