January 13, 2011: Rotary Log (NHICC)

Portsmouth Rotary Club

Weekly Log for January 13, 2011                                                      

Somehow we all dug ourselves out from under 18 inches of snow that piled up yesterday and made it to Red Hook for today’s meeting. Reverend Allen opened the meeting with my favorite Welsh prayer.

Luis (pronounced “Luis”) Melchor, was our vocational minute today. Luis has been breaking into people’s safes, houses, business’ and cars for 41 years, 21 of which have been while he has been a Rotarian and 16 of those 21 years mark perfect attendance. In Rotary, Luis is on the new members committee and chairs the group study exchange committee. You might be able to lock Luis out of your heart, but you can’t lock him out of anything else!

 There were several happy dollars today, including a happy dollar for the announcement that we will be retaining our usual wait staff at Red Hook. President Diane asked everyone to give a $1 happy dollar to celebrate Gene’s 80^th birthday! A reasonably good rendition of Happy Birthday was sung for the birthday boy.

Just a reminder again that Saturday, January 22 from 9am – 1pm is the Portsmouth Rotary Club Vision session in the Levenson Room at the Portsmouth Public Library.

THE PROGRAM

Norm Olson introduced Mark Alvin, Director of the New Hampshire Innovation Commercialization Center (“NHICC”). The NHICC was born after the dotcom bubble burst and New Hampshire saw early stage high tech and intellectual capital business’ evaporate. Mark, a graduate of Canada’s McGill University, explained that the Governor and other business leaders in New Hampshire got together and came up with a concept of an agency designed to encourage early stage high tech and intellectual capital business development in New Hampshire. In order to do this, New Hampshire needed to create an Infrastructure to make it easy to start such a company. Those notable professionals involved in the NHICC include a professor of economics, the President of UNH, the Provost of Research at UNH and Mark Alvin himself who has started 4 high tech companies. UNH is uniquely situated to participate in this project because it has available students and because it gets $1.5 million in federal research money specifically targeting start up companies. The NHICC coordinates a whole variety of paid and unpaid internships in high tech companies and tries to focus on getting research that has been done by graduate students off the shelves and into the market place.

Start up companies are a vital part of our employment base. Last year, start up companies increased jobs by over 3 million people across the country. All other companies combined posted net job decreases.  New Hampshire’s problem is that much of the seed money came from Massachusetts and now Massachusetts investors are requiring that the companies locate in Massachusetts if they want the money. New Hampshire, as a result, has gone on the offensive.

Mark gave us some samples of the types of start up companies in the high tech world who are involved with NHICC. Holase, Inc., for example, invented portable traffic lights. Pokos.biz invented a social messaging system that allows you to download an application to your smart phone and then locate other people in the room or area who have the same application so that you can then contact them! Unifiedoffice.com has invented state of the art voice and data technology. Regaalo.com is a web ability to get money to students through your cell phone so that they can print off gift cards. GopherDeals.com is a networking system for coupon clippers. Innovacene is a company that has invented a solar spray that can turn whatever it’s applied to into an energy producer.

The meeting concluded with somebody other than me winning the lottery.