HUDSON VALLEY CENTER FOR INNOVATION TO HOST SEPT. 21 SYMPOSIUM ON “THE ROLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN TECHNOLOGY-BASED ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT”

Symposium will spotlight the Lower Hudson Valley as an ideal geography and demographic capable of supporting significant domestic and international technology development clusters, innovation and entrepreneurship

The symposium will be anchored by keynote speaker

Johanna Duncan-Poitier, Deputy Chancellor of SUNY, followed by a distinguished panel of academics, investors and technology experts

For Immediate Release

CONTACT: Les Neumann

(845) 943-5660

Lneumann@HVCFI.com

NEWBURGH, Aug. 16, 2011 – The Hudson Valley Center for Innovation will host a symposium on “The Role of Higher Education in Technology-based Economic Development,” featuring keynote speaker SUNY Deputy Chancellor for the Education Pipeline Johanna Duncan-Poitier on Sept. 21.

The symposium will discuss how to leverage the combined regional assets to create a unified platform for innovation and technology-based economic development, retain the youngest and brightest individuals, and attract sustainable global high-tech enterprises to regional innovation clusters that will lead to 21^st Century job creation.

The symposium will take place in the Great Room at the newly opened Newburgh campus of Orange County Community College starting at 8 a.m. Opening remarks will be made by the host, Dr. William Richards, President of Orange County Community College, and Les Neumann, Managing Director of the Hudson Valley Center for Innovation.

With over 25 years of experience providing results-driven leadership, Duncan-Poitier serves as the Chancellor’s Deputy for the Education Pipeline and Vice Chancellor for Community Colleges for the State University of New York (SUNY), the largest public higher education system in the United States.

A panel discussion featuring prominent members of the academic, investor and technology communities will follow the keynote address. The panel discussion will be moderated by the Chairman of the Hudson Valley Center for Innovation and Chairman of the Orange County Community College Board of Trustees, Dr. Arthur Anthonisen.

The Lower Hudson Valley region of New York is geographically, demographically and academically situated to become one of the United States’ premier technology communities.

“Through the development of a Regional Innovation Ecosystem, the Hudson Valley must link its academic, corporate, innovation, manufacturing, not for profits, government and economic development authorities into a unified and cohesive architecture,” event organizers said. “This public/private consortium will be capable of generating the vision to capitalize and promote the strengths of the populous and internal regional resources to retain our youth and existing businesses while attracting new domestic and international cluster-based initiatives creating jobs and economic sustainability.”

For decades me and my colleagues have helped many clients realize remarkable success using PR, promotion, advertising and other communications tools. Like thousands of others in PR and marketing communications agencies did this with sound goal definition, well-aimed affordable and executable strategies, and step-by-step execution.

For years I was frustrated seeing so many entrepreneurs with marketing program that are either stuck or waffling about spending good money and getting static, even declining results. These were often friends, definitely smart, energetic principals in start-ups, micro family businesses or even healthy small businesses.

They either could not afford a strategic agency and did the best they could on their own.  Many would rely on specialty tactics of favored suppliers year after year. What once worked was less and less effective as markets changed. Their vendors couldn’t help. Their loyal radio, TV, and newspaper sales reps, well, were stuck selling time and space.

Enough is Enough

I realized that the techniques that work for the big outfits can be put to work for small, micro businesses, as well as not-for-profit groups who in this economy are challenged as never before.

It was my frustration that led to the creation of COMPAS, an acronym for Creative Opportunity Mapping Planning and Strategy.

The name (created by friend and colleague Gretchen Reed when she was on the JMC staff ) says a lot about the depth and power of this approach. The procedures have been improved and fine tuned by another friend and business partner in COMPAS, Marjorie McCord.

Remarkable Potential

The remarkable potential of COMPAS is, in fact, embedded in the name.

* Creative - there are few personality types with the energy, resilience and raw creativity as entrepreneurs! just get into a room of entrepreneurs, and you don’t need electricity. It’s in the air.  Frankly, the best creative group in the most prestigious blue chip ad agencies cannot compare to ideas emanating from business owners around the table, working a problem.

* Opportunity Mapping - Experience has shown me that businesses often have multiple “opportunities” they can tap into and spirit forward. Too often, leaders are consumed running their businesses, schedule killing real world demands. The process of going through internal developments, external conditions in the marketplace, changing trends affecting customers, and so forth is what marketers do. With a mix of cross-functional team brainstorming and critical thinking — brought to the party by fellow entrepreneurs, any one of us can generate a bucket of opportunities.

* Planning and Strategy -   If my business friends can fill a bucket of opportunities, and then sort and prioritize the TOP opportunities, I have no doubt that with the right planning they can realize the benefits of the opportunities in front of them, one after the other.  To accomplish this takes planning and strategy. What opportunities are the low-hanging fruit? Which of them deserve to the placed in the slow cooker, nurtured a while and then brought forth? Just getting our entrepreneurs to step away from multitasking and focus is a challenge.

Thus the workshop format. We will put you at a table with a mix of non-competitive fellow entrepreneurs, get each of you to pause, think, identify and then — in an atmosphere of supportive camaraderie fine tune the opportunities and the way you will go about realizing them. Our patience is short: we are looking to 3-4 month effects. Our scope is practical: your plans must be executable. You will end having identified the steps that you will commit to going forward.

To the degree that your workshop experience needs expertise from our world of marketing, advertising, PR, promotions — whether in print, video or digital — we’ll be on hand to provide experience and guidance.

The goal is to leave with at least one great opportunity you will and can pursue in the next 90-120 days to help drive your success.

Contact Us

You can find more information about COMPAS at our Web site. Also, please feel free to contact us with any questions. We are working with a growing team of collaborators. JMC and the Hudson Valley Center for Innovation (HVCFI) will be scheduling more workshops. And sponsorship includes DragonSearch Marketing and Ryan & Ryan Insurance Brokers.

My goodwill paled when a few days before the big day, we learned we’d have 15 to 20 guests. The original turkey was only half enough, leading my wife Alex to find a second 10-pounder, ushering in for both of us a bit of angst over increasing the provisioning and having so many people packed into the East Side place.

When we learned our guests would also be contributing dishes and drink, we were somewhat relieved that we’d have limited late hour, last minute scaling up.  Thought we didn’t say much more to Chase, en route to the City my wife and I were muttering that we wished the scene would be smaller, quieter, more entre nous. Read that to be, “just the three of us.” 

Each person seemed to dig into their own life situation, and with accents that stretched from Australia and New Zealand, stretching across the Americas over through Europe down to South Africa came their Thanksgiving stories: Tender, personal, fired with hope and optimism. None with any economic or political negativity.

There was joy in these moments of sharing. And there was the remarkable realization that the inspiration for the national holiday and the reason the 18 of us were gathered that afternoon were linked by our personal searches to strike out, set forth and strive to realize deeply felt aspirations.

When it came to my turn to speak, I was surprised to find myself choked up. “You -all of you here- are what all of us who call this place home are about,” I sputtered.

“You remind me to be so incredibly thankful for this promise of America, and to have this time to share.  And I’m so thankful to have a daughter with the generosity of spirit to schedule this, the best Thanksgiving dinner ever.”

Whether you like or disdain The Tea Party movement or fall somewhere in the middle, there is one theme for which adherents are to be saluted: our culture of enabling Mr. and Mrs. Citizen to toss their hats in the ring, run for election and, surprise!, hold office.

In the tradition of Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Gary Cooper in Meet John Doe, we see Christine O’Donnell defeating the Republican establishment on Sept 14 winning a position on the Delaware ballot for the U.S. Senate.  She has her messages, but overriding positions on economics and other specific policies, is her larger point that ordinary people can and should run for elected office.

 I was struck by the power and conviction in her victory speech Tuesday night.  “Don’t ever underestimate the power of ‘we the people.’  We the people will have our voices heard in Washington, D.C. again.” She added that her victory is really “about . . . more everyday Americans can step up to the plate, without worrying about character assassination, and run for office. 

“We need citizen politicians in Dover and in Washington, D.C. to get our state and our country back on track.”

Her victory crowed fell into, by accident I’m sure, chanting “Yes we can!” is a reminder that it was a community organizer in Chicago who became a citizen politician, moving to become the first black person to serve as President of the United States. 

Maybe the next best step is to have more citizen politicians mix it up, talk to one another, cook a new policy stew. And something done!

Over the years as a PR practitioner I have been drawn into numerous situations ranging from emergencies to full-blown crises and many in between. Our role is to help people and organizations with damage control.

One of the major rules is that when it comes time to address the situation, the message should be clear, accurate, consistent and compassionate. You’d think this would be the standard operating procedure.

But it’s not. Crisis management is rich with awful examples of high-powered people saying the wrong things. It’s not easy, when a manager is in the thick of things trying to fix what went wrong or to explain how something happened. It’s especially challenging when an executive is used to being the top dog in speaking to his people — note, I did not say dialoguing with them — in their own paradigm and world view.

How else could you explain this from BP’s CEO Tony Hayward saying “the Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.”

Honest! I got this from a Newsweek piece that ran yesterday, quoting from The Guardian.

But sometimes you don’t need a crisis to address in order to find yourself in a mess. A LinkedIn forum for PR and Communications Professionals brings this ad up for review:

“What does it say about a company that posts a PR director job opening but in the ad tells unemployed people their applications are not welcome and will not be considered?”

Even those of us not in PR know that statement isn’t good PR. Clearly it’s an ad from a company completely lost without its PR leader. As Cyrus Afzali of Astoria Communications quips Andy Rooney fashion,

“The funny thing is when people who ARE currently employed go in for interviews, all they want to know is why you’re leaving your current position.”

One point he makes I reeally like. He calls it a “know- it-all” syndrome. So very right, and something I’ve seen creeping into my own mindset of late.

It’s the easiest of conceptual traps one can fall in. Easy to fall in, I believe? because it identifies an internalize  brand positioning which is a notion about self that accumulates over the years.  With this comes a higly selective process by which certain new information is filtered by source or some other criteria that itself is set by the prejudices of our hardened brand and its world view.

Such a subtle self smugness is something that I have observed within myself in my own process of re-structuring my own future, personal and professional.

My experience is that parking the smugness is a powerful chalkenge if one is to move ahead with personal branding.

This self view, built over time and hardened in the kiln of life must be chipped away or dissolved somehow in order to develop a fresh brand that will work in support of one’s strategy for his or her next stage of life.

I wonder if deconstructing a hardened self-made brand image must be considered for big government or big business?  Is dissolving a know-it-all mindset crucial to effective rebranding anything?

One of the conditions of having a life that can look back across decades, is a personal sense of the layered meanings in the phrase ubi sunt, the medieval lament over the transitory nature of life and the mutability of all things. Everything changes.

Ratchet forward and you can plot the trajectory of change following the “curve of life,” as Charles Handy calls the Sigmoid Curve.

Moving along the X axis, the line takes us up the leeward slope stretching to its highest point before beginning its downturn.I like Handy’s view, because there there is a point where change doesn’t necessarily mean riding the curve to its downward termination. Rather at this point, we are wise to start a new curve, moving forward and starting a new curve of growth.

Last night we toasted Gretchen and her move to a new position as director of communications at the Mohonk Preserve. She is going to be great in her new position. She will bring incredible energy, a Molly Brown passion for getting it done, and a fierce commitment to the cause the Preserve serves. It was sad to wish her well, but also exciting to send her off to start a new curve in her professional trek.

We have worked together at JMC for nearly seven years, I will miss her. As director of editorial services, Gretchen polished virtually every writing product that moved out of our shop. She handled a wide-range of clients herself, covering topics as diverse as genomics and high-tech ballistic materials that protect our soldiers in Iraq. Being a highly skilled and experienced researcher, it stands to reason that she was and continues to be a sponge for information – not just finding information but then sorting and dissecting it into usable bites. A great, great resource in a marketing communications firm where the next client will come to us from a field as fresh as tomorrow.

Most of all, though, is her heart. Generous and true and trustworthy. She can take her talents across the mountain, but deeper, enduring qualities will forever connect her to all of us who are privileged to call her friend.

A week ago I attended an open house celebrating a new gym that has been installed in The Wingate, an assisted living community in Highland, here in Ulster County N.Y. I responded to an invitation from Genie Keating, Wingate’s NY Regional Director of Marketing, a colleague in the Business Marketing Association of the Hudson Valley, but found myself arriving at the tail of the afternoon open house. The political and business networkers had come and gone.

It was time for the cognoscenti of nursing home and home care to kick back and share stories. I was the only male at the table, and the only non-medical institution professional. Around me were managers, staff pros, people working in this facility or others in the region and a legacy of serving in many medical facilities. This is a small coterie of pros, and they keep up with what’s going on in he field. I mean, they could name virtually every facility between Times Square and Albany.

Being a fly on the wall has its merits. While the chairs around the table were refilled several times with these wonderful people stopping by to catch up with their associates and the news, I had the opportunity to listen. From smartly dressed managers to hands-on staff dressed in those maroon, shapeless medical sets, from the salaried set to the hourly workers I began to see something beneath the surface – call it a fire, a certain calling.

What motivates one to devote a career to taking care of elderly people in the latter chapters of their lives?

“I remember when I started working in this field. I remember I was bathing this resident. As I washed her hair, I recall the smile on her face. Nothing can equal that feeling. Nothing.” I listen to this, recalling decades past when my grandmother was, reluctantly, placed in a nursing home, where the care was magnitudes less than this and where, I swear due to neglect, Nanna contracted pneumonia and died. Incredible, there are people who actually take pleasure in treating our senior most friends well.

Conversation flowed, like the river nearby, taking this notion of commitment across the landscape and along the years – each of those present with snippets of similar stories. There is a subculture of people who work at the Wingates and other facilities like it who are not just committed, but who are enthusiastic with all the small steps that add up to be Quality care.

I learned that there is a class of manager, supervisor, nurse and health-facility worker who embody this viewpoint. Sometimes they work in wonderful corporate organizations, like Wingate, formed 22 years ago and which operates 18 additional facilities. They also work for, have worked for and know of other groups which have different values, where profit trumps quality, where good care is delivered because of the committed staffers and managers – in spite of the ownership. All owners don’t exhibit the deep commitment evinced by Wingate.

I want to acknowledge too the sobering statement one at our table made. “We know someday we can be here as a patient.”

At the table, I listen, and realize I am in the company of of individuals who represent legions of others like them who’ve come to America from the four corners of the world, who are busing to their jobs via Ulster County Rural Transportation (UCRT) or New York City’s MTA Bronx lines. I am not only privileged to listen. WE are privileged to have them among us.

To all who bring your management skills, your medical skills, your care, your concern, dedication, your compassion and your care, I say thank you on behalf of all those whom I have loved and who were quietly and professionally cared for.

As much as I am enamored with life online, life offline regularly steals the show. Every now and then I find myself in a conversation tiptoeing about a dirty little secret that there isn’t all that much time for social online connecting, and buzzing about “how do they do it?”

This came to me squarely some weeks ago while having a conversation on the mobile phone with one of my all time favorite people to be social with, my cousin Susan Kunz. She was speaking via mobile phone, using her freeway time to catch up. Being younger and definitely more hip, I’d asked about establishing more frequency on Facebook or some other digital app. “I don’t have time!” she said. “I don’t read e-mail, I don’t do any of that. There just isn’t time!” Even the household land line is seldom used. So a cell phone call is it with her. If she isn’t available leave a message and she’ll get back to you from some Ventura County freeway.

Then came the interesting comments from President Obama, the most tech savvy of all recent U.S. presidents, “With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.”

That comment, made at the May 9 commencement ceremonies at Hampton College, Va., was itself like a shot heard round the world – prompting The AtlanticWire to ask, “Are techies more zealous than gun owners?” “By the looks of their reaction to President Obama’s remarks on “iPods and iPads,” maybe so.”

His comments brought about a round of conversational twitter about the massive flow of information and opinion that, well, overwhelms. The President had a valid point to make. He bemoaned the fact that ‘some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,’ in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets. ‘All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy,” said the AFP in its report.

“We can’t stop these changes… but we can adapt to them,’ Obama said, adding that US workers were in a battle with well-educated foreign workers. ‘Education… can fortify you, as it did earlier generations, to meet the tests of your own time,’ he said.

Well said. Thoughtful. A personal issue of significance as Susan Kunz and many others in my circle have declared. We adults need personal information management strategies, and our kids need great education, I agree.

Two days later direct from The White House (president@messages.whitehouse.gov ) I receive a message advising of the President’s nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court – along with a dandy video. I don’t even want to count the number of articles and commentaries that emanated from this! I’m too busy.

I do note it’s reported that she does listen to all sides of an argument. Wonder how much social media she has time for?