Chairman's Year End Wrap-Up
The MTBC focuses on fostering a supportive business environment for technology companies and members of the technology community. This is done by focusing on our four pillars:
- Talent & Workforce Development
- Innovation and Commercialization
- Advocacy and Branding
- Education and Networking
The Talent team of the MTBC has focused on the expansion of the PEP program; K-6 grade Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education pipeline initiatives; and Elcan Optical's pilot project for education.
The Innovation team of the MTBC co-hosted the World's Best Technology Conference in the spring and the national SBIR conference in the fall. This team supports the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Texas at Arlington in their efforts to enhance the transfer of intellectual property into the marketplace. MTBC's President, Bill Sproull, heads up the development board at UTD focusing on comercialization. At UTA, two of MTBC's finest volunteers, Matthew Blanton and George Brody are working on an intellectual property software program.
As part of the advocacy and branding efforts of the MTBC, 2007 was a great success as we kicked off the best Tech Titans event in history! The event was held on September 29th at the Hotel InterContinental and was bigger and better than ever before featuring a new silent auction and $46,000 distributed in scholarship money.
2007 kicked off the 1st annual MTBC golf tournament , the continuation of the emerging tech fund, and the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) event.
The MTBC was host to luncheons featuring speakers such as:
Doug Levy - President & Founder of imc²;
the Tech Titan Horizon Finalists: David Maxim - President & CEO of Authentix, Jeff Fiedelman - CFO of Oryon Technologies, Dan Walsh - VP Operations of RipCode, Jim McCoy - CTO & SVP of InnerWireless, and Joan Hoadley - VP, 4G of Nortel;
Mark Hamdan - President & CEO of HRsmart;
Neal Bruce - Vice President of Alliances at Monster;
Elmer Doty - President & CEO of Vought Aircraft;
Scott Petry - Founder of Postini;
David Hanson - President of Hanson Robotics;
Doug Rasor - VP of Texas Instruments
Randy Heffner - VP of Forrester Research
Thank you members, sponsors, volunteers, and event goers for a successful 2007. We are looking forward to an exciting line up for 2008. Keep your eyes open for some special new events that you'll be sure to want to get involved in.