A Night of Firsts and What Did You Just Call Me?

Wednesday night was a red letter day for me, and a fun one for CHEN PR. Chris Carleton and I attended our first Mass Innovation Night at the very cool Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation and had the distinct pleasure of buying everyone a drink at Biagio afterward.

It’s a fun and interesting venue for many people to get a first look at some local innovations – with huge thanks to the event founders Bobbie Carlton, Carlton PR & Marketing, and Dan Englander, High Rock Media. The MassInno site has a great recap with video, which also includes some great links to other recaps of the night.

Another first was that the MassInno folks introduced a new feature, the “Expert’s Corner.” When I first heard of it, I thought what a great idea. They set aside a corner of the venue for one-on-one conversations with a group of volunteer experts on a range of topics of interest to both exhibiting entrepreneurs and hopefully soon-to-be exhibiting entrepreneurs. The experts included Accounting, Law, Entrepreneurism, Funding, and PR/Strategic Comms.

Then I thought, cool, wonder who the generous, brave and hardy soul was who they got on the PR front. Yeeaaaa, THAT’s where the last first of the night emerged…

As you’ll see from the pic (taken and Tweeted by Chris Carleton) someone failed to look behind the curtain and decided that I would be the PR Wizard du jour. Chris got the easier role -- chatting up the presenting companies, checking out their products and hanging out with the other Mass Inno-ites.

All kidding aside, it was a really great night with a lot of energy and active discussion. And while I may not feel worthy to wear an Expert badge, I got an extra opportunity to chat with some very interesting people, making some very interesting things in the areas of enterprise software and social networking, and whom I hope to see rocking the Massachusetts, US and ultimately global innovation scene soon. Until next time…

The Idealists’ Turn

Up until the relatively recent clean tech boom, I’d heard little day-to-day, rank-and-file talk of "doing good" in the 15 years of my professional career in high tech. For sure the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been around for a while, and lots of companies have CSR statements and programs. And of course there were a lot of people and companies in fact doing good.

But among the people and companies where I spent my time that sort of goal or vision just didn’t come up much in day-to-day professional contexts. (One notable exception is my former client Lotus Development (now a division of IBM of course), who in my experience always did an impressive job of making its philanthropic commitments a central and pervasive part of its business).

So it is that I find the sort of talk I heard at the Boston-Area Sustainability Group meeting last night so refreshing and inspiring. Co-founded by a former Bay Networks colleague of mine, Rich Goode, and Glen Grant, the group aims to bring together like-minded individuals across all sorts of professional disciplines and companies for informal presentations and networking.

Last night Tom Permatteo, founder of a very cool company called izzitgreen.com -- a blog that helps consumers make environmentally motivated purchase decisions -- and Glen Grant, founder of environmental IT consultancy G2 Technology, presented to the group. Their presentations and the informal discussion among all the attendees before and after the presentations were replete with references to doing good, environmental responsibility and global accountability. The general consensus in the room was that entrepreneurial/business success and environmental responsibility, far from being mutually exclusive, are complementary.

It is in my judgment a very positive evolution that this kind of talk is now commonplace in the technology industry. Big props to Rich and Glen for co-founding the group -- it was energizing to be among so many idealists and I’m already looking forward to the next meeting.

MIT Enterprise Forum and the Art of Positioning

If you're a PR professional, thinking in terms of positioning and messaging is second nature, but you're probably not very comfortable with molecular mayhem. And if you're a PhD chemist, you're likely more at home in the world of stoichiometric equations than with elevator pitches and mission statements.

Our worlds collided last night at a session on "The Art of Positioning," part of the MIT Enterprise Forum's Start Smart series. Start Smart is a nine-week workshop (a mini-MBA program) designed for new and early stage entrepreneurs looking to delve into each phase of getting a new venture going. This particular Fall series is tailored for medical device entrepreneurs. Different experts present the workshops each week, and last night I teamed up with Kara Della Vecchia of KDV Communications to do the positioning workshop. We blended a dash of Guy Kawasaki and a touch of Geoffrey Moore to present our own take on the fastest path to positioning. Kara presented a case study on her client Starion Instruments, whose CEO (Kirt Kirtland) graciously called in from an airport to field some questions. The variety of presenters seemed to keep the students engaged, and we hope we helped them a bit on their path to commercializing their devices.

Whenever I meet with area entrepreneurs, I'm always impressed with the diversity of business concepts that are percolating out there. We had a gentleman with a device to address COPD, a fellow with a biodegradable staple for surgeries and a PhD physicist with a filtering technology with medical applications, to name just a few.

Thanks to Pete McDonald of Silicon Valley Bank for hosting and facilitating last night's session.

You can check out upcoming MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge sessions here.