Northern Essex Community College together with the Greater Haverhill Chamber of Commerce and the Haverhill Horizons Hardware Challenge will host the Open Innovation Conference 2013 on Wednesday, March 20 from 6 to 9:30 p.m. at the Northern Essex Community College Technology Center located at 100 Elliott St. in Haverhill, MA.

Business, community, and educational leaders are encouraged to attend the conference, which will initiate the development of an open innovation cluster in the Merrimack Valley.

“We want to enhance our local and regional competitiveness so that we can increase business and economic development in Haverhill and the Merrimack Valley,” said Mayor James Fiorentini of Haverhill, who sees the establishment of a regional ecosystem of stakeholders to innovate better and faster as the key to future growth.

Sven Amirian, president of the Greater Haverhill Chamber of Commerce concurs: “To succeed, a region needs a critical mass of entrepreneurs and talented workers, a strong education network, collaborative business practices and tools, as well as access to capital resources and local and global markets.” He went on to say that the Chamber hopes to play a major role in matchmaking for partnerships.

John Harthorne, founder and CEO of MassChallenge, the largest-ever start-up accelerator and competition, will be the first of two keynote speakers at the event.

Jon Frederickson, vice president of InnoCentive, will be the second keynote speaker. InnoCentive enables corporations and government organizations to solve their key problems by connecting them to diverse sources of innovation including employees, customers, partners, and the world’s largest problem solving marketplace.

“We want to be the first region in the United States to adopt open innovation as a business practice and to establish a regional ecosystem that will enable companies to systematically reach out to external entrepreneurs and problem solvers for ideas to complement their internal research and development capabilities. John Harthorne and Jon Frederickson will share their globally-recognized expertise on how to leverage ideas from entrepreneurs and problem solvers, respectively,” said John Michitson, who is organizing the conference with a host of business and community partners.

The evening’s program will also include panel discussions on business practices and tools needed for open innovation as well as two-minute overviews from each of the six finalists in the Haverhill Hardware Horizons Challenge on their innovative products.

A business concept developed by Henry Chesbrough of UC Berkeley, open innovation brings together internal R&D talent with entrepreneurial partners to share expertise and intellectual property for rapid co-development of products and services.

This conference is designed to unite Merrimack Valley partners—including entrepreneurs and startups, students and universities, government leaders, investors, and established companies. “The teamwork up in the Haverhill area exactly matches the MassTech view that our economic vitality is tied to optimizing engagements between industry, academia and government as we drive for competitive advantage in robotics, Big Data, advanced manufacturing and nanotechnologies,” said Patrick Larkin, Director of MassTech’s Innovation Institute.

To learn more or inquire about sponsorships, contact John Michitson, michitson@mitre.org

To register, visit the Haverhill Chamber website

View the event flyer.

When veterans sit down with Jeff Williams, NECC’s veterans
services coordinator, they are talking with someone with all
the right experience.

Williams, 43, is a Battalion Command Sergeant Major in
the U.S. Army Reserve with one tour in Iraq behind him and
more than 20 years of experience working in the areas of
education and veterans’ services. He is well versed in
most things military.

A member of the Vermont National Guard while in high
school, he subsequently transferred to the Army Reserve
after graduation from Husson College where he earned a bachelor’s
in business administration. He also holds a master’s in public
administration from the University of Maine, Orono. In the
years since, he has garnered significant experience in
veterans’ services and benefits.

“The single most important thing I do is put student
veterans in touch with the resources they need whether it is
in the area of academics, counseling, health care or financial
aid…and I like to think my background lends credibility to
this position,” he says.

Veterans interested in learning more about educational benefits can contact Williams at 978 556-3631 or jwilliams@necc.mass.edu.

There’s little doubt that chocolate is a delicious treat and typically seen as a guilty pleasure but did you know that chocolate can also be healthy?

 

According to Professor of Chemistry Mike Cross at the Northern Essex Community College (NECC) in Haverhill, MA chocolate might just be the “perfect drug.”

With high quality versions of chocolate carrying over 500+ natural chemicals and more antioxidants then a bowl of blueberries … chocolate can increase feelings of well being, reduce high blood pressure, relax blood vessels and more.

Through a unique session called “Chocolate, The Perfect Indulgence,” Professor Cross will be sharing his knowledge as both a chemist and a passionate lover of chocolate with the public and residents of the Edgewood Retirement Community in North Andover on February 11th.

In this tasty lecture, Cross will discuss the joy that chocolate not only bring to our palates but the health benefits it can offer our brains, hearts and mood.

He believes enjoying fine and especially dark chocolate in moderation, say two squares a sitting, has enough benefits to assuage the guilt and valid concerns that come with consuming higher quantities of chocolate or eating a lower grade of chocolate.

With that thought in mind, Professor Cross’ presentation at Edgewood will also teach participants how to detect quality in the chocolate they are tasting.

Good chocolate and less guilt? Sounds like a Valentine’s match made in heaven.

This special Valentine’s event will take place at the Edgewood Clubhouse Auditorium, 575 Osgood St. North Andover, MA and is free and open to the public. Please reserve you seat in advance by calling Edgewood at (978) 725-3300 or emailing info@edgewoodrc.com.

The presentation being hosted by Edgewood Retirement Community (www.edgewoodrc.com) is part of NECC’s speakers bureau which provides speakers free of charge to area nonprofits (https://www.necc.mass.edu/community-engagement/speakers-bureau/)

Northern Essex Community College is planning several events in celebration of Black History Month including workshops on anti-racism, a read-in featuring poet January Gill O’Neil, and presentations on African American Music at local libraries by NECC Professor Kevin Comtois. All Black History Month activities are free and open to the public.

Workshops will focus on Anti-Racism

Featuring activities and discussion, the anti-racism workshops will help participants increase their understanding of white privilege and learn practical skills to foster anti-racism. The one-hour workshops will include White Privilege, (Tuesday, Feb. 12) and Anti-Racism (Tuesday, Feb. 19). All workshops will be held from noon to 1 p.m. in the Spurk Building, 100 Elliott St., Haverhill, Room 208.

African American Poet will Lead Read-in

NECC’s 5th Annual Black History Month Read-in will be held on Monday, Feb. 25 from noon to 1 p.m. in Lecture Hall A in the Spurk Building, 100 Elliott St., Haverhill. Poet January Gill O’Neil of Beverly, who teaches at Salem State and is the executive director of Massachusetts’ Poetry Festival, will lead the read-in. O’Neil published “Underlife”, a book of poetry acclaimed for its powerful autobiographic verse, in 2009. O’Neil will read some of her own work and attendees are invited to share their own favorite prose and poetry written by African American writers.

NECC Professor to Present on African American Music at Two Local Libraries

Kevin Comtois, who teaches in the Global Studies Department at Northern Essex, will share his passion for American Music in a presentation titled “From Slave Spirituals to Hip Hop: The Social and Political History of American Music”.

Comtois will present at the Langley Adams Library in Groveland on Monday, Feb. 25 at 6:30 p.m. and at the Memorial Library, 2 Main St., Andover on Wednesday, Feb. 27 at 7 p.m. Both presentations are free and open to the public.

Using recorded music, film clips, and still images, Comtois will trace the evolution and social and political context of American popular music through four centuries ranging from slave spirituals, minstrelsy, blues, jazz, and Rock and Roll.

Kevin Comtois has been teaching History at NECC since 1999. In 2005 he was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to study Jazz with Dr. Gerald Early (an expert on the evolution of Jazz in America) at Washington University, St Louis.

The library presentations are part of the college’s speakers bureau which provides speakers free of charge to area nonprofits. For more information visit the website https://www.necc.mass.edu/community-engagement/speakers-bureau/

For more information on the workshops or read-in, contact Chelsea Fullerton at cfullerton@necc.mass.edu.

For more information on the presentations on African American Music, contact Ernie Greenslade, marketing communications, 978 556-3862 or egreenslade@necc.mass.edu.