BIA/NYS sets 2009 annual meeting for May 7th in Rochester

The board of directors of the BIA/NYS has set Thursday, May 7th, as the date for our 2009 general members' meeting. Our host will be the Venture Creations incubator at Rochester Institute of Technology. Our annual member meetings rotate around New York State so that member incubators can become familiar with facilities and strategies in other regions. To date we have met in Albany, Syracuse, Buffalo, and Stony Brook.

This annual meeting will feature a theme of international partnerships for incubator and incubation-stage companies. On our agenda is Charles Lambert, president of our opposite incubator network in Québec, and our special guest is Sam Natapoff, Senior Advisor to Gov. Paterson on International Commerce and Senior VP, International Division, Empire State Development. He will bring with him between 10 and 12 senior trade commissioners and innovation specialists from industrialized nations. Our members will each have a chance to address brief remarks to these delegates.

An agenda (for the morning/lunchtime public portion of the program) is attached as a pdf. The agenda for the afternoon's members-only business meeting is available by request from the executive director. The RIT website includes directions to the Venture Creations incubator and a list of nearby hotels .

We thank our board member Jerry Mahone, the director of Venture Creations, for undertaking this project. He will also be collaborating with James Senall, the new president at High Tech Rochester, which operates both the Lennox Tech Enterprise Center and the Rochester BioVenture Center, and with other important organizations in the Rochester area. Members and sponsors may send representatives without charge.

You are invited to sign up at the link below. If the executive director does not recognize your email address or name, you may be contacted to provide your affiliation. If you are not eligible to attend free of charge (members or invited guests) we may ask you to pay a registration fee.

If you are a member incubator already confirmed to membership and know you cannot attend, you may download and mail or fax the proxy attached. It is important either to attend or to sign the proxy because we need your vote to admit new members and to alter our bylaws to allow for rotation of directors, a change requested by several organizations that have recently joined us.

Signups closed for this Event