VTTA Offering Professional Development Courses from MindEdge
The VTTA is offering online professional development courses n partnership with MindEdge, an innovative learning company specializing in higher education and professional development content and technology solutions.
These courses provide an easy-to-access, affordable option to learn something new, expand your skills, and earn professional credits. You can sign up for just one course or complete an entire certificate.
Course offerings cover a range of subject areas, including Agile, Cybersecurity, Data Analytics, Emerging Technologies, Entrepreneurship, HR Management, Management, Marketing, Project Management, Web Design, and courses offered by Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. Many earn credits from a range of credit-granting institutions.
Courses are designed for adult learners, using a combination of interactive exercises, case studies, real-world examples, and video. An “Ask the Expert” feature provides answers to all course questions within 24 hours. All courses are web-based, self-paced, and approved for CEU credits.
Even better, if you are a VTTA member or part of a VTTA member business you can save 10% on courses and certificates.
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Legislative Updates
We continue to monitor and provide input to the Legislature. Here are a few areas of note in the ongoing activity in the Statehouse:
Corporate Tax/Cloud Tax
The Senate Finance Committee approved a revised version of S.53, which deals with corporate tax changes and included the addition of the Cloud Tax. The good news is that the committee has eliminated the Cloud Tax from the bill. In addition, the committee did not agree to the House version which would base corporate taxes solely on sales, because it would result in some tax losses, and removed the proposed higher minimum corporate taxes. This bill will go to a conference committee, where we are hopeful the elimination of the Cloud Tax will be sustained.
Workforce Development
The House Commerce and Economic Development Committee approved the Omnibus Workforce Development Bill, H. 703, which includes a number of strategies and funding for growing the workforce. Some final changes were being made, based on input from other committees, but the bill includes incentives for college students and graduates to stay and work in Vermont. Among them:
- A statewide forgivable loan program of $5,000.00 per graduate for recent Vermont college graduates who commit to work for a Vermont employer for two years after graduation.
- An Internship Cost Offset Initiative that offers up to $3,000 for students for tuition and fees for participating in an internship.
- A pilot program to expand the workforce throughout the state by using Workforce Expansion Specialists to grow the workforce and fill jobs.
The bill will go to the House Appropriations Committee, where it could face cuts as that committee balances all funding requests.
Economic Development Bill
The Senate Economic Development, Housing, and General Affairs Committee is close to completing an omnibus economic development bill, H.159. (This bill was originally S. 263, but the contents were moved to H.159 after the legislative crossover date) It has VTTA-supported elements, including:
- $6 million for the Workforce Relocation Grant program, without limitations on who is eligible.
- $8.4 million for Vermont employee recruitment and relocation to Vermont, including marketing and regional relocation grants.
- The bill also includes a VEDA forgivable loan program for small businesses, but some of the details still are under debate.
Housing
The Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs advanced a housing bill that includes:
- $5 million in grants to large employers who want to build housing for employees
- $15 million to make homes more affordable for middle-income families by offering builders a subsidy to cover the difference between the building cost and appraisal value.
We appreciate the support of our members. Find out more about becoming a VTTA member here.
Jeff Couture
Executive Director
Vermont Technology Alliance
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Featured Member – Cross Benefit Solutions |
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Navigating the ever-changing employee benefits world can be difficult, costly and, at times, confusing. When businesses factor in having to carry out important HR responsibilities, administering the company’s benefits offerings, educating and training employees, and providing timely employee communication, the task list can seem unmanageable and cumbersome.
That’s where Cross can help. Their clients have access to thousands of researched, reviewed, reliable and easy-to-read resources that make their day-to-day operations significantly easier.
Service areas include:
- Compliance and Legislation
- Human Resources
- Plan Administration and Strategy
- Employer Education
- Employee Communications and Education
- Health Care Consumerism
- Health and Wellness
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Peak Pitch Vermont 2022
(March 22, 2022)
FreshTracks Capital hosts Peak Pitch, a start-up business pitch event on the slopes. Peak Pitch brings aspiring entrepreneurs and investors together for a unique version of the classic “elevator pitch.” At Peak Pitch, a shared chairlift ride gives entrepreneurs the opportunity to pitch their business plans to venture capitalists, individual investors, commercial lenders and other entrepreneurial advisors during a day of skiing and snowboarding at Sugarbush.
Find more and register here.
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Female Founders Speakers Series: Creative Agencies
(April 4, 2022)
Season 6 of VCET’s Female Founders Speaker Series wraps up with the theme of Creative Agencies. This event features Isora Lithgow owner of Isora Lithgow Creations; Katie Rutherford co-owner of Ruthless & Wellington; and Julie Jatlow co-owner of Fuse Marketing – three women who will share their stories and demystify what it takes to start and grow a thriving creative agency.
Find more and register here.
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Harnessing the Power of Technology
(April 7, 2022)
The Vermont Council on World Affairs presents a virtual/hybrid event focused on Technology, as part of its International Speaker Series. This event will look at how emerging technologies are transforming world politics and explore how national governments and non-state actors should work to help mitigate the risks associated with such innovations.
Find more and register here.
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Invention 2 Venture (I2V) Conference
(April 20, 2022)
UVM’s annual Invention 2 Venture (I2V) Conference pulls together dynamic experts, academic researchers, students, entrepreneurs and business leaders from across Vermont and New England to talk about how to protect, develop and finance business initiatives and ideas.
Find more and register here.
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KickstartNEK – Demo Day
(April 21, 2022)
Participants in KickStartNEK , a ten-week local business accelerator in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom (NEK) region, will share their final business pitches in an evening of entrepreneurial excitement and light refreshments.
Find more and register here.
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Biocogniv Closes $6M in Seed Funding Led by Breyer Capital
(March 16, 2022 – Biocogniv)
Biocogniv, a digital diagnostic company focused on predicting time-critical medical conditions using artificial intelligence (AI) on top of laboratory data, announced the closing of its $6M rolling seed round led by Breyer Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, 1984 Ventures, Inflect Health, Promus Ventures, The Fund at Hula, as well as several prominent angel investors, including Boston Scientific’s co-founder John Abele, and IBM’s former CEO Sam Palmisano.
Using real-world laboratory data from hundreds of hospitals and strategic partners, Biocogniv has created aiMarkers™, predictive AI models that can detect acute conditions before they become irreversible, and clinOS™, a real-time, cloud-based platform that deploys those models into clinical care. The company will use the new funding to further develop and validate its platform.
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Burlington, VT Makes List of Highest Paying Cities for Software Engineers
(March, 2022 – VTTA)
The online publication The Tech Tribune recently published its list of the highest-paying cities for software engineers in 2022, and Burlington, Vermont is included. Burlington is listed 23 in a list of 27 cities, ahead of Baltimore, Cincinnati, Bentonville, Arkansas; and Kansas City. The top three cities are Los Gatos, California; Kirkland, Washington; and New York City.
The Tech Tribune partnered with Blind, a website that collects pay information directly from professionals to create the list of the cities that offer the highest salary and total compensation in the United States for software developers.
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Beta Technologies Receives State Incentive for Possible Expansion in St. Albans
(March 4, 2022 – VPR)
A South Burlington company making electric aircraft received approval March 4 for up to $557,000 from the state’s primary business incentive program for a potential project in St. Albans.
Beta Technologies, which has built a prototype electric plane intended to primarily carry cargo, will earn the funds from the Vermont Economic Growth Incentive (VEGI) program if it meets targets to expand its workforce and make capital investments.
A Beta spokesperson declined to comment on the company’s plans in St. Albans. Blain Newton, the company’s chief operating officer was at the meeting of the Vermont Economic Progress Council, where members unanimously approved Beta’s application for a VEGI award for its potential St. Albans project.
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Breakthroughs and bugs: Inside Vermont's tech sector
(March 3, 2022 – VPR)
In this episode of Vermont Edition on Vermont Public Radio, Mikaela Lefrak discusses Vermont’s burgeoning tech industry and some of its recent developments and its challenges, with representatives from VTTA members: Lisa Groeneveld, co-owner and co-founder of OnLogic; Sam Roach-Gerber, vice president, Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies; and Aaron Stein, chief technology officer, Resonant Link.
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Innovators, not inventors: Lisa Groeneveld, Roland Groeneveld and OnLogic
(March, 2022 – VermontBiz)
The married couple Lisa and Roland Groeneveld started their computer company as Logic Supply in 2003 in a one-bedroom apartment in Boston. Now called OnLogic, it is based in South Burlington with facilities in Taiwan, the Netherlands, Malaysia and North Carolina. They employ 200 people and have just reached $100 million in sales. They are also in the permit process to build a new, $50 million,125,000-square-foot corporate headquarters, which will include a production facility for the assembly of their rugged computers as well as a warehouse and shipping component to handle the growing demand. This Vermont Business Magazine feature profiles the business and its owners.
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DealerPolicy Rebrands Under the More Consumer-Friendly Name of Polly
(March, 2022 – DealerPolicy)
DealerPolicy, a leading marketplace for online automotive retail insurance, announced a rebranding and insurance agency name change to Polly to better engage consumer audiences. The name change will take effect in March. Polly's existing suite of technology solutions designed for use by automotive dealers will continue to be easily accessible via a web interface or smartphone application called "Polly for Dealers."
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VT Health IT Company PCC Receives Award for its Work Serving Pediatricians Technologies
(March, 2022 – PCC)
Physician’s Computer Company (PCC), a leading Electronic Health Records (EHR) vendor for independent pediatricians nationwide, announced that they have been designated as “Best in KLAS” in the 2022 KLAS: Software and Services Report in the Ambulatory Specialty segment for their work in creating software specifically catered to independent pediatricians in the U.S.
This award demonstrates the Vermont company’s fourth consecutive year being the #1 EHR for pediatricians. As a business of just over 100 employees, PCC’s designation of “Best in KLAS” singles out the company as a formidable contender among much larger competition in the national healthcare technology marketplace.
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UVM Spinoff, Packetized Energy, Acquired by EnergyHub
(March 1, 2022 – UVM News)
Packetized Energy, a University of Vermont spinoff company, has been working since 2016 to bring to market patented technology for improving the responsiveness and resilience of power systems. Its technology was the result of research initially conducted by electrical engineering professors and company co-founders Paul Hines, Jeff Frolik and Mads Almassalkhi.
The technology, known as packetized energy management, is built on the fundamentals that underpin electrical engineering at UVM: power systems, control systems and automation, and wireless communications.
The company’s success in the quickly growing field of distributed energy resources (DERs) has now led to its acquisition by EnergyHub, one of the nation’s leading providers of distributed energy resource management solutions (DERMS).
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More Tech Startups Gravitating to Vermont
(February 23, 2022 – WCAX)
High-tech companies looking to get off the ground are increasingly using Vermont as the launching pad.
What does a geo-based social media app, a mobile amazon Alexa device creator, and an mRNA manufacturing company all have in common? Vermont is their home. A growing number of founders of new companies either recently moved or started their company in the Green Mountain State.
“So many people don’t know how great it is, so that made it a perfect spot for an app like this,” said Rosalie Phillip, the founder of the Hawp App.
The social media app may connect people from all over, but Phillip says the roots are in Burlington.
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Vermont Technology Alliance Membership Update
The Vermont Technology Alliance works on behalf of its members and is able to carry out its mission through the support of its membership.
New and Renewing members:
New members include Stark Tech, Karen Walker Beecher.
Not a vtTA member yet? Then why not join now? Find more information and register here. You can also contact us at admin@vtta.org.
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Useful Information & Links |
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Volunteers Sought for Champlain College Mock Interview Days: March 28-April 1, 2022
Champlain College’s Career Collaborative is recruiting volunteers to help prepare students for job interviews during its Spring 2022 Mock Interview Days, March 28-April 1. Interviews will be hosted virtually on Google Meet on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, and in person on Wednesday.
The time commitment can be as little as one hour or could expand to several hours over one or multiple dates. No subject matter expertise is required; however, some classes are making participation in Mock Interviews a required event or extra-credit option, and the intention is to pair these students with volunteers who have industry-relevant expertise.
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USDA Small Business 201 Procurement Workshop
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is hosting a virtual “USDA Small Business 201 Workshop” on April 13 and April 14, from 2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m., both days. This workshop is the second in the series of USDA’s efforts to support and showcase procurement opportunities to rural, minority, women, veteran, and other small businesses.
Register for the event here.
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MedTech Pitch Competition Offering $10,000 Prize
The Upper Valley MedTech Collaborative is hosting a MedTech Pitch Competition April 27 at 5 p.m. at the Lebanon Opera House in Lebanon, New Hampshire. The winner will receive $10,000 of non-dilutive funding. Applications are open to all Northern New England-based MedTech start-ups that have raised less than $2 million through institutional investment.
Leading up to the event, UVMTC will be hosting Pitch Peer Groups that will pair participants with like-minded MedTech entrepreneurs to practice and refine their pitches and will hold virtual roundtables that focus on building a successful pitch deck.
Apply to participate here.
Complete the application to participate in the Pitch Peer Group here.
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Applications Open for Governors Institute of Vermont Programs
The Governor's Institutes of Vermont is a nonprofit that helps Vermont high schoolers pursue their passions. GIV offers 1- to 2-week programs in topics like Arts, Engineering, Entrepreneurship, Technology & Design, and Health & Medicine. GIV operates on a sliding scale so that any family can send their child, no matter their finances.
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Online Professional Development Courses
The VTTA has partnered with MindEdge to offer easy-to-access, affordable, online professional development courses. Whether you are looking to expand your skill set, earn professional credits, or learn something new, these courses are an option to gain essential and in-demand skills on your own time, at your own pace, and from any location. As a bonus, VTTA members save 10% on all offerings.
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VTTA Career Center
Vermont Technology Alliance member companies are hiring, and when you visit the Career Center on the Vermont Technology Alliance website you can browse and search for these job openings and subscribe to updates. The Career Center on average features 150+ tech and non-tech jobs with Vermont Technology Alliance member businesses. Jobs available from VTTA members are listed at no charge in the Career Center as a member benefit.
Find the Career Center here.
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The VTTA Thanks Its Member/Sponsors
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