Published in Interface Tech News
MANCHESTER, N.H. ‹ In its first big self-promotion move, 10-year-old design engineering services firm Sunrise Labs is gearing up to unveil its new facility on Oct. 19. The company moved from the Ammon Center at the Manchester airport to Auburn, N.H.'s Wellington Business Park.
"This is really our first foray into marketing," said John MacGilvary, Sunrise's vice president of sales and marketing. The grand opening will give the company a chance to woo existing clients and prospects, in a bid to continue its rapid growth.
The privately held company has been growing about 40 percent per year, and needs the new space to continue expanding its workforce apace, according to MacGilvary. Sunrise Labs presently employs 35 people in the new facility ‹ occupied in January and now "fully ramped up," he said.
In 1999, the company won a "Decade of Design" award from Businessweek magazine for its part in designing an electronic voting machine accessible to people in wheelchairs. The machine, first sold in 1990, is now standard equipment at polling places, according to Businessweek.
MacGilvary said that was just one example of the company's design capabilities. Targeting customers in mature industries, Sunrise Labs has also built valves, valve actuators, and software valve controls for industrial applications, and is now working on the next generation of controllers for mammography equipment, he said.
With many companies working to reduce the cost of goods and moving toward more efficient design, the company said it is doing well, even in the economic downturn.
"Companies are using this time to regroup," MacGilvary said, which means more business for Sunrise Labs. He added that many of the company's clients say they outsource a lot of business, with mixed results, but often say Sunrise Labs exceeds expectations.
The company is seeing some effects from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as well, MacGilvary said. Companies that had been moderately interested in security and military applications for some of Sunrise Labs' work have increased orders, in some cases, doubling them. The company thought interest had spiked in June, MacGilvary said, but "now it's really taking shape."
Thursday, October 18, 2001
Cape students adopt service members
Published in the Current
A group of eighth graders at Cape Elizabeth Middle School has adopted recent Cape high school graduate Pvt. Brendan Sweeney of the 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg, N.C. The students will be writing him letters to help keep his morale up during the war on terrorism.
Sweeney visited the middle school while home on a recent leave, and found the students’ reception warm and welcoming.
The students are in teacher Rachel Guthrie’s advisory group.
“They were so kind to him, so concerned,” said his father, Kevin, a member of the town’s School Board.
The advisory group and other middle school students have organized car washes to raise money for the American Red Cross, raising over $1,000, which has been matched by the school’s student council for a total donation nearing $3,000, the students said.
Kevin Sweeney is compiling a list of Cape residents who are serving in the military, so students will be able to adopt them as well. He said each member of the uniformed services is important, whether they serve in the U.S., or bases around the world, or are personally involved in fighting.
“Whether or not they wind up in a combat zone is irrelevant,” Sweeney said.
He said the list now includes eight people serving in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, who have a Cape connection.
Either they grew up in town or have a direct Cape connection, Sweeney
said. He also said he knows of three others and is working to get permission from their families to give out their addresses to adopters.
The middle school also has a bulletin board with pictures of the people on the list, in uniform and in some cases as they appeared while in school in Cape Elizabeth.
Sweeney said supporting members of the armed forces is an important activity for all students to engage in.
“I want every school in Maine to do this,” he said.
A group of eighth graders at Cape Elizabeth Middle School has adopted recent Cape high school graduate Pvt. Brendan Sweeney of the 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg, N.C. The students will be writing him letters to help keep his morale up during the war on terrorism.
Sweeney visited the middle school while home on a recent leave, and found the students’ reception warm and welcoming.
The students are in teacher Rachel Guthrie’s advisory group.
“They were so kind to him, so concerned,” said his father, Kevin, a member of the town’s School Board.
The advisory group and other middle school students have organized car washes to raise money for the American Red Cross, raising over $1,000, which has been matched by the school’s student council for a total donation nearing $3,000, the students said.
Kevin Sweeney is compiling a list of Cape residents who are serving in the military, so students will be able to adopt them as well. He said each member of the uniformed services is important, whether they serve in the U.S., or bases around the world, or are personally involved in fighting.
“Whether or not they wind up in a combat zone is irrelevant,” Sweeney said.
He said the list now includes eight people serving in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, who have a Cape connection.
Either they grew up in town or have a direct Cape connection, Sweeney
said. He also said he knows of three others and is working to get permission from their families to give out their addresses to adopters.
The middle school also has a bulletin board with pictures of the people on the list, in uniform and in some cases as they appeared while in school in Cape Elizabeth.
Sweeney said supporting members of the armed forces is an important activity for all students to engage in.
“I want every school in Maine to do this,” he said.
Thursday, October 11, 2001
Cape School Board gets test results
Published in the Current
The Cape Elizabeth School Board heard the town’s schools are ahead of state averages across the board, but the schools’ principals see room for continued improvement in performance on the Maine Educational Assessment test.
The results are of last year’s MEA tests, taken by students in fourth, eighth and eleventh grade. All of the principals said it is a flawed test and can raise more questions than it answers, but acknowledged its standardization across time and across the state makes it a useful evaluation tool.
Tom Eismeier, principal of Pond Cove Elementary School, said the school needs to work on its science curriculum, but was pleased with the results of students’math
scores. He said the school teaches test savvy as well as material specifically on the test.
Eismeier said 75 percent of the students are reading at or above grade level, and most of the rest of the students are near the standards and do not fall into the category labeled “does not meet standards.”
Jeff Shedd, principal at the high school, said data for specific other schools might be more helpful than the statewide average data supplied with the test results.
Shedd said the school’s difficulties in science are a result of time constraints on teaching material, but may also indicate an increased need for lab time in science courses. The slow decline in math scores, Shedd said, while still above the state average, is due to what he called “a demographic fluke,” rather than any problem with the curriculum.
He was concerned about meeting the needs of students who do not meet standards in one or more of the areas examined by the test, and said he would like to investigate adding programs for that portion of the student body.
Middle school principal Nancy Hutton said her students have been having problems with justifying answers in science, though they often know the correct answer. She also said the science curriculum covers some topics in fifth grade on which students are tested in fourth grade.
In other business, the school board:
-Heard from the high school student representatives about the stink-bomb detonated at the high school’s homecoming dance.
-Heard from the middle school student representatives that fifth and sixth grade students will be taking field trips in the area soon, and that the middle school’s gift
wrap sale is complete.
-Received a report from Superintendent Tom Forcella that the music department was invited to participate in the Grammy Foundation program for 2002; the Cape Elizabeth Education Foundation will look at a fundraising campaign to establish an endowment.
-Approved a list of 19 people to serve on the building/renovation project committee, including members of the School Board and Town Council, school administrators, community representatives, teachers, the athletic director and three parents.
-Heard that School Board member Kevin Sweeney’s son Brendan was enthusiastically
greeted at the middle school last week while on leave from the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, N.C.
-Learned the exchange trip to France planned by teacher David Peary will be cancelled due to lack of a participating school in France.
-Approved, with the condition that the State Department’s travel guidelines be adhered to, an exchange program with a school in Costa Rica which will bring 16 Costa Rican students and two teachers to Cape in January and send 12 Cape students to Costa Rica in April. The board said they wanted a report from the students in the program, led by teacher Mark Pendarvis, when they returned.
The next school board meeting will be at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 13 in the Council Chambers in town hall.
The Cape Elizabeth School Board heard the town’s schools are ahead of state averages across the board, but the schools’ principals see room for continued improvement in performance on the Maine Educational Assessment test.
The results are of last year’s MEA tests, taken by students in fourth, eighth and eleventh grade. All of the principals said it is a flawed test and can raise more questions than it answers, but acknowledged its standardization across time and across the state makes it a useful evaluation tool.
Tom Eismeier, principal of Pond Cove Elementary School, said the school needs to work on its science curriculum, but was pleased with the results of students’math
scores. He said the school teaches test savvy as well as material specifically on the test.
Eismeier said 75 percent of the students are reading at or above grade level, and most of the rest of the students are near the standards and do not fall into the category labeled “does not meet standards.”
Jeff Shedd, principal at the high school, said data for specific other schools might be more helpful than the statewide average data supplied with the test results.
Shedd said the school’s difficulties in science are a result of time constraints on teaching material, but may also indicate an increased need for lab time in science courses. The slow decline in math scores, Shedd said, while still above the state average, is due to what he called “a demographic fluke,” rather than any problem with the curriculum.
He was concerned about meeting the needs of students who do not meet standards in one or more of the areas examined by the test, and said he would like to investigate adding programs for that portion of the student body.
Middle school principal Nancy Hutton said her students have been having problems with justifying answers in science, though they often know the correct answer. She also said the science curriculum covers some topics in fifth grade on which students are tested in fourth grade.
In other business, the school board:
-Heard from the high school student representatives about the stink-bomb detonated at the high school’s homecoming dance.
-Heard from the middle school student representatives that fifth and sixth grade students will be taking field trips in the area soon, and that the middle school’s gift
wrap sale is complete.
-Received a report from Superintendent Tom Forcella that the music department was invited to participate in the Grammy Foundation program for 2002; the Cape Elizabeth Education Foundation will look at a fundraising campaign to establish an endowment.
-Approved a list of 19 people to serve on the building/renovation project committee, including members of the School Board and Town Council, school administrators, community representatives, teachers, the athletic director and three parents.
-Heard that School Board member Kevin Sweeney’s son Brendan was enthusiastically
greeted at the middle school last week while on leave from the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, N.C.
-Learned the exchange trip to France planned by teacher David Peary will be cancelled due to lack of a participating school in France.
-Approved, with the condition that the State Department’s travel guidelines be adhered to, an exchange program with a school in Costa Rica which will bring 16 Costa Rican students and two teachers to Cape in January and send 12 Cape students to Costa Rica in April. The board said they wanted a report from the students in the program, led by teacher Mark Pendarvis, when they returned.
The next school board meeting will be at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 13 in the Council Chambers in town hall.
Wednesday, October 10, 2001
Global-Z returns to Bennington with expansion plans
Published in Interface Tech News
MANCHESTER CENTER, Vt. ‹ Data processing company Global-Z is relocating for the second time in five years, returning to nearby Bennington, where the company was founded in 1989. The company is expanding to meet demand for direct-mail advertising in Asia, and expects to triple its payroll within five years.
The company is finishing financial arrangements for purchasing land and building a 5,000 square foot facility in Bennington. It expects to be in its new home by March 2002.
"Bennington is really hungry for new business," said company co-founder and vice president of operations Dimitri Garder. "A lot of the legwork is being done for us."
Several state, county, and municipal programs are working together to help the company remain in Bennington County and form part of what Garder hopes will be a critical mass of area technology businesses.
"If Bennington can promote themselves as really advantageous to high-tech business, we'd love to be a part of that," Garder said.
Global-Z began as a database consulting firm. Its clients ran into trouble when entering international addresses into databases that were expecting U.S.-style address formats.
In 1993, Garder said, the company began processing international address data for marketers. The benefit for the customers, Garder said, is fewer duplicates, faster delivery, and fewer pieces of returned mail. "It improves the deliverability of the mail piece," he said.
One of the company's employees works in Beijing, opening up services with Asian clients and working with the region's postal services. Global-Z has offered services in Japan for two years, and the next few countries to see Global-Z services, according to Garder, will be Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand.
Guy Creese, research director at the Aberdeen Group, said there are big bucks in international direct mailing and address handling.
"That's quite a brisk business," he said.
There is room for improvement in addressing, Creese said, noting that even small improvements can have significant payoffs.
"If you can improve addresses by two percent, and you have a million addresses, that's big," he said.
The U.S. direct-mail market is saturated, Creese said, leading many companies, especially multi-nationals, to seek abroad the levels of success they have had with U.S. campaigns.
"The business demand for this is growing," he said.
Global-Z, planning to follow the trend in its sector, expects to add 35 jobs within the next five years, and offer training and internships collaboration with programs at Mt. Anthony Union High School's career center and Bennington College's foreign-language programs.
MANCHESTER CENTER, Vt. ‹ Data processing company Global-Z is relocating for the second time in five years, returning to nearby Bennington, where the company was founded in 1989. The company is expanding to meet demand for direct-mail advertising in Asia, and expects to triple its payroll within five years.
The company is finishing financial arrangements for purchasing land and building a 5,000 square foot facility in Bennington. It expects to be in its new home by March 2002.
"Bennington is really hungry for new business," said company co-founder and vice president of operations Dimitri Garder. "A lot of the legwork is being done for us."
Several state, county, and municipal programs are working together to help the company remain in Bennington County and form part of what Garder hopes will be a critical mass of area technology businesses.
"If Bennington can promote themselves as really advantageous to high-tech business, we'd love to be a part of that," Garder said.
Global-Z began as a database consulting firm. Its clients ran into trouble when entering international addresses into databases that were expecting U.S.-style address formats.
In 1993, Garder said, the company began processing international address data for marketers. The benefit for the customers, Garder said, is fewer duplicates, faster delivery, and fewer pieces of returned mail. "It improves the deliverability of the mail piece," he said.
One of the company's employees works in Beijing, opening up services with Asian clients and working with the region's postal services. Global-Z has offered services in Japan for two years, and the next few countries to see Global-Z services, according to Garder, will be Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand.
Guy Creese, research director at the Aberdeen Group, said there are big bucks in international direct mailing and address handling.
"That's quite a brisk business," he said.
There is room for improvement in addressing, Creese said, noting that even small improvements can have significant payoffs.
"If you can improve addresses by two percent, and you have a million addresses, that's big," he said.
The U.S. direct-mail market is saturated, Creese said, leading many companies, especially multi-nationals, to seek abroad the levels of success they have had with U.S. campaigns.
"The business demand for this is growing," he said.
Global-Z, planning to follow the trend in its sector, expects to add 35 jobs within the next five years, and offer training and internships collaboration with programs at Mt. Anthony Union High School's career center and Bennington College's foreign-language programs.
Tuesday, October 9, 2001
Centra takes e-learning offering to China
Published in Interface Tech News
LEXINGTON, Mass. ‹ E-learning software firm Centra has signed a deal with New Modern Technology (NMT), based in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China, under which NMT will be Centra's distributor in China.
Centra has worked with a Japanese distributor for its eLearning framework for two years, and has several customers in that country.
In the past year, the company has expanded to serve Australia, Singapore, and India, adding Taiwan, China, and Korea in the past six months, according to Chris Reed, the company's vice president of corporate strategy.
"You really have to start in Japan," Reed said. Expansion to Australia, Singapore, and India often follow, he said.
With the new partnership, NMT will undertake the Chinese localization and marketing of Centra's software, which permits live interaction with an instructor via the Internet using video cameras, voice over IP, electronic whiteboards, and other tools.
Reed said the early adopters of this type of training platform are multi-national corporations, who are frustrated by delays between product launches in the U.S. and training for Asian offices, which often occur several months later.
Reed described Centra's platform as a "control panel around a content window," which allows multiple teaching tools to be used as part of a training session. Reed said this offers value and depth of understanding.
"The most effective learning experiences are a combination of these learning methods," he said.
Market research agrees. In August 2000, Forrester Research published a report entitled "Online Training Needs A New Course." The report indicated not only that lack of interactivity was the key obstacle to online learning, but that trainee resistance is the next largest problem.
Reed said Centra gets around these problems by offering lots of interactivity and with a simple analogy: "a class over the Internet."
Reed said people already have a sense of what a class entails and what it should be like. Centra's software, he said, gives them this without forcing companies to fly trainers all over the world, exhausting the people and the training budget.
With a distributor in China, Reed said, the company has an agent committed to a couple of years of market building, leaving Centra itself to continue working on its software and on other expansions.
LEXINGTON, Mass. ‹ E-learning software firm Centra has signed a deal with New Modern Technology (NMT), based in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China, under which NMT will be Centra's distributor in China.
Centra has worked with a Japanese distributor for its eLearning framework for two years, and has several customers in that country.
In the past year, the company has expanded to serve Australia, Singapore, and India, adding Taiwan, China, and Korea in the past six months, according to Chris Reed, the company's vice president of corporate strategy.
"You really have to start in Japan," Reed said. Expansion to Australia, Singapore, and India often follow, he said.
With the new partnership, NMT will undertake the Chinese localization and marketing of Centra's software, which permits live interaction with an instructor via the Internet using video cameras, voice over IP, electronic whiteboards, and other tools.
Reed said the early adopters of this type of training platform are multi-national corporations, who are frustrated by delays between product launches in the U.S. and training for Asian offices, which often occur several months later.
Reed described Centra's platform as a "control panel around a content window," which allows multiple teaching tools to be used as part of a training session. Reed said this offers value and depth of understanding.
"The most effective learning experiences are a combination of these learning methods," he said.
Market research agrees. In August 2000, Forrester Research published a report entitled "Online Training Needs A New Course." The report indicated not only that lack of interactivity was the key obstacle to online learning, but that trainee resistance is the next largest problem.
Reed said Centra gets around these problems by offering lots of interactivity and with a simple analogy: "a class over the Internet."
Reed said people already have a sense of what a class entails and what it should be like. Centra's software, he said, gives them this without forcing companies to fly trainers all over the world, exhausting the people and the training budget.
With a distributor in China, Reed said, the company has an agent committed to a couple of years of market building, leaving Centra itself to continue working on its software and on other expansions.
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