Many people who attended our May event said it was our best event for content as attendees got a two hour MBA from Joe Colopy of Colopy Ventures and Bronto Software fame. Joe also joined us for the Afterparty dinner and also met with several local entrepreneurs on Friday at TekMountain as I had told him about the “Ritz-Carleton” of coworking space (for the decor). He was SOOO good on stage with his insights about the need for a co-founder, why NetSuite taught him how to be “SalesCentric” and why he started GrepBeat.com, a tech startup newsletter that has included Wilmington stories.

But I have taken the challenge to make our June event even better if possible.

For the June event, NEW has arranged for two experienced technology leaders with connections to North Carolina to speak at a Riverside Chat in June in Wilmington.

The technologies behind “The Cloud” and “Voice” are changing the global economy.

Even Gary Vaynerchuk is VERY excited about the future of VOICE as people buy consumer products by saying Alexa we need laundry detergent and other products.

If you are familiar with voice technology, this is the Amazon Alexa or the technology behind Wilmington based Voice.tech scaling startup that helps sexual assault victims by automating the interview process and leads to 40 % more information from the victims. Software called VictimLink.

If you are familiar with Cloud technologies, this is what allows you to have Gmail, Amazon AWS, or cloud allows you to have pictures or songs you can pull from storage, not on your device. Or a local company like nCino uses the cloud to manage documents in the banking industry. These cloud storage facilities for Apple and Facebook are based in North Carolina near Hickory with cheap energy infrastructure left over from the furniture industry.

But what about the future of cloud and voice technologies?

We will discuss this on June 25th.

Guest speakers for the event include two of my mentors:

-Tom Fisher, a North Carolina native, has been a high-level executive with tech companies such as IBM, Oracle, eBay, Qualcomm, Gateway and Success Factors and is considered a leader in cloud-based technology.

– Jordan Cohen has been involved in voice technology for more than 30 years through his time in the Air Force, IBM and more recently with a company called Semantic Machines that sold to Microsoft.

– The moderator of the Riverside chat will be Tim McLoughlin, Partner in Cofounders Capital, that is based in Cary and recently announced a $31 million venture fund. McLoughlin was an Entrepreneur in Residence at NC IDEA and is a frequent speaker at NEW events in Wilmington.

We are proud to announce that we have received an Engage grant from the Durham based NC IDEA organization for this event. The NC IDEA Engage grant funds organizations across the state that execute creative programs to support entrepreneurs and strengthen North Carolina as a national exemplar for entrepreneurship. The Engage grant offers a maximum of $5,000.

NC IDEA is a Durham based non-profit and their goal is to foster economic development in North Carolina by helping young startups commercialize their innovations. In turn, these companies will grow and create a lasting impact in the community and beyond by securing investment, creating jobs and building wealth.

Here is the story in the Wilmington Business Journal – https://www.wilmingtonbiz.com/entrepreneurs/2019/05/30/network_for_entrepreneurs_brings_two_tech_leaders_to_wilmington_for_june_talk/18988

A BIG Thank you to our sponsors like Adam Shay CPA ( http://adamshaycpa.com/ ), Justin Wolfe of Strategic Investments ( https://strategicinvestmentsnc.com/our-team/ ) , SWELL systems (https://swellsystem.com/ ),NC IDEA ( ncidea.org ) , the Cohen family, the Fisher Family Foundation and of course Ironclad Brewery.

Please connect with NEW on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/NEWilm/ and Twitter @redspireusnc