SSTI congratulates Tom Persons, president and CEO of the South Carolina Technology Alliance, for receiving the Individual Achievement Award from the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce.

Thomas Persons Sr., president and CEO of the South Carolina Technology Alliance, was appointed to the newly created South Carolina Venture Capital Authority.

A new economic development council formed in South Carolina has been charged with two objectives: help reshape the state’s economy and raise its per-capita income. Members of the South Carolina Council on Competitiveness, a group of business, academia, government and economic development leaders, were announced earlier this month.

Sean O'Kane, a hotel manager from Manchester, N.H., has been confirmed as the new commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Resources and Economic Development.

Fred Kocher has been elected president of the New Hampshire High Technology Council, which advocates technology-based businesses in New Hampshire.

South Carolina Research Authority president Larry Druffel has announced he will retire next year.

The new position of vice president of research and health services at the University of South Carolina will be filled by Harris Pastides.

Joseph James is the new chief operating officer for the South Carolina Department of Commerce.

In a move to integrate technology and traditional learning, New Hampshire Governor Craig Benson introduced on Tuesday a four-year pilot program to bring laptop computers into classrooms. The program, Technology Promoting Student Excellence, is intended to provide wireless connectivity to all 7th-grade students and teachers from selected schools.

Gary Schneider is the new chairman of the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce (S.C.).

The South Carolina Technology Alliance calls it the most significant victory for South Carolina's research universities and tech entrepreneurs in the last 50 years. An idle exaggeration? Probably not.

George Bald, Commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Resources and Economic Development, has announced his resignation to become executive director of the Pease Development Authority.

In last week's Tech Talkin' Govs II article, we inadvertently listed Mark Warner as the Governor of South Carolina. Gov. Warner leads the Commonwealth of Virginia. Mark Sanford is Governor of South Carolina. SSTI regrets the error.

With $90 million already secured in state and private support, a 400-acre automotive research campus to be developed by Clemson University promises to make South Carolina a hub of the nation's automotive and motorsports industry.

Angel investors are reducing the average size of their investments, according to the latest report from the University of New Hampshire Center for Venture Research. In the first half of this year, total angel investment dollars fell by 27 percent from the same period in 2008, but the number of angel deals increased by six percent. As a result, the average deal size has fallen by 31 percent since early 2008.

The third installment of SSTI’s Tech Talkin’ Govs’ series includes excerpts from speeches delivered in Delaware, Maine, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah and Wisconsin. The first and second installments are available in the Jan 13 Digest and Jan. 20 Digest, respectively.

Lonnie Emard has been named interim director of the Consortium for Enterprise Systems Management, a recently formed collaboration of business, academic and economic development organizations intended to build information technology (IT) opportunities in South Carolina.

Decreases in the number of young adults in the state are more a result of fewer children being born 25 to 35 years ago, and not because of a substantial brain drain or outmigration of talent from New Hampshire, according to a task force convened by New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch. However, attracting and retaining younger workers to the state is imperative because of the large share of baby-boomers in the workforce that will be retiring in the next decade.

Last week the South Carolina Higher Education Study Committee, formed by the General Assembly in 2007, released its action plan to improve postsecondary education and economic opportunity within the state.

Four recipients selected as best practice models in technology-based economic development were honored during an awards ceremony last week in Cleveland during SSTI's 12th Annual Conference. The awards follow a national competition emphasizing impact and replicability in approaches to building and sustaining tech-based economies.

New Carolina, South Carolina's Council on Competitiveness, has formed the South Carolina Engineering Cluster. Lee Stogner will lead the cluster and its steering committee, which represents government, economic develoment, academia, engineering companies and professional societies aiming to promote engineering in South Carolina.