The Rhode Island Technology Council is forging into 2002 with executive and
board vacancies as well as plans for new events, workforce development and increasing
its membership and visibility.
The organization is searching for a replacement for Rick Kovar, who resigned as RITech’s executive director earlier this month.
The high-tech trade group hopes to make a decision about Kovar’s former position at its February meeting. Also at that meeting, RITech will be appointing three new board members to replace three people whose terms are up. Last year, six new members joined the board.
RITech President Jeffrey Deckman, president of Warwick-based SyNet, Inc., said that the group is in the midst of refining its focus.
Beyond Cash Donations: How New Forms of Giving Are Transforming Not-for-Profit Accounting
Evolving Funding Landscape for Not-for-Profits Not-for-profit organizations are being asked to do more with less,…
Learn More
"You want to do everything," he said. "And a lot of us, being entrepreneurial, are used to that."
Limiting that focus to a few key areas was challenging but necessary, Deckman said, with the organization ultimately choosing to zero in on workforce development, liquidity and membership.
Shirley Freitag, a RITech board member who heads the organization’s membership and recruitment initiative, said one of the group’s primary objectives of the last year has been increasing and diversifying the RITech membership.
"Membership is what’s going to keep the organization vibrant," said Freitag, who is also an account executive at PaeTec Communications in Providence.
In 2001, RITech’s membership grew by 75 percent from 138 to 242 members, representing more than 18,000 Ocean State employees and over $9 billion in annual sales.
And because membership recruitment attempts to involve people from an industry cluster – not just IT-producing companies, but IT enabled ones – RITech membership extends to publishing, hospitals, banks and manufacturers, among others.
The organization will hold its second annual membership drive in February.
RITech’s liquidity initiative is focused on Venture 2002, replacing the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation (EDC) as the organizer of the three-year-old Rhode Island Venture Forum program. Venture 2002 is scheduled for June 13-14.
