Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Blog

Making Kendall Square connections

By By Bobbie Carlton, co-founder, Mass Innovation Nights; founder, Carlton PR and Marketing

We also had a group of business solutions. SnapHop helps marketers easily create mobile marketing campaigns. InsightSquared software tools help small and midsize businesses make data-driven decisions. Ripplefly’s sales performance software helps unlock the potential in your sales force and enterprise player LiveCirrus takes those pesky corporate desktop applications and makes them mobile.

I want to highlight CoPatient Audit and Appeal Services. CoPatient addresses a very real need, especially as our population gets older. Patients need help dealing with their medical debt. With CoPatient, consumers can upload their insurance benefits and medical bills, and be paired with a billing expert who will provide a free audit of those bills. The audit will aggregate the patient’s total debt, uncover any errors, and determine whether outstanding balances can be appealed.

Also, FreightFarms was popular with the green crowd, showing off its hydroponic growing centers with a working model at the event. Check out the monthly presenter videos on our Innovation Nights YouTube Channel.

Being in Kendall Square, we turned our monthly after-party into a joint event, supporting the Memory on Hand’s (a product launch from #MIN25) KickStarter party. (Happy to report Memory on Hand is 100 percent funded!) Seeing a lot more KickStarter these days – how about you? 

Big shoutout to the marvelous events team at the Microsoft New England Research and Development (NERD) Center! Between the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC), the NERD, DogPatch, TechStars, Google, MIT and more, if you go to innovation events in this area, you have probably spent some serious time in Kendall Square. As an events coordinator, it is always interesting to hold an event where there is so much happening all at once. Among other things, you get to see the Kendall Square regulars (in no way related to the Baker Street Irregulars), the entrepreneurs who seem to live and work within a 1 mile square radius. (Is it just me who thinks some of them might just work AND live at the CIC?) 

Our March event will be at Space with a Soul in South Boston , our April event will be in Lowell and June we’ll be visiting the North Shore with a trip to the “megalopolis” that is the Beverly Cummings Center. (May 2012 we’ll be back at the NERD and July we’ll be at IBM.) If your company is located near to Lowell or Beverly, sign up on the website now as we’re looking for local products to feature. Also, the Pioneer Valley Innovation Nights team has their first event scheduled for April! Very excited to see that taking off! Road trip, anyone?