Berkshire Forum September 14 to 16

The Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield

By: News Desk - Sep 09, 2010

 

 

SURPRISING CONNECTIONS
All 2010 Forum talks and panels will be presented in a town hall format, affording attendees the valuable opportunity to ask questions and bounce ideas off those on stage. Ample downtime will be built in to The Forum schedule in order to allow attendees and program participants to swap stories and discuss opportunities.

UNEXPECTED INSIGHTS
The Berkshire Forum is fueled by ideas worth spreading and inspirational stories worth sharing. Cutting-edge Berkshire innovations will be illuminated, potentially profitable entrepreneurial initiatives will be investigated, and regional business achievements and job-creating enterprises will be celebrated.

INSPIRATIONAL DISCUSSIONS
For three days, 2010 Forum speakers and panelists will deliver an unbounded stream of thought-provoking content.  Forum participants, sponsors and panelists will deliberate on and debate the sustainment and expansion of capitalism in Western Massachusetts, employment, entrepreneurship, the state of the 2010 economy, and the prospects for Berkshire-based cultural and commercial business endeavors.

Schedule of Events

Tues. September 14
4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
(The Colonial Lobby)Registration & Welcome Reception

Cookbook Signing & Tasting with:
CHEF MICHAEL BALLON, Author, Castle Street Café Cookbook

Welcome Reception Courtesy of Baba Louie’s, Castle Street Café, Guido’s Fresh Marketplace, Marketplace of the Berkshires, Ooma Tesoro's and Pittsfield Rye Bakery. 6:00 pm – 6:10 pm
(The Colonial Theatre) Welcome Remarks

Speakers:
JAMES RUBERTO, Mayor, City of Pittsfield
RICHARD ALCOMBRIGHT, Mayor, City of North Adams 6:10 pm – 7:10 pm The Future of Business: Stabilizing the Fluctuating Job Market to Achieve Economic Growth at the Local Level

Speaker:
WILLIAM “BILL” LITTLE, Chairman, National Chamber Foundation and former Chairman, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Commentator:
BRET SWANSON, Contributor, The Wall Street Journal; President, Entropy

Investigating the positive effects that free enterprise has on the economy and job sustainability. 7:10 pm – 8:10 pm The Business of Healthcare: Medical Delivery Innovations Taking Root in Massachusetts

Speaker:
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB, Practicing Internist; Forbes columnist; The Wall Street Journal Contributor; CNBC Commentator; Former Deputy Commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Commentator:
BRET SWANSON, Contributor, The Wall Street Journal; President, Entropy

Expanding coverage while addressing cost pressures. Featuring an audience Q&A session with one of the country’s foremost health-policy experts, Dr. Scott Gottlieb. 8:10 pm – 9:00 pm FOD Fest Youth Concert - Friends of Daniel Pearl: Strengthening Community Through Music

In addition to being a journalist (North Adams Transcript, 1986; Berkshire Eagle, 1988), the late Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was a talented musician who believed in the power of music to bring people together regardless of their differences.  FOD Fest promotes this ideal through its programming.

The Berkshire Forum FOD Fest performance will showcase local youth performers. Proceeds from the event will benefit the FOD Fest school program, aimed at educating, inspiring, and empowering local music students at the junior high and high school level.

Wed. September 15
7:30 am – 8:00 am

(The Colonial Lobby)Morning Registration 8:00 am – 8:20 am
(The Colonial Theatre)Stone River (film short)
Directed by: HAL CLIFFORD and JASON HOUSTON

Deep in the Northeastern woods, working alone, one man is building a better world, one stone at a time. One very, very big stone. Placed very, very carefully. His tools are his hands, his back, a few metal implements. His vision encompasses all of modern culture and its reformation. Premiered at the Berkshire International Film Festival in 2010. 8:20 am – 9:00 am

In the Colonial Lobby
(7:30 am – 9:30 am):
Book signing with Cornelia Brooke Gilder, Author, Houses of the Berkshires and Hawthorne's Lenox
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Louisa Gilder, Author, The Age of Entanglement The Spirit of Enterprise: The Impact of Entrepreneurship on Business and Technology

Speaker:
GEORGE GILDER, Chairman, George Gilder Fund Management, LLC; Author of over ten books, including; Wealth and Poverty (1981), The Spirit of Enterprise (1986), Microcosm (1989), Life After Television (1990), Telecosm (2000), The Silicon Eye (2005), and The Israel Test (2009)

How the economic health of a community is determined by the collective ingenuity and wisdom of individual entrepreneurs —the heroes of capitalism. 9:00 am – 10:30 am

In the Colonial Lobby
(10:00 am – Noon):
Book signing with Ruth Bass, Author, Sarah’s Daughter and Rose Isolating the Entrepreneurial Gene: The Psychology of the Serial Entrepreneur

Moderator:
MICHAEL ZIVYAK, Founder & Publisher, Berkshire Living magazine

Panelists:
LISA CHAMBERLAIN, Founder and Managing Partner, The Chamberlain Group
MITCH NASH, Owner & Founder, Blue Q
SETH NASH, Owner & Founder, Blue Q
RICHARD STANLEY, Commercial Real Estate Developer; Managing Partner, The Beacon Cinema
MARK WOLF, Director, The Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute

For some, entrepreneurship is more than an economic endeavor; it is a vocation—a way of life. How the impulse to create and self-govern inspires people to craft innovative new products and services… 10:30 am – 10:45 am

In the Colonial Lobby
(11:30 am – 1:30 pm):
Book signing with Leslie Wheeler, Author, Murder at Plimoth Plantation and Murder at Gettysburg Bach of the Antarctic (film short)

Directed & Written by:
BEN HILLMAN

With Music From:
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH and DONALD SOSIN

Toccata. Cantata. Antarctica. Who knew? A startling discovery confirms that the person who discovered Antarctica was none other than Johann Sebastian Bach. As scientists uncover the astounding evidence, totally fake historical footage recreates Bach’s daring voyage into the Unknown. Who could have guessed that when Bach composed the musical magni opi of the Baroque Period, it was but a Prelude to the Discovery of a Continent? Premiered at the Berkshire International Film Festival in 2009. 10:45 am – 12:00 pm

In the Colonial Lobby:
(12:00 pm – 2:00 pm):
Book signing with Stephen Donaldson, Author, The Berkshires; Along Route 7: A Journey Through Western New England; Barns of the BerkshiresThe Commerce of Culture: Artful Innovation & Effectiveness in the Non-profit Sector

Moderator:
HELENA FRUSCIO, Director, Berkshire Creative

Panelists:
STUART CHASE, Executive Director, The Berkshire Museum
DAVID FLEMING, Executive Director, The Colonial Theatre
LAURIE NORTON MOFFATT, Director and Chief Executive Officer, Norman Rockwell Museum
STEPHEN PERKINS, Executive Director, Bennington Museum
MARK VOLPE, Managing Director, Boston Symphony Orchestra

Weighing community benefits vs. personal profits. Servicing community stakeholders. 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
(Downtown Pittsfield) Break for Lunch 1:30 pm – 1:50 pm
(The Colonial Theatre) Boston Symphony Orchestra (performance)

Musicians:
VICTOR ROMANUL, Violin
MICHAEL ZARETSKY, Viola

John Williams: Duo Concertante for violin & viola
Handel-Halvorsen: Pasacaglia (Duo) for violin & viola 1:50 pm – 3:00 pm

The Investor-Entrepreneur Relationship: Building Businesses & Strategically Partnering for Success

Moderator:
SPENCER REISS, Contributing Editor, Wired magazine

Panelists:
JANETTE KESSLER DUDLEY, Vice President of Special Projects, CPower
MATT HARRIS, Managing General Partner, Village Ventures
RUSS HOWARD, Managing Director, High Peaks Venture Partners
MICAH SINGER, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, VoIP Logic
EDWARD ZYSZKOWSKI, Chief Executive Officer, Steeplechase Networks

Scaling your business. Shopping for investors and establishing critical early-stage investment connections. 3:00 pm – 3:30 pm Cabaret-to-Go (performance)

Featuring:
SHERRI JAMES BUXTON, Vocal Interpreter of the Great American Song Book

Sherri and friends perform Cabaret-to-Go classics for The Berkshire Forum audience. 3:30 pm – 4:45 pm The Impulse to Innovate: Inspiration, the Launching Process, Set Backs, and Breakthroughs

Moderator:
JESSICA HARRIS, Host of NPR’s From Scratch: The Radio Show on Entrepreneurial Life

Panelists:
JULIA BOWEN, Executive Director, The Berkshire Arts & Technology Charter School
BETH PEARSON, President, Pearson Properties and Management LLC
JAMES NEJAIME, Owner, Nejaime’s Wine Cellars
JOE THOMPSON, Director, MASS MoCA

The crucial components and critical path to launching a business. Plus, an investigation into how true innovation creates its own market. 4:45 pm – 5:00 pm

In the Colonial Lobby:
(3:30 pm – 5:30 pm):
Book signing with Richard Greene, Author, Midnight Rounds and
The Day After MidnightAnnie (performance)

Performed by:
BERKSHIRE THEATRE FESTIVAL Children's Theatre Company

The BTF Children's Theatre Company performs selections from Annie. Featuring local children under the direction of the talented Berkshire Theatre Festival staff and crew. 5:00 pm – 6:50 pm Break for Dinner 6:50 pm – 7:00 pm
(The Colonial Theatre)Little Red Jiving Hood: The Original Girl in the Hood (film short)

Written & Directed by:
BEN HILLMAN

Music by:
DONALD SOSIN

In a deep, deep forest lives a little girl who wears a little red — wait a minute… You know the story. But not quite like this! Screened at the Inaugural Berkshire International Film Festival in 2006. 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm


In the Colonial Lobby:
(5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
& 9:00pm – 9:30 pm)
Book signing with Jana Laiz, Author, Weeping Under the Same Moon and Co-author, A Free Woman on God’s Earth
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Ann-Elizabeth Barnes, Co-Author, A Free Woman On God's Earth
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Chris Darroch, Author, The Climb of Polar Mountain Street-Fighting Math and Science: Down-and-dirty, Opportunistic Problem Solving

Introduction:
MARY COLLINS GEORGE, Former Math & Science Teacher; Co-producer, The Berkshire Forum
TINA CHASE, Accountant & Business Manager; Co-producer, The Berkshire Forum

Speaker:
DR. SANJOY MAHAJAN, Author of Street-Fighting Mathematics; Associate Director for Teaching Initiatives, Teaching and Learning ?Laboratory, MIT; Visiting Associate Professor of Applied Science and Engineering, Olin College

How to build and sharpen your creative problem solving skills across diverse fields of knowledge—from mathematics to management. 8:00 pm – 8:15 pm Youth Alive (dance performance)

Introduction:
SHIRLEY EDGERTON, Director, Youth Alive Community Based Performance Arts Program

Featuring:
The Youth Alive Step Team

A performance by the Youth Alive Step Team— a rite-of-passage program for adolescent girls that includes multi-cultural women's studies, health education, support for trauma, and self-esteem building programs. 8:15 pm – 9:00 pm

Advocating Excellence: 2010 Berkshire Forum Education Roundtable

Commentator:
DR. SANJOY MAHAJAN, Associate Director for Teaching Initiatives, Teaching and Learning Laboratory, MIT; Visiting Associate Professor of Applied Science and Engineering, Olin College

Panelists:
JANE BURKE, Life-long Educator; Founder & Director, Flying Cloud Institute
TED COLLINS, Social Studies Teacher, Monument Mountain Regional High School
MICHAEL FARMER, Teacher, Mount Everett School
MONICA JOSLIN, Dean of Academic Affairs Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
LYNN MCDONNELL, Science and Math Specialist, Crosby Elementary School

A discussion on improving teaching in our schools, led by Dr. Sanjoy Mahajan. Together the panel will strive to find antidotes to the rigor mortis brought on by too much rigor and too little creative thinking and problem solving. 9:00 pm – 9:30 pm
(The Colonial Lobby) The Berkshire Forum After Hours
Networking and Book Signings

Thursday September 16
7:30 am – 8:00 am
(The Colonial Lobby)Morning Registration 8:00 am – 8:20 am
(The Colonial Theatre)

In the Colonial Lobby
(7:30 am - 9:30 am):
Book signing with Derek Gentile, Author, The Vanilla Envelop and Splitters, Squeezes, and Steals Creativity is a Muscle: Building a World Where Creativity Thrives

Speaker:
KEVIN SPRAGUE, Photographer; Author, Imagining Shakespeare; Owner, Studio Two

Can creativity be taught, trained, and learned? Can it open up new
opportunities and potential? Discover some simple strategies for unlocking the creative process. 8:20 am – 9:30 am


Cleantech: Building Sustainable Communities

Moderator:?
CHARLIE DEITZ, Berkshire Bureau Chief, WAMC

Panelists:
ALAN CUMMINGS, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Seldon Technologies
TYLER FAIRBANK, Chief Executive Officer, EOS Ventures, LLC
STEVE NELSON, President & Chief Executive Officer, Solar Electric Service Corp.
STEPHEN SEARS, Principal, Berkshire Renewable Power, LLC

Commentator:
SPENCER REISS, Contributing Editor, Wired magazine

Eco-conscious innovations and energy alternatives tinting the region green. Creating new markets and focusing investments on clean technologies. 9:30 am – 10:45 am


In the Colonial Lobby:
(10:30 am - 12:30 pm):
Book signing with Kevin Sprague, Author, Imagining Shakespeare Philanthropic Power: The Business of Giving

Moderator:
ABBIE VON SCHLEGELL, Philanthropic Fundraising Consultant

Panelists:
JENNIFER DOWLEY, President, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation
NANCY FITZPATRICK, Vice Chairman, The Fitzpatrick Companies
TODD MACK, Singer; Producer; Founder, FOD fest (Friends of Daniel Pearl music festival)
TBA

Inspiring and infusing the marketplace through altruism. 10:45 am – 10:55 am The Kabbalah of Bob Dylan (musical performance)

Featuring:
SETH ROGOVOY, Singer, Guitarist, Writer, Award-winning critic, Author, Lecturer, Teacher and Radio Commentator

Berkshire Living’s critical commentator and locally-loved music, book, and cultural critic performs live for The Berkshire Forum audience. 10:55 am – 12:00 pm Getting to Next (Career workshop)

Introduction:
SETH ROGOVOY, Editor-in-Chief, Berkshire Living and Berkshire Business Quarterly

Speaker:
CAROLE HYATT, Entrepreneur, Renowned Career Strategist, and Best-selling Author, The New Woman's Selling Game, Shifting Gears, Lifetime Employability, and When Smart People Fail

Inspiring Berkshire Forum attendees to reevaluate attitudes, skills and goals in order to increase staying power, survive setbacks, transition to new careers, land new positions and expand or launch new businesses. 12:00 pm – 1:45 pm
(Downtown Pittsfield) Break for Lunch, with “Getting to Next” Networking Assignment 1:45 pm – 2:00 pm
(The Colonial Theatre)

In the Colonial Lobby:
(12:00 pm – 2:00 pm)
Book signing with Carole Hyatt, Author, When Smart People Fail Cowboy Yoga (film short)

Written & Directed by:
HAL CLIFFORD and LOU BENDRICK

Camera & Editing by:
JASON HOUSTOn

Two cowboys make an instructional yoga video for cowboys. Premiered at the Berkshire International Film Festival in 2009. 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Finding the Where of Happiness: Realizing the American Dream in Rural America

Moderator:
SETH ROGOVOY, Editor-in-Chief, Berkshire Living and Berkshire Business Quarterly

Panelists:
BILL HINES JR, Managing Director, Interprint Inc.
PERRI PETRICCA, Chief Executive Officer, Petricca Industries; President, Unistress
MARC ROBERTS, Founder, Superl Sequoia, Vice President, Sequoia Group Holdings
KELLEY VICKERY, Executive Director, Berkshire International Film Festival

Fascinating and inspiring stories of business owners reinventing and rejuvenating their businesses far from urban centers. 3:30 pm – 4:00 pm A Plan For Action: The New Berkshire Blueprint

Speaker:
DAVID ROONEY, President, Berkshire Economic Development Corporation

Growing the Berkshire economy and improving the quality of life for residents and employers by leveraging the cultural and entrepreneurial richness of the region. 4:00 pm – 4:25 pm

Breaking Pattern (film short)

Written & Directed by:
RYAN KAMPE

Breaking Pattern opens with lush, vivid colors. It is summer in New England. There is a mother with a baby. All seems right with the world. But before long it is obvious that the beautiful colors belie the bleakness of the characters’ lives. In the short span, Breaking Pattern gives us suspense, violence, social commentary, and a love story, or two. Shot on location in the Berkshires with an all-local cast, the complex situations in Breaking Pattern give insight into life in small New England towns. Premiered at the Berkshire International Film Festival in 2008. 4:25 pm – 5:10 pm Broadband Expansion to Rural Communities: Growing Locally, Competing Globally

Speaker:
BENJAMIN DOWNING, Massachusetts State Senator (D-Pittsfield)

Audience Q&A Session Featuring:
BENJAMIN DOWNING, Massachusetts State Senator (D-Pittsfield)
JUDITH DUMONT, Director, Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI)
MONICA WEBB, Spokesperson, Wired West
5:10 pm – 5:50 pm

In the Colonial Lobby:
(4:30 pm – 6:30 pm)
Book signing with James Ciullo, Author, Orinoco and Maracaibo
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Barbara Shook Hazen, Author, Katie's Wish; The Knight Who was Afraid of the Dark; Who is Your Favorite Monster Mama?; Where do Bears Sleep Negotiating the Changing Media Landscape: A Conversation

Host:
EUGENIE SILLS, Founder and Publisher, The Women’s Times

Guest:
MARTIN “MARTY” BARON, Editor, The Boston Globe

Why innovation, collaboration and engagement are the new watchwords of journalism. 5:50 pm – 6:00 pm The Heartbeat of Our Community (Reading)

Speaker:
KEVIN O’HARA, Author, A Lucky Irish Lad 6:00 pm
(Colonial Lobby & Downtown, Pittsfield) A Lucky Irish Lad book signing, with Kevin O’Hara (6:00 - 7:30 pm)
& 3rd Thursday Festivities