Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

Leading our roundup of news and notes from last week is a new look for the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center. The organization has a new logo. If you attended “Startup Day” on October 5, you might have seen the logo on a tee shirt that Chris McAdoo was wearing while he served as a co-host along with Cortney Piper. It certainly is much more colorful and bolder.

Other items from the week included these:

• Speaking of KEC, the organization is offering a five-session virtual class series to help craft makers grow their online business to increase sales and reach a wider audience. The series is designed for sellers who have opened an Etsy shop and are currently making sales on Etsy, with an introductory workshop for sellers who are new to the platform. Workshop sessions are taught by successful online craft sellers who will share best practices on topics that impact sellers most, including getting discovered on Etsy, taking better pictures of your products, and building your brand. The program is specifically designed for creative makers from underserved communities. The first session is October 26. For more information, click here.
• Launch Tennessee has announced the first offering in a new series titled “#BuildTN Conversations” designed to highlight start-ups and technology-based businesses across Tennessee. The inaugural event, set for this Friday, will feature Percy (Master P) Miller, CEO of P. Miller Enterprises. It will be a hybrid session for a limited number of people in-person and the general public invited to join online. It is hosted in partnership with the Nashville Entrepreneur Center’s Twende program and the National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM). More details can be found here.
• The Greater Nashville Technology Council and AWS will present the 9^th annual “Nashville Analytics Summit” as an in-person event tomorrow and Wednesday at the Omni Nashville Hotel. More than 50 presentations and hands-on workshops will be held. New for 2021 is a healthcare analytics track in partnership with Tennessee HIMSS. Attendees will also have the chance throughout the event to network with data and analytics professionals from across the country. Registration information can be found here.
• Fortune magazine recently named Eastman Chemical Company to its “Change The World” list for 2021, ranking the Kingsport-based company #No. 21 on the list of companies that have made a “positive social impact through activities that are part of their core business strategy.” Eastman made the Fortune list for its plastic recycling initiatives.
• Lirio, whose Precision Nudging^TM solution promotes health through artificial intelligence-powered behavior change, has announced the launch of a new Precision Nudging solution to encourage people to schedule and attend colorectal cancer screenings with their healthcare providers. Rochester Regional Health (RRH) in New York is the first health system to deploy the solution for its patient population. Click here to learn more.
• Kevin Christopher, Founder and Principal at Rockridge Venture Law, has been named a National Science Foundation Evaluator for CB2, an industry-university cooperative research center that is housed at the University of Georgia, Iowa State University, Washington State University, and North Dakota State University. CB2 member companies include 3M, AkzoNobel, Amazon, Ford, Dukane, John Deere, Kimberly-Clark, Medtronic, Hyundai, BASF, Shaw, Boehringer Ingelheim, and dozens of others invested in a renewable materials future. Rockridge has three offices in Tennessee and a fourth one in Durham, NC.

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