Additional Activities
Whether you come early for a preconference workshop, the Atlanta City Tour or the Networking Dinner, or extend your stay for the Tour of Georgia Incubators, Conference 2004 has a lot to offer beyond its traditional educational sessions. You can maximize the impact of your trip to Atlanta by participating in some of these additional activities.
Atlanta City Tour
Sunday, April 25, 1 - 5 p.m.
THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT.
For a lovely introduction to our host city, sign up for the Sunday
afternoon tour of Atlanta hot spots. We’ll begin in the business
district, viewing the State Capitol and the Georgia Dome, and the Martin
Luther King Jr. Historic District, passing the MLK Center. Then we’ll
travel to Midtown – home of the world headquarters of the Coca-Cola
Company, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the IBM Tower. The
bus will continue down Peachtree Street past the Fox Theater and Colony
Square and through Northside to view the Governor’s Mansion and
Atlanta History Center.
Following the driving portion of the tour, we will visit the 100-year-old
Cyclorama, where we will view the Civil War Museum and giant diorama,
which brings to life the Battle of Atlanta – a turning point
in the Civil War. We’ll finish the tour at Atlanta’s CNN
Center, home of Ted Turner’s CNN and Headline News, where we
will catch a glimpse of the fast-paced excitement of a 24-hour news
broadcast with a behind-the-scenes tour.
Fee: $48 (includes bus transportation, guides and admission fees)
Networking Dinner – Southern Style
Sunday, April 25, 6 – 8 p.m.
Don’t miss this opportunity to start off conference by catching
up with old friends and meeting new ones. We will tantalize your taste
buds with a Southern-style buffet, including chicken and dumplings,
whisky barbecued chicken, cornmeal-crusted catfish, Southern cornbread,
and other side dishes representative of the Southern-U.S. cuisine.
Enjoy a drink on NBIA while you dine with colleagues. To get the networking
started, we’ll help you identify other people who are interested
in the same industry segments and business incubation topics as you
are.
Fee: $63
Tour of Georgia Incubators
Wednesday, April 28, 1 – 9 p.m.
THIS
EVENT IS SOLD OUT. Tickets
may become available onsite. Visit the registration desk for details.
Don’t leave Atlanta without touring four additional Georgia incubators:
the Intelligent Systems Incubator and Hispanic American Center for
Economic Development in Atlanta, and the Georgia BioBusiness Center
and Athens New Media Synergy Center in Athens. Each program focuses
on a different industry segment – from for-profit to minority
and biotech to media systems – giving you a chance to experience
four unique set-ups. We’ll stop at the two Atlanta area incubators
before heading to Athens for two additional tours and time to explore
the Athens area on your own. At each incubator, staff will be on hand
to brief us on their latest innovations and to provide a tour of the
facilities. Join us Wednesday afternoon for a glimpse into what makes
these programs work!
Fee: $38 (includes transportation)
Intelligent Systems Incubator
Led by Bonnie Herron, former chair of NBIA’s board of directors,
the Intelligent Systems Incubator is United States’ longest-running
privately funded incubation program. This for-profit incubator provides
assistance specific to the needs of emerging technology companies.
The 140,000-square-foot facility offers office, manufacturing and warehouse
space; conference and meeting rooms; and outstanding business assistance
advice and services. Thanks in part to the incubator’s services,
Intelligent Systems graduate ChemFree Corp. received NBIA’s 1999
Incubator Client of the Year award. The incubator currently has 14
client companies. www.intelsys.com
Hispanic American Center for Economic Development (HACED)
HACED has developed into a business incubator from programs operated
through the Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. The program offers
services often not found in a typical business incubator, including
a full range of classes and seminars conducted in both English and
Spanish. HACED provides outreach to all individuals in the Atlanta
area who want to start a business or existing businesses that want
to reach the next level. The incubator, which has space for up to
12 client companies and 24 affiliate clients, currently serves six
clients on-site. www.ghcc.org/HispanicAmericanCenterforEconomicDevelopment.html
Georgia BioBusiness Center
The Georgia BioBusiness Center was founded in 2000 to accelerate the
growth and sustainability of Athens-based bioscience start-up companies.
The incubator enables bioscience start-up companies to accelerate
their growth through access to management expertise, sources of funding
and state-of-the-art instrumentation. All of the current resident
companies have ties to entrepreneurial faculty at the University
of Georgia. With 30,000 square feet of space incorporating leading-edge
core lab instrumentation, the Georgia BioBusiness Center currently
accommodates seven bioscience companies. www.biobusiness.uga.edu/
Athens New Media Synergy Center
Founded in 1999, the Athens New Media Synergy Center focuses on accelerating
the formation and growth of digital media, wireless and software
development companies in Georgia and linking them with the resources
they need to become long-term, successful employers in Athens. The
center operates in cooperation with the University of Georgia’s
New Media Institute and is sponsored by the University of Georgia
Research Foundation. Companies residing in the incubator focus on
corporate communications, Web-based software for tracking chemical
and hazardous waste, biomedical illustrations and animations, and
more. www.uga.edu/synergy/