Villages in a Global Economy: How Can We Compete?

As products increasingly vanish into information, software and smartphones, villages see new opportunities and challenges. Warehouses empty as just-in-time deliveries erase the need for storage. Roads become less important than Internet highways. Products become easily available from beyond, yet customers from beyond also become easier to reach. It is these companies, that export products and services beyond our local economy, that pay higher wages, bring new revenues into the community and attract young people to stay.

In this Community Conversation we’ll hear about ways, a college, medical professional, a real-estate developer, and a forest-products company, are working toward a new economy. We’ll look at how businesses and the towns might collaborate to attract outside revenues into the region and encourage their circulation within the local economy.

Panelists include:

Bill Gurney is the Executive Director of the Regional Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing at Keene State College.Bill earned his M.Ed. from Keene State College, and a CAGS degree in Education Leadership from Plymouth State University. He served as middle school assistant principal in Milford, NH; as principal in Westmoreland, NH; as Co-Superintendent of the Keene School District; and as President of the Vermont Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. And, also serves as the Interim Director of the I.N.S.P.I.R.E. School for Autism in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Chub Whitten is one of the founders of Juniper Development Group. he has held various positions within the construction and development areas of the firm since it’s inception and is currently responsible for origination, leasing, construction, and leasing. Mr Whitten has been directly responsible for building and developing over two and one half million square feet of industrial, office, research, and retail space.

Dave Buxton and wife Deb are the owners of New England Forest Products, Inc. in Greenfield, NH. After over a decade of service in the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension Service as Hillsborough County Forester, and then as the Marketing and Utilization Specialist for the University, Dave left the University to enter private industry.    He spent the next 5 years as general manager for a privately owned sawmill in southern NH. Then, in 1993, Dave realized a lifelong goal which was to own his own mill, manufacturing lumber from sustainably managed woodlots.  He and Deb purchased the site where they are currently located  and began New England Forest Products.  Originating as a hardwood mill, producing “green” northern red oak lumber, the company has evolved to meet the economic times.  It now provides retail lumber, kd lumber, custom wood flooring.   Dave has been a NH Licensed Professional Forester since 1974, and works closely with landowners, helping them to manage their woodland    NEFP is proud to have been awarded the Business NH Green Product Award for its sustainability. The company employs 22 people and ships lumber products worldwide.

Teresa Mary Cadorette, MD, PA. exemplifies the opportunities and barriers facing a medical service professional seeking to expand practice beyond local boundaries. She will speak about her plans to deliver her services to a wider audience via videoconferencing and the technical and regulatory challenges she is working through. As a member of the Peterborough Enhanced Broadband Committee of the Peterborough Economic Development Authority, Dr. Cadorette is working to gain the symmetrical bandwidth and reliable connection she needs both to access records and to maintain video contact with her tele-medicine patients. She will speak about the difference and important distinctions between “telehealth” and “telemedicine” In addition, she is adv0cating that the state join the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact to encourage the State of NH to sign on so that she and others with medical licenses in NH can work across state boundaries.