Sun Prairie Home to New East Side High Tech Network

Since this past April, about a dozen "high-tech" manufacturing companies located from Madison to Columbus have been gathering once a month for breakfast at Market Street Diner (110 Market St.) in Downtown Sun Prairie. Their goals: networking, finding out about each other's products, and learning more about how to improve their business.

Lynne Chase, a manager at Market Street Diner and her husband Kent Chase of Intense Engineering are the official founders of this group. Kent said he noticed the lack of a group for more manufacturing based companies, and Lynne thought the Diner would be a perfect place to hold the meetings. The City of Sun Prairie has agreed to coordinate the monthly meetings, arrange for speakers, and to share relevant information learned at each meeting.

Meetings are usually from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. on the third thursday of each month. Each meeting, attendees introduce themselves and their company. One company gets to be the "company spotlight" and gets to spend 10-15 minutes on their product. Finally, a speaker on a variety of topics identified by those who have attended makes 20-30 minute presentation. Topics so far have included the anticipated impacts of the federal stimulus package, resources available from the UW Small Business Development Center, and a great Q&A session on sales and use tax as well as R&D tax credits.

The City also maintains a blog to track topics and share resources with this group. Click here to visit the East Side High Tech Network Blog.

The East Side High Tech Network is open to anyone interested in attending, but is focused on technology based manufacturing or related companies around the I-39/90/94 cooridor. Contact Neil Stechschulte at (608) 825-0894 for additional information.

Next meeting is tentatively set for July 16th. Join us!