February 18, 2010 - Manchester, NH – The New Hampshire High Technology Council (NHHTC) announced today it has formally merged with the Software Association of New Hampshire (SwANH), creating a single voice for the state’s high technology community under the NHHTC banner. All SwANH members will be inducted as full members in the NHHTC immediately. SwANH, which has been serving and representing the state’s software industry for 16 years, will become a special interest group within the NHHTC. All programs offered by SwANH will continue to be offered in the future, with the sole exception of its annual meeting.

“The NHHTC and SwANH have long shared a common mission – to promote and support the development and advancement of technology in the State of New Hampshire. By combining the organizations we reduce our overhead and can leverage more resources to achieve our core mission,” said Matt Pierson, chairman of the NHHTC. “We’re excited to deliver more value to our rapidly growing membership and help accelerate New Hampshire’s innovation driven economy.”

Three SwANH board members have joined the NHHTC Board of Directors: Dave Todaro, vice president of BID2WIN Software in Portsmouth; Dana Lariviere, president and CEO of Chameleon Group, LLC in Portsmouth; and Mike Melville, CEO of IntelliSoft in Nashua. All other SwANH board members are invited to join the NHHTC’s committees working on specific programs and initiatives.

Dave Todaro, the chairman of SwANH, said, “We’ve had a great working relationship with the NHHTC. Their ready commitment to continue and strengthen our existing educational and networking programs made the merger clearly beneficial to our members. We look forward to continuing to help make New Hampshire an ideal place to develop software and grow a software-based business.”

The NHHTC’s keynote events now include the Entrepreneur of the Year program, Product of the Year Program, Speed Venture Summit™, the Entrepreneur’s Forum, and the software-focused InfoXchange conference. In addition, the NHHTC offers the Human Resource Exchange, IP Forum, and specialty seminars designed to support new business formation and growth in the high tech arena.