Brookline, MA -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/17/2014 -- Imagine having a tool about half the size of an iPhone allowing a guitarist to record, perform, tune AND monitor environmental conditions for optimal storage! That's the idea behind Acoustic Stream, www.acousticstream.com , a revolutionary device that attaches to a guitar and syncs with mobile devices.

The brainchild of guitarist and CAD software guru Bob Bean started when Bean took his guitar out of its case to find it was cracked in three places.

"Admittedly the winters in New England can be beyond harsh, but I thought the humidifier in the case would protect the guitar. It didn't. I knew then something needed to be done. Musicians need a better way to protect their investment and the tool of their craft," he said.

With prototypes for Acoustic Stream musician-tested, Bean decided it is time to take his creation to market. He and his team launched a Kickstarter Project www.acousticstream.com/kickstartus to introduce his product. His company, Acoustic Stream has been approved for the Apple MFi developer program.

"We have a solid idea, a proven idea and a market need. We just need to refine the product for mass production, set up the manufacturing process and begin taking orders," Bean said. "Acoustic Stream is something musicians have needed for a long time and now, with crowdfunding help, it will be a reality."

Monitoring rapid temperature and humidity changes are essential for protection of quality instruments.

"Both of these can be fatal for a guitar, as I found out," Bean said. "If you have that perfect guitar that delivers the perfect sound, then you need to protect it. Acoustic Stream lets you keep a close eye on your instrument. If things start changing, you can step in and do what's necessary to correct the environment."

Wireless musical functions allow instant recording. A musician himself, Bean knows inspiration can strike anywhere at any time. Music must be captured quickly or it may be lost forever.

The precision tuning feature is a convenience, always at the ready, to help a musician sound his best.

Acoustic Stream works with iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, 5s, 5c, iPad Mini, iPad 3rd and 4th generation, iPad Air and iPod Touch 5th generation. Future iOS updates will be supported as Apple brings them out. Customer demand for the Android platform is also being evaluated.

The Kickstarter campaign has several funding levels beginning at $19. Those contributing at this level may download music from the Kickstarter video along with plenty of thanks.

Moving up two levels will purchase an Acoustic Stream at half price, along with 10 guitar picks and music downloads.

At the top contribution level of $3,000, the backer is designated a beta tester and will receive two devices with adapters and other items listed in lower levels.

For more information, visit www.acousticstream.com/kickstartus and www.acousticstream.com .

About Acoustic Stream
Acoustic Stream is small electronic device, which attaches to a guitar or other instrument allowing a musician to monitor storage conditions as well as record and play music and tune the guitar. Acoustic Stream can also be found on Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

BC Benefit Race for School. Runners are Off! MacPherson, Marco Bitran Top in 30+ Category

Brookline, MA -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/29/2012 -- As reported by the Boston Globe, the second annual BC Race to Educate was held at Boston College Saturday morning to benefit the Saint Columbkille Partnership School in Brighton. Top 5 winners were Eric Mendoza, Sara Putterman, Steve Macpherson, Mark Pineau and Marco Bitran. Further articles can be found here.

The fund-raising 5K walk/run will begin outside of Conte Forum at 11 a.m. on May 5 following a 1K "fun run" for children that starts at 10:30 a.m., according to organizers. He also served on teams advising large technology companies on their strategic alternatives.

Marco Bitran. Registration costs $25 for adults, $20 for students and $10 for children 12 and younger. Bitran placed 53rd in 2011 but finished 5th this year. Race officials said event proceeds will benefit the Saint Columbkille Partnership School, a preschool through grade eight Catholic school in Brighton that partners with Boston College. Bitran has CV and other information posted. Tweet it here!

The Race to Educate is Saint Columbkille Partnership School's signature annual fundraiser. Nearly 50% of our students qualify for financial aid, and furthermore, 30% of our students qualify for federal Free or Reduced Lunch. As such, funds raised through race entry fees and sponsorships are funneled directly into the School's financial aid budget. Tweet Bitran. General Catalyst Entrepreneurs. These donations help to ensure that no student is turned away from Saint Columbkille Partnership School, regardless of his or her family's economic situation.

Know your pace. If want to run the 5K in 20:00, don't go out at 5 minute per mile pace. You won't be able to hold on, and later in the race, you'll end up crawling towards the finish line. It's not bad to be a little faster than your race pace goal, but it has to be within reason.

My old track coach had a saying that for every second you are out too fast, you will lose three seconds in the later parts of the race. Use your energy wisely so you can finish how you started.

Other related news:
http://vimeo.com/marcobitranai

http://www.trulia.com/profile/mbitran/

http://zerply.com/marco-bitran

http://angel.co/marco-bitran

http://www.lookuppage.com/users/marcobitran/

http://econnect.entrepreneur.com/MarcoBitran

http://peoplepond.com/MarcoBitran

http://marcobitran.wordpress.com/

http://marcobitran.tumblr.com

http://www.facebook.com/marco.bitran

http://finance.boston.com/boston/news/read/21258100/participants_and_winners_in_5k_boston_and_brookline_road_races_include_marco_bitran

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

In April 2012, POMS Magazine, A Leading Journal In The Field Of Operations Research, Honored MIT Professor Gabriel R. Bitran For His Exceptional Service And Leadership In His Field.

Brookline, MA -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/09/2012 -- Gabriel Bitran, born in 1945, attended the Polytechnic School at the University of Sao Paulo, in Brazil, and received a PhD in Operations Research from MIT in 1975. His doctoral thesis, advised by Tom Magnanti, provided several results related to the characterization of the structure of admissible points with respect to cone dominance, as well as the study of duality for optimization problems in that context. Bitran and Magnanti were also was among the early researchers to provide duality and algorithmic results for fractional programming problems.

Bitran was Editor-in-Chief of Management Science from January 1990-December 1996, and President of POMS in 2004. He has also received several awards for his research.

Gabriel Bitran was awarded the Distinguished Fellow of the Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM) Society (June 2009). In addition, Gabriel was awarded the INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing Section Historical Award (2009). This award recognizes critical contributions to the science of pricing and revenue management published in English, prior to 1999.

In parallel to hid PhD thesis Bitran worked with Arnoldo Hax, who had written, with Harlan Meal, a seminal paper on Hierarchical Planning for Large Scale Systems. In that paper the authors reported on several heuristics used in practice. Bitran's contribution to this topic of great practical importance was to show, in a paper co-authored with Hax, that the heuristics used in practice corresponded to approximating the solution of specific optimization problems. This result allowed a more formal analysis of the heuristics, including identifying instances where the procedures could lead to infeasible solutions. In subsequent papers, Bitran extended the methodology to large scale production systems by including feedback mechanisms between hierarchical levels and other features.

Gabriel Bitran is the Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management and a Professor of Operations Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Bitran is a source for information on the design of service delivery and manufacturing systems. His work addresses topics that include matching the supply and demand in service systems, capacity planning, technology selection, pricing of perishable and seasonal products, and understanding consumer behavior in highly interactive services such as the Internet. He is the former president of the Production and Operations Management Society. Bitran.

Bitran holds a BS from the University of Sao Paulo, as well as an MS in industrial engineering and a PhD in operations research from MIT.

The work on Hierarchical Planning inspired Bitran's research from 1982 to 1987. During that interval he stud ied non-capacitated as well as capacity constrained production systems under deterministic and stochastic cond itions. Topics addressed included, computational complexity, heuristics, and the determination of parametric bounds. During the following 10 years, 1988-1 998, Bitran's research was sponsored by companies in the semiconductor and telecommunication industries. The companies were very generous in terms of support and access to their plants.

Entrepreneurial research was then undertaken by Bitran to understand and mod el the complex production processes typical of Marco Bitran those industries. The underlying model used was that of Stochastic Networks processing a wide range of products through hundreds of steps. The Bitran challenge Boston in managing such plants included very high capital costs, variable yields, expensive set-ups, forecasting, as well as managing the interfaces among marketing and sales, manufacturing and process engineering. The access to several sponsors' Bitran plants throughout the country led to publications on several of the topics above. Worth mentioning are two concepts that have emerged and have a broad applicability in tactical and strategic planning of manufacturing systems that can be represented by open queuing networks with multiple product classes. Bitran Angel Co Boston. They are the concept of Interference in advanced trading queuing networks, and that of Tradeoff Curves. The first models the physics of a phenomenon previously ignored, resulting in significantly more precise estimates of the variance of departure streams from stations in the network. A paper on this topic, part of D. Tirupati PhD thesis, was jointly published and received considerable attention. Bitran Google. Later, Ward Witt extended the results to more general settings.

The concept of Tradeoff Curves shows that under mild assumptions manufacturing network of queues can be characterized by a signature and Bitran represented by trade off curves between capacity and work in process, or average service time. This property allows the development of algorithms to determine, at the tactical and strategic levels, the effective sequence of changes in resources in the network to achieve a desired output. The tradeoff of the uncertainty inherent in the system canalso be contrasted with the effective deployment of resources as part of this methodology. This concept provides operations managers and Bitran with an effective tool to defend their plans for capital investments with the board of the firm.

This research was done in collaboration with D. Tirupati and D. Sarkar.

In the early nineties, Bitran became interested in the management of services both from the behavioral and quantitative perspectives. The result was a series of publications on frameworks to analyze this type of operations, the modeling of the catalog mailing industry; several yield management studies, including reservation systems in the hotel industry, a framework to analyze the matching of supply and demand in services, and a series of papers on pricing.

In particular two papers co-authored by Bitran with S. Mondschein and R. Caldentey received considerable attention. The first provides a direct comparison of pricing models decisions with those of managers. Experiments were run with a major retailer in Chile and demonstrated the effectiveness of the models in increasing profits and their use as a AI Exchange raised $1.5 million training instrument of managers. The later effect became apparent when the under performance of the managers was identified as "greed" and other psychological partnership bitran factors of critical importance. The second paper is a survey for pricing perishable products with R. Caldentey. Another research phase started in the early 2000s with a 6-year research project sponsored by a leading logistics company.

The objective was to trulia understand the impact of electronic business HBS YouTube Contest on the third party logistics industry and the structure of supply chains. Several manuscripts were produced. Three examples are "Supply Chains and Value Networks: The Factors Driving Change and their Implications to Competition in the Industrial Sector", "The need for thirdparty Coordination in Supply Chain Governance", and "Coord ination of Supply Networks and the Emergence of Mini-maestros" Marco Bitran. This work led to a similar study in emerging markets with implications to third party logistics players, trading companies, and government policies. A epresentative manuscript is "Alternative Models for the Coordination of Supply Chains in AI Mexico" co-authored with Professor Pilar Arroyo, University of Monterrey,Mexico. TiE Speaker Series. In parallel with the major research projects Bitran worked on "Two-classes Priority Queuing Systems with State-Dependent Arrivals, co-authored with R. Caldentey, An Integrated view of the management of Waiting, co-authored with J. C. Ferrer and P. R. Oliveira, Approximating Nonrenewal Processes by Markov Chains: Bitran and his beautiful grandkids as reported on Vimeo. Use of Super-Erlang Chains "co-authored with S. Dasu, and several other topics.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

With a 5K, race day is a snap. No preparation. You can start early, as we have seen with runners including Joe Smith, Marco Bitran and Geronimo Junior.

Brookline, MA -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/07/2012 -- Most of us are tired, working hard, and training time is precious. Therefore, it's really tough to find the time to train for a half-marathon or marathon. Not so with the 5K. You can work up to it quickly (from scratch) and train for it adequately on just three days a week. As reported on the Marco Tumblr Blog, anyone can use the C25K plan anywhere. This is training like in LinkedIn, MIT, Harvard Business School.

Josh Clark, a self-proclaimed, reasonably fit 20-year-old, founded the Couch-to-5K (C25K) Running Plan in 1996. Although he hated running at the time, he knew he would benefit if he could just get through the initial discomfort such as in the Princeton wedding Devorah Bitran. Clark's strategy in developing the C25K was to make it as painless and user-friendly as possible in order to engage the new runner immediately. Best of all, Marco and anyone can use the C25K plan anywhere.

As stated in http://www.marcobitran.com/, running a 5K is an excellent goal for new and experienced runners alike, as Marco Bitran, 36 years old, finishes fifth in his age group in the BC 5K Race to Educate. One of the fastest times we found was TJ Unger, 33 years old, at 15:58. You'll get lots of motivation, as well as enjoyment, from participating in a race, and 5K (3.1 miles) is the perfect distance for first-timers. Even if you're a couch potato, you can be ready for a 5K in a couple of months. You can learn more on sample Facebook pages.

Exhilaration. In a 5K, you feel like you're really racing. And that's a good feeling. Not many runners can maintain a 10K race pace that is much faster than their daily training pace. With a 5K, however, you can motor as much as one minute per mile faster than your usual training pace.

The CAP technique was established by the Boston HBS association in 1993 and has since served more than 150 nonprofits with a variety of missions, such as the environment, education and learning, housing, health care, along with the arts, says CAP cochair Barry Horwitz (MBA '88), an independent process and marketing and advertising consultant. In that time, nearly 550 CAP volunteers have donated nearly $7 million in consulting services. This year alone, fourteen teams of HBS alumni will donate an estimated $1.1 million in solutions.

Some interesting content can be found at:

Other official stories can be found at these official sites:

http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/marco-bitran/marco-bitran-brookline/sbwire-140515.htm

http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/marco-bitran/non-profits/sbwire-138797.htm

Racing the occasional 5K is an excellent fitness booster. It will elevate your max VO2, improve form and efficiency, and make your regular training runs feel easier. You should ease into your running program gradually. In fact, the beginners' program we outline here is less of a running regimen than a walking and jogging program. The idea is to transform you from couch potato to runner, as Marco says, getting you running three miles (or 5K) on a regular basis in just two months.

Too often in our training, we run the same course at the same pace at the same time of day. Don't get me wrong. Routine is good—essential, in fact, if you want to stay with a long-term running program. But too much of a good thing is too much of a good thing. You need variation, and a short-and-sweet 5K every once in awhile is a great way to mix things up.

Motivation. Races are great motivators. Each year, scores of runners tell me that having a regular schedule of 5K races gets them out the door on days when they would have stayed in bed in the morning or hit the couch after work.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

5K Roadraces in Brookline and Boston, Participants Include Marco Bitran, Michael Jorgensen, Grace Watson

Brookline, MA -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/03/2012 -- Running a 5K is an excellent goal for new and experienced runners alike, as Marco Bitran, 36 years old, finishes fifth in his age group in the BC 5K Race to Educate. One of the fastest times we found was TJ Unger, 33 years old, at 15:58. You'll get lots of motivation, as well as enjoyment, from participating in a race, and 5K (3.1 miles) is the perfect distance for first-timers. Even if you're a couch potato, you can be ready for a 5K in a couple of months. You can learn more on sample Facebook pages.

There are some excellent 5K road races in Boston, Massachusetts. Many races are USATF-sanctioned and certified, with cash prizes for both. Run or walk the 4th Annual Bobcat Bolt 5K and 10K, starting at 9:00 a.m. Marco Bitran finishes in 12th place (4th in Division) in the Brookline Flag Day 5K Road Race. Videos were also posted for these races.

The Bobcat Bolt and Oyster River Festival will be held on May 12, 2012 this year! Marco Bitran and Joe Smith may also be running in these events. Prepped to be to be the best one yet, cash for 1st, 2nd and third in both, plus age group prizes and a kids' race at 10:30! Two races, a reunion, a memorial, a festival, live music, and a day of fun for everyone!

You've been on the treadmill or running through New England's snow and slush. All for this: the chance to do your best in this year's 10K at the Groton Road Race. Traveling over the rolling hills of picturesque Groton for close to six and a half miles, the course is as beautiful as it is challenging. Lace-up those running shoes. We'll see you out there!

Course is USATF certified and sanctioned. Timing accuracy assured with "ChronoTrack" chip technology. Route closed to traffic ensures runners' safety. Course has two water stops at the 2- and 4-mile marks. Synchronized time clocks at every mile mark. Race typically fields 500+ runners.

Sample race times are as follows:

Place Name City Bib No Age Gend Age Group Time Time Pace
1 ANDY WOMACK JAMAICA PLAIN MA 519 27 M ***** 20-29 15:50.5 15:50.5 5:04/M
2 MATTHEW CORR BOSTON MA 263 18 M ***** 13-19 16:32.0 16:32.0 5:18/M
3 STEPHEN INFASCALLI BOSTON MA 265 19 M ***** 13-19 16:35.0 16:35.0 5:19/M
4 AARON AAKER MILTON MA 464 39 M 1 30-39 16:45.2 16:45.2 5:22/M
5 NEIL FINNEGAN BOSTON MA 531 33 M 2 30-39 16:50.0 16:50.0 5:24/M
6 EVAN PARKINSON BOSTON MA 538 21 M 1 20-29 17:44.0 17:44.0 5:41/M
7 WILLIAM WIET NEWTON MA 88 24 M 2 20-29 18:06.3 18:06.3 5:48/M
8 RAY GRINER BOSTON MA 275 35 M 3 30-39 18:06.4 18:06.4 5:48/M

Marco Bitran, Joe Wiet, Parkinson

9 Unknown PARTIC. 518 518 29 M 3 20-29 18:11.3 18:11.3 5:50/M
10 TARA WOMMACK JAMAICA PLAIN MA 228 28 F ***** 20-29 18:25.3 18:25.3 5:54/M


Complete stories can be found at the following sites:

http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/marco-bitran/non-profits/sbwire-138797.htm

http://www.recentglobalnews.com/free-advice-can-be-better-than-cash-for-many-nonprofits/368/

http://www.coolrunning.com/results/11/ma/Jun19_Brookl_set2.shtml

http://vimeo.com/marcobitran

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

NonProfit gets planning aid as Marco Bitran and Chuck Eisenberg were accountable for reviewing the organizations effectiveness and plans for housing acquisition and expansion.

Brookline, MA -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/25/2012 -- When Mark Alston-Follansbee, executive director with the Somerville Homeless Coalition in Somerville, Massachusetts, needed advice on how to make the nonprofit much more cost-effective, he may perhaps have considered attending business school. But he didn't need to. Harvard Business University came to him in the form of alumni who've helped him create a whole new strategic approach and refocus his endeavours for much better effect.

Marco Bitran and Chuck Eisenberg were accountable for reviewing the agencies effectiveness and plans for housing acquisition and development.

The alumni came courtesy from the Community Action Partners (CAP) program organized through the HBS Association of Boston. Through CAP, alumni work in teams of 4 to six through several months to give Boston-area nonprofits with organizational growth, promotion, financial planning, and general management consulting services — all free of charge.

"The 5 CAP volunteers assessed our agency carefully and gave me the type of feedback I hadn't acquired before," says Alston-Follansbee. "They helped us understand that what we do best is offer services once clients move into permanent housing, so we've shifted our concentration."

The CAP technique was established by the Boston HBS association in 1993 and has since served more than 150 nonprofits with a variety of missions, such as the environment, education and learning, housing, health care, along with the arts, says CAP cochair Barry Horwitz (MBA '88), an independent process and marketing and advertising consultant. In that time, nearly 550 CAP volunteers have donated nearly $7 million in consulting services. This year alone, fourteen teams of HBS alumni will donate an estimated $1.1 million in solutions.

Within the San Francisco Bay Region, the HBS Association of Northern California (HBSA/NC) has been providing free of charge consulting solutions to nonprofits since 1986. It was also the inspiration for other HBS clubs nationwide to start comparable programs. The Bay Area Community Partners program is now some of the largest nonprofit service providers in the San Francisco region, having served greater than 250 nonprofits and furnishing consulting services valueed around $1.5 million annually, says HBSA/NC president Sean Jacobsohn (MBA '98).

Nonprofits across the nation are under increasing strain to professionalize their operations and sharpen their administration expertise. That's exactly where the CAP program comes in, says Horwitz. HBS alumni in Boston are right now operating together with the Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence to develop a long-term plan and a advertising system to turn the grassroots business right into a international force for change in the Asian community. They're also supporting the Lena Park Community Development Corporation, which provides housing and human services for inner-city residents, to create a business plan for its new initiative to establish a multiservice residential community. And they are offering support on financial planning, advertising, and benchmarking to an art museum, a local YMCA, and a philanthropic agency.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Volunteers in this program were Marco Bitran (MBA ’03), Chuck Eisenberg (MBA ’78), Arjuna Costa (MBA ’01), John Flanagan (AMP 96, 1985), Tom White (MBA ’69), Mark Alston-Follansbee, and Charles Cassidy (MBA ’83).

Brookline, MA -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/24/2012 -- When Mark Alston-Follansbee, executive director of the Somerville Homeless Coalition in Somerville, Massachusetts, needed advice on how to make the nonprofit more cost-effective, he might have considered attending business school. But he didn't have to. Harvard Business School came to him in the form of alumni who have helped him develop a new strategic plan and refocus his efforts for greater impact.

Marco Bitran and Chuck Eisenberg were responsible for reviewing the agencies effectiveness and plans for housing acquisition and development.

The alumni came courtesy of the Community Action Partners (CAP) program organized by the HBS Association of Boston. Through CAP, alumni work in teams of four to six over several months to provide Boston-area nonprofits with organizational development, marketing, financial planning, and general management consulting services — all free of charge.

"The five CAP volunteers assessed our agency carefully and gave me the kind of information I hadn't had before," says Alston-Follansbee. "They helped us realize that what we do best is provide services once clients move into permanent housing, so we've shifted our focus."

The CAP program was established by the Boston HBS association in 1993 and has since served more than 150 nonprofits with a variety of missions, including the environment, education, housing, health care, and the arts, says CAP cochair Barry Horwitz (MBA '88), an independent strategy and marketing consultant. In that time, approximately 550 CAP volunteers have donated nearly $7 million in consulting services. This year alone, fourteen teams of HBS alumni will donate an estimated $1.1 million in services.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the HBS Association of Northern California (HBSA/NC) has been providing free consulting services to nonprofits since 1986. It was also the inspiration for other HBS clubs nationwide to start similar programs. The Bay Area Community Partners program is now one of the largest nonprofit service providers in the San Francisco area, having served more than 250 nonprofits and providing consulting services worth approximately $1.5 million annually, says HBSA/NC president Sean Jacobsohn (MBA '98).

Nonprofits across the country are under increasing pressure to professionalize their operations and sharpen their management skills. That's where the CAP program comes in, says Horwitz. HBS alumni in Boston are currently working with the Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence to develop a long-term plan and a marketing strategy to turn the grassroots organization into a global force for change in the Asian community. They're also helping the Lena Park Community Development Corporation, which provides housing and human services for inner-city residents, to create a business plan for its new initiative to build a multiservice residential community. And they are providing guidance on financial planning, marketing, and benchmarking to an art museum, a local YMCA, and a philanthropic organization.

Further news and credits: http://www.alumni.hbs.edu/bulletin/2005/june/network_clubs.html" href="http://www.alumni.hbs.edu/bulletin/2005/june/network_clubs.html">Further news and credits: http://www.alumni.hbs.edu/bulletin/2005/june/network_clubs.html>

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm