Overheard

Springfield business veteran Todd Parnell can add one more item to his plate. Parnell, interim president at Drury University and executive director of Drury’s newly created Edward Jones Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, has been appointed to the Missouri Clean Water Commission. Gov. Matt Blunt was in Springfield July 23 to announce Parnell’s appointment, which is subject to Senate confirmation. His term would end April 12, 2008. The commission works to conserve state water resources and protect the quality of public water supplies. Parnell has a hand in a number of environmentally focused organizations, including the Wonders of Wildlife board, Upper White River Basin Foundation, James River Basin Partnership and The Nature Conservancy of Missouri. He also is chairman of the Community Foundation of the Ozarks. Parnell was a founding investor in Springfield-based The Bank, and until 2005, he served as president and chief operating officer after the bank merged with Signature Bank to form The Signature Bank.

Ooh La La Mama

Nixa-based marketing company MarketTech is saying “ooh la la” after receiving an e-commerce fulfillment/distribution contract for a California-based infant clothing company. Ooh La La Mama offers 40 designs and is expanding into toddler lines. MarketTech is responsible for distribution and inventory control of the clothier’s online and retail store orders. MarketTech owner Mary Stevens says the company is negotiating with her other e-commerce companies. Six-year-old MarketTech already works with Reckitt Benckiser, Carnival Cruise Lines and Cobalt Boats/Yachts.

$200M to Spend

During a July 20 legislative briefing to the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce Governmental Relations Committee, state Reps. Sara Lampe, D-Springfield, and Margaret Donnelly, D-St. Louis, shared that the state has about $200 million in excess revenue. If Lampe had her way, education would receive part of the surplus. Education funding is her top priority going into the fall session. Donnelly, who’s running for attorney general, argues that health care needs the cash, particularly to restore cuts made to the Medicaid program in 2005.

Eye on PhotoStore

Five Missouri State University students have taken a class project to a federal level. The students, led by associate professor Ken Vollmar, created a software program for digital media storage that has been released for field use to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Science. The software, called PhotoStore, was created as part of a service-learning component of an introduction to software engineering class. PhotoStore was nationally certified in June. The organizational software allows users to add or delete images, provide file names and descriptions for each image, and conduct searches through thumbnail images.