VALDOSTA — The state of the economy is forcing more and more people to look outside the box for extra income. Dreams of inventing a gadget or a process that catches on with the public, earning the dreamer big bucks, flourish in hard economic times.

The Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce has partnered with the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Enterprise Innovation Institute to help people turn their dreams into profitable realities by presenting a series of inventors workshops.

The workshops feature tips and advice from experienced inventors and entrepreneurs on how to develop, patent and market ideas and inventions and how to avoid some common pitfalls. They focus on five areas: licensing, financing, marketing, prototyping, and manufacturing.

One of the inventors speaking at Wednesday’s workshop at the LaQuinta Inn & Suites on Clubhouse Drive was John Darden. Like many inventors, Darden’s experience made him aware of certain deficiencies in an existing technology, and he became engrossed in the process of finding a solution. Darden worked in a farm equipment dealership. His experience using a mower blade that didn’t work the way he wanted it to led him to develop, through frustrating trial and error, his own mower.

Darden and his wife eventually turned his invention into a profitable, international business.

Darden advised people hire an patent attorney as opposed to patenting an invention by themselves because of the amount of red tape involved.

He also recommended inventors utilize any agencies that may be able to help develop and promote an invention. He said he received invaluable assistance from the Georgia Department of Economic Development, among others, and was given a government grant of $100,000 to develop his patent.

Darden’s invention came to him in a dream. He said he was frustrated from struggling with the solution to his mower problem and on the verge of giving up when “the Lord just grabbed and shook me and gave me the idea in detail.” As so often happens with inventions, his idea snowballed into several spinoff inventions, including a device to rejuvenate chicken litter.

Cecil Holt’s money-making invention also came to him in a dream. Holt said he’s had a number of dreams over the years that have come true, what he calls “Friday and Saturday night dreams.” His Nut Wizard was one of those dreams. It’s a nut harvesting tool designed to make gathering nuts efficient and easy, as well as saving backs in the process. It took a lot of work and ingenuity before the Nut Wizard was ready to put in the hands of consumers. In fact, he said he had to invent the machines used to manufacture the device.

The Nut Wizard has since led to other inventions that can be used to pick up anything from bullets to baseballs. When Holt asked his patent attorney who he should get to build the device for him, he said his attorney responded, “You should because no one knows as much about it as you do.”

Holt also invented a device to help take off and put on socks more easily.

“I’m the kind of guy that just doesn’t give up, and I think that’s the key to being successful,” he said.

Jay Mullis’s invention of a superior roach bait, called Green Dragon Roach Kill, didn’t arrive in a dream, unless it was his grandfather who dreamed it.

Mullis said his grandfather developed the roach bait and the recipe was fairly successful, but he was fiercely independent and wouldn’t take the steps necessary to bring it to the mass market. When Mullis received an assignment at the University of Georgia to come up with an invention, he decided to pick up where his grandfather left off.

Mullis was the youngest of Wednesday’s speakers and said his business hasn’t turned the corner yet, but his hard work is starting to pay off. He recommended inventors not try to find someone else to take their idea and bring it to production.

“The people who succeed are the ones who take their ideas and drive them forward instead of getting others to do it because others don’t have the same passion for it,” he said.

Jason Chernock, workshop facilitator, explained that, in 2007, Georgia Tech launched the first statewide comprehensive survey of independent inventors through a pilot program sponsored by the U.S. Economic Development Administration. More than 300 inventors responded to the survey, and Georgia Tech researchers have used that feedback to create these workshops.

The workshops are sponsored by the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) to provide education, increase the awareness of available resources, and demonstrate the importance of inventors to the overall economic growth of Georgia, Chernok said. In addition to the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce, Georgia Tech’s partners have included the Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce, the Technology Association of Georgia, the Creative Coast Alliance, the Columbus Regional Technology Incubator and the Inventors Association of Georgia.

Anyone interested in learning more is asked to contact Tara Nichols at the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce at (229) 247-8100 or at tnichols@valdostachamber.com.