IBM proudly supports the next generation of Technology Professionals
Grand Central Tech (GCT) had their inaugural Innovation Night following their new successful 6 weeks internship program. The innovative program is meant to facilitate technology education by offering high school and college students real work experience at real startups. The startups were from GCT's second year class, which has already raised 7 million USD in venture funding. NYC currently has 300,000 technology positions and in the next 5 years, it is estimated the US will have 1 million open tech jobs, so training the next generation of technology professionals will be critical to continued growth. With these dynamics in mind, Eddie Cullen (previously at Fordham University's accelerator), set out to design the GCT internship program.
On Innovation night, the Goldman Sachs auditorium was packed with interns, startups, and proud family. Interns were matched up with GCT startups based on skills and interests. The intern's backgrounds ranged from high school students with interests in technology, to college computer science majors. Students created projects that spanned from non-profit shoe donations, IoT data stream (IOBeam), payment platforms (Arthur) to 3D printing projects (Source3). However, the real outcome of these 19 startups and 33 students were the indelible memories and valuable real life work experience.
Words like creativity, perseverance, innovation, and great code were used to describe the outcomes of the program. Nurturing the next generation of tech entrepreneurs benefits NYC, the economy and creates better lives for all. Most of the students started the program with fledgling technical skills. However at the event most interns prided themselves to have learned HTML, CSS and JavaScript, creating web forms and simple mobile applications. A few students even went above and beyond, chasing leads and customer, successfully demonstrating mastery of advanced tech skills, and thriving in the fast paced reality of a genuine startup.
IBM is a corporate sponsor of GCT. IBM Cloud Ecosystem Development makes available business and technical support to GCT startups and offers Bluemix for cloud apps and services. IBM is also part of Digital.NYC initiative, a unique public/private partnership between the office of Mayor Bill de Blasio, the New York City Economic Development Corporation, Gust, and over a dozen leading NYC-based technology and media companies..
TieCon Explodes for IBM Cloud!
I love attending the TieCon conferece every year. It is the world's largest Enterpreneur Conference with over 4300 attendees, 35% women, and this year 20% women speakers.
The TieCon 50 are the top 50 Entrepreneurs who this year each received up to $120K of the IBM Cloud! The results for these chosen few are amazing .. with over the past years over 114 successful exits!
They focused on 8 tracks:
- Internet of Things
- Data Economy
- Cloud & Security
- Healthcare
- Entrepreneurship
- Oil and Gas
- Online Education
- Youth
I wanted to share many of the great moments from our Global Entrepreneurs!
Kick Sim:
GT Systems - a TieCon Power 50 Entrepreneur!
Airosense:
And the interest in the IBM Cloud was a long long line! Thanks to all the entrepreneurs for your interest! We will do our best to help you be successful!
For Developers - The Wimbledon Experience!
We are calling all Developers to get under the covers at Wimbledon 2014 and help take the experience to the next level.
Background:
The Wimbledon website, with 19.7 million unique users last year, is being enhanced with more mobile functions where users are able to create a personalized feeds with news from their choice of players, countries and categories of match, from data updated up to 140,000 times a day.
A new addition this year is "Hill vs World" which will be polling the results questions asked of fans sitting on Henman Hill via the giant screen, and pitting them against those of the television and internet audience responding via social media.
An IBM Softlayer based analytics console known as Wimbledon Social Command Centre will allow the social media team to view engagement from users in real time and tailor content according to reaction. This could take the form of everything from a conversation about strawberries in the rain to which photo of Andy Murray is causing the most stir!!!
48 tennis analysts are stationed around the site to manually capture data from the courts and feed it into the IBM cloud, which then crunches it into the statistics and graphics for the TV coverage and the second screen Slamtracker service
IBM has uploaded years of analytics gathered from previous championships to its private cloud. The cloud server is scalable and will be ramped up during the fortnight to cope with demand. IBM's Watson will be flexing its elastic data muscles to ensure that data supply and demand are always met, constantly analyzing information to ensure that pertinent data is at the front of the cloud's 'mind'
Now it is your turn!
And the innovation doesn't stop there! – What would you do to make the Wimbledon experience even better?
Now it’s your chance to create a prototype app which uses, creates, consumes, or analyses data in and around The Championships to enhance the fans’ experience on-site. Your code will create, consume, or analyze data in and around The Championships (either previously generated or real-time) to enhance the fans’ experience on-site.
You can also contribute your own data if you like. Don’t have any? That’s okay. There's some on the website to download
We will have prizes for the Best mobile app and Best Data Insights.
To take part, upload your app to BlueMix and send us a 2-4 minute video demonstrating your solution's use of IBM technology and include a 500 word max abstract.
We are starting this to run from October 24 - November 6.
The best apps will be invited to pitch in front of a live audience at IBM BusinessConnect from which we will pick our category winners, and the overall winner
- Prizes - Two show court tickets for The Wimbledon Championship 2015 and the opportunity to work with IBM Interactive Experience team in the UK, to explore how your solution might be incorporated into the official Wimbledon mobile app for the 2015 Championships.
http://www.ibm.com/uk/wimbledon_innovation_challenge/
Upcoming Cloud Webcasts!
I want you to be aware of some great opportunities on Codename: BlueMix and SoftLayer coming up in a matter of days. There are two webcasts you can attend to learn about our new and exciting cloud-based solutions!
BlueMix is fantastic for building, managing and running apps and services of all types (web, mobile, big data, new smart devices). The May 15th webcast will benefit developers and Business Partners alike on hearing how BlueMix offers a low-risk, secure, cost sensitive environment—using new capabilities and technologies geared towards the cloud.
Here's a brand new video to help you get up to speed on the power and potential of what BlueMix has done for others and what it can do for you!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbXN2mz90b0&w=560&h=315]
SoftLayer provides a robust, scalable and secure platform for born-on-the-cloud applications. The May 22nd webcast will provide an introduction to SoftLayer and cover the business strategy for Business Partners, the value proposition, and the subscription model.
Be sure to take advantage of this opportunity to sign up for both webcasts. You don't want to miss them!
And the winner of the IBM Pulse App Throwdown is... MyMenu!
We had five fantastic finalists demonstrating some superb applications developed on the IBM cloud and security portfolio.
Standing out above some stiff competition, I am ecstatic to announce that the winner is… MyMenu. This early adopter of the IBM Bluemix beta is bringing a menu of cloud, big data and mobile to restaurants, at the same time helping to reduce ‘appathy’ induced by downloading a separate app for every restaurant we frequent.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYuGhgATvok]
I want to extend a huge congratulations to MyMenu for developing a solution that appeals to anyone who needs to eat.
I applaud all of the ecosystem partners who submitted an entry in the IBM Pulse App Throwdown and helped make this event such a spectacular success!