The STE²M Economy
All aboard!
Today was a STE²M day. What's that? Females in Science, Technology, Entrepreneurship, Engineering, and Math.
I spent most of the day with Women helping other Women and Girls as well as with Dads of Daughters discussing strategies for girls to learn programming, challenges for female founders in Europe, and Enterprises looking for more great Channel Talent.
And it hit me. This is a new economy. (Take this survey to help us change the world around this! CLICK HERE!
The STE²M economy.
Did you know that studies in Africa show that children of mothers who have spent five years in primary education are 40% more likely to live beyond the age of five? And that if Egyptian women were employed at the same rate as men that country’s GDP would climb by 34%?
How do we grow this new Economy? STE²M (science, technology, entrepreneurship, engineering, and math) fields play a direct role in driving economic growth. Women in STEM jobs earn 33% more than those in non-STEM occupations and experience a smaller wage gap relative to men. And STEM careers offer women the opportunity to engage in some of the most exciting realms of discovery and technological innovation. Increasing opportunities for women in these fields is an important step towards realizing greater economic success and equality for women across the board.
We grow this one woman at a time.
the Change Makers
- Chics Connect has seen phenomenal growth and has taken some amazing initiatives for connecting women,who help each other to achieve their dreams,ambitions,missions as well as assist in everyday challenges life throws at a Neo-Age Women of today. Chics Connect is now present in Dubai, Jamaica, California, India and Denmark and is launching in Toronto, Turkey, Denmark and Australia soon. They have 4,800 members across the world!
Their fearless leader helping to create this new economy is Hurratul Maleka Taj - who is passionate and at 25, has already started 2 companies! I loved chatting with her today about her plans! Watch out world!
SonderConnect's goal is to support women entrepreneurs. Since their launch in April 2016, they have focused on mentoring and supporting their founders. The first batch of 13 founders have been mentored consistently over the period of six months. The founders are encouraged to approach SonderConnect even after their graduation from our mentoring program. Over the next few years their goal is to become the ultimate women entrepreneurs support and mentoring group. India being the oasis of startups, we believe there is immense potential for women lead organizations.
Their fearless leader is Lathika Pai, who is a serial entrepreneur and has over 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship. Her team consists of: Vaishali Kasture, Sejal Shah Gulati, and Anju Shenoy -- all amazing leaders and change makers. I have dinner with them each and every time I head to India!
Girls in Tech is focused on the engagement, education and empowerment of girls and women who are passionate about technology. Adriana Gascoigne founded GIT in 2007 to create a support framework to help women advance their careers in STEM fields. GIT has more than 50K members around the world!
Today, GIT aims to accelerate the growth of innovative women entering into the high-tech industry and building startups. They achieve this through the creation of proprietary, innovative programming and strategic global partnerships.
Today, I met with the new head of GIT Berlin, the fearless Nakeema Stefflbauer. She is founder of her startup helping everyone learn how to code, understand architecture, and more.
She is passionate about changing the game in Europe - especially the hub of entrepreneurship Berlin!
Women of the Channel - Bob Demarzo - Yes, men are supporting this new economy too!
The Women of the Channel connects women in telcom and IT Channels for the purpose of collaborating to grow their businesses, and to support each other with best practices and mentoring. Bob has his right hand leader -- Allison Hughes -- running the event, but Bob is actively engaged and very supportive.
Our discussion today was around how to help startups in the channel / sales aspects and to ensure that female founders and VCs are well represented!
Artificial Intelligence Colleges
OK.
I admit it. I am in love with Artificial Intelligence (aka AI).
As an undergraduate at Duke University, I took classes in it even though it is so far away from where AI is today!
So I played with an AI company - Graphiq - to find top AI colleges.
Below are the results!
Very intriguing!
The Global Entrepreneur Program from IBM Rocks!
Find out more about our Global Entrepreneur Program while attending InterConnect 2016!
https://developer.ibm.com/startups/
@Sandy_Carter
Wow! Check out these Entrepreneurs Changing the World around the Globe!
This week we wrapped up our local SmartCamp events in some major cities and did we see some talent on the stage pitching! Here’s this week’s round up of innovators.
Congratulations to these great startups for advancing to the next stage of IBM SmartCamp 2015. Stay tuned next week for our final IBM SmartCamp blog post. Thanks to everyone who participated thus far!
Auckland: Eight Wire Limited
Eight Wire's Conductor is a data integration product that is designed to fix the problems that often derail integration projects. https://www.eight-wire.com/
Austin: The Car Force
The care force connects with 162 million highly sophisticated vehicle computers on the road to the internet and enable franchise dealerships to see service opportunities in real time. www.thecarforce.com
Boston: Feelter
Feelter offers a revolutionary approach to social content harvesting, curation and monetization which can either replace or complement the solutions in the marketplace. www.feelter.com
Berlin: Panatomy and Tripdelta
Panatomy is a breakthrough visual support software for medical imaging specialists, providing the first interactive image-based diagnostic reference system for radiology. www.panatomy.com
Tripdelta is a smart flight search that finds routes and alternative flight options that other flight searches do not find and provides route suggestions. www.tripdelta.com
Cairo: Vidmy and SocialBlink
Vidmy uses Softlayer to manage a site that allows you to choose videos from around the Internet to build a custom video website and make money from Advertisements. http://www.vidmy.com/
SocialBlink analyzes information and sentiments in Arabic and English on social media channels including: Facebook, Twitter & YouTube. http://www.social-blink.com/
Melbourne: Localz
Localz enables enterprises to use the latest in location technology to enhance customer’s in-store experience, improve asset and inventory tracking and provide frictionless mobile payments, at scale. www.localz.com
Milan: Horus Technology
Horus is a wearable personal assistant for blind and visually impaired people. Worn on the user’s head, it observes the scene through a vision system and describes it to the user through a bone conduction device. It can read texts, recognize people and objects and detect obstacles and road signs. http://horus.tech/it/
Montevideo: Bquate and Tizkka
Bquate created a talent platform for the music and video industries in South America. Their dashboard allows industry professionals to make educated talent decisions based on transparency and real data. www.bquate.com
TiZKKA is the first fashion app that connects users with their favorite fashion bloggers to purchase the same products worn by the fashion bloggers seamlessly in an app. http://www.tizkka.com/
Raleigh: Plum Print and Akilis Software
Plum Print takes artwork that children create, transforms them into digital archives and prints elegant custom coffee-table books and keepsakes. www.plumprint.com
Akili Software's Savii Care is a workflow management platform that streamlines agency tasks and allows end-users to complete those tasks in a fraction of the time.
Silicon Valley: Kukun
Kukun is a SaaS driven marketplace for home renovation that brings together home owners, buyers and sellers. www.mykukun.com
San Francisco SmartCamp Winner Revolutionizes Farming!
I loved seeing the San Francisco Smart Camp live! First I got to see Jason and then I got to see amazing solutions on style, live streaming, farmers, and more!
For farmers, understanding farm conditions can be quite cumbersome, that's why we're excited about San Francsico's SmartCamp winner FarmHub who has just made it that much easier!
In the city of tech, winning this stage of SmartCamps is no small feat, congratulations to FarmHub for their innovative solution that makes monitoring agricultural fields easy and efficient.
How does it work? With FarmHub's weather stations and web solutions, you can connect dozens of field sensors to the cloud without the hassles of cumbersome technology. Gaining remote access to real-time conditions across the farm is as simple as turning it on.
FarmHub measures conditions like: air temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind speed and direction, rainfall, solar radition and UV Index, visible light intensity and soil moisture. The hardware even provides camera snapshots of crop fields.
Let's hear from the founder.
"The IBM mentorship was really top notch. Very seasoned investors who listened and looked at what we had done. The review team cut to the chase with very targeted, constructive criticism that we are immediately taking action on at FarmHub. We are excited to go to the next stage and continue to gain benefit from the IBM Smart Camp program." Louis Thiery
Congratulations again to FarmHub. Follow their story on Twitter at @farm_hub.
For a complete look at application deadlines and public SmartCamp events, click here: http://www.smartcamp2015.com/cities/. Stay tuned for more SmartCamp stories in your city.
Announcing Tech.London - a Digital Ecosystem for London built on IBM Bluemix!
Today I am proud to announce the partnership of IBM with the Mayor of London and Gust, on a new digital platform for the ecosystem called TECH.LONDON !!!!
TECH.LONDON is THE digital place for London startups, investors, influencers, and developers to collaborate on innovation and disruption. tech.london
In one place it has:
- All London Startups, VCs
- News
- Events
- Meetups
- Courses
- Jobs
- Funding
- Open spaces
And more
It’s more than just a portal - it’s a digital community creating a World Class ecosystem that will enable the collaboration and innovation necessary for reinvention of today’s world.
There are 3 reasons why IBM has invested in this London Ecosystem NOW.
First, London is a city of Developers – the new King Makers.
There are over 18M developers worldwide --- and a large cluster of them are right here in London. This developer Skill is the key to the kingdom.
Second London is a start up magnet.
- With the “startup explosion” of over 140K startups globally, London is in the Startup epicenter and was recently ranked one of the top cities in the WORLD where entrepreneurs want to meet up and #1 in Europe. Did you know 34K digital and tech companies reside in London/
And third, London startups are global – they internationalize at a much faster rate than those around the world. Over 1B pounds of investment goes into London Start-ups!
Tech.London is an essential resource to help connect and continue the strong growth of the London tech scene.
IBM’s investment in Tech.London is twofold:
First, with technology. Tech.London is powered by IBM Cloud – our Bluemix platform that is the fastest growing developer platform in the world.
IBM’s sponsorship of Tech.London goes beyond being built on IBM Bluemix.
Tech.London is powered by the People and so IBM is ensuring the local IBM teams, who just rated IBM as one of their favorite employer in Europe, help to create this community.
- With IBMers from South Bank to Level 39 and beyond, we are sharing our best employees to work Shoulder to Shoulder with the London Ecosystem. Knowhow, Kingdon, Monitise, and Push Technology are examples of IBM’s partnership locally.
Examples include:
- Hackathons – like the one just last week at Wimbledon where we had teams deliver amazing Innovative solutions around Fan Experience.
- Academics - like the partnerships at the Imperial College of London – where we are helping students use Cloud, IOT, and their imaginations to power a balloon to 30 kilometers to read information to have weather become Smarter.
- Meetups with the Future of London in diversity. Diverse workteams drive innovation – so we are hosting meetups and events around Coding to help more women and girls select tech as a viable career choice.
- Resources – like IBM’s Global Entrepreneur Program that allows new companies to use up to 77K pounds free use of the IBM Cloud but more importantly Free Technical Support and GTM help.
Each of these types of activities will now be easily found by the local community by Tech.London to disrupt the WORLD!
This exciting public/private partnership between IBM, the Mayor of London, Gust and a wide range of local partners puts this powerful digital platform into the hands of the London community for the London community.
Tech.London will be a great value to innovation and disruption creating a launchpad for continued growth here in the capital.
TECH.LONDON – check it out! tech.london