Colorado SmartCamp Winner Works to Bring Attorney-Client Relationship Online!

Colorado held their SmartCamp event September 10th at accelerator partner Galvanize in Boulder and finished the evening by awarding an innovative legal advice technology startup the winner!

Congratulations to Congo for creating the first online free market solution for the legal industry. Clients can schedule an appointment with an attorney in less than 60 seconds (think Zocdoc for attorneys ).

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How does Congo work? With three simple steps Congo takes away the pain of searching for a lawyer by streamlining the search process, delivering the information and credibility needed to make an informed decision. Attorneys are licensed, vetted and have no history of malpractice. When I say simple, I mean simple.

Step 1. go to www.congo.io  - find an attorney for DUI, Criminal Law, or Business Law

Step 2. Book an appointment

Step 3. Connect by phone or video

Congo was originally a school project that started in a CU-Boulder Entrepreneurial class in the Spring semester of 2013. . Their long-term vision is to bring the entire attorney-client relationship online.

Congo leverages IBM Softlayer in their solution and is learning more about how Bluemix can benefit their mission.

Congratulations again to Congo. Follow their story on Twitter at congo_io.

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.

 


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!

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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.

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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.

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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.


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.

GCT for Sandys blog

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..

 


The Truth Behind Millennials!

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Are you the next CitiMobile Challenge Champion? Registration is open now!

Can you help to transform banking as we know it?  The answer is YES and here's how...

IBM is proud to be a strategic sponsor of the Citi® Mobile Challenge - a quest to find developers and designers to create new and innovative FinTech solutions with Citi's digital platforms.  After successful events in the US, Europe, Middle East and Africa, the Citi® Mobile Challenge is now starting in Asia Pacific and is hosting Demo Days in Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangalore and Sydney - and registration is open now!

Using Bluemix, you can apply your skills to develop, design and impress in two categories:
Consumer solutions:  create innovations which give consumers personalized, intuitive products and services that transform how they think about banking.
Business solutions:  develop new financial technology tools and services to meet the needs of small businesses, large corporations, institutions, organizations or governments.

Developers using Bluemix will be ahead of the game with a platform as a service (PaaS) that gives them simplicity, speed, agility and critical tools - all without the overhead of setting up the underlying architecture.  And, as strategic sponsor, IBM is there each step of the way, giving Challenge participants a wide spectrum of face-to-face and virtual product education, consulting and coding assistance by top experts - throughout the competition.

Finalists will compete for an opportunity to take their technologies into production with Citi’s support, plus a share of USD $100,000 in cash awards and a suite of services from Citi Mobile Challenge sponsors.  Selected participants will showcase their concepts at live Demo Day events.

So, be a part of the banking transformation!  Go to http://www.citimobilechallenge.com/ to register for the Citi Mobile Challenge (registration closes September 2, 2015).  Rally your team and get everyone registered to use Bluemix here:  https://ibm.biz/IBMCMCAP15
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Introducing IBM Cloud Developer Certification in India!

What do you get when you take a skilled cloud developer, an open by design cloud architecture, and IBM professional certification? You get the new Cloud Application Developer Certification program!   http://www-03.ibm.com/certify/certs/50001601.shtml

Today, I'm announcing the launch of a very special new program which offers significant benefits to both developers and business. We are creating campaigns customized around the geographic needs and opportunities of developers, starting in India, to accelerate the adoption of the certification program. Stay tuned as we progress delivery and enablement worldwide in October.

Through this new program, all developers will be able to showcase their expertise by designing, developing and deploying secure applications using open technologies, to the IBM Cloud. For systems integrators, the program allows them to convey their differentiation to customers in creating open Cloud solutions. Business, too, will realize the benefits of this program as it will help to quickly identify developers who have proven that they have the skills to deliver scalable, secure and open Cloud solutions. As IBM's Cloud integration platform, Bluemix competencies will play a central role in the certification content.

So, if you're interested in

  • Planning and implementing secure, cloud-ready apps
  • Enhancing your cloud apps with managed services
  • Using devOps services and tools to manage apps

...then, come get certified using the Cloud Application Developer Certification program to showcase what you can do!

Interested? Learn more, today!    http://www-03.ibm.com/certify/tests/objC5020-285.shtml