Archive for May, 2010
ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Fenella Saunders
Monday, May 31, 2010, 3:21 pm No Comments | Post a CommentContinuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years’ interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked Fenella Saunders from The American Scientist to answer a few questions:
Serious Gaming at Sigma Xi
Sunday, May 30, 2010, 10:33 pm No Comments | Post a CommentLast week I went to this season’s last American Scientist pizza lunch at Sigma Xi featuring Phaedra Boinodiris (Twitter, blog), Serious Games Product Manager at IBM.
I first saw Phaedra Boinodiris speak as the opening speaker at TEDxRTP (my review) back in March, but this was a different kind of talk, geared more towards scientists and science communicators.
I remember playing Pong when it first came out. I remember spending many hours back in 1980 or so playing The Hobbit on Sinclair ZX Spectrum. And I played many games at arcades (still not knowing which games started out as arcade games adapted to computers and which the other way round). Then I quit playing games for a couple of decades until my kids were ready for them. I loved Zoombinis - an amazing game of logic and a brilliant preparation for taking IQ tests! I loved Richard Scarry’s Busytown - the one and only game I know about infrastructure, where players build stuff and deliver it to others for the good of the town - from baking bread to paving roads - learning along the way how those things are done.
And sure, Phaedra Boinodiris started with a slide depicting Pong (to the chuckle of the audience) but soon got into the real stuff - the serious gaming and the story of how she got involved in developing such games, as well as about studies of gaming and how different kinds of games help develop different real-work skills, from eye-hand coordination to leadership to cooperation. Her first game - INNOV8 - was developed as a prototype, a proof of concept, in only three months and instantly became a huge hit. It is used by businesses and business schools around the world to teach Business Process Management. It is essentially a first person shooter game (without guns) in which the player is brought as an outside consultant into a company where s/he has to figure out the flow, the bottlenecks, etc. (including by interviewing employees, as well as data-sheets) and experiment in making it more efficient. The 2.0 version came soon after, adding such problems as traffic, customer service and supply chains.
The next game, recently announced and coming out in October 2010, will be a Sim-City-like serious game CityOne, designed to help city planners, town councils, citizens, and engineers plan better, more efficient infrastructure for their cities. Put in your city’s specs and start building new infrastructure, see how much it will cost, see what problems will arise, see what solutions are available - probably something you could not have thought of yourself and may be surprised.
As I am currently reading ‘On The Grid’ it occured to me that the developers of CityOne should read that book, and that Scott Huler should be given a test-run of the game, perhaps for him to review for Charlotte Observer and Raleigh News&Observer and the local NPR station. And for Science In The Triangle, of course.
RTP Week Ahead, May 31 - June 4
Friday, May 28, 2010, 11:19 am No Comments | Post a Comment
- IASP dancing
Monday, May 31
LaunchBox Digital’s Business Accelerator Program – Early Application Deadline
LaunchBox10 is a global competition, where successful applicants receive funding and guidance to take their big ideas from concept to market.
Learn more here.
Memorial Day
Happy Holidays!
Tuesday, June 1
Webinar: How to Grow your own Social Media Ecosystem
11:00am - 12pm EST
Online
Social media ecosystems are a staple of the internet. Attend this webinar to learn the core principles of social media ecosystems, identify their unique attributes, and how to grow a social media ecosystem of your own.
Sign up here.
FREE CED Member-Only Networking Reception
5:30 - 7pm
Hotel Indigo, 151 Tatum Drive, Durham, NC 27703
Put your membership to use, join CED for a FREE, casual networking reception at Hotel Indigo.
RSVP here.
Wednesday, June 2
12th Annual NIH SBIR/STTR Conference
All day, Wed. 6/2 - Thurs. 6/3
Raleigh Convention Center
Attendees will learn the ins and outs of the NIH SBIR/STTR program, the funding opportunities available to small business researchers, and how the NIH SBIR/STTR program can be a valuable resource to help you start and/or grow your company.
Register now here.
Seminar: Credit for the Entrepreneur
11:30am - 1:30pm
Wake Tech Western Campus, 3434 Kildaire Farm Road, Cary, NC 27518
Seminar will address why personal credit history is important when starting or building a small business. How to improve credit and chances for obtaining funding or financing for a small business. Presenter: Alyssa Mako, Assistant Director of NCIMED Women’s Business Center.
Find out more here.
Carrboro Creative Coworking: West End Ruby Meetup
6:30 - 8:30pm
Carrboro Creative Coworking 205 Lloyd St Suite 101 Carrboro, NC 27510
Thursday, June 3
SaaS User Group Spring Roadshow: Raleigh
11:00am - 1:30pm
Raleigh Marriott City Center
SaaS stands for Software as a Service. The events will feature internationally recognized industry expert David Linthicum as keynote speaker. Linthicum is the author and co-author of 13 books on computing, including the best selling “Enterprise Application Integration,” and his latest book “Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence.”
To register, click this link.
Durham Critical Mass Bike Ride
5:35 - 7:05pm
Ride Starts at the Bronze Bull Downtown Plaza, Durham
A monthly ride which calls attention to the rights of cyclist to the roads as a vital form of transportation.
Summer Stock Social Media Mixer by NC FoodBank
6:00 - 8:30pm
Food Bank of Central & Eastern NC, Raleigh Branch: 3808 Tarheel Drive, Raleigh, NC 27609
More info here.
Friday, June 4
RTP CFO Forum: Alternative Funding Sources: Looking Beyond Traditional Bank Loans and Venture Capital
7:30 - 9:00am
Hughes Pittman & Gupton Office, 1500 Sunday Drive, Suite 300, Raleigh
The RTP CFO Forum serves the greater Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill region, supporting over 200 senior financial executives. The Forum is designed to provide interactive networking and discussion of technical and strategic topics in an environment created exclusively for senior-level peers.
Invitation event. Find out more.
CED’s Leadership Series
8:00 - 10:00am
CED’s Entrepreneurship Center, 100 Capitola Drive, Ste. 106, Durham, NC 27713
CED’s Leadership Series is a quarterly breakfast series for C-level executives in companies beyond the pure start-up stage. Attendance will be limited to the first 60 registrants.
$75 CED members. $100 others. Register.
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To view a complete calendar of RTP community events, please visit the Science in the Triangle calendar.
Scott Huler - ‘On The Grid’ at Quail Ridge Books
Thursday, May 27, 2010, 4:16 pm 4 Comments | Post a Comment
As I alerted you before, last night Scott Huler (blog, Twitter, SIT interview) did a reading from his latest book On The Grid (amazon.com) at the Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh.
The store was packed. The store sold out all the books before Scott was even done talking. The C-Span Book TV crew was there filming so the event will be on TV some day soon. Scott was also, earlier yesterday, on WUNC’s The State Of Things (the podcast will soon be online here) and the day before that he was on KERA’s Think with Krys Boyd (download MP3 podcast by clicking here).
Scott’s energy and enthusiasm are infectuos. He held the audience captive and often laughing. The questions at the end were smart and his answers perfectly on target. But most importantly, we all learned a lot last night. I think of myself as a reasonably curious and informed person, and I have visited at least a couple of infrastructure plants, but almost every anecdote and every little tidbit of information were new to me. Scott’s point - that we don’t know almost anything about infrastructure - was thus proven to me.
Google announces economic growth for North Carolina
Wednesday, May 26, 2010, 8:48 am No Comments | Post a Comment
Google announced Tuesday in a special press conference at Johnny T-Shirt in Chapel Hill that in 2009 it generated $780 million for North Carolina businesses, website publishers, and non-profits. In total, the Internet giant generated $54 billion in economic activity across the US last year alone. These figures were unveiled at a series of launch events held across the country, and Chapel Hill was lucky enough to host one. Google sees a great opportunity in partnering with companies—large and small—based in North Carolina, said representatives.
“Google is best known as a search engine, but we’re also an engine of economic growth for businesses in North Carolina,” Google Vice President for Global Agency and Industry Development Penry Price said. “Google isn’t just a California company – we’re also a North Carolina company, generating hundreds of millions of dollars of economic growth every year for local businesses and entrepreneurs.”
ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Karyn Hede
Tuesday, May 25, 2010, 3:25 pm No Comments | Post a CommentContinuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years’ interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked Karyn Hede to answer a few questions:
RTP Week Ahead, May 24-29
Friday, May 21, 2010, 2:29 pm No Comments | Post a Comment
Monday, May 24
Southern Capitol Ventures Entrepreneur’s Breakfast
8:00 - 9:15am
Southern Capitol Ventures, 21 Glenwood Avenue, Suite 105, Raleigh, NC
Want to start a company? Starting a company? Already an entrepreneur? Come join us for bagels and coffee. Meet some of your peers.
FREE! Register here.
Tuesday, May 25
Innovations in Sustainability (Tues. 5/25 - Thurs. 5/27)
8:00am - 5:00pm
Marriott City Center, 500 Fayetteville St., Downtown Raleigh, NC
The agenda includes panel discussions with practitioners and researchers from Bayer Crops Sciences, IBM, Novozymes North America, Next Right Decisions LLC, and CarbonNeutral.
Register and find more info here!
Separating the Snails from the Superstars
6:45 - 8:45pm
Wake Tech Northern Campus, 6600 Louisburg Rd, Bldg.D-Rm 310, Raleigh
Learn to recruit and hire the best for your small business. Class will cover 4-step hiring process, interviewing techniques, reference checking, salary negotiation and closing the deal.
Find out more here.
Wednesday, May 26
The State of Technology: Transforming the Way We Live, Work & Play
7:30am - 4:00pm
Sheraton Imperial Hotel, 4700 Emperor Blvd, Durham, NC
The State of Technology Conference will explore how innovation is impacting industries by improving processes and increasing efficiency, changing the way we do business.
Register online here.
Breakfast Science Cafe: Urban Evolution - Response to Human Disturbance
8:30 - 10:00am
Museum of Natural Sciences - 4th floor, Acro Cafe, 11 West Jones St. Raleigh, NC 27601
Why is it that some animals do better than others with human disturbances than others? Further, is it possible that we could change the course evolution of some species? Have we already?
FREE! Find out more here.
SCONC Author Scott Huler Reads From New Book “On The Grid”
7:00 - 9:00pm
Quail Ridge Books & Music, 3522 Wade Avenue, Raleigh, NC 27607
In “On the Grid”, Scott Huler takes the time to understand the systems that sustain our way of life, starting from his own quarter of an acre in North Carolina and traveling as far as Ancient Rome. Book out now!
More info here.
Thursday, May 27
RTRP 2010 State of the Research Triangle Region
7:00 - 8:00am
Sheraton Imperial Hotel & Convention Center
You are invited to join other regional business and community leaders at the seventh annual State of the Research Triangle Region, hosted by the Research Triangle Regional Partnership (RTRP).
Find out about registering here.
TGHC Breakfast: Effective Geographically-distributed Collaboration in Drug Research
7:30-9:00am
Congressional Conference Room, NC Biotechnology Center 15 TW Alexander Drive, RTP, NC
This discussion will begin with a review of the solutions offered by ‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS) web-based platforms, despite notable challenges, and the evolution of these platforms required to foster efficient virtual research efforts by geographically dispersed scientists.
Free. More here.
TechJournal South’s Deck Party
5:30 - 9:00pm
Solas, 419 Glenwood Avenue, Raleigh, NC 27603
The TechJournal’s semi-annual DeckParty event is the largest technology and life science networking event in North Carolina, attracting a typical crowd of over 500 technology executives and investors.
FREE! Must be over 21. RSVP here.
Saturday, May 29
Still the Spill: Get a Haircut, Save a Beach!
All day.
The Corner Tavern and Grill, 1301 NW Maynard Road, Cary, NC
Have your head shaved, get a haircut, or just have a trim! We want it all! Your hair will be made into booms to help absorb the oil that continues to leak into The Gulf of Mexico.
Haircuts free. More at sponsor Matter of Trust’s website.
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To view a complete calendar of RTP community events, please visit the Science in the Triangle calendar.
ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Antony Williams
Thursday, May 20, 2010, 2:13 pm No Comments | Post a CommentContinuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years’ interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked Antony Williams from ChemSpider to answer a few questions:
ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Emily Fisher
Wednesday, May 19, 2010, 11:34 am No Comments | Post a CommentContinuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years’ interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked Emily Fisher from Oceana to answer a few questions:
ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Amy Freitag
Tuesday, May 18, 2010, 2:38 pm No Comments | Post a CommentContinuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years’ interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked Amy Freitag from Southern Fried Science to answer a few questions:
