Tucson’s TOXIC named Finalists for Edison Student Innovator Award

April 24, 2013 in Community, startup, Technology by Elliot Ledley

Team_TOXIC

This week TOXIC, a team of Tucson middle school students are traveling to Chicago after having been named Finalists for Student Innovator Award at the 2013 Edison Awards. The students, 7th or 8th graders from the Sonoran Science Academy, include Kate Ciaramello, Emma Galligan, Robert Gauthier, Jose Hernandez, Liam Koenneker, Zakaria Lamri, Quincy Lyons, and Nathan Vandivort.

NBC News recently described the prestige of being named an Edison Award finalist as “one of the highest accolades (one) can receive in the name of innovation”.  Past business winners of have included Space X, for the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft, Ford Motor Company, and 3M.

Team TOXIC was nominated for creating a fruit and vegetable washing solution that they call Non-Toxic by TOXIC.  It’s a household food cleaning product that kills the food borne bacteria and mold that is typically trapped between the fruit and the external wax coating.

Wednesday, March 6th AZTC Lunch and Learn

February 16, 2013 in aztc, Brownbags, design thinking, Gangplank Tucson, Technology, user experience by Gangplank Tucson

The Arizona Technology Council’s Tucson March Lunch and Learn event is being held at Gangplank Tucson and presented by new AZTC member, 29th Drive, on user experience design.

Kevin Goldman, founder of 29th Drive, will explain what to look for when managing, hiring, and otherwise leveraging UX Design to increase revenue. He’ll start by decoding the alphabet soup. You’ll learn the difference between UX, IA, HCI, and UI design and when to use each skill set for different businesses and problems. You’ll then learn what great digital design processes look like, what kind of design effort is needed to produce meaningful revenue changes, and what tools will influence them both. He’ll conclude with case studies from his own experience working with Microsoft, SuperMedia, and ADP, as well as examples of Design Thinking that created enormous revenue gains for large companies like P&G, Nike and Herman Miller.

Who Should Attend

  • CTOs / CIOs interested in plain talk about design and managers who hire design teams
  • Non-designers, especially marketing professionals, looking for a broad overview of design process
  • Small business owners and CEOs interested in how design process can improve profits
  • Developers looking for knowledge to help them better communicate and work with designers

The event will be free for all Arizona Technology Council members and $15 for non-members. Lunch will be served so please RSVP in advance.  Please note “Gangplanker” in your RSVP.

Date: Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Time: 11:30am – 1:00pm
Location: Gangplank Tucson 

5120 South Julian Drive #148
Tucson, Arizona 85706

 

About the Presenter
Kevin Goldman’s industrial design background (ASU 1994) provides the foundation for almost 20 years as a business owner and entrepreneur. He founded Goldman Design in Seattle in 1995 and successfully ran that business until he opened 29th Drive in Scottsdale in 2011 to grow his team and expand the services he was able to offer. While living in Seattle, Kevin worked on the user interface and design strategy for Microsoft Office’s PowerPoint, and worked closely for years with Scott Guthrie and Scott Hanselman and their teams on a range of design needs for Microsoft’s ASP.NET and IIS groups. Throughout his career, Kevin has focused on more than just creating “pretty screens.” Rather, his work is focused on enterprise customers looking to solve deep usability problems in complicated applications. Customer include Microsoft, Intergraph, Minitab, Sonos, ORCAS, Cobalt, University of Washington Tacoma, Online Resources and many other big and small companies. Kevin also played bass professionally in Maktub for 14 years, and he always makes space to enjoy time with his wife and two young sons.

About 29th Drive
We solve design and technology problems for our customers to help them operate more efficiently and make more money. In doing so, we may create delightfully usable web apps, mobile apps, desktop software, and sites, or we may work closely with our customers to identify and solve other problems that are getting in the way of productivity. It’s all good, clean fun.

Communication for a Startup Community

January 20, 2013 in Startups, Technology, Uncategorized by Will Farley

The methods and practices of communication used in a group will impact key factors including efficiency, validation, and constructive criticisms. In this article I explore an alternative method for a team to collaborate, emphasizing a concept leading application developers are passionate about, Open Source. I first address a few issues of communicating via email. Next the importance of being completely transparent with communications and some explanation of open source. I conclude with a process we used to test communication interfaces and what we ended up with.

Emailing is Out of Date, Avoid it if Possible

“Email was not designed to be used the way we use it now. Email is not a messaging protocol. It’s a todo list. Or rather, my inbox is a todo list, and email is the way things get onto it. But it is a disastrously bad todo list.”

Paul Graham

Interview: Dan Jaffe, Founder of LawLytics

January 6, 2013 in Featured, Local Companies, Startups, Technology, Tucson by Chad Lehrman

After graduating from law school at the University of Arizona, Dan Jaffe left Tucson, grew two successful law firms, and then started an online legal directory that was acquired in under two years. Now back in Tucson, Dan’s new venture, LawLytics, is poised to change the way attorneys use the web and manage their online presence.

Startup Tucson: What brought you from San Francisco back to Tucson?

Dan Jaffe: I like everything about Tucson. It’s a friendly, relaxed environment. It’s a great place to live and work, and in my opinion the ideal place to grow a business built on a strong foundation. I spent time hanging around the Silicon Valley ecosystem after my first startup was acquired. The Tucson ethos and business climate is supportive of our vision of efficiency. Also, California just passed Prop 30 which is a huge blow to innovation and entrepreneurship in that state.

Interview: Dan Jaffe, Founder of LawLytics

December 19, 2012 in Local Companies, Startups, Technology, Tucson by Startup Tucson

After graduating from law school at the University of Arizona, Dan Jaffe left Tucson, grew two successful law firms, and then started an online legal directory that was acquired in under two years. Now back in Tucson, Dan’s new venture, LawLytics, is poised to change the way attorneys use the web and manage their online presence.

Startup Tucson: What brought you from San Francisco back to Tucson?

Dan Jaffe: I like everything about Tucson. It’s a friendly, relaxed environment. It’s a great place to live and work, and in my opinion the ideal place to grow a business built on a strong foundation. I spent time hanging around the Silicon Valley ecosystem after my first startup was acquired. The Tucson ethos and business climate is supportive of our vision of efficiency. Also, California just passed Prop 30 which is a huge blow to innovation and entrepreneurship in that state.

Angels in Life Science America | Xconomy

November 15, 2012 in Articles, Bioindustry, C-Path, Desert Angels, Technology, University Medical Center, Venture Capital by Curtis Gunn

While deal structures, return profiles, financing terms, etc. remain unknown, it is probably safe to say that angels will continue to be a cornerstone of early stage support for life science ventures. Angels’ industry and entrepreneurship experience is too valuable, their instincts and rigor in evaluating quality opportunities is too strong, and their desire to participate in the next wave of life-saving and enhancing technologies is too resilient to allow investment market conditions to remove them from the playing field.

via Angels in Life Science America | Xconomy.

Venture capital picks up the Moneyball strategy | VentureBeat

November 11, 2012 in Desert Angels, Startups, Technology, Venture Capital by Curtis Gunn

Venture capital picks up the Moneyball strategy | VentureBeat.

 

Just as the renegade general manager of the Oakland A’s flouted assumptions about baseball and replaced gut feelings and outdated statistics with more effective quantitative analysis, a new breed of venture capital firms are throwing out their Magic 8-balls and are using computer-based models to make smarter investments.
Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2012/11/09/startup-algorithm/#QwI45lSwZcMdilZG.99 

Arizona Innovation Challenge – Applications Now Being Accepted

August 19, 2012 in Arizona Commerce Authority, Arizona Innovation Challenge, AZ Tech Council, AZCI, Bioindustry, Desert Angels, Economic Development, Funded Companies, Gangplank Tucson, Invest Southwest, Optics, Solar Industry, Startup Weekend 2012, Startups, Technology, Venture Capital by Curtis Gunn

Every AZ-based startup should apply for this grant.  Up to $250,000 in funding to grow your company that you never have to pay back.  Applications now being accepted.

 

The Arizona Innovation Challenge, powered by the Arizona Commerce Authority, awards the most money in the country for a technology commercialization challenge – $3 million ($1.5 million twice yearly) to the world’s most promising technology ventures. Awards range from $100,000 to $250,000 per company.

via Arizona Innovation Challenge.

Medical Research & Technology Company to Relocate to Tucson

August 16, 2012 in Articles, Bioindustry, News, News Releases, Technology, Tucson, Tucson Tech by Bob Hagen

Biotech firm Accelr8 to move HQ to Tucson

Inside Tucson Business

August 16, 2012

By Patrick McNamara

Article Summary: Accelr8 Technology Corporation plans to relocate its corporate headquarters from Denver to Tucson. The medical diagnosis and instrumentation firm intends to have its new facility in Tucson up and running early next year. It will be located at 3950 S Country Club Rd near the University of Arizona Medical Center – South Campus.

For more details, visit the full ITB article at the link below:

http://www.insidetucsonbusiness.com/news/biotech-firm-accelr-to-move-hq-to-tucson/article_1227cbf4-e7c2-11e1-9e83-0019bb2963f4.html

 

Local “Hackathon” Served as Preliminary Event to Upcoming Startup Weekend 2012 in Tucson

August 14, 2012 in Articles, Hackathon, Hackathon, IT, Startup Tucson, Startup Weekend 2012, Technology, Technology Business Development, Tucson, Tucson Tech by Bob Hagen

Tucson tech: Hacking apps in 24 hours

August 14, 2012

Author: David Wichner Arizona Daily Star

Over the weekend, about 35 programmers and assorted computer nerds got together in Tucson to compete for bragging rights and prizes in the Old Pueblo’s first “hackathon.”

The object of the 24-hour event at the Spoke6 co-working space was to complete a new mobile , game or other software project from start to finish.

But there was more to the exercise than just throwing together some computer code for grins.