I had a chance to sit down with Ben Milne of Dwolla (http://dwolla.com) at Chicago Ideas Week, an amazing BizSpark company changing the way consumers and merchants think about transactions. Dwolla also has a rich API for developers to take advantage of their fast and secure payment processing system.
Ben is also speaking at ThincIowa and I am excited to sit down with him here to talk about their rich API and how developers can take advantage of it.
Chris Bernard and Brian Gorbett from Microsoft BizSpark are heading to Des Moines, Iowa to represent BizSpark and talk to entrepreneurs from both startups and large corporations. Should be an interesting mix.
Unfortunately, because of a flight cancellation, we arrived later than we wanted to but still did not miss any of the great speakers. Being entrepreneurial themselves, they took advantage of the HD camera in their Windows Phone to shoot them heading into the conference
If you were given 54 hours to build a businesses, what would you create?
That’s the question 60 Chicago students and community members faced for the the 2011 Startup Weekend challenge. The event brought together developers, graphics designers, business people, and big thinkers together to build a web or mobile application that could function as a viable business post-event. At the end of the startup marathon, one team walks away with $2,000 to further their idea and a community of supportive mentors.
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There are many perks of being a Microsoft employee – great health benefits ( 100% covered .. yeah, its awesome), flying everywhere to meet with fascinating startups, working with the smartest people in the world and with the most forward-thinking innovative company in the world. But most importantly to me, the best perk that comes with working at Microsoft is the opportunity to give back to our community on a consistent basis.
Yesterday myself and a few other Microsoft employees had the honor of meeting with eight of the brightest students the Midwest has to offer as a part of the ThinkChicago initiative. The program selected a handful of the regions brightest college seniors to come to Chicago during CIW, attend Tedx Midwest and learn about job opportunities at some of Chicago’s most esteemed businesses like Groupon, Google, Grubhub, and Microsoft.
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As all of Chicago focuses their attention on innovation, we thought we would turn our spotlight on some of our very own local BizSpark innovators.
Meet Innovative Exams – a Chicago-based startup revolutionizing assessment through their remote proctoring technology.
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There was one group of speakers at CIW’s Tech & Web MegaTalk that stood out a bit.
They weren’t media moguls, or designers, or founders of the next mobile marketplace.
But within two minutes of starting their speech, the soft-spoken and seemingly unknown speakers had the audience on the edge of their seats and their fellow speakers wide-eyed with amazement. Meet Lifelens, winners of Microsoft’s 2011 Imagine Cup challenge.
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There must have been something in the air yesterday because as I looked around at the buzzing crowd, networking and dreaming outloud, I saw that everyone, both old and young, looked so ready, so eager. For what, I can’t say definitively but I can guess that just like me Chicago Ideas Week had made them excited and almost frantically anxious to learn, build and create.
Tuesday morning those who attended Chicago Ideas Week had a chance to visit what TIME managing editor Rick Stengel called “the most interesting place in the universe - Bill Clinton’s mind.” For a little over an hour, Clinton spoke with Stengel on unemployment, national dept, the economy and of course – innovation.
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Mayor Rahm Emanuel from Chicago, Mayor Michael Bloomberg from New York and Mayor Kasim Reed from Atlanta discussed education, jobs and the economy at CIW’s Mayoral Evening at the Oriental Theatre. In the roundtable Q&A moderated by the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman , the political leaders talked openly and honestly about the problems their cities are facing and the innovative needed to overcome them.
Last night, I attended CIW MEGTALK: Innovation & Influence – a discussion of idea innovation with five of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people. While the thought leaders were discussing social innovation, I found that some of their sage advice also rings true within the entrepreneurial world.
