Conmergence

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong outlines the vision for how wireless technologies will transform the entire spectrum of health care, from genomic analysis and prediction to in-home monitoring of chronic illness.

on Youtube. Also, this: Internet2 DNSSEC Special Interest Group (SIG) Provides Forum for Research/Education Community (link 1)(link 2)

And, CEO Dave Lambert commented about #Ohio, #Indiana connecting to @Internet2 ‘s #100G network

Meanwhile, at National LambdaRail

Finally, in eScience more generally

Jeremy Rifkin* makes an extremely important point about the manner in which President Obama attempted to persuade/sell the US public about the potential of a green economy (greenconomy) — that being, that because several components had to be developed and understood to be synergistic with other components being developed in parallel, folks were not effectively imagining the future Obama was trying to describe. He was not effectively describing the interconnectedness of the big picture.

This overdependence on artificial categorization is a major stumbling block to American innovation. People from sectors which have independent policy, regulatory and regional origins fail to see similarities of areas of their sector with parts of other sectors–the kinds of similarities which allow for standardization and scaling, the network effect which has been behind so much economic growth over the past few decades. For an example of this I think of those who make a desitinction between virtual currency, mobile money, barter, coupons, advertizing payment schemes, etc. They are all nothing more then entries in web front ended database with unique IDs and transactional logging–from a technological point of view. From a legislative viewpoint, however, they are distinct “things”.

For those with the ability to see beyond these artificial divisions and may be of the entrepreneurial bent some recent Jumpstart Foundry resources: Tips for Entrepreneurs, a collection of essential tips from the Jumpstart podcasts.

*Jeremy Rifkin “The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World” Jeremy Rifkin argues that internet technology and renewable energy could lead the way for a new industrial revolution in the United States and help the country regain its economic foothold in the world. He spoke at The Booksmith in San Francisco.

The FOSE Conference & Expo is returning to Washington, DC, April 3-5 – with all new in-depth conferences, workshops, camps, keynotes and education.

The magic number for FOSE in 2012 is 5! The FOSE 2012 Education Experience features 5 all-new conferences:

• Cybersecurity: http://bit.ly/FOSE12Cbr
• Cloud & Virtualization: http://bit.ly/FOSE12Cld
• Mobile: http://bit.ly/FOSE12Mob
• Defense Innovations: http://bit.ly/FOSE12Def
• Record & Information Management: http://bit.ly/FOSE12Rec

FOSE also has a FREE Expo, including 5 keynotes and 5 Marketplaces with 5 educational theaters. There will also be free workshops and training, plus you can participate in 2 Camps – CloudCamp, and BigDataCamp!

Interested in attending FOSE? Register today at http://bit.ly/FOSE2012.

I took one of those Asperger self-diagnostic tests the other day and got the following subjective results:

Your Aspie score: 131 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 98 of 200
You seem to have both Aspie and neurotypical traits

Tony Perkins observes that Silicon Valley isn’t just a geography anymore, it is a global culture. Taking liberties with William Gibson’s quote, the Silicon Valley mindset is definitely not evenly distributed. It turns out that, apparently, one of the nexes with SVM is the brain within the Autism-Asperger spectrum. Well, there you go…

Key content is news from, about, or of interest to National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) in Africa. We request and invite you to submit an item before the 20th of each month capturing:

• News and developments from your NREN and news items of interest to NRENs
• Content networks: how researchers and academics are using the REN infrastructure to enhance effectiveness and efficiency their work and to promote national and international collaboration
• Hot tips about something you have done successfully (organisational or technical)
• A photo that tells a story
• Looking into the future, especially with regards to fibre infrastructure

Submissions should be sent to info@ubuntunet.net

You might want to do some research here http://www.internet2.edu/presentations/jt2012winter/

Start-ups in FI space: act now! The Innotribe 2012 start-up competition is here.

The objective of the Innotribe start-up challenge is to close the gap between early stage start-ups and the SWIFT community. With few exceptions, banks and large FIs are too big, too busy, and not well structured to take early stage start-up pulse in the financial services sector.

At Sibos in Toronto we did an experiment where we brought a selection of start-ups to a carefully selected sample of our top 50 clients. It turned out to be a big success! We had in excess of 200 start-ups competing, 10 pitched their product at Sibos, and two won a prize of 50K USD each! Beyond this prize though, what startups really appreciated of course is the exposure to the banks (and I know for a fact that there was action in addition to exposure). And our clients appreciated the quality and financial focus of the start-ups. See here for a detailed summary and videos of the pitches.

Based on this success, we decided that this year we will do the same, in 3 different locations, regionalising the challenge, with the objective to bring – again – the best of each competition to Sibos in Osaka (where a 50K USD cash prize will be granted to the winner).

What is the role of Innotribe in all this?
First of all, we do the pre-screening, using our network of VCs, entrepreneurs, technology and consulting partners, and banker who has experience in the start-up field. Then we build up the event where this extended eco-system (including the banks) meet and network.

To give you an idea, this is a non-exhaustive list of banks who already confirmed their participation:

• SOGE
• JPMorgan
• Wells
• BAML
• Barclays
• Lloyds
• BONY
• Commerzbank
• Danskebank
• SEB
• Standard Chartered
• Deutsche bank
• HSBC
• ANZ
• ICICI
• Sberbank
• OCBC
• ING
• Banco sabbadell
• BBVA
• Santander
• RBS
• Rabobank
• Intesasanpaolo
• Unicredit
• Nordea
• UBS

The first of the 3 regional challenges is next February 8th in NYC. If you are a SWIFT customer and you are not in this list, and you want to send a qualified representative to the competition, get in touch.

If you are a start-up and want to apply, go to www.innotribestartup.com … you have less than a week left to apply.

The financial community, the Innotribe, is looking for good ideas!

Konstantin (Kosta) Peric

Happy New Year!

We wanted to give you a quick update about the Innotribe Startup Challenge and remind you about the upcoming application deadline.

Thanks to the generous support of our sponsors SWIFT, Invest in Northern Ireland and Cisco, we’re very pleased to announced a $50K prize purse to be shared by one or more Early-Stage winners selected at Innotribe @ Sibos.

Because the prize was only confirmed in the last week of 2011, we’ve extended the application deadline by a week, until 11:59pm Pacific on next Friday, January 13th.

If you’d like to apply for the NYC Showcase Challenge, taking place on Feb 8, please complete and submit your Challenge Registration and Company Profile, and upload your Pitch Deck on http://www.innotribestartup.com.

And whether or not your applying yourself, if you know of other startups or innovators who are looking for new customers, partners or investors in the global Financial Industry, please let them know abou the Challenge by sharing this message by email, post or tweet!

Warm regards,

- The Innotribe Team

About the 2012 Innotribe Startup Challenge
The Innotribe Startup Challenge introduces the world’s most promising FinTech and Financial Service startups and innovators to a global community of over 9000 financial institutions, venture capitalists, angels and influencers. The leading challengers are invited to meet face to face with potential customers, investors and partners who are actively investing in disruptive innovation. Learn more and apply at http://www.innotribestartup.com

I think it is fair to say that 2011 was a good year for the VC4Africa community. What originally started as a Linkedin group has now grown into a thriving and productive network. This year we closed the old website and started a new chapter on VC4Africa.biz.

We now have more than 4.300 members who have opened personal profile pages on the new site and over 200 entrepreneurs stepped forward to crunch their venture online ( http://bit.ly/9Yzi7T ). There are promising businesses making progress in over 30 African countries and we have seen members in Cameroon, South Africa, the United States, Kenya, Nigeria, the Netherlands and Somaliland establish partnerships, investments and joint ventures. Increasingly, VC4Africa featured entrepreneurs are being picked up by global media channels like Forbes and BBC World. We have opened a new thread where members are starting to share their successes as their continued progress remains our bottom line – as a community and organization ( http://bit.ly/sWTglN ).

In the past months we have launched a number of new programs and resources VC4A entrepreneurs can tap into for support. For example, entrepreneurs are now calling in on Free Feedback Fridays ( http://bit.ly/s9Xd9j ). These are sessions hosted by business experts and are useful for working through challenges faced in the business development process. We also hosted several Business Modeling Workshops and worked with entrepreneurs to practice and film their elevator pitches ( http://bit.ly/tsItJ9 ). More recently, we launched the ( http://bit.ly/rHbJa9 ) VC4Africa Mentorship Program that connects members for peer-to-peer coaching with some early successes already on the books. We also gave a facelift to the venture profiles and entrepreneurs can now post their video pitches online, one of the reasons ventures like ( http://bit.ly/s2cyCG ) Njorku are top ranked all time. In the year ahead we will be doing even more to support our entrepreneurs as they champion their ventures.

Our team is constantly working to introduce new tools and services that further improve the VC4A networking experience. To foster more effective network building we launched our own ‘dating widget’ that matches members on the basis of complimentary skill sets and forwards recommended connections. How do you tap into a global network spread across 159 countries? This past year saw the release of ( http://bit.ly/w4VuI2 ) Questions & Answers as a tool for crowdsourcing knowledge from across the member base. There are now 68 open threads and 128 responses. We also launched dedicated groups that allow members to come together around a specific country or theme. Some notable groups we look forward to growing in 2012 include ( http://bit.ly/tMHdEC ) Green Entrepreneurship, ( http://bit.ly/vsF8up ) the Social Entrepreneur, ( http://bit.ly/rHbJa9 ) VC4Africa Mentors and ( http://bit.ly/vTS0vG ) VC4A Woman Entrepreneurs.

Far and away, one of the greatest projects we launched this past year was VC4A Badges. Building great companies and an effective network of contacts is a lot of hard work, but it’s also a lot of fun. With great looking badges we look to recognize your milestones and contributions along the way. See an overview of all of the badges and keep your eye out for new ones :) ( http://bit.ly/us5lZs )

Editor: Got me my nifty VC4Africa Officer Badge Rightcheer; woohoo!:

VC4Africa Officer Badger

We will continue to listen to your feedback and build the tools that enrich your time spent with VC4A ( http://bit.ly/sbph8f ).

These developments aside, VC4Africa had a great year because we have such great members. People who believe in the continent’s potential and want to see its best entrepreneurs succeed. It is remarkable to see more than 30 VC4Africa meetups organized by members from around the world. We already have great events online for 2012 starting with Accra, Oslo and London.

Certainly Africa is a great business opportunity and we all agree the time to make it happen is NOW.

The best part about all of this? We’re just getting started :)

Folks:

Help me funnel ideas to Martin. Thanks! – Ed

Dear Ed,

I am writing to you because I am conducting some research on future developments in ICT to assist development in Africa, in particular mobile and internet. I’m aware of the HIMSS Medical Banking Project and World Bank Task Force  and some of my research may be of interest to you.

This project is to inform Comic Relief’s grant-giving, who are a grant-giving charity based in England that raised a £100 million or so last year through their telethons. I’m looking for any ideas, projects, contacts  or resources you may have on this. The most restrictive parts of the brief, which makes it interesting,  are technologies must be future, have direct impact and have some component of ICT in them, but I try to be flexible. Amongst other things, I’m looking at:

•        Cutting costs of ICT devices to include more people

•        Increasing the numbers of people connected through subsidising mesh networks (eg. Solar panel equipped mesh devices), WIMAX and 3G

•        Converting information from one medium to another (eg. SMS to Facebook or translated voice calls from local to commercial language)

•        Citizen journalism

•        Voice recognition

•        Crowd sourced information on complex events

•        ICT that enables other technologies (eg. Add-on sensors for mobiles eg. Ultrasound wands, 3D printing in remote areas)

•        Machine to machine communications (eg. Micro-grids for solar and other power sources with dyanamic pricing linked to m-banking)

Assuming this is of interest, I’d like to talk further about this sometime this week. I can send through a slide deck that may be of interest as well.

Best,

Martin Underwood

Future Media & Technology

Comic Relief

1st Floor, 89 Albert Embankment, London, SE1 7TP

tel: +44 (0)207 820 2298

email: m.underwood@comicrelief.com website: http://www.comicrelief.com/

Save the Date! for GOSCON 2011, returning to Washington D.C. late this summer on August 23. We’re delighted to share the news that we’ll partner with the Meritalk Network for Goverment IT and co-locate with their fantastic Innovation Nation Forum for a special one day program.

What: Innovation Nation & GOSCON 2011
When: August 23, 2011, 7:45 a.m. – 4:15 p.m.
Where: D.C. Convention Center, Washington D.C.
Cost: Complimentary for Government
$95 Early Bird Industry (Until June 24, 2011)
$150 Industry (Beginning June 25, 2011)

Innovation Nation will focus on the three bellwether topics in Federal IT today – cloud, data center consolidation, and cyber security – plus GOSCON will feature a full track on open source. GOSCON will present three deep dives:

Cost Take Out: What’s the Bottom Line for Open Source
Engine Room: Open Source Fuels the Cloud & Consolidation
Lessons Learned: The Road Traveled by State and Local Gov

Previously scheduled for April of this year, the new late August date for Innovation Nantion and GOSCON empower Federal IT pros to understand the latest and greatest trends and offerings prior to the end of the Federal fiscal year.

More detail to follow! For further information please contact director@goscon.org .

Nashville Startup Weekend

This year promises a great deal of added value!

• A heavy focus on mentoring and feedback
• A much improved mixer
• Better location
• More industry leaders
• Spoils for the weekend victor
• And a shot at $15K in funding

We’re in need of YOUR feedback already….. Along with the focus on mentoring and superb entrepreneurship, we’re involving some of the greatest examples of this in Nashville. Let us know what the most iconic businesses are in Nashville.

More development to come! Follow the leaders on Twitter: @leeGTurley, @NashvilleEC, @MichaelRBurcham and join us on Facebook.

Hash tag for this year is #NSW2010 and new site URL is www.NashvilleStartup.com!

Have a great day!

Lee G Turley