Do It For Denmark ~ Pro-Growth Promo;-)

Jeff Beer at Fast spots Do It For Denmark conception campaign;-)

David Sengeh ~ Lemelson-MIT "Cure it!" Winner

Congrats to Sierra Leonean David Sengeh, MIT Media Lab doctoral student and the 2014 Lemelson-MIT "Cure it!" Graduate Winner...

Best Cycling City ~ Wagenbuur on Top Nominees

BicycleDutchman Mark Wagenbuur created these video portraits reviewing the pros and cons of five top nominee candidates for Best Cycling City in the Netherlands 2014. First, Zwolle... Second, Velsen... Third, Enschede... Fourth, Eindhoven... Finally, Almere... P.S. Check out Mark's Recap including portraits by the Cyclists’ Union which make the cities look their best!

MIT $100K Memories ~ Blasts From the Past ;-)

Blast from past MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competitions...

Accelerate ~ MIT $100K Contest Deadline 2day!

Tonight, Wednesday 28 November 2012, a minute before midnight is deadline for the MIT $100K Accelerate Contest!

"The contest is all about building stuff -- it's about execution. Up to 30 teams with the most potential will be selected by the judges to go through to the Accelerate phase during IAP. These teams will receive $1,000 each to spend on their ideas, and we'll pair them up with rockstar mentors and designers. We’ll also help them secure work space."

As former lead organizer of the MIT $100K, I'm especially excited to see the latest class of compelling ventures blossom!

DJ Focus ~ Sierra Leone's Kelvin Doe @ MIT!

DJ Focus -- i.e. teenager Kelvin Doe from Sierra Leone -- is the youngest person ever invited to the "Visiting Practitioner's Program" at MIT. Why? He is...

"...an engineering whiz living in Sierra Leone who scours the trash bins for spare parts, which he uses to build batteries, generators and transmitters. Completely self-taught, [now 15 year old] Kelvin has created his own radio station where he broadcasts news and plays music."

Plus check this CNN What's Next piece DIY Africa: Empowering a new Sierra Leone by MIT Media Lab's David Sengeh on Innovate Salone...

"The youth of Sierra Leone are ready and capable of transforming their country. By providing them with resources and creative freedom, we can spark the joy of discovery that results in innovation and ultimately, national development."

Help support Innovate Salone's escalation.

Essmart Wins ~ Dell Social Innovation Challenge

Congrats to our MIT Development Ventures 2011 alumco Essmart Global for $50K Grand Prize at the Dell Social Innovation Challenge!

"Essmart gives rural retail shop owners access to products that improve their customers' lives. We are a technology distributor working with existing retail shops to reach end users. We deliver the goods."

Tricorder X-Prize Rules ~ Draft Guidelines Up...

Qualcomm Tricorder X-Prize’s Competition Guidelines are up...

"The winner(s) [...] will be the best-performing solutions in their abilities to diagnose a set of 15 distinct conditions in a pool of people within three days, while providing a strong consumer experience. In addition, the winning solutions must:

1. Meet minimum scores for both diagnosis and consumer experience
2. Continuously monitor five vital signs over the course of the consumer testing period and log this data to the cloud
3. Have a maximum mass of no more 5 than pounds"

Not easy;-)

Tehran Tower ~ Intriguing Iranian Greenscraper

Iranian architects Mahdi Kamboozia, Alireza Esfandiari, Nima Dehghani, Mohammad Ashkbar Sefat received Honorable Mention in the eVolo 2012 Skyscraper Competition for their Tehran Tower... Thanks to Urban Greenery and Apple Arts for spotting this cool design!

LAUNCH ~ MIT $100K Ventures Contest DUE!

MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition DUE @ 6pm today Friday 23 March 2012. MIT IDEAS DUE later tonight @ 11:59pm;-)

MIT PWNs SXSW ~ We Might As Well NXNE;-)

See here three MIT Media Lab-related teams own half of the SXSW Accelerate awards. We might as well run the true NXNE confab here in Boston instead of flying to Austin...

MIT SEID + $100K Mixer ~ Emerging Markets++

This coming Monday night 28 November 2011 at the MIT Stata Center, the student-run SEID and MIT $100K Emerging Markets Track are hosting an informal mixer 6-9pm in the R&D Commons to encourage cross-links and developmental venturing! This is the home stretch to submitting idea in MIT $100K Accelerate Contest next Friday 2 December 2011. Past Emerging Markets track winners have met team-mates at just such mixers, btw, so they're quite worthwhile!

CineSkates Showdown ~ Cinetics Video Contest!

Nice! Check out the CineSkates Showdown video contest from MIT Imaging Ventures alumco Cinetics...

Chemical Reactions ~ Patten Exhibit Wins MUSE!

Very cool to see Media Lab Tangible alumnus interaction designer James Patten's museum exhibit Create a Chemical Reaction win MUSE Gold award for Interactive Kiosk design!

"Create a Chemical Reaction allows visitors to use the Periodic Table to initiate their own chemical reactions and virtually create a variety of chemical compounds. The experience integrates a physical and digital interface, employing an object-sensing reaction table with three overhead projectors. Visitors use small pucks to select virtual atoms of specific elements from the Periodic Table, then drag the pucks to the Reaction Lab. As they touch the pucks together, the “reaction” takes place and visitors see the results of the reactions they created via images and video of real life phenomena, objects or materials."

Lovely work! I personally believe we've only seen the very tip of the iceberg of this kind of interactive projection interface and the glorious applications it enables!

Build Change ~ More Quake Resistant Housing!

I just saw Dr Elizabeth Hausler describe the work she and colleagues at Build Change have been doing to design earthquake-resistant houses in developing countries plus train the builders, owners, engineers, and officials to actually go build them. She's the winner of the 2011 $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability -- which she officially receives tonight, 16 June 2011 at 7:30pm at an open-to-public EurekaFest event at the MIT Stata Center -- definitely go if you can! Hausler and team's core goals are compelling...

"...to greatly reduce deaths, injuries and economic losses caused by housing collapses due to earthquakes in developing countries. [This means] single family houses built with inputs from Build Change in seismically active developing countries are resistant to earthquakes and other natural disasters, and [that government] building codes are enforced or construction practices are permanently changed so that houses built in the absence of external funding and technical support are also earthquake resistant."

So far, Build Change has helped create ~20K safer houses for over 70K people with a team of 60 people, 90% of whom are locals in their operating countries Indonesia, China, and Haiti.

EurekaFest 2011 ~ Celebrating Invention+Action!

Starting today Thurs 6/16, going through Saturday 6/18 at MIT and the Museum of Science is EurekaFest 2011, the celebration of invention and action orchestrated by the Lemelson-MIT Program!

"EurekaFest is a multi-day celebration designed to empower a legacy of inventors through activities that inspire youth, honor role models, and encourage creativity and problem solving."

Check out the goodness, including high school InvenTeams, the Award for Sustainability winner Elizabeth Hausler, and 2011 $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize winner John Rogers!

MIT $100K Finale ~ Business Plan Contest 2011

The finale of MIT's $100K Entrepreneurship Competition is tonight in Kresge Auditorium, with posters before-hand and live keynote and presentation starting at 7pm. See which of 6 Finalist teams take home the $100,000 check this year!

1. Mobile ~ Sensactive
2. Web/IT ~ Upkast
3. Products & Services ~ Green Logistics
4. Life Sciences ~ Zinaura Pharmaceuticals
5. Emerging Markets ~ Sanergy
6. Energy ~ CoolChip

Watch online!

MIT $100K! ~ Business Plans Due 2/25 6p...

The MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition deadline for the Spring semester Business Plan Contest are due via online submission this Friday night 25 February 2011 by 6pm EST! I encourage everyone eligible to give it a shot. Multiple tracks and overall grand prize of $100,000! Many excellent actual companies have been born from this Competition, including Harmonix, Akamai, SmartCells, Neurometrix, and a hundred more. Plus I'm very proud that a third of the previous round winners and many past track winners and finalists are former students in our Ventures classes!

Digital Jeopardy ~ HAL 2001? No, IBM 2011!

CNN's John Sutter writes Computer ties human as they square off...

"An IBM supercomputer named Watson finished one round of the TV show "Jeopardy!" on Monday night tied with one of his human competitors and $3,000 ahead of the other. The man vs. computer face-off won't be complete, however, until the final rounds of the extended trivia game show are aired on Tuesday and Wednesday. IBM trumpets Watson, which has been in development for years and has the processing power of 2,800 "powerful computers," as a major advancement in machines' efforts to understand human language. The computer receives clues through digital texts and then buzzes in against the two other "Jeopardy!" contestants like any other player would. It juggles dozens of lines of reasoning at once and tries to arrive at a smart answer."

HAL 2001? No, IBM 2011!-)

P.S. Watson kicked @$$. Plus, check out BBC interviews with the competitors who "represented the human race" versus the machine;-)

Innovation at MIT ~ Elemental Economic Impact

Thanks to MIT Global Challenge champion Lars Torres for spotting the Innovation at MIT video from MIT150's Elemental MIT series...