Last Tuesday I had the opportunity to meet with Nation Hahn, a UNC '08 graduate and the Director of Engagement at New Kind in Raleigh, North Carolina. As my independent study has evolved I have begun to focus more on innovation in the broader sense- yes, I love to read and write about the future of technological innovation, but I am also interested in innovation from a geographical perspective. Nation and I discussed Raleigh's future as a start-up hub, something that I now have a great deal of faith in. New Kind is built around an interesting concept. Their website explains "some might call us a communications agency, a design studio, even a management consulting or innovation strategy firm." I wouldn't be surprised if in the future more agencies promoted themselves in a similar way, boasting a diverse skill set and working on a broad range of projects simultaneously. One of the primary reasons I became interested in New Kind was after reading about their work with CAM Raleigh, which is the local Contemporary Art Museum. I appreciated the aesthetic of a lot of their CAM collateral: The opening of Raleigh's Contemporary Art Museum is one of the many exciting things happening in the RTP (Research Triangle Park) area. Nation explained that some entrepreneurs are starting to look to settle outside of the typical NYC//Silicon Valley landscape, providing the opportunity for a third start-up hub to sprout in the United States. He explained that Raleigh, Las Vegas and Austin are all viable options, and we discussed how Raleigh's entrepreneurial roots set it apart (thanks to the pharma giants of RTP). The Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area has and undeniably strong pool of students, with three acclaimed universities (N.C. State, Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill) within a 30 minute drive. As an added bonus, all three of these universities are currently investing in entrepreneurial programs for their students. I am in the Entrepreneurship minor at UNC, which has given me immense insight into the young company culture and has made me very excited for the future of the RTP area. I am currently enrolled in a scientific entrepreneurial ventures course, in which we have spent a large part of the semester focusing on local pharmaceutical start-ups. In my opinion, the innovation cycle of the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area will be discussed in two parts: the first being the wave of pharmaceutical giants that settled in the area in the late nineties. These companies gave the triangle area the legitimacy that was necessary for investors to focus on the area. I believe the second wave of this innovation cycle will be a much younger, more innovative go round. With companies such as Red Hat and ShareFile bringing a tech-oriented start-up culture to Raleigh, more specialized companies such as Ignite Social Media were able to gain traction. As part of my Tech Thoughts blog I am beginning this Innovation Leaders speaker series, in which I will focus on leaders of the second wave of innovation in the RTP area. Up next I will be featuring Kimberly Jenkins, Senior Advisor to the President and Provost for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Duke University. She is coming to speak to the UNC Women in Entrepreneurship group on April 3rd. Looking forward to it!
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Greetings from some really high altitude as my flight ascends into the clouds on our way from Denver to Charlotte. I was lucky enough to spend the first half of my spring break exploring Colorado- a state that I had never been to before and that I absolutely love after six days of adventure. We flew into Denver last Tuesday and then spent a few days in Breckenridge before going to Vail for Snowball Music Festival. This was my first spring break since the iPhone epidemic devoured my friend group; last year I spent the week in New Orleans for Mardi Gras and recall that most of us were still 100% Team Blackberry. I don’t want to over exaggerate the importance of phone make and model on the ability to have fun on spring break, but this year I noticed many iPhone-specific habits amongst spring break goers, myself especially. (Many of these are also applicable to Android phones, but I will focus on Blackberry vs. iPhone). In a short year I have totally changed how I utilize and leverage my mobile connectivity- and I bet a year from now things will be monumentally different once again. It’s a little bit mindboggling to think about, but exciting nonetheless. Four reasons why upgrading from a Blackberry to an iPhone improved the way I explored Colorado: (1) Mobile Location-Based Knowledge I have written about this before but it still shocks me when I travel: due to the iPhone (as well as Android- in most cases), we have reached a new level of constant connectivity. This spans many areas of travel, but especially when it comes to location-based knowledge, one of my favorite mobile improvements. This was relevant throughout my entire trip- from checking in on Foursquare at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, and again at Denver International Airport (+4 points for 1336 miles between check ins!) to using Google Maps to navigate walking shortcuts around Breckenridge. The iPhone navigation system is a perk unto itself, which I will elaborate on later. Location-based services are much easier to utilize on an iPhone compared to a Blackberry- not to mention how much more aesthetically pleasing the user interface is. I used to be freaked out by touch screens- I thought they seemed unreliable compared to tangible buttons and controls- but once Blackberry ditched the rollerball for a touch-controlled trackpad it seemed that they might as well switch to 100% touch screen (not to imply that their Blackberry Storm was a successful attempt). This leads me to my next iPhone perk: (2) The Bigger, Better Utilized Screen Although I will certainly acknowledge that it took a bit of time to adjust from my three-dimensional Blackberry keyboard to the 100% glass iPhone screen, I now view the touch screen as a big perk in the Blackberry vs. iPhone travel debate. It allows the user to take advantage of the size of their phone. For example, why should half of the Blackberry be devoted to a keyboard if the user isn’t typing 100% of the time that they are using the device? Apple understands this; therefore they created a phone that only displays a keyboard when the user needs a keyboard. My flight from Charlotte to Denver was the first time that I opted to use a downloadable mobile QR code instead of a printed boarding pass. This option is much easier on an iPhone because I can display the QR code as well as all of my flight information on one screen. For those who are timid to rely on a digital ticket, the iPhone can easily capture a screenshot that includes the QR code, which will then be saved as an image in the phone’s camera roll. Although I agree with some that QR codes have become a bit overrated and aren’t appropriately utilized (especially in advertising), I think that using them for airline tickets is plausible. Also, imagine how much paper would be saved if all iPhone users downloaded QR code airline tickets. A lot. Newer identification technologies, such as fingerprint or cornea scanners, could take the check-in process to a new level, but these options are likely expensive and slow to implement. This makes me think that QR ticketing might stick around for awhile. (3) Navigation For most of the duration of my Blackberry career the thought of using my phone for directions was a comical notion. Sure, Blackberry has navigation capabilities that have certainly been improved over the past few years. That being said, the transportation knowledge that the iPhone (and most Android-based phones) offer is leap years ahead of RIM’s technology. If you were stranded in a forest with one Blackberry friend and one iPhone friend you should probably go ahead and sacrifice the Blackberry friend—you’re going to need the iPhone’s GPS technology to get out alive. Yes, that is an exaggeration, but after having my iPhone for almost a year I can’t imagine navigating a new place without it. I lived in Los Angeles for three months last summer and my iPhone got me out of many tricky directional situations. I am not confident that my Blackberry would have done the same. Navigating new places on an iPhone is easier than a Blackberry for a few reasons. The most important is that thanks to a better integration of Google Maps and faster loading time, it is easier to see what is around you in less time. I am a Google Maps addict and the Maps team is one of my top choices when I am at Google this summer because I think the platform still has massive potential. (I am going to do an entire blog post soon about my favorite parts of Google Maps.) Without this technology it would have been much harder to navigate the complexities of Vail. The walking directions were particularly useful. There are many other useful navigation tools aside from Google Maps. For example, the Find My Friends app is extremely helpful in the festival environment. When I went to Bonnaroo two summers ago I would often know the stage where I was supposed to meet my friends, but due to massive crowds the task was still daunting. With Find My Friends I could simply view a map of Snowball and locate the exact location of my friends within the crowd. (4) New technologies Many of the things that I love about my iPhone compared to my old Blackberry are related to the capabilities brought about by the speed at which the iPhone can function. The Internet is now more accessible and apps are easier to navigate. This has allowed for an entrepreneurial opportunity based on creating iPhone content. During Snowball Music Festival there was a start-up called SmartBar launching, based around the idea of “beer and wine without the line.” The app was based around ordering and paying for drinks from your iPhone so that they could be picked up at the bar without the hassle of waiting in line: As the capabilities of our mobile phones continue to evolve I believe that more of our daily activities will be programmed like this. For example, if I know I am looking for a prom dress I could wake up on a Saturday morning, scroll through the store’s inventory on my phone and select which dresses I am interested in trying on. When I arrived at the store that afternoon the dresses I selected would be waiting in a dressing room. Our concept of efficiency will eventually be redefined because of our interactions with technology. I doubt that the shopping process will ever be entirely like this, however, because I could easily argue that scrolling through dresses on my phone is an inefficient way to select clothing. For example, a royal blue dress on my phone might appeal to me because it is my favorite color but once I get to the dressing room I might instantly realize I hate the fabric. In our current shopping system the dress would have never been moved to the dressing room because hating the fabric would have overruled that it was my favorite color. It’s pretty crazy to think about the future of shopping, especially when you throw virtual dressing rooms into the mix. This has absolutely nothing to do with mobile phones or spring break, but it’s still worth watching (it's only 49 seconds long!): (But to summarize, new apps are redefining the way that we go about doing things, such as buying drinks, with the help of our smart phones. The purchasing process is likely going to change significantly as our technologies evolve.) When I started this blog post I made a really long list about all of the iPhone-enabled improvements that I saw while in Colorado, particularly at Snowball Music Festival. The list was long, and this blog post has become even longer. I could jabber forever about all of the ways that having an iPhone has upgraded my travel experience, but I will post about the rest of the list later (which includes Twitter and Facebook mobile communication, the ways that the iPhone has evolved real-time photography and uploading, utilizing Siri and wifi in the Colorado Mountain Express buses). In short, iPhones allow their users to travel more efficiently and to better take advantage of their surroundings. This leads to a less stressful travel experience and more free time for exploring (without getting lost!) Many of these technologies are relatively new and are constantly evolving—it will be interesting to see what the iPhone is like by next year’s spring break.
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Started restructuring this site on 12/24/2011 by adding this page. It will mainly consist of technology ramble and things that you probably won't read.
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