BIZTECHBUZZ in the world of social, cognitive, IoT and startups

Month: September 2014 (Page 1 of 3)

Entrepreneur Fire! SmartCamp comes to Dallas, y'all! Visual Content and Conversion WON the Day!

The very first SmartCamp Dallas event was held recently, and there were PHENOMENAL startups competing to be a finalist in the event. Two startups stood out from all the rest: ImageVision and Digital Certainty!

Congratulations to ImageVision, the judges’ choice and winner of SmartCamp Dallas! And congratulations to Digital Certainty, the people’s choice award winner!

smartcamp_dallas

By using image recognition and machine learning technology, ImageVision built a search system that helps web and social media companies monetize their visual content and automate the recognition and tagging of images and videos. Customers can tap into their visual search system using ImageVision’s web APIs.

Think of ImageVision as the watchdog for large web companies that deal with tens of thousands of images. ImageVision allows them to monitor and manage all those images and videos!

Digital Certainty’s solution designed to increase the conversion rate of your marketing plan. Turning web and mobile visitors into paying customers – faster than anyone else – is their goal!

Lastly, congratulations to the Dallas team! Nice job on your first SmartCamp event!

Four Colorado Entrepreneurs stand out at Denver Startup Week!

denver_event

IBM is doing so many things with startups, it’s hard to keep up! I’ve blogged a lot about SmartCamps, so you probably think SmartCamps are the only things we have going for entrepreneurs. But nothing could be farther from the truth!

Case in point, IBM was recently a sponsor of the Denver Startup Week. There were 5,500+ startup community members and over 650 companies engaged in over 125 community-driven events celebrating everything entrepreneurial in the Mile High City!

And I’m thrilled to say that the event marked the first time IBM Global Entrepreneur was involved at an entrepreneurial event in Colorado. Something tells me, it won’t be the last!

The four winning startups were B&C Electronic Engineering, SPF Solutions, S’ync, and Enterprise Sentinel.

B&C Electronic Engineering has a solution that shares responding emergency vehicles locations with other emergency agencies (fire, police, ambulance). This is critical for first responders. We all know about the chaotic nature at the scene of an accident, add to that the multiple emergency vehicles that are arriving at the scene. B&C Electronic Engineering’s solution can reduce the chaos for the emergency vehicles by giving them critical information about the location of other emergency vehicles.

SPF Solutions’ mobile app is going to make your “take-out” experience better! SPF Solutions has created an app for customers that enables them to place their food order and then be notified when it is ready for pickup. With this kind of automation, fewer mistakes are made and it frees up the restaurant staff to do other tasks. Sounds like greater efficiency and better service to me!

S’ync is tackling a huge issue in the realm of smarter transportation. Their solution uses GPS location data to map traffic flow, rates, and conditions to synch traffic lights. Think of it! Improving the flow of traffic is a benefit to everyone!

Enterprise Sentinel monitors enterprise data from any source, providing transactional analytics as well as executing pre-emptive actions to prevent issues from occurring.  This predictive analytics capability plays very well in health monitoring as well as other industry use-cases.

Congratulations to these four startups! I know I look forward to hearing more about them in future SmartCamp events!

For more information:

B&C Electronic Engineering -> http://www.911eta.com/
SPF Solutions -> http://www.spfsolutions.biz/
Enterprise Sentinel-> http://enterprisesentinel.com/

Digital tip of the week – Create customize LindedIn invitations for better engagement

Cherrio! The Social Business Circle of Trust!

This morning my daughter had her favorite cereal  — Cheerios!   And I was looking at the bowl,  I noticed the circles swirling and thought of the social business circle of trust that is required in Social.

cherio

The “circle” of trust?   Yes!

The Circle of Trust

Every Social Business has to generate trust in its brand, employees, and products. I still remember the movie Meet the Parents, in which the father explained the concept of the “circle of trust” to his future son-in-law where trust in his family revolves from person to person. While we can laugh at the situations of this funny movie, the context of the message is one that is very real and very important.

Trust, while often overlooked, is crucial in the Social Business world. People want to do business with someone they trust, and with the social tools, all relationships depend on this concept. Our common sense tells us that trust is earned and not easily given. How do we survive in today’s business world in relation to trust? “Who do we trust” and “Who trusts our company” become critical questions to answer.

Trust Guards Your Social Business Digital Reputation

Trust guards your Social Business digital reputation. That digital reputation is how people view your company from the online content available in the blogosphere. This trust varies with the relationship, whether for employees, customers and partners. For example:

  • Employees build social capital through interactions that can happen naturally through work. The social environment can be provided by the company and built into work processes (hence the power of social enablement of business processes).

 

  • Building trust and a reputation with customers and prospects requires a different kind of thought and focus. There is no shared “platform” (although LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, and so forth, are shared by all) that guarantees interaction. Targeting, use of analytics, and engaging with honesty and value are key. It’s not enough to simply focus on the customer’s interests, but trust is built by understanding where they spend time and their motivations. Trust and a digital reputation are built by making the customer successful.

 

  • Partners and channels have aspects of customers and employees. A business partner who has more than 50% of their business with your company might be deeply integrated into your core processes and have a social interaction pattern somewhat like a customer. Other partners, however, can also be hybrids[md]a bit of a competitor and customer. Their business relationship is not integrated into your business processes as deeply, so it takes on a different type of relationship.

 

Below is an example of trust at the highest level where every night my client is processing all the feedback from clients and making changes — trusting their clients with their innovation!

the loop

SmartCamp Raleigh Showcases Entrepreneurs With "Change the World" solutions!

Two startups offer charity and educational solutions, win SmartCamp Raleigh!

Another week means another round of SmartCamp winners! Congratulations to Livitae and LikeCharity for winning SmartCamp Raleigh!

raleigh

Livitae, a woman-owned startup (go girl power!), has developed a mobile and cloud-based solution that offers academic institutions a single platform to centralize academic progress, performance, and planning by aggregating student information in a clear and secure manner. The system provides a customized academic roadmap for each student, simplifying degree and career planning by auditing and managing all aspects of the processes.

That means no more confusion for students about what classes to take or their grades! Think of it, even parents could be better informed about their kids’ academic performance!

LikeCharity enables you to donate to your favorite charities by simply sending a text message from your mobile phone. Donating via LikeCharity is a quick and easy way for you to help the charities that you really care about!

The power of this solution has the potential to increase donations by automating the entire process via their platform. I’d love to see that used for the Humane Society, one of my favorite charities!

Great ideas coming from Raleigh, North Carolina!

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