BIZTECHBUZZ in the world of social, cognitive, IoT and startups
I love this Infographic of the Silicon Valley ranking of cities for entrepreneurship!!!
The top 5 scores were:
Did you see that there is a geographic dominance of Northern California? The top 4 Silicon Valley cities in the MIT rankings possess 20 times the average start-up quality as California’s median city!!!! WOW!
A very special thank you to all Veterans who are currently serving our country, who have served, and who have paid the ultimate sacrifice. You are not forgotten and your sacrifices are appreciated. A special call out to my Uncle Johnny, who served in WW II and was recognized for his service in D Day. I wish you were still with us!
Our freedoms come at a high cost and we can never rest assuming that our freedoms will always be present, so it’s fitting that there is a day to say thank you to those who voluntarily serve and put themselves in harms way so that we can enjoy our freedom.
Today we hosted an incredible call about Unconscious Bias. Everyone has them … based on your history, experiences, and context. Take this test — it is a real eye opener! https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
What is UnConscious Bias?
A personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment (Merriam-Webster)
Unconscious biases influence our judgment and decision-making, and because we are not aware of them, can be detrimental in certain circumstances such as what information to prioritize in decision-making, who to hire, promote, and reward, and where to allocate precious resources.
Why do we have these biases?
We work in everyday between the automatic pilot and thoughtful, reflective moments. Most of us are on that automatic pilot most of the day — driving to work, the feeling when wearing shoes, breathing, etc but when we pause and do the slow thinking, we think about the facts and the basis of our decisions. When you are in System 1 — intuitive — you make assumptions you don’t even know about!
Understand the Ladder of Influence:
We have a lot of filters that we need to be aware of. I love this ladder from Chris on how much data we process automatically. Alot of our conclusions are based on assumptions, based on a selective set of data.
What do you do? Unconscious Bias:
I love attending the TieCon conferece every year. It is the world’s largest Enterpreneur Conference with over 4300 attendees, 35% women, and this year 20% women speakers.
The TieCon 50 are the top 50 Entrepreneurs who this year each received up to $120K of the IBM Cloud! The results for these chosen few are amazing .. with over the past years over 114 successful exits!
They focused on 8 tracks:
I wanted to share many of the great moments from our Global Entrepreneurs!
Kick Sim:
GT Systems – a TieCon Power 50 Entrepreneur!
Airosense:
And the interest in the IBM Cloud was a long long line! Thanks to all the entrepreneurs for your interest! We will do our best to help you be successful!
In 1935, three decades before the Equal Pay Act, IBM recruited its first women in the workforce. IBM’s founder, T.J. Watson Sr. promised women, “the same kind of work for equal pay.” Since then, IBM has been acknowledged as a world leader in its commitment to women both in and out of the workforce. In 2014, IBM was named one of the 諺Best Companies for Women”by Forbes.
It should come as no surprise that IBM has partnered with WITI (Women In Technology International), a powerhouse dedicated to women in tech, on their first ever Virtual Hackathon. WITI started in 1989 as The International Network of Women in Technology and, in 2001, evolved into The WITI Professional Association, the world’s leading trade association for tech-savvy women. Today, WITI is the premiere global organization empowering women in business and technology to achieve unimagined possibilities.
I personally invite you to join Bluemix, IBM’s premier cloud development platform, and WITI for an international hackathon where developers, scientists, students, and entrepreneurs will gather virtually to build software, applications, hardware, data visualization and platform solutions focused on the Internet of Things and wearables. The hackathon runs throughout the month of May and is open to open to all.
Follow these easy steps to get started and get hacking!
1. Register for the hackathon at ibm.biz/witiregistration
2. Register for your free Bluemix trial at ibm.biz/witihack
3. Participate in Bluemix virtual education sessions and review technical resources here: ibm.biz/witihackathon
4. Start building your app and submit it for review by May 27th.
Prizes include IBM Cloud Credit, a 1-hour virtual meeting with me, 2016 WITI Summit tickets, free WITI memberships and more.
As a board member of WITI and mentor to several women in IBM, I am thrilled to see this type of collaboration and can’t wait to see the apps you come up with!
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