Meet Minio Labs!

Today’s  Smartphones are powerful enough to put a man on the moon, but we usually limit their use to sending text messages and browsing the web. Additionally, when new models come out, we simply throw the current ones away. Imagine the possibilities if you could use the computer in your pocket to its full potential? With Innovation Underground’s newest member, Minio Labs, you can! Discover all the possibilities using your mobile device: control your DIY projects, take measurements using existing sensors and play games free from limitations.

Using a small, external attachment, Minio enables you to make your device into whatever you dream it could be. Traditionally, your phone is locked into the hardware installed by the manufacturer. With Minio, however, users can unlock the potential of hardware IO blocks instead of conforming to standard boundaries. The Minio SDK even allows you to incorporate your custom hardware blocks into your apps.

Customization has never been easier (or more fun): with Minio, you can connect your smartphone to hardware that you create. Not only will your projects become truly mobile, but your smartphone can now be an extension of your project and your imagination.

To learn more about Minio Labs, or any of our other Innovation Underground members, visit our members page.

Member Spotlight: Gratitude Initiative

The Innovation Underground is honored to introduce their newest non-profit member, Gratitude Initiative (GI). GI’s mission is to provide college scholarships and educational support to the children and families of military service members, veterans, disabled veterans, and those killed in defense of our country. Over a decade of conflict and involvement in two wars has placed a stress on military and veteran households that is unparalleled in our nation’s history. GI and its supporters strive to ease some of the burden on these patriot families by helping their children achieve life-changing opportunities through education. Their main activities are:

1. Award scholarship funds to children to attend college or technical school to help make their future dreams come true without the burden of many years of school debt.

2. Provide educational services and support to help military children achieve their educational and career goals.

3. Raise awareness and provide services to help children cope with the challenges brought on by having a mother or father deployed overseas for military service or dealing with the disability or death of a parent due to combat action.

4. Host summer camps at affiliated universities for high school students to help bolster college readiness, celebrate being a teenager, and relieve some of the burdens brought on by the weight of a family involved in war.

The Innovation Underground Team joined forces with Gratitude Initiative last summer after serving together as mentors for the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities.

To learn more about GI, visit our members page.

HireOurHero.com Honors Heroes With Employment

US Disabled Veteran and entrepreneur, Brandon Bunch, has launched Hire Our Hero ­ a platform to help homeowners and citizens at large hire trusted professionals in their community such as realtors, plumbers, and electricians. This marketplace seeks to honor our Heroes’ service by increasing business opportunities and additional income

Bunch is a member of the Innovation Underground, a technology small business incubator located in Historic Downtown Bryan Texas. A year ago, Bunch founded Hire our Hero after attending the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities, part of the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship offered through the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. Today, Hire Our Hero is pleased to begin the recruitment of local “Heroes.”

Brandon Bunch served in the Marine Corps from 2000 to 2004 and now serves as a firefighter paramedic in Austin.

The Innovation Underground is a privately owned business incubator located in Historic Downtown Bryan, Texas. The Innovation Underground was established in 2011 by AdventGX . Since it’s founding, The Innovation Underground has successfully graduated four start­up companies and remains at full capacity with current small businesses while also continuing to support new clients through virtual, off­site incubation.

The Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities is a one week program offers training in entrepreneurship and small business management to post­9/11 veterans with disabilities resulting from their service to our country. EBV at Texas A&M University is a significant collaboration on our campus between the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship and the Center for Executive Development and Mays Business School.

Relevant Web Links:

­ Hire Our hero: ­ hireourhero.com
­ Innovation Underground: ­ iu.adventgx.com
­ Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities: ebv.tamu.edu

 

SEAD Academy To Host Entrepreneurship Camp for Kids

SEADAcademy.jpg

SEAD Academy is pleased to announce the addition of NEST Kids to their summer programming. NEST Kids is a one week crash course in entrepreneurship. Using the project management tools of today’s technology leaders, the NEST Kids staff will guide teams of children ages 12-16  as they turn ideas into prototypes.

NEST Kids was founded by NEST’up, a technology accelerator program and incubator space located in Wallonia, Belgium. NEST Kids Co-Founder, Marc Lainez, has served as an instructor and project mentor since it’s founding in 2013. This summer Marc has joined forces with the Innovation Underground team in Historic Downtown Bryan to put on the very first US edition of NEST Kids.

The Innovation Underground is a privately owned business incubator located in Historic Downtown Bryan, 216 W. 26th Street. The Innovation Underground was established in 2011 by AdventGX . Since it’s founding, The Innovation Underground has successfully graduated four start-up companies and remains at full capacity with current small businesses while continuing to support new clients through virtual, off-site incubation.

SEAD Academy is a project that aims to integrate Science, Engineering, Art and Design into camps and classes for kids grades K-12. SEAD Academy was founded in 2013 by the AdventGX. Last summer, SEAD Academy hosted 150 students as they participated in immersive interdisciplinary classes.

NEST Kids is a one-week course for children aged 12-16 and will run from June 23-27. This program gives participants the opportunity to learn from experts and software developers. Kids will use tools from the startup world to bring ideas to life. NEST Kids aims to help children express their creativity and develop their ability to solve the problems that surround them.

 

Relevant Web Links:

– SEAD Academy –http://bit.ly/SEAD-Summer

– Innovation Underground – iu.adventgx.com

– NEST Kids – http://www.nestup.be/

The Art of Cyber Security


On March 27th, SEAD Gallery was honored to host the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) of Central Texas. This bright group meets on a monthly basis to discuss best practices in cyber security. During this month’s meeting, David Orchel, Principal at Secuilibrium, LLC and a board member for the Central Texas Chapter of the ISSA, gave a presentation titled Comparing NIST’s Cybersecurity Framework with Best Practice. The presentation was well delivered and received with enthusiasm by the audience. In the week following, our friend Ochel wrote a blog post giving more insight to the topic and the struggles he encountered while gathering his thoughts for the event.

Picture

To learn more about ISSA, or to subscribe to be informed for future events, send an email to IU@AdventGX.com

2014 MBA Venture Challenge

Three members of the Innovation Underground were selected as case studies for Texas A&M May’s School of Business’ 2014 MBA Venture Challenge. Gratitude Initiative, NoFolder, and Hire Our Hero were each assigned a team of MBA students who spent two weeks researching the start-ups, developing an elevator pitch and conducting analysis, all culminating in a due diligence presentation to panels of judges. Innovation Underground entrepreneurs had the unique experience of watching a group of MBA students analyze and pitch their startups to a panel of expert judges. The team presenting Hire Our Hero took first place in the competition which included 12 teams, each representing an early stage company. In an interview following the competition, Hire Our Hero’s Founder and CEO Brandon Bunch expressed his gratitude for the opportunity be part of the MBA Venture Challenge. “We were extremely honored to have the opportunity to work side-by-side with these students, helping them to understand what challenges new startup ventures endure,” Bunch said. “It is a huge advantage for us here at Hire Our Hero to have an unbiased evaluation performed.  Having the winning team was just a really big bonus.  We are very proud to have been a part of the MBA Venture Challenge.” Hire Our Hero was only a concept until Founder and CEO, Brandon Bunch, attended the Mays Business School’s Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities program this summer. It was here that Bunch put pen to paper, making Hire Our Hero a reality.

Hire Our Hero is an online database where local Citizens can hire trusted “Heroes” (veterans, firefighters, police, and EMTs) to assist in home repair and improvement projects. This marketplace seeks to honor our Heroes’ service by providing meaningful work and additional income.

Gratitude Initiative is the IU’s newest non-profit member. Their mission is to provide college scholarships and educational support to the children and families of military service members, veterans, disabled veterans, and those killed in defense of our country. Over a decade of conflict and involvement in two wars has placed a stress on military and veteran households that is unparalleled in our nation’s history. GI and its supporters strive to ease some of the burden on these patriot families by helping their children achieve life-changing opportunities through education.

NoFolder is the first fully private cloud based online storage center. With NoFolder, files can be saved from any device in real time and are synchronized and available to all devices attached to your personal Nofolder account. Nofolder works on Windows, Mac and Linux Desktops as well as Android, iPad, iPhone and Windows mobile devices.

MBA Venture Challenge was established in 2001 by the Mays Business School in partnership with the Center for New Venture and Entrepreneurship. The competition is designed to give first year students the opportunity to apply their newly acquired knowledge to a living, breathing startup. Over the past twelve years, the event has continued to gain notoriety and respect. This year, more than 100 regional business and academic leaders participated in the event.

Inaugural Software Developer’s Cartel Event

Last Tuesday, the Grand Stafford Theater welcomed bright minds from Central Texas for the inaugural meeting of the newly created Software Developers Cartel.

http://vimeo.com/87169887

The Cartel aims to gather passionate developers from Central Texas to share their personal and professional experiences. By creating a space where hackers can interact, the Cartel hopes to grow and maintain a community of curious and passionate developers while fostering and promoting best practices.

This very first event had two local speakers lined up. Mike Abney, VP of consulting at Improving Enterprises and Manoj Prasad, doctorate candidate at the Sketch Recognition Lab from TAMU.

Mike introduced the audience to the SOLID principles, a set of architecture design principles which, when followed, help produce cleaner code that is easier to read and maintain. The SOLID principles were first introduced by Robert C. Martin, a famous character from the software community that described them in detail in his book “Clean Code” and his screencasts at http://cleancoders.com/ To learn more about SOLID principles check out Mike’s presentation at http://www.slideshare.net/mikeabney/1-solidhttp://vimeo.com/87169888

Manoj then took the stage for a totally different topic. At the Sketch Recognition Lab, he worked on an interactive vest that can give gps-based direction instructions through vibrators positioned at different strategic spots. The whole technology is based on the Arduino platform and interacts with Android devices. Manoj gave the audience a demo of the vest and showed some of the code controlling the Arduino part. You can read more about Manojs’ vest on the CSNet news feed (http://www.cse.tamu.edu/NewsFeed/?id=3626), http://vimeo.com/87169889

The event ended on a lighter note as Cartel founder, Marc Lainez, led the group in a discussion of potential future events. Different activities were proposed and attendees voted.

The vast majority voted for two specific activities:

– Meet-ups with guest speakers

– Teaching kids how to code

The two activities that came second are:

– Organizing coding dojos (http://codingdojo.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WhatIsCodingDojo)

– Setting up an openhack community (http://openhack.github.io/).

Following the result of last week’s vote, we can already announce that the next meeting of the Software Developers Cartel will be next month, March 18th at 6pm, and will follow the same mini-conference format.

Want to get involved? Let us know by filling out this online form! http://bit.ly/1bTrVsq

The Cartel is an initiative of Innovation Underground and AdventGX, supported by local organizations such as Improving Enterprises, Capsher, TAMU Product Innovation Cellar, HTRI and the ISSA. Should you want to support the Software Developers Cartel, drop us an email at developerscartel@adventgx.com


 

Voices for Children Benefit Concert Rocks Grand Stafford Theater

On November 15, more than 100 guests gathered at Grand Stafford Theater in Historic Downtown Bryan for the first Voices for Children Benefit Concert produced by Advent GX. With generous underwriting from Fred Davis of Davis & Davis Lawyers, Advent GX produced the event that raised funds to help Voices for Children and their staff provide court appointed special advocates for children in the foster care system in the Brazos Valley. The evening featured the Latino rock of Texas’ own Del Castillo at Grand Stafford Theater, Downtown Bryan’s premier live music venue. Guests started the evening with Latino dance lessons donated by Dr. Susan Quiring from Susan’s Ballroom Dance.

“We are always looking for ways to put our heritage assets, such as Grand Stafford Theater, to work to benefit local economic development,” explains Advent GX Managing Partner Joan Quintana. “In this case, we were able to work with generous local businesses and patrons of the arts to create a cultural arts event that was incredibly fun and supported some of the most vulnerable members of our community…kids in foster care.”

The event raised funds and, thanks to promotional support from arts and community advocate Denise Bermudez, raised awareness of Voices for Children’s mission through advertising and social media campaigns produced by Advent GX Media.

Fred Davis of Davis & Davis Lawyers supported the Voices for Children, Inc. benefit concert as part of the firm’s campaign to commemorate their 50th Anniversary in 2013 by donating $50,000 to local charitable organizations. Celebrating 50 years of Texans helping Texans, Fred Davis chose Voices for Children, Inc. as one of these organizations, understanding the importance of Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) in representing neglected and abused children in our community.

In FY 2013, Voices for Children’s 101 CASA volunteers advocated for 242 abused and neglected children in Brazos, Burleson, and Grimes counties, placing 80 children in safe, permanent homes. Each CASA volunteer serves as Guardian ad Litem for one child or sibling set throughout the child welfare court system. CASAs provide the detailed information necessary for judges to safeguard the children’s best interests and ensure they are placed in safe, permanent homes as quickly as possible.

Advent GX opened the 100-year-old Grand Stafford Theater in Fall 2012 as a community development project showcasing the economic potential of the arts and heritage preservation. The theater now features state of the art sound and lighting and has been host to Grammy-award winning artists, up-and-coming talent and local musicians across a wide variety of genre. Advent GX is a community and economic development consulting firm headquartered in Texas A&M University’s Research Park. Advent GX owns the Innovation Underground, a business and technology incubator in downtown Bryan, and serves rural and small urban communities throughout Texas and North America.

 

BCS Startup Launch Party at Grand Stafford Theater

BCS Startup’s launch party, held at Grand Stafford Theater in Historic Downtown Bryan was an overwhelming success. The eclectic group of entrepreneurs, designers, investors and all around creative types who attended totaled over 100. All who came were engaged as BCS Startup unveiled their new app, which aims to simplify the convoluted process of discovering startup resources in Bryan/College Station. The app, which maps out local investors, incubators and support services is a 100% free resource for local startups.

In addition to learning about BCS Startup’s innovative app, the event was a networking opportunity. Those in attendance were invited to pitch their business ideas to the crowd of fellow entrepreneurs.

What was most striking about the group of attendees was their shared optimism and entrepreneurial spirit. Watching some of Bryan/College Station’s sharpest and most capable pioneers rallying around one another’s ideas was an inspiration and a reminder that business is about more than making money.

BCS Startup will be hosting a second event November 5th at Grand Stafford Theater. Everyone is welcome to attend. RSVP online at http://cofounders-meetup-eorg.eventbrite.com/

Grand Stafford Theater to Host Voices for Children Benefit Concert

Advent GX is proud to announce the Voices for Children Benefit concert coming to Grand Stafford Theater on November 15th. The benefit concert will feature the music of Del Castillo. Tickets go on sale September 20th with proceeds benefiting Voices for Children, Inc.

Voices For Children is a non-profit organization that protects abused and neglected children by pairing them with trained child advocates. These advocates follow children through the long and difficult journey of the court system to safeguard the child’s best interests and ensure they are placed in safe, permanent homes as quickly as possible. Last year Voices For Children’s 106 volunteers advocated for 247 abused and neglected children in Brazos, Burleson, and Grimes counties, placing 81 children in safe, permanent homes.

Special thanks to Fred Davis of Davis & Davis Lawyers for underwriting the Voices for Children Benefit Concert as part of the firm’s campaign to commemorate their 50 years of serving the BCS community and to AdventGX for production support.

Del Castillo has toured nationwide with such diverse acts as Styx, Los Lonely Boys, Ozomatli, Don Henley, Los Lobos and Willie Nelson. Their music has become a symbol of the cross-cultural power of music with their eclectic blend of Flamenco, Rock, Latin, Blues, and World music.

The Grand Stafford Theater is an award winning music venue located in Historic Downtown Bryan and an incubated member of the Innovation Underground. Since opening their doors almost a year ago, The Grand Stafford has featured great musicians like Kopecky Family Band, Dave Ramirez and Ben Rector. This Fall they are honored to welcome Del Castillo as they preform a concert benefiting Voices For Children.

Ticket proceeds will directly benefit Voices for Children, Inc. in their mission to serve the neglected and abused children of the Brazos Valley. Tickets will be available for purchase at grandstaffordtheater.com starting September 13. General admission pricing is $30.00. A limited number of reserved seating benefactor tables for four are available for $200.