A great mobile application (apps for iPhones, iPads, Droid, etc.) contest for students at the University of Maryland. Its awesome to see various schools and departments working together to give students entrepreneurial experiences. By Priya Kumar:
Last semester, University of Maryland students received academic credit for creating iPhone apps. Now any tech-savvy team of students that wants to get in on the app market can get something better: cash.
In its latest effort to examine the intersection of mobile technology and education, the university is launching a contest for students to design an app that “supports campus life.” The first-place team wins $3,000, two runner-ups get $2,000 and $1,000, respectively, and all winners have a chance to market their apps.
The contest represents a way to “harness our campus community’s broad creativity,” says Ben Bederson, contest chair and assistant professor of computer science. He served as director for the Human Computer Interaction Lab on campus from 2000-2006.
The contest is part of a mobility initiative the university launched in Fall 2008 to explore the impact of handheld wireless devices on education. Through the program, the university has given pilot groups of freshmen an iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad and helped develop a new cell phone emergency alert system.
Found an interesting article on student entrepreneurs when researching Under Armour founder Kevin Plank. This article, by Archana Rajan, highlights some of the actions that various colleges and universities (including the Smith School at the University of Maryland — where Plank studied) are doing to support and encourage student entrepreneurs.
While profiling Maryland Grad and CrookedMonkey T-Shirts founder Micha Weinblatt, Rajan writes,
Now 26 years old, Weinblatt owns a business that has booked more than $700,000 in sales during 2009. And he couldn’t have done it without the help he got from the University’s of Maryland’s Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship–a business boot camp that helps students create, launch and grow their own companies.
College Hunks Hauling Junk is featured in the In Pictures: Dorm Room Entrepreneurs feature at Forbes.com
“The Dingman Center has been a tremendous source of advice for me, especially since I didn’t go to the business school,” says Weinblatt. Advice provided by the center taught him essential business skills, like how to forecast and monitor sales. It introduced him to a network of like-minded student entrepreneurs he could rely on for support and as a sounding board for new ideas. And it provided access to a network of successful entrepreneurs outside the school.
Weinblatt then describes his various interactions with Kevin Plank. From Rajan:
“During one of their meetings, Plank told him to concentrate on what the company does best; as a result, CrookedMonkey focused on its strength in the wholesale business, as opposed to selling directly to consumers over the Internet. Weinblatt says the advice helped the company succeed despite a recession.
Its great to hear that Dingman and Plank are available to students from across the campus and not just the business school. This is a sign of an open, diverse entrepreneurial eco-system on campus.
There are compelling statistics surrounding the growth of entrepreneurship centers and classes and many insights into the low-risk nature of founding a firm while on campus.
Other schools and programs mentioned include MIT, University of California Berkely, University of Pennsylvania, and Northeastern University.
A few weeks back I was fortunate enough to meet Ben Hatten, one of the founders of LegalRiver.com, a marketplace for lawyers and small businesses. The three founders met at the Maryland’s Smith School of
LegalRiver.com launchs to help small business.
Business. Not only have they taken great advantage of what Smith offers (from business planning courses to a winter break accelerator program at the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship).
Legal River is currently participating in the Launchbox Digital accelerator in Washington DC. Today Legal River issued press release introducing their services to the marketplace. For any small business or new venture, finding a lawyer that can complete non-standard request is difficult to say the least. We have run into the problem often with FamilyFantasySports.com. BTW, you can follow LegalRiver.com on Twitter.com/legalriver. Here is the Press Release:
“Washington D.C. — June 1, 2009 — This morning Legal River launched an online marketplace where small and medium sized businesses can find lawyers to meet all of their legal needs. Legal River was conceived in 2008 when three MBA students at Smith School of Business were trading war stories about some of the challenges they faced in their previous jobs. “One issue that kept coming up was how difficult and time consuming it was to find lawyers for unique, long-tail problems.” said Co-Founder Ben Hatten, one of the company’s founders. The three identified a problem, and then they set out to create a solution.
We wanted to create a solution that would empower businesses to find
the right lawyers and empower lawyers to reach out to clients they
wanted to help,” commented Co-Founder Zach Girod. “To make our
service effective we know it has to be a win-win scenario” Continue reading “Smith School Grads Launch LegalRiver.com”→
I received an email recently from a student living in the VeloCity Residence at the University of Waterloo (I believe Waterloo is the home of Research In Motion). The residence is pretty tricked out with conference rooms, a wireless device lab, and very modern minimalist design to it. Looks like a pretty cool place to be a campus entrepreneur to me. Their partners, mentors, and speakers are a pretty impressive bunch. Under projects, the site states:
VeloCity residents will have the freedom to pursue projects that they feel passionate about.
They’ll have the chance to collaborate with some of the most talented students from across campus.
They’ll have an experienced mentor who can help guide them in the right direction.
And at the end of each term, there will be a forum where they’ll have the chance to pitch their work to people who can help take things to the next level.
Unless teams decide to work on a project that is also part of their academic coursework, nothing from VeloCity will be graded or put on a transcript, so the motivation to be successful will come from within each team. It is the VeloCity residents who will have control over their workload – and progress.
With the right mix of talent, mentors, facilities, ideas and ambition, VeloCity projects have all the critical ingredients needed for success.
Peter Kao, a member of the first cohort (entered in Sept.) to participate in VeloCity has been very impressed with the technology — from the lighting to the flat screens and wii. In an email, Peter said,”What makes the place extra special is the entrepreneurial spirit everyone has and their motivation and passion for that special venture idea they want to develop.” He posts about his early move in experiences his blog.
I believe these focused dorm/vocational residences and programs may be one of the key ways for schools to teach entrepreneurship across campus. There is no reason engineers, artists, and even pre-law, biz, and med students should be augmenting their studies with practical entrepreneurial experiences. Kao believes the VeloCity is the first student incubator residence in Canada. I believe that there are a handful here in the states; I know there is a program called Dingman at the University of Maryland.
Campus Entrepreneurship 