Category: Austin (Page 248 of 308)

BY LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Google fiber is coming to Austin.
It’s only the second city to get the Google fiber network which began rolling out in Kansas City, Kan. last year.
Google officials made the announcement Tuesday morning at a packed Brazos Hall conference center downtown filled with more than 100 local and state business officials, politicians and media representatives. The room erupted into applause when Google officially announced the fiber network for Austin with a wall-sized slide that proclaimed:

“Hello, Austin, Goodbye, loading bars”

The Google fiber network has already elicited a response from broadband competitor AT&T, based in Dallas, which on Tuesday also announced plans to deliver a 1 Gigabit broadband network to Austin. AT&T issued a release right after the Google event. AT&T “is prepared to build an advanced fiber optic infrastructure in Austin, Texas, capable of delivering speeds up to 1 Gigabit per second.”
No word yet on how Internet providers Time Warner Cable and Grande Communications will react to the new Google fiber network.

So what does all of this mean?

The Google fiber network means super fast uploading and downloading speeds that are 100 times faster for businesses and homes than what most broadband Internet users currently experience, as well as TV service with hundreds of high-definition channels. With 1 Gigabit Internet access, you can upload a 90 minute concert in 10 seconds or upload 300 vacation photos in 12 seconds.
“Way to go Austin. You’re changing the world,” said Gov. Rick Perry, who encouraged everyone to Tweet out the news using the hashtag #FiberATX.
The Google fiber network in Austin will transform the city’s already super hot technology startup industry and could lead to the world’s next Google, Perry said.
“Already, Austin is home to some of the boldest, most creative, most visionary people in the world,” Perry said. “This development will mean another way for those visionary companies, and many to come I would venture to guess, to help them take those innovations and those visions and make them a reality. It vastly increases the odds the next great thing, the next Google, will be born and bred right here in the Lone Star State. For these types of companies the connection with the Internet is the air that they breathe. The faster and the more stable, the better.”

Google fiber should spur even more technology startups in Austin

High speed Internet not only lets consumers stream videos, upload and download pictures and skype without issues, the Google fiber network can unleash all kinds of possibilities and innovations. The industries most likely to benefit include healthcare, education, new media, broadcast, business services, software companies and cloud computing businesses. The Google fiber network may even spawn new industries that don’t yet exist, said Joshua Baer, co-founder of Capital Factory, a coworking and technology accelerator downtown. He installed Time Warner’s 50 megabit network into his workplace recently at a cost of $4,000 a month. He was going to advertise that Capital Factory had the fastest Internet network in the city, but now Google’s announcement has made that obsolete, he said.
“For geeks, fast Internet is like a big monitor and a good chair,” Baer said. “It leads to higher job satisfaction and productivity.”
The Google fiber network means more companies and people will move to Austin to take advantage of the lightning fast Internet speeds, Baer said. It also means that more companies will launch the latest products and services here for the wired population to test out. And the Google fiber network will spawn all kinds of innovations that can only be left up to the imagination for now, he said.

When is Google fiber coming and how much will it cost?

While Google fiber’s pricing has not yet been announced, the Kansas City service runs about $70 a month for Internet service and $120 a month for combined TV and Internet service. In Kansas City, Google also offers “free” Internet which offers average American broadband speeds at no monthly charge for at least seven years to any homeowner who pays a $300 construction fee. Google plans to announce a business service package in Austin, said Kevin Lo, Google’s general manager of access services, but consumers are its priority.
Google will start working right away to build its infrastructure, Lo said. The company would not disclose the cost of the network but Lo said no taxpayer incentive money will be used to build and deploy the network. It is expected to be in operation by mid-2014, he said. TechCrunch cited a report estimating that Google would spend $11 billion to rollout its service nationwide to 20 million homes.

In addition to consumers and businesses, Google plans to work with the city of Austin to put its Google fiber network in 100 public institutions such as libraries, community centers and schools for free.
Austin applied to be the first recipient of the Google fiber technology in 2001 and it competed against more than 1,100 communities. Google selected Kansas City. But Austin never gave up, said Mayor Lee Leffingwell. The city’s business and community leaders, with Councilwoman Laura Morrison spearheading the effort, kept lobbying for the technology to come to Austin, he said. The city created videos, email marketing and social media campaigns and more. The campaign was called BigGigAustin.
“When Google was originally choosing where to bring fiber, Austin had one of the most enthusiastic reponses,” said Milo Medin, vice president of access services at Google.

Google fiber can lead to new innovations

“It’s a resource that can help make our city even more innovative,” Mayor Leffingwell said.
Austin asked its citizens how they would use the Google fiber network and they came up with a wide range of responses from interactive classrooms and medical center imaging and teleconferencing to uniquely Austin ideas like streaming live broadcasts of concerts and turning Austin into the live music capital of the Web, Morrison said. Other ideas included a smart energy management system for the home and a interactive town hall meeting online.
Morrison also recognized Gary Chapman, 58, a professor at the University of Texas, who died in 2010, and worked tirelessly to bring high-speed Internet access to Austin.

Creating fiberhoods in Austin

Morrison also mentioned that the Google fiber network will create “fiberhoods” that provide everyone access to the Internet. She showed a video of people in Austin proclaiming how they would use the high speed network.

Google has been in Austin since 2009 and has more than 100 employees in the city. Google briefly opened an office downtown and then shut it down and moved its staff to a North Austin campus.
Google sponsored a happy hour in February with RISE Austin and Engine Advocacy at Rattle Inn. At that event, Google gave away Google Austin T-shirts. The Engine Advocacy spokesman said the focus of the event was on H1-b Visas, patent reform and broadband spectrum access. But Google was mum about its plans for rolling out Google fiber, which was already in the works.

In a globally competitive world, Internet speeds matter

“We’re here because speed matters,” said Medin with Google. “At Google, we’re obsessed with speed.”
Everyone knows the frustration of trying to upload or download a large file on the Internet, Medin said. It wasn’t long ago that broadband Internet access was a novelty, he said. Broadband Internet access has led to all kinds of new innovations on the Web, he said. Yet despite the innovations, the speed of broadband access had not gotten that much better for most people, Medin said.
Today, the U.S. ranks 16th in Internet speeds worldwide and yet consumers pay some of the highest rates in the world, Medin said.
“This is a problem in a world that is globally competitive,” he said.
Medin said he was sadden to read a story in the Wall Street Journal in January about high school students who hang out in the parking lots of Starbucks and McDonald’s to use the free Wi-Fi to complete their homework.
“We’re giving everyone living within Austin the choice to use Google fiber,” he said. “No more waiting on the Internet.”
With the Google fiber Internet and TV package, consumers will get a Digital Video Recorder and they will be able to record up to eight high-definition television shows at the same time.
“The way Google fiber works, we build where you tell us to,” Medin said. The first rollouts of the service will be in the neighborhoods with the most demand, he said. The area that has the most people sign up for the service will get it first.
Google has confirmed that it’s going to bring Google fiber to small businesses and that’s expected to make Austin, which has a growing technology base, even more competitive with Silicon Valley, said Eugene Sepulveda, CEO of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas.
“It means greater productivity and a higher quality of life,” Sepulveda said. “It will definitely be a competitive advantage for Austin.”

Google’s fiber network has spurred Kansas’ Silicon Prairie startup industry, said Lo with Google. Today, some areas without high speed Internet access resort to putting information on thumb drives and flying to another business location to transfer giant files, Lo said. The Google fiber network in Kansas has created a clustering effect where businesses that need access to dependable broadband access locate, Lo said.

High tech companies are already looking to relocate to Texas

Already, the Austin Technology Council gets a few calls every week from California high-tech companies looking to move to Texas to escape high taxes in California, said Julie Huls, president and CEO of ATC. Now she expects even more calls.
“Google fiber validates Austin as a Tier One market for technology,” Huls said. “It really solidifies our place. The announcement alone will create additional global visibility for Austin.”
Huls said she recently spoke with the Kansas City Technology Council CEO who told her that Google fiber has dramatically changed the city and spurred further technology startups.

If I had Google fiber I would…..

Following the official announcement, the invited guests went upstairs for tacos and sodas and to receive Google blue “swag bags” with a white Google fiber Austin T-shirt in them. People also filled out red Google map marker stickers that said “If I had Google fiber I would ….” They filled in the blank with all kinds of suggestions including work from my hammock and rule the world and they placed them on a map of Austin.

Google kicked off the announcement with this video.

This video gives even more details on Google fiber.

Gov. Rick Perry’s speech at the Google fiber event.

Nathan Bernier with KUT Austin has uploaded a soundcloud file with the full 30 minute press conference, if you would like to listen to it yourself.

For more information on the availability of the Google Fiber service in Austin, sign up for updates.

BY RANDY LANKFORD
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

If Tim Porter didn’t let a bomb blowing up in his hands stop him, he’s certainly not going to back down from a bully. Porter, who retired from the army as a sergeant first class in 1998, lost all the fingers on his left hand and all but the forefinger on his right when a C-4 explosive device he was dismantling in a training exercise detonated. Doctors were able to save the thumbs on both hands and replace Porter’s left index finger with one of his toes. A less-than-full complement of fingers didn’t keep him from creating a career on a keyboard though.
His curious nature, entrepreneurial desire and determination to protect children drove Porter to create Appddiction Studio, a San Antonio-based mobile applications development company, best known for its “Stop Bullies” app.
“I was working in the information technology department at the San Antonio Express-News,” explains Porter, “and I could see how quickly applications for hand-held devices were growing. It was obviously the fastest-growing segment of the development market. So I taught myself how to develop mobile apps. It took me about two years to learn it on my own.”
The first apps Porter’s company created were for preschool children to teach them the alphabet, shapes, colors and how to count. And while that work was rewarding, it wasn’t enough for Porter. Driven by ever-increasing news accounts of bullying and childhood suicides, Porter developed his anti-bullying app that has spread across the nation.
“I wanted to help prevent those suicides, so I did some research,” he explains. “I talked to a lot of school administrators to find out how kids were reporting bullying.
“In most schools a kid has to go into the office, or put a note in a shoebox or a locker somewhere to report bullying. I felt that was pretty antiquated. Most kids today either have a smart phone or want one. And the main reason parents give their children smart phones is to make sure they’re safe and at school.”
Porter’s concept was to give children a way to immediately report incidents of bullying to school administrators, in real time, accompanied by video footage or photos of the event.
“Now,” says Porter, “instead of finding out about it hours or days later, school officials can respond immediately and it’s not just one student’s word against another’s. There’s documentation, proof so schools can be more proactive and preventative in tackling bullying and other incidents.”
Shelly Smede, principal of Eagle Rock Middle School, vouches for the value of the program.
“The Stop Bullies app by Appddiction Studio and Tim Porter has received a warm welcome in our middle school. Students who would never visit the office to get a paper ‘bully report’ will send in a report via their smart phones from home. We also do the Safe School Ambassador program at Eagle Rock, and Ambassadors have used the app as a means to connect with administration, reporting exclusion, bullying, and even a suicide threat. We ended up sending police officers to a young lady’s home to do a welfare check, and her family was incredibly grateful that a classmate was able to send us a picture of the Facebook messages she was sending that discussed her desperation. We also received pictures of threats that a boy from a high school across town was making to a female student in our building. We sent the pictures to his principal and the threats have stopped. Even though we’ve only had the app for less than a month, I cannot imagine our school without it. A few days ago, I told a community member about it and he said, ‘Why don’t all of our schools have this?’”
Introduced in 2011, the app is already credited with preventing three suicides among students who were being bullied.
“I’d estimate we’re currently protecting more than 35,000 children,” adds Porter who funded the startup of the company through his 401(k) retirement account. With $415,000 in sales, Appddiction has grown to six employees, mostly programmers, who are developing school and campus safety apps to go along with programs serving federal, state and city governments.
“Our campus safety app is being implemented at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio and the University of Miami in Florida. It alerts students of any emergencies on campus and allows them to connect to campus police without knowing the phone number. You have access to university policies and procedures, how to react in an emergency and how to contact university administrators. More and more universities are expressing interest in that app as a way of protecting students and staff.”
Appddiction is also creating an app to enable school districts to assess individual school campus safety procedures without cumbersome and time-consuming paper work. Porter believes early safety assessment and preparedness, along with effective responses to threats, are, like his recovery from his injuries, possible with determination.
“It’s all in your mind. If you have the intestinal fortitude you can do anything. It doesn’t matter if you have 10 fingers or not.”

The mysterious invitation from Google began to show up in email boxes on Thursday. The invitations were delivered to members of the press and leaders in the business community.

You’re Invited.
You are a leader here in Austin. Every day, your work and contributions help make our community better and stronger. That’s why we want you to be one of the first to hear about something new coming to Austin. Please join Google and the City of Austin for an announcement on Tuesday.

Tuesday, April 9th
Doors open at 10:30am
Program starts promptly at 11:00am

Google, which has more than 150 people at its Austin campus, is not commenting or providing any further details about the press conference.
But GigaOm, VentureBeat and CNet have all written articles speculating that the news could be about Google Fiber network might be coming to Austin. The network which is currently only available in Kansas City, delivers 1 Gigabit broadband upload and download speeds to the home. Google has said it plans to roll the service out to additional cities, but did not provide any timetable or additional information.
The Austin Business Journal is also reporting that the Google fiber announcement will be made next week, quoting unnamed sources.
VentureBeat reported that the addition of the Google Fiber Network to Kansas City last July has ignited that city’s startup industry. That’s one reason economic development and technology industry leaders want to see the network come to Austin and just on down the highway, San Antonio.
But no one knows for sure what the announcement might be. It could be a Google expansion in Austin or a new product line here. So speculation will continue until Tuesday when Google will reveal everything.

Here’s Austin’s promo video from 2010 designed to encourage Google to put its high-speed fiber network in Austin.

By Kristen Tischhauser
Special to Silicon Hills News

Julian Frachtman is the founder of Gush, which was incubated within Austin-based Jutera Labs, which he also cofounded. The other Jutera Labs founders are Surojit Niyogi and Adam Salamon. On Jutera Labs’ first product, DeedorGreed, Frachtman maintained over 2,500 relationships with brands including Walmart and Urban Outfitters.
Gush will officially launch its iPad app in mid-April. With offices in Austin and Bangalore, India, Gush allows mobile tablet users to comparison shop at their favorite online stores and get notified about coupons, deals, and other offers. Gush’s shopping mall app pulls together the top 300 brands and provides cross-brand price comparison, so that consumers know they’re paying the lowest price available. Gush’s mission is to transform the shopping experience on tablets by creating a functional and intuitive one-stop shop for top brands and top offers.

Q. What inspires you about entrepreneurship and innovation?
A. I love the fact that you’re really able to disrupt a specific vertical and make changes that can affect people’s lives. In the tech sphere its scalable; put a product out there, and in a month, thousands of people are on it. Instagram is the perfect example because it’s a unique experience, fun, and overnight a million users were on their platform.

Q. What got you started? In other words, when did you get “bitten” by the entrepreneur bug?
A. It happened early in high school. I was interested in schemes that I wanted to do but didn’t have the necessary capital. I then took the traditional path and went to college. After I graduated, I saw my friends go off to their 9 to 5 roles; I knew innately that lifestyle didn’t appeal to me.
My first job out of college was at a medical manufacturing startup. I was originally drawn towards this career path because I wanted to make a big difference at a small company. To my surprise, it felt more like an engineering company instead of having a startup feel. The company wasn’t as innovative and tech forward for what I was looking for. I knew that I needed to expand and go beyond that and find other like-minded people to work with.

Q. How is Gush setting the stage to disrupt your industry?
A. Gush has unlimited opportunities in the industry because there’s no single market leader in the tablet shopping market space. Amazon and Fab have done a great job in serendipitous shopping. However, Gush provides multiple features and can pull in all the stored information in one product. We’ve created the Swiss Army knife of shopping apps and are able to offer the best online shopping experience for consumers.

Q. In your opinion, where (what industry segments) are the most opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs?
The ability to manipulate big data is a horizontal skillset. We’re now able to understand the massive amounts of information we’re bombarded with and make it worthwhile and valuable for people –
aspiring entrepreneurs need to take advantage of this. Hipmunk has done an amazing job at this – they migrate results and put it into a great user experience.

Q. Three things you love about being in the Silicon Hills tech scene?
A. • Still somewhat of a nascent tech space – you won’t find people quite as jaded after being in the tech scene for a while, which is refreshing.
• Support from larger tech companies – eBay, Facebook, Apple are all opening up offices here, which means more opportunities for the startup and tech community.
• Environment – not only is this city welcoming and friendly, there’s always something fun going on. Austin is known for its festivals (Austin City Limits, SXSW, Fun Fun Fun Fest, etc).

Q. When things get tough, what keeps you going? What are some of your tricks? In other words, how do you stay SANE?
A.• I use Asana as a task management tool on a daily basis. You can segment and organize tasks, which makes things seem more manageable.
• Running for a few miles outside.
• Reminding myself of my responsibility to our employees and investors to succeed. At the end of the day, you are insuring that everything gets done to make sure all parties involved are happy.

Q. Who inspires you? Do you have any mentors that have been an integral part of your success?
A. A lot of my tech learning has been working with my co-founders at Jutera Labs, Roj Niyogi and Adam Salamon. It has been an honor and privilege to work with individuals with so much experience and knowledge. I spend a lot of time with them and by understanding their view of the world – it has helped me excel and grow.

Q. What is one [surprising] thing about you that most people don’t know?
A. I played the djembe (drums) in a reggae band for a year and half.

Close to 70 people turned out for the eighth SA New Tech meetup at Geekdom in downtown San Antonio Tuesday night.
Cole Wollak, SA New Tech founder, kicked things off by having everyone introduce himself or herself to a stranger.
That got the room talking.
Then Luis P. Gonzalez, CEO and co-founder of ParLevel Systems, a vending machine monitoring service, gave the first pitch.
The startup has created a software and hardware solution that allows vending machine owners to remotely monitor their machines and keep track of the best selling items and which items need restocking.
Right now, because a vending machine owner has to guess at which products to stock they can lose money on expired or unsold products. With the Parlevel System, the company estimates that vending machine owners can increase sales by 20 percent and reduce inventory waste by 40 percent. It also sends out alerts when machines are broken and lets the owners know why the machine is not working.
ParLevel Systems received a $25,000 investment from the Geekdom Fund last year. The San Antonio-based startup joined the TechStars Cloud program in January. The company is part of the “Internet of Things” movement in which everyday objects are wired and connected to the Internet, which allows people to monitor and operate them remotely.
The ParLevel team includes Walter Teele Vera, co-founder, and Rafael Barroso, co-founder.
Next, Roberto Rondero de Mosier and Nathan Roach, co-founders of Greenhouse, an equity-based crowdfunding portal, pitched their startup. They’re seeking to solve the problem many startups face when they go to look for funding and can’t find any.
Currently, less than 10 percent of viable startups can find seed stage or venture capital funding, Mosier said. That’s because only 5 million to 7 million people nationwide are accredited investors. An accredited investor is someone with a high-networth that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has approved to invest in companies.
But last year, President Obama signed into law the JOBS Act, which allows for equity-based crowdfunding. The only problem is the SEC regulators have not yet issued rules that allow the crowdfunding portal to begin accepting investments from unaccredited investors. When that happens, ordinary people can invest in startups through Greenhouse. Right now, Mosier and Roach are signing up both companies looking for funding and investors looking to finance them. When the SEC rules are approved later on this year, they will begin allowing the companies to fundraise.
Lastly, Alex Devkar, co-founder of Conspire, pitched his company’s software that connects to your email and analyzes the strength of your relationships with your contacts. It also lets you easily contact other people within your extended network. Email is the largest social network, Devkar said.
“Conspire tells me who I am losing touch with,” Devkar said. “And how to keep my network strong.”
Conspire is also a TechStars Cloud company. Paul McReynolds is the other cofounder. Both Devkar and McReynolds graduated from Stanford with computer science and engineering degrees respectively. They also graduated from UCLA Law School with law degrees and Devkar also has an MBA.
Conspire has 100 users signed up beta testing its product. Those 100 users have an extended network that reaches 603,934 people. Conspire is a powerful networking tool and is the source to understand how people can be reached, Devkar said. It’s more effective than LinkedIn, he said.

There’s a new game company in town.
And industry veterans Andrew Busey, along with Chaotic Moon Studios, have launched the new venture: Team Chaos.
The new mobile gaming will debut its first title, a collectible card game, Elements: Broken Lands, today in the Apple App store.
The free game lets users engage in all kinds of dynamic adventures, battles and they can buy and sell cards in the marketplace. It focuses on exploration, head to head play, collectability and trading.
In the game, players enter the world of “Arastia, a massive fantasy world, containing more than a dozen continents with thousands of unique battles and maps to explore,” according to a news release. “Along the way, players collect, enhance, and evolve, hundreds of creature and equipment cards. Elements features a player-driven marketplace to deliver a deep economy where players can buy and sell all the cards in the game.”
“One of our objectives in crafting Elements has been evolving the ease of use and raising the quality level of this genre on mobile,” Busey said in a statement. “Our past experience building these types of games combined with the amazing advancement in mobile technology has allowed us to build a visually stunning game that is both accessible and deeply strategic.”
Busey has a lot of experience in the gaming industry. He founded Challenge Games in Austin, which he later sold to Zynga. He also co-founded Pluck, acquired by DemandMedia.
“I had not planned to do another start-up, but conversations with Chaotic Moon and the pace of mobile gaming advancement got me super excited.” Busey said. “This is about passion. We are truly making games that we want to play. And we believe our passion and enthusiasm will result in games that other gamers are going to love playing, too.”

Geekdom, the collaborative coworking site is moving into the historic Rand Building downtown in December.
Weston Urban, the commercial real estate firm owned by billionaire Graham Weston, Monday announced it has bought the Rand Building, constructed in 1913, from Frost, the banking subsidiary of Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc.
The historic, eight-story, downtown building is located at 100 E. Houston Street at the corner of Soledad. The price or terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Frost plans to lease back most of the building from Weston Urban for two years and plans to completely turn over the building in the Spring of 2015 and meanwhile it’s vacating two floors so that Geekdom can move in.
The building will become the permanent home for Geekdom, founded by Weston, chairman of Rackspace. The new building allows Geekdom to double in size and remain downtown.
“It will really anchor the startup community in San Antonio” Weston said. “Geekdom has grown to 50,000 square feet of space including the Open Cloud Academy. We need even more space over time.”
The building will also be a leading candidate to house Rackspace’s Open Cloud Academy, which offers IT training and certification focused on cloud computing. Both Geekdom and the academy are currently housed at the Weston Centre.
“Frost is delighted that Weston Urban will be bringing new energy and commitment to downtown San Antonio when Geekdom moves into the Rand Building across the street from the Frost Bank Tower,” Dick Evans, Frost chairman and CEO, said in a news statement.
Frost plans to relocate its employees to a new facility in Westover Hills near the Frost Technology Center, Evans said.
Geekdom expects to move into the Rand building in December, according to Nick Longo, its director.

And no – this is not an April Fools joke.

Disclosure: Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News

BY ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

High school students from Texas, Missouri, Florida, and Mexico arrived at the Henry B. Gonzales convention center this weekend for the FIRST Robotics Competition. Called FRC, the competition is part of the larger Alamo-FIRST that hosts several robotics competitions for students of different ages.
Of the 61 teams that came to San Antonio, eight are now moving on to the world championship in St. Louis.
Three of the teams moved on due to their robotic victory in Ultimate Assent – the game FRC revealed to the teams at the beginning of the year. Their 150 pound robots competed to both shoot frisbees into goals and climb up on a tower. Qualifying teams had to form three-team alliances for the finals, which were held today. Eight alliances competed in a playoff-style bracket until only one alliance remained. For the first fifteen seconds of each match, the robots were autonomous and relied completely on their programming. Afterward, a team member controlled the robot for two minutes.

The victorious alliance was composed of West Lake High School from Austin, Manor New Tech High School from Manor, and Del Rio High School from Del Rio, all from Texas. The victories validated the countless hours of work the students spent on robotics, some of which had been competing on a robotics team for several years.
“It’s taken us a long time to work for this, we’re really proud,” said Alexis Rubio from Manor New Tech High School. “Five years we’ve worked for this.”
“We’ve worked so hard for this and it’s exhilarating to finally see our success materialize into this win. It was awesome,” said Ben Berry from West Lake High School. Berry is a senior and this is his last year with the team.
But winning isn’t everything. Three other teams also moved on to the world championship by winning awards based on their spirit, conduct, and community involvement.
The first of these was the Rookie All-Star Award, given to a team with students from both the Alamo Academies and Early Memorial High School. The team had students from New Braunfels and Seguin as well. The award recognized them for best demonstrating the qualities and values of the competition as a rookie team.
The Engineering Inspiration Award was given to the Lambot team from San Luis Potosi, Mexico. The award was given because the team most inspired their school and community to become engineers and support engineering.
“I think it’s amazing that they recognized our work,” said Nuria Ledezma. “And it’s also inspiring because they believe in us and – by seeing that they believe in us, we get so much motivation to be the change that the world and our country most needs.. ..I feel we are breaking standards here, and we are teaching everyone that we can do it.”
The most prestigious award, called the Chairman’s Award, was received by Lee’s Summit North High School from Lee’s Summit, Mo. It is the highest reward that can be received at a FRC event.
“The team that wins the prestigious chairman’s award is the team that epitomizes everything that FIRST expects from its teams,” said Assistant Alamo Regional Director Jess Jankowitsch. “While you’re competing like crazy, you are doing so with a spirit of wanting everyone to succeed, and so you help other teams.”
Teams must apply for this award, by going through a special process. They write a 10,000 character essay, make a three-minute video, do a five minute presentation, answer questions on their presentation, and do community service. Sixteen teens applied for the award, which was only given out at the very end of the event in a drawn out and dramatic way.
“It was definitely an emotional roller coaster, and when they finally say 1987 [the team’s number] it’s a big deal,” said Ben Glodowski from Lee’s Summit North High School. “We spent countless hours on our speech and how to address the judges, working on how to behave in the pits and on different activities to do in the community — we spent a lot of time on it.”
In an unexpected twist, two more teams got to move to the finals as well. Any team that wins one of the above awards at another region competition automatically goes to the world championship. If they are part of the winning alliance at another competition, their “ticket” to the championship will go to a team in the second place alliance.
Not one, but two of the winning alliance teams had already won these awards and passed on their “tickets” to two second place teams — sending Merritt Island High School from Florida and BSA Robotics Explorer Post 42 from San Antonio to the world championship as well. These teams had no idea they would advance until the end of the final ceremony.
Both Merritt Island High School and their Florida sister High school, Cocoa High School, had their robots destroyed in a vehicle collision the night before the Orlando Regional robotics competition. The robots were rebuilt at that regional and the teams competed there before having them shipped to San Antonio.
“We built two robots in less than two days,” said Dallas Daniele from Merritt Island High School. “The fact that we rebuilt all our robots and made it that far..
The teams competed against one another in the semi-finals. At the Alamo Regional, Team 801 (Horsepower) was able to advance to the finals.