Human Resource provier TriNet has become a “Visionary Partner” with the Austin Technology Council.
In that role, TriNet will donate money and executive expertise and become involved in the Austin Technology Council’s activities and board.
The Austin Technology Council helps entrepreneurs and supports the technology industry locally.
“TriNet is excited about our partnership with the ATC as it provides us with the opportunity to support the growth of the technology industry in Austin and in other parts of central Texas,” Steve Cohen, regional vice president at TriNet, said in a news release. “We’re eager to share our knowledge, expertise, and one-on-one guidance to help empower and equip ATC member companies for success, as well as to serve as a trusted HR resource as their business grows.”
The Austin Technology council has more than 6,000 members including 1,200 executive level members and 230 companies.
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Austin-based Q2ebanking plans to open an office outside of Atlanta in August to serve its growing client base in the region.
The startup company provides electronic banking solutions to banks and credit unions nationwide.
“Expanding into the Atlanta area is a natural move for us and is a testament to the demand we are experiencing for electronic banking services,” Matt Flake, CEO and president of Q2ebanking, said in a news statement. “Atlanta is rapidly becoming an East Coast technology corridor and was recently ranked by the U.S. Census Bureau as one of the nation’s fastest growing cities. Having a presence there gives us access to some of the industry’s most well respected professionals and ensures that our clients continue to receive unprecedented support.”
By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Richard Garriott de Cayeux is passionate about many things. Space, exploration, the environment, the moral imperative of games, building cool houses and collecting things. So how did he choose to make his first game to launch from Portalarium, the most recent incarnation of his gaming company, Ultimate Collector?
“There are all kinds of ideas we kicked around; potential threads to latch onto …to create as our first original title,” Garriott de Cayeux said. “We wanted to create a game that demonstrates very well that we understand the game mechanics and ease of play of this new third wave of gamers.”
Garriott de Cayeux, known just as Richard Garriott until his marriage in 2011 to equity fund manager Laetitia Pichot de Cayeux, was one of the original game creators. His games, inspired by stories like The Lord of The Rings Trilogy, have been rich in stories, levels, multiple players and layers of meaning, he wanted to show that Portalarium could build games for people who weren’t planning to invest a lot of money and time. He needed a game that could show its value fast.
“We wanted an aesthetically familiar enriching experience that would start with an avatar and a world map and let you explore: go to retail outlets and pawnshops, go around collecting in a wide variety of categories. I can tell you that just through collecting I’ve become sort of an expert on fossils, weapons and armor, automatons…just through exposure a little at a time. I’m a big believer in collecting. You can become very knowledgeable and it’s still as simple and light as any other game.”
Portalarium just raised $7 million in Series A funding from M8 Capital, FF Angel, BHV Venture Capital, and Garriott himself. The company plans to release Ultimate Collector beginning with a PC and Facebook game and follow it 30-60 days later as a mobile game among other platforms.The funds will also help launch Garriott de Cayeux’s next RPG, Ultimate RPG/New Britannia, for mobile platforms.
His new company, started in 2009, began with $3.5 million in seed capital. It aims to be “platform agnostic” to adapt to constantly changing technology and gamer preference.
The Austin-based startup Hurricane Party received all kinds of attention at South by Southwest Interactive 2011.
Mashable wrote about them. So did Read Write Web.
TechCocktail labeled Hurricane Party the hottest app of 2011 at SXSW.
Hurricane Party was a mobile app that let people know where the best parties were at.
Then a year later, that company largely folded and reinvented itself as Forecast.
Hurricane Party received $20,000 as a Capital Factory company in the class of 2010. The company, led by Rene Pinnell and Eric Katerman, eventually raised another $80,000 and blew through it all in 12 months, according to this interview. The founders said they took what they learned from Hurricane Party’s failure to create Forecast, an app that lets friends share their plans with other friends.
Mashable, once again, named Forecast one of the hottest apps to watch at SXSW 2012. It was also one of the companies pitching in the mobile category in the SXSW Accelerator competition.
But Forecast ran out of money and shut down its website on July 1st. Forecast posted the following message on its Facebook page and sent an e-mail to all of its users.
“The time has come for Forecast to shut its doors. Starting on July 1, our mobile apps and website will not work.
Although we’re passionate about building great products that help people connect in the real world, we have run out of resources to keep the Forecast project afloat. We sincerely appreciate you taking the time to try our app, and we hope that it brought you some value.
If you have any questions, comments, or just want to keep in touch, don’t hesitate to email us!
Best,
René Pinnell and Team Forecast
A white board plastered with dozens of sticky notes tells part of the story of the first Central Texas Barcamp at Geekdom.
People attending this unconference filled the board with ideas for sessions including ethical hacking, how to create a kick ass page on Facebook for a nonprofit, Creating the Wow: marketing yourself/business on the Internet, Blog tips and tricks and so much more.
An unconference is an event in which the participants put on the show. But the chief organizer behind Central Texas Barcamp is Joey Lopez, a professor of convergent media at the University of Incarnate Word.
“I lived in Austin for 10 years, we had built a creative space there. Back in 2008, I pitched the idea of having a creative space in San Antonio,” Lopez said. “My goal with this conference was to bring together like minded individuals from a diverse background, Chicanas, architects, startups, academics, just everyone from all over Central Texas to talk about the cool, creative things that are going on in their lives.”
More than 120 people signed up for the Barcamp and half of those people showed up, Lopez said. They came from San Antonio, Austin and Houston.
“We’ve got people who have talked at Tedx here. We have people who have talked at Foo Camps, where Barcamp is based off,” Lopez said. 
Dustin Younse with Dorkbot in Austin is here. So is Brandon Wiley who runs Hackerspace in Austin. And Jennifer Navarrete, who started Barcamps in San Antonio back in 2008, is livestreaming the event.”
The focus of the event was to get people invigorated to have new ideas come out and share them, Lopez said.
“It’s a participatory, collaborative environment and unlike something like Tedx, it’s free,” Lopez said. “The participants are the speakers and the audience.”
The event also brought together Austin and San Antonio’s tech community and creative community.
“I met some people in San Antonio who want to do some civic hacking and one gentleman who is already doing it,” said Chip Rosenthal, who drove from Austin to attend the event. He runs a site, Unicom.com, for people creating software and tools with a civic interest in mind. He did a session on “Hack Your City: Open Government and Data.”
Brandon Wiley drove down from Austin also. He’s a member of Hackerspace in Austin and he consults with startup companies. He has put on several unconferences in Austin. On Saturday, he saw some good talks including one on how to make video games and another on autonomous vehicles.
Joey Lopez, organizer of CTX Barcamp
Jennifer Navarrete organized the first Barcamp in San Antonio in 2008 and attended the latest one.
“It’s a way to bring together a diverse group of people under one roof,” Navarrete said. That creates a certain kind of “magic” around the principals of Barcamp, which are to learn, share and grow, she said.
Alicia Arenas, who runs Sanera Camp, a business bootcamp in San Antonio, attended the day-long event to learn from others.
“What I love about camp is the informal atmosphere and getting to connect with people,” she said. “Unconferences really reveal the brillance of the people in the room.”
The audience asks questions, shares their own experiences and offers up new ideas, Arenas said.
“You don’t get to go to a regular conference and float ideas, but you can do that here.”
The first CreateAthon Austin will kick off Sept. 20 and run 24 hours.
During that time, volunteers will donate their creative marketing expertise to nonprofit organizations.
BuildASign.com and AIGA are sponsoring the event. They are inviting nonprofit organizations to apply for CreateAthon Austin now through July 22. They will notify the selected organizations by July 30..
“Austin is home to so many nonprofits that deserve creative marketing services to help them support their missions,” Erin Bender, President of AIGA Austin, said in a statement. “We look forward to making that possible through CreateAthon Austin, and can’t wait to see the work this event produces.”
“Bringing CreateAthon to Austin made total sense,” Dan Graham, co-founder and CEO of BuildASign.com, said in a statement. “We live in a city full of creative professionals that are not only extremely talented, but also committed to giving back. The work this event produces in 24 hours can help make a tremendous impact in the community, and we are so excited to be a part of that.”
Now in its 14th year, more than 75 agencies have participated in the national CreateAthon network, hosting annual events across the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. The program has benefited more than 1,275 nonprofits with 3,100 projects valued at more than $15 million.
BuildASign.com, an online custom printing provider, has 240 employees and $30 million in revenue last year.
MapMyFitness, a collection of fitness apps, has landed $3 million in financing from Square 1 Bank.
The Austin-based startup also announced it has more than 10 million registered members.
MapMyFitness is also sponsoring Le Tour Challenge in conjunction with the Tour de France. The challenge gives cyclists worldwide a chance to compete against other athletes during the Tour de France. They compete for $55,000 in prizes, including a trip to Paris.
“The proposed Square 1 Bank financing, coupled with the $9 million Series B funding from Austin Ventures, Milestone Ventures, Competitor Group, Inc. and The Running Specialty Group, LLC announced earlier in the year, will help MapMyFITNESS continue to advance its leadership position in the global online and mobile fitness application markets and further develop its offerings,” according to the company.
Two San Antonio researchers have received $200,000 in seed stage funding to study new methods to optimize drug release.
Kelly Nash, assistant in the UTSA Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Dr. Benjamin Furman, a research engineering in Southwest Research Institute’s Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Division will use the funding to study “Photoresponsive Polymeric Composites Utilizing UV-Light Harvesting from Upconverting Nanoplatelets.”
Their project will focus on hydrogels for applications in drug release.
This is the third project to be funded under Connect, a collaborative program fostering research between Southwest Research Institute and UTSA.
“Drs. Nash and Furman’s Connect proposal will have tremendous value not only to industry and the university but to the nation,” Jim Massaro, assistant vice president for Research Development said in a news release.
As a technology region, Austin and San Antonio combined have great strengths that rival major tech centers like Silicon Valley.
Austin, known for software, hardware and silicon chips, has also become a vibrant incubator for high tech startups.
San Antonio, home to Rackspace, a Web hosting company, is also a high tech mecca with tons of research and development taking place at Southwest Research Institute, the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, the University of Texas at San Antonio and now Texas A&M. San Antonio, with its military bases, also has one of the highest concentrations of cyber security workers outside of the Washington, D.C. area.
San Antonio is also working to nurture its high-tech workforce and encourage startup companies.
So what better place to discuss the region’s strengths and how the two communities can help each other out than at a Barcamp, which is a free event in which the participants put on the show.
San Antonio has had several Barcamps and Austin has had several Barcamps. But this is the first time the two communities have joined together at a Barcamp to cross pollinate ideas.
The Central Texas Barcamp takes place this Saturday, July 7 starting at 9 a.m. and running until 5 p.m. at Geekdom at the Weston Centre, 112 Pecan Street in downtown San Antonio. A happy hour will follow the day long camp. It’s not too late to sign up. Register here. Silicon Hills News will be there. I hope you will be too.
In the old days, inventors tinkered in obscurity in their garages, spare bedrooms and basements.
But now that cool collaboration and coworking spaces like Geekdom have arrived on the scene, there’s no need to tinker in private. And if you’ve got a hankering to make something out of nothing, but you’re not into crafting like Martha Stewart or cooking like Gordon Ramsay, then you might want to take a shot at company creation especially if you like to get your hands dirty with coding and graphic design.
And Startup Weekend San Antonio and Geekdom have an opportunity for you to spend a weekend with like-minded individuals, brainstorming ideas, pounding out code and creating a new venture.
I covered the first Startup Weekend in San Antonio organized by Jennifer Navarrete when I worked at the local paper. I hung out with the teams for most of the weekend and I can tell you this is a serious venture. The people who attend this event are passionate about entrepreneurship. And they worked hard all weekend long. Some of the teams pulled all nighters.
The event generally starts out Friday evening with a brainstorming session. The group considers the ideas and votes on the best ones. The teams are formed and then the fun begins. They work the rest of the time to put together business plans, web sites and products and at the end they pitch their companies to venture capitalists and other interested investors.
Alan Torng and Michele Stewart of Austin are organizing the event along with Cristal Glangchai of San Antonio. Rackspace, the Kaufman Foundation and Geekdom are sponsoring it.
The event takes place on Friday, July 20 through Sunday, July 22 at Geekdom, on the 11th floor of the Weston Centre at 112 East Pecan street in downtown San Antonio. The early bird registration prices are done, but you can still snag a ticket for $99 here. This event usually sells out. At the last Startup Weekend Austin, people were submitting videos for a chance to get off the waiting list and get a ticket.