The Silicon Bayou has been buzzing with tech and entrepreneurial news. Here are the most popular stories published on Silicon Bayou News in the past seven days:
Dinner Lab and FundDat Named New Orleans’ Hottest Startups, Win Tickets to Tech Cocktail Celebrate
Over 80 members of the tech and startup community in New Orleans attended the first ever local Tech Cocktail Social last week at Ohm Lounge. Dinner Lab and FundDat were picked by Tech Cocktail to represent New Orleans’ hottest startups in Vegas at Celebrate. The national startup competition and conference is just around the corner. From October 23 – 25, Tech Cocktail is expecting over 500 attendees in downtown Las Vegas, including startup founders, entrepreneurs, tech enthusiasts, investors, media and local community leaders.
Fifth Annual TribeCon Highlights Intersection of Innovation, Music and Technology in New Orleans
TribeCon is Louisiana’s premiere social technology conference, created to inspire and educate through presentations by a wide-range of speakers. The fifth TribeCon will be held on Halloween (October 31) at 2:00 PM at The Peristyle in City Park in conjunction with the Voodoo Experience. TribeCon 2013 now includes independently produced events. Organizers have expanded the conference to include events such as social dinners, sponsorships and workshops.
Dinner Lab Expands Into Five New Cities, Debuts on ‘Top Chef: New Orleans’
With wild success is New Orleans, Dinner Lab quickly expanded into Austin, Nashville, New York and Los Angeles since launching last year. Yesterday, news broke that the members-only supper club would also be expanding to Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington D.C. and Atlanta. Dinner Lab is a mix between a pop-up restaurant and a vacation, designed to connect undiscovered chefs and foodies across the country to create a dining experience unlike any other. For more information, visit dinnerlab.com.
Capital Pitch Gives Five High-Growth Companies a Chance to Pitch to Potential Investors
Capital Pitch is a private event held in partnership with New Orleans BioInnovation Center (NOBIC), The New Orleans Startup Fund, Launch Pad, The South Coast Angel Fund, Abstraction Ventures and The Idea Village. This year, five high-growth companies had the chance to pitch in front of a room of potential investors and members of the local entrepreneurial ecosystem, including: Dreanie, StaffInsight, Tru-SEE Systems, Direct Diagnostics, and Munivestor.
Second Startup Weekend New Orleans Creates 10 Ventures
The second ever Startup Weekend (SW) New Orleans took place this past weekend. The 54-hour event attracted 77 participants, all of whom were there to share ideas, form teams, build products and launch companies. BeneFIT, a service that helps people lose weight by giving the calories you aren’t eating to someone else in the world who is hungry, came in first place at SW. Second place went to Steeming, a mobile dating app that connects young professionals over a cup of coffee. GeoTones, an app that changes your ringtone based on your cellphones GPS, “so you never have another awkward moment at work again,” came in third. More information about the other seven ventures is available here.
How to Ensure Successful Application Development
Beau Button is a New Orleans-based software developer, architect, and coder, with more than 15 years of experience in the technology industry. A leader in the local entrepreneurial community, Beau is the founder of software development firm WebDevrs and previously co-founded Archon Information Systems and Memorandom. He explains how to ensure successful application development here.
TruFund: New Name, Same Mission
TruFund Financial Services, formerly known as Seedco Financial, has recently rebranded their organization in an attempt to reposition the company for continued support and strength within their spectrum. TruFund grants loans to companies that have trouble accessing them from traditional sources, such as banks. They target underserved small businesses, many of which are located in Louisiana, Alabama, and New York. TruFund establishes loan goals for each of their regions. The loan goal for Louisiana by the end of 2013 is $2.4 million. To learn more about TruFund, visit TruFund.org.
Louisiana Technology Park Company Brings Hard-to-Find Items to Online Shoppers
Revy, a Baton Rouge startup based out of the Louisiana Technology Park, takes a virtual crowdsourcing approach to locating unique and hard-to-find items. Users can post items for sale or items they want at the price they want to pay, such as a family heirloom or a rare baseball card. Revy’s “Connector” tool enables the connectors to get paid if they find a buyer for a seller that has an item in the want ad. For more information, visit revyit.com.
JEDCO Hires Alan Allgood as New Manager of Innovation and Entrepreneurship
The Jefferson Parish Economic Development Commission (JEDCO) has announced Alan Allgood as their newest hire. He will serve as the new Innovation and Entrepreneurship Manager, a position that was added to help run the incubator program and better connect the organization with entrepreneurs throughout the region.
UNITY of Greater New Orleans Wins the Greater New Orleans Foundation’s Pitch It! The Innovation Challenge
From a pool of 40 applications, three nonprofits were chosen to compete in Pitch It! The Innovation Challenge, a project created by the Greater New Orleans Foundation in partnership with the Kresge Foundation, on September 30th. UNITY of Greater New Orleans pitched their “SuperTool” that helps better assess homeless clients and more effectively target resources at the event and took home the $25,000 grand prize.
Protecting Online Data Using 2-Factor Authentication
Vico Marziale, PhD is a Managing Partner of 504ENSICS Labs, specializing in cutting edge research and development of tools and techniques for digital forensics and computer security. He wrote his first post for Silicon Bayou News about how to protect your online data using two-factor authentication. Learn more here.