TRAVERSE CITY, MICHIGAN: A cohort of entrepreneurs from Michigan Tech University in Houghton, Michigan will takeover the TCNewTech’s August 4th Pitch Contest as part of an initiative to strengthen the connection between MTU and the Grand Traverse Region. Three student-led “Bar Napkin Ideas” will be presented along with 3 commercialized, early-stage startups with roots connecting them to MTU and the Husky Innovate program.
Just a little over 2 years ago, David Ponraj decided to do something for underserved communities: democratize the information that helps businesses network and grow, and make it accessible to everyone. StartupSpace is an app customized for business and entrepreneurial support organizations that allows them to offer a database of business loan and grant information, curated content, and networking events specifically filtered for particular regions, business area, and demographics.
“Ferris Wheel Flint is the building–a coworking space with 7 floors and flexible memberships month to month for existing businesses and entrpreneurs,” Brandee Cooke explains. Cooke runs an incubator program called 100K Ideas out of the Ferris Wheel, which has been instrumental in helping new startups revitalize the city. “The city has evolved into a lot of small businesses launching and being successful,” Cooke says. Ferris Wheel is the space–where people can rent the conference room, or visit the downstairs coffee shop and print shop, and then there is 100K Ideas.
We covered TU-Automotive Software Conference in Detroit in 2019, and it was hard to even begin to bring you backstage access to all the great talks and events going on. This year, you can tailor your attendance to your own preferences. TU-Automotive is going virtual from August 18-20. If you’re interested in the future of mobility tech and connectivity or security and software in the automotive industry, this is the one conference where it all comes together.
Last year, we covered Intermitten: The Conference for Change Makers, as part of our Ann Arbor a2tech360 Tech Week coverage, including interviews backstage with Doug Song of Duo Security, multiple fireside chats with thought leaders in the social justice space in tech, and more. This year, we’re excited to see Intermitten is still on, but it’s being held virtually, and independently of a2tech360 on August 7. Registration info below. We hope to “see” you there!
How do you replace all the lead pipes in Flint when you don’t know how many there are? It’s a problem now faced by multiple municipalities realizing they have incomplete plumbing records and water contamination around the U.S. The City of Flint, Michigan, has been sending data to a company called BlueConduit to speed up an incredibly complex overhaul of lead service lines leading to houses across the city. BlueConduit programs what data they have into an AI-powered system designed to predict where lead pipes are likely to be found. This speeds up the process of locating most lead pipes in the least amount of time. For a while, the city returned to the more ordered but slow process of digging up every house’s lines one at a time, but it was proved so inefficient and ineffective at targeting the areas with the most lead pipes that the city was ordered to go back to using the AI system to speed up the process for public safety.
Just released from Ann Arbor SPARK is the announcement that Ann Arbor’s tech week and all associated a2Tech360 programming will be delivered virtually this year, moving from its usual June timeframe to September 18-26. Tickets and formatting are still to be announced, but we have the full schedule now and are happy to share it with you and see how many popular events are continuing. There are also some newer events in the mix, such as Ann Arbor’s Applied AI Conference, and Ypsi’s Hero Comic Con.
If you’re looking for a tech job in the Midwest, dozens of companies are still hiring in Ann Arbor-Detroit. Continuing our series from earlier this week, here are 5 more tech companies, this time in AI and cybersecurity, hiring for positions from marketing to engineering to finance.
Happy New Year, everyone! We are excited to kick off this new year with expanding interviews and test drives with the coolest new tech coming out of Michigan, but we need your help. Cronicle Press Tech News is supported through sponsorships of various kinds, and now you can become an individual or corporate Patron as well to help fund the work we are doing to cover the historic growth of tech in the Great Lakes area.
Patent strategy firm Aurora Consulting in Traverse City recently awarded several startups in the Midwest with a RISE Award, which stands for Relief for Startup Endurance. The prize means that Ann Arbor-based realLingua software startup that teaches online language learning through immersive native language speaker programs can pursue a patent for its new AI-based natural language learning programs. Founder Keith Phillips, whom we interviewed at launch just over a year ago, says that the award will help the startup move forward in several ways. “We’ve got an idea for the backbone of our conversational AI and wanted to do a provisional patent for that,” Phillips says of the recent award.
Plenty of tech companies in Southeast Michigan are still hiring during coronavirus, but you might not see their listings on job boards. We wanted to highlight a few companies you might not have seen yet on Cronicle, because there are so many tech startups in Ann Arbor and Detroit that after 1 year we still haven’t had a chance to speak with many of them. Here are a few tech companies hiring right now in Ann Arbor and Detroit. We will split this post into several sections because of length, so check back through next week for more.
