Coffee, Cupcakes and Coding at Girl Develop It Meetup in South Burlington

Earlier this spring, I reported on a new chapter of Girl Develop It that launched in the Burlington area. The national nonprofit aims to build coding skills among professional women — both because women are underrepresented in technology fields, and because coding skills are in demand in the marketplace. Women who can not just use but program computers increase their earning potential substantially.

Burlington chapter founder Maureen McElaney is part of GDI's intended audience. She works in sales at Dealer.com, but is interested in learning how to build the products she's selling. McElaney was involved with GDI in Philedelphia before relocating to Vermont with her husband last September; she started the chapter here so she and others like her could take low-cost coding classes.

The first GDI Intro to HTML and CSS sold out; a second is planned for June. Last night's "Code & Coffee" event was a more informal gathering. About 20 people filled a conference room at Logic Supply in South Burlington and chatted over laptop screens while tinkering with projects. Attendence was split between people who came to teach and those who came to learn.

The teachers came from Dealer.com, EatingWell, Ringmaster Software, Brandthropology and Logic Supply. The learners included a graphic designer, a business consultant and a retired programmer who wanted to build a website for her business.

One woman, who asked that I not use her name, admitted, "I just got a smartphone. I'm super lame." She came to the coding session, she said, because she wants to create an intranet for her nonprofit organization so that their far-flung statewide offices can share resources online. She hopes to learn the skills she needs to build it — or at least to manage its creation.

Champlain College Gaming Students Take Top Honors at GameFest

Vermont's burgeoning video game development scene got another boost over the weekend — students from the Champlain College Game Studio in Burlington won top honors at GameFest, a regional game development competition hosted by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

Twenty teams from Champlain, Becker College, Rochester Institute of Technology and RPI vied for prizes. Instructor Jonathan Ferguson shared the results in a post on his game studio blog. The Champlain winners were:

• First Place: Magnosphere
• Second Place: Quibly Ball
• Excellence in Visuals: Sagittarii Run
• Excellence in Graphical User Interface (GUI): Crisis of the Superverse

The photo above shows members of the Magnosphere team watching as another contestant plays their game. From left to right, they are: Scott Gilman, Christina Aceves, Andrew Gould and Ian Cubin. All are graduating seniors.

Ferguson explains that GameFest was both a competition and a showcase. There were 45 teams of students participating in the showcase, but each school was allowed to enter just five teams in the competition. Both tracks took place in RPI's swanky EMPAC performing arts center. "Last year it was in a gym," quips Ferguson. "It was a big upgrade."

Seeking Teen Girls for Summer IT Institute

High school girls in grades 9 through 11, listen up: Organizers of the Governor's Institutes of Vermont want you to attend their Information Technology Institute this summer. They've even got scholarship money to give you.

Seriously, they really, really want you to apply. So much so that they've extended the application deadline until May 15 — for girls. Boys who want to apply, at this point, go on the waiting list.

Why the focus on girls in IT? Registrar Annie Schneider explains that GIV seeks gender parity in all of its summer institutes, and makes a special effort to attract young women into science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs. There are plenty of them in the math, engineering and environmental sciences institutes, she says, but IT, not so much. "For some reason," says Schneider, "we have a lot of trouble reaching girls in IT."

Honestly, I don't get it. The summer session, which takes place from June 22 to 30 at Champlain College in Burlington, sounds like a geekette's dream. From the description on the Governor's Institute website:

The Governor’s Institute on Information Technology is eight days jam-packed with all things IT. You’ll access state-of-the-art equipment, the hardware and software of your dreams, and professionals at the forefront of their fields. Electronic game design, cybersecurity, coding, digital video, Photoshop, web entrepreneurship, object-oriented programming, and more are on the menu. New for 2013, you’ll be able to choose from tracks in game design, coding and cybersecurity, or “advanced webistry” (interactive web design and entrepreneurship) to focus on in depth.

... Whether you’re a casual user or supergeek, this institute is designed for you. We’ll explore the technologies of the future and look at innovative ways that information technology is being used to create a better world.  So join us on Champlain College’s beautiful Burlington campus — with a view of Lake Champlain — for a week of challenging mind games.

Schneider points out that summer institute participants get to do graphic design, and work with Champlain's Emergent Media Center. What's not to love about that? 

Girls, if you're interested, check out this website. Tuition for GIV is on a sliding scale, and the scholarship money, from EPSCOR, defrays anywhere from $50 to $500 of the cost. Your school guidance counselor can help you apply.

Never heard of the Governor's Institutes? Check out this essay by Seven Days multimedia producer Eva Sollberger that appeared in the March issue of Kids VT. She went to the Institute on the Arts and said it changed her life.

Image credit: stock photo from Dreamstime.

The Patent Files: Mercedes Rincon

Vermont has one of the highest rates of patents per capita in the country. Every year, the state produces dozens of inventions and innovations that get certified by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The “Patent Files” is a new Tech Jam News series that profiles those inventors.

Many of Vermont’s patent seekers work for companies such as IBM and Husky Injection Molding Systems, or for educational institutions such as the University of Vermont.

UVM recognizes its new patent holders every spring at its Invention2Venture conference, which draws students, researchers, entrepreneurs and business leaders for a day of education and networking. The 2013 event took place on April 4 at the Dudley H. Davis Student Center; Rich Tarrant, CEO and founder of Winooski-based MyWebGrocer, was the keynote speaker.

Before Tarrant took the stage, officials from the Vermont Technology Council and UVM’s Office of Technology Commercialization recognized the nine UVM-affiliated scientists and inventors whose patents had been granted in the last year. Mercedes Rincon was one of them. Rincon is a professor in the medical school’s immunobiology program.

Rincon received two honors that afternoon — one for her patent, and one for having licensed it to Burlington-based BioMosaics, which is marketing her discovery. 

I caught up with Rincon for an interview last week in her office in UVM's Given building. Here's her story:

Name: Mercedes Rincon

Number of patents: Two, with amendments pending on both noting additional discoveries

Most recent patent: Anti-methylation-controlled J protein (MCJ) antibodies and uses thereof

How did she get the idea for that patent? Rincon, 49, refers to her work on the MCJ protein as a “Thanksgiving experiment.” The gregarious Burlington scientist is single, so she receives multiple invitations to spend holidays with colleagues and friends. She prefers, however, to spend those days in her lab. “I used to devote the day of Thanksgiving to special experiments,” she explains. 

Is a Vermont Entrepreneur's New Game-Specific Crowdfunding Site a Game Changer?

Video game developers looking to get their ideas off the ground have a new way to raise some quick cash. GameLaunched, an international, game-focused crowdfunding platform, debuted last month. The website's co-founder Steve Foley lives here in Vermont; he works out of his home in South Burlington.

Why does Foley think the world needs yet another crowdfunding website? 

Because gaming is a huge and growing niche in the crowdfunding world. Last year alone, 2796 game projects sought funding through Kickstarter, according to a year-end report produced by the site. And fans have proven willing to back games. That same report noted that, in 2012, Kickstarter gaming projects generated $83 million in pledges — more than projects in any other category.

But just 911 gaming projects actually met their Kickstarter goals and got funded. Foley says that's in part because the big, catch-all crowdfunding site isn't doing enough to support this robust niche. He thinks he and his team can do a better job connecting people passionate about games with projects worth supporting.

Foley (pictured at right) describes himself as "a geek at heart," but he's not a coder. The 40-year-old entrepreneur grew up in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. After studying sports medicine at Lyndon State College he began working in physical therapy, and eventually parlayed that experience into a career as a medical device salesman. A year and a half ago, he started talking with a friend in Oklahoma, another medical device salesman, about launching a start-up. They're still seeking investors for their first venture, a feedback system called i-ask. 

Last fall, Foley's friend, Kevin Bailey, decided to try funding a video game idea on Kickstarter. The project failed to meet its goal, but Bailey and Foley learned a few things in the process.

For starters, they found that gaming projects on Kickstarter get buried by thousands of others seeking funding. “Everything embedded in that segment gets lost very quickly,” he explains.

And they learned that Kickstarter doesn't offer much support for game creators. “Kickstarter does not promote, does not help you, does not even want you to mention Kickstarter,” he says.

So they set out to build an easily searchable site specifically designed to attract gamers and promote games. They worked with a Hinesburg developer to build the site. And they recruited a team of 19 industry professionals from all over the world to serve as a volunteer "launch crew." These advisers review projects posted to the site, offer feedback to creators and promote games they think are worth noting.

Meet Your Matchmaker: An Interview With Lars Hasselblad Torres, Director of Vermont's Office of the Creative Economy

Vermont is synonymous with snowboarding, sugaring and farming. But those activities account for a fraction of the state’s economy. Traditional sectors such as manufacturing and health care play a big role, but the Green Mountain State is also home to a large and growing creative economy made up of "knowledge workers" who produce everything from software to film scores.

The Vermont Technology Alliance, a trade group representing the state’s software and technical companies, estimates that its members alone brought in $150 million in 2009; their revenue jumped to $280 million in 2011.

That year, the state created the Office of the Creative Economy, under the auspices of the Department of Economic, Housing & Community Development, to help support and expand these industries. The OCE absorbed the Vermont Film Commission, which had focused on luring film producers to Vermont. The OCE’s first director, Joe Bookchin, was the former head of the film commission; he resigned in late February.

Lars Hasselblad Torres, creator of Montpelier’s coworking and community-event space, Local 64, has stepped in to take Bookchin’s place. The energetic 42-year-old entrepreneur has a worldly background — he spent his childhood in Seattle and Malaysia, and went to high school in Senegal, earning his bachelor’s degree at Vermont’s School for International Training in 1995. He started a public-policy institute and helped craft prizes to promote innovation and entrepreneurship for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and USAID before founding Local 64 in 2012.

Over the past year, Torres has been a vocal proponent of the state’s creative economy, emceeing a “Tech State of the Union” event put on by partners including Google, Engine Advocacy and Seven Days in February, and organizing a video-game showcase in January at the Statehouse in Montpelier, where lawmakers heard from local developers hoping to grow their industry in Vermont. Last month, Torres wrote a white paper on creating coworking spaces that was published by the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies.

Torres, who lives in Cabot with his wife and daughter, came to Winooski recently for a Vermont Technology Alliance lunch and learn on “Marketing Vermont as a Technology State.” We discussed his new job afterward over a pot of Rooibos at Dobrá Tea in Burlington. This is the extended version of our conversation; the first six questions and answers appeared in print in this week's Seven Days.