Jacksonville Startup EventHash Is Tracking OneSpark’s Social Graph [video][onespark]

According to Elton Rivas, co-founder and executive director of OneSpark, since Wednesdawy there have been nearly 80,000 people on the streets of downtown Jacksonville. By our non scientific estimate we dare to say he is probably right on!

So with 80,000 people on the ground and just as many keeping up with The World’s Crowdfunding Festival back home, that’s a lot of social media mentions.

Luckily, Jacksonville startup EventHash, which just launched Tuesday night, is here to help. EventHash co-founder Brett Erpel has a team of five on the ground navigating through the mass of people while the EventHash system tracks the rest.

We’ve seen a ton of social media dashboards here at nibletz.com but none really give such a robust picture as EventHash and none have their platform set up in a native mobile app that functions as well as the web platform.

EventHash shows the latest tweets, the users, topics, and even the hash tags that are trending. The system ranks users by how many times a user is mentioned, not how many times a user tweets.

EventHash also has a media data stream that shows the latest pics from an event. They round the platform out with a graph that shows peaks and valleys as related to the social graph. Finally they can show a geolocation graph that shows how many tweets are coming from where.

All of this information is extremely valuable to an event organizer. Having real time access to these analytics is vital to changing and improving the course of an events social graph during an event. The data available after an event is a great case study for any event organizer.

Check out the video below and for more info visit eventhash.com

We’ve got even more OneSpark coverage here!

Jason Belanger, Founder Of Florida Startup Lokal Muzik Interview [OneSpark][video]

Last May we featured an interview with Jason Belanger right as he was launching a new proximity based local music aggregator called LokalMuzik. A year later there seems to be a lot of startups that are entering the space in a variety of ways.

Take Aurora for instance, also a Jacksonville startup, their app helps you discover local music based on your geographic location and streams it right down to your device. That was good enough for them to be the biggest mover on Friday afternoon at OneSpark the World’s Crowdfunding festival.

Belanger was early in the local music game and offers something a bit different. Rather than “discovery” per se and streaming local artists’ tracks randomly, LokalMuzik shows the user graphically, the artists from the area they are in. It’s also searchable by genre which makes it easier to locate the freshest new music.

Belanger has been hard at work at this for over a year and has a fully functioning Android app. While he’s got several features in the works he’s taking a brean from Android development to go ahead and push out an iOS app.

Right now they make money off mp3 purchases and hopes in the future to be able to offer some kind of preview streaming so that users can hear the music rather than just read about the artist.

Belanger is very excited about being part of the first OneSpark. Check out the video below.

Check out LokalMuzik here at lokalmuzik.com

Check out more OneSpark creator interviews here at nibletz.com.

Meet OneSpark Creator: OneForte A Knowledge Market Place [video][onespark]

Knowledge and learning are big markets in the startup space. One Forte, is a Jacksonville based startup, that’s a market place for knowledge. OneForte

Using One Forte’s platform anyone can sign up and say what their skills are. Skills can be anything from guitar playing to tax accounting and anything in between. After a person adds themselves to the One Forte platform and lists what they have knowledge in they can offer online classes via video chats.

The “teachers” or “knowledge providers” can set their rate for how much a 1:1 session is going to cost, or they could decide to do it pro-bono and not charge anything at all.

One Forte makes the entire process easy by allowing knowledge providers to have profiles, and users to search for the skills they’re looking for. Once the two hook up One Forte provides an easy way to handle the billing and takes a small percentage of the fee that the teacher sets.

This scalable platform is going global out of the gate, hoping that a cook in London could provide lessons to someone who wants to learn about cooking in Boise Idaho. All of the lessons are done online through a video platform that’s also administered by One Forte.

Check out our interview with Gary below and for more info visit OneForte.com

More from OneSpark here at nibletz.com The Voice of Startups Everywhere Else.

A Green Record Label and A Pedal Powered Recording Studio [interview][onespark]

Florida Green Records is an incredible green record label. The record label operates two brick and mortar recording studios, one in Jacksonville and one in Key Largo.

At both recording studios, they try and be as green as possible through efforts like using digital recording versus pressing CDs, they use environmentally friendly paper and try and conserve energy. Now they’ve taken their green efforts a step further by creating a mobile recording studio that is powered by a bicycle. The mechanism for converting the bicycle energy into usable energy for the studio is able to attach to anyone’s bicycle.

Florida Green Records’ mobile recording studio is complete with computers running pro-tools, an isolation booth that can accommodate vocalists, guitar players and even a drum kit, and a working air conditioner that operates off of ice water. To power the studio someone rides a bike, and their power system, designed by the team at Florida Green Records, stores the energy in old UPS batteries. The batteries can run the studio for up to 3 hours, with the AC going.

While we stayed away from saying what our favorite creation at OneSpark, the World’s Crowdfunding Festival, was, the pedal powered recording studio is definitely in our top 3.

Throughout the five day festival Florida Green Records recorded some of the musical creators for free, and of course it was all powered by the bike. They also encouraged folks to bring their bikes out and help power the recording sessions.

Check out our video interview and a quick walk through of the studio in the video below.

Check out Florida Green Records here

Keep up with all our OneSpark coverage here!

An Educational MMORPG, We Chat With Lindsey Tropf CEO Of Immersed Games [video][onespark]

Educational video games and online games have been due for a disruption for quite sometime. We’ve seen startups like Memphis’ Seed Hatchery alum, Knoco, innovate by trying to bring back the story line based games like “Where In The World I Carmen San Diego”, while that’s a great idea, the storyline concept wasn’t brand new.

Lindsey Tropf and her co-founders at Immersed Games have taken their gaming experience as teenagers, young adults and now graduating college students and decided to start something, fun, educational and long lasting. Yes, they’re creating the first educational MMORPG.

For those that aren’t gamers, MMORPG stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, think World Of Warcraft, but of course Immersed Games educational MMORPG won’t be the least bit violent.

In the Immersed Games world students will take on an avatar and character profile and go into a world where they need to solve real problems with friends and other players to get to the next phase in the game. We’re not talking the classic, question and answer problems, real life problems like creating food chains, and using laws of physics and science to get out of situations.

Immersed Games is relying on the addictive nature of MMORPG games to keep students coming back and learning more.

Their first game is going to tackle sixth great science in a virtual world.

Tropf, along with brother Ryan Tropf and Kaz Burgmeister are working on creating their first worlds and quests and are hoping to raise money at OneSpark and then in an investment round. If all goes well they hope to role out their first game next year.

Check out the video interview with Lindsey below:

Find out more about Immersed Games here

We’ve got so much OneSpark coverage here at nibletz.com

OneSpark Creator FoggFace’s Startup Will Protect Motorcyclists’ Faces.

Michael Fogg is one of those fun loving guys that loves the adrenaline rush of surfing in Costa Rica or Hawaii and riding his motorcycle wide open through the rocky mountains. He’s also a smart guy who loves life, and people.

In 2008 Fogg, a life long motorcycle rider, decided to take his Harley Davidson half helmet and do some customizing too it. Rather than stickers, or engraving, he had a face mask, the kind you would find on a football helmet, mounted to his helmet. It seemed like a natural thing to do for safety.

Millions of people have broken bones, ribs and other injuries riding motorcycles. Without proper training and driving safely people wreck, its a fact of life. Well when you break your leg, foot or arm it’s going to heal and then get covered up with clothing. No one is going to see your scars, unless you want them to. When you hurt your face though, that’s a different story.

Fogg knows a fellow rider who broke his bottom jaw almost off and now has to wear a veil. If he had one of Fogg’s FoggFace helmets his jaw would still be intact.

Fogg hopes that in ten years people will look back in disbelief knowing that before the FoggFace helmet, motorcycle riders had no facial protection. Sure there are street style helmets with a full plexiglass piece that comes down across the face but those helmets can be distracting, and sometimes dangerous.

Using a football style masking the FoggFace helmets don’t look awkward. In fact whenever Fogg goes to biker events and sits his helmet on a table, people gather around to hear all about it and ask how to order it. One woman who rides a scooter to work everyday said she would love to buy a FoggFace helmet in designer colors like pink. Fogg is hoping that after OneSpark and getting his business plan rolling, he will be able to offer that.

He’s also hopeful that he’ll be able to create helmets for skateboarders, bicyclists and scooter riders.

Sounds like a multimillion dollar idea right? While the money doesn’t hurt, Fogg is doing this so people don’t get hurt. “It’s really all about safety” he told us at his creator booth at OneSpark on Friday.

To get a better idea of what the FoggFace helmets are all about check out the video below.

There’s so much more OneSpark coverage here at nibletz.com

Ooworldcoop Biggest Mover At OneSpark Day 2

The OneSpark staff just announced the day 2 biggest movers in the crowdfunding voting for the crowdfunding festival. Over 500 creators are competing for there share of a $250,000 pot that will be distributed on Sunday to help launch these creations and take these projects, businesses, startups and inventions.

There are 4 main categories: Art, Music, Science and Technology there’s also a 5th “other” category,

Oooworldcoop, a technology startup trying to mesh Facebook with EBay in a social marketplace platform, as a co-op was the biggest mover in the tech category today.

Yesterday’s biggest mover was Aurora, a local music discovery app.

Here’s the complete rundown on video:

Oh yes! We have a lot more OneSpark coverage here

Bad Ass Startup Chicks: Cara VonderBruegge With St Louis Startup Bonfyre [video][onespark]

The sunny skies of Hollywood California, celebrities, and power events, with a startup, that would be the ultimate goal for many people who love startups and working for them. Well for Cara VonderBruegge, who worked in that exact position at the Los Angeles office of Living Social, that wasn’t enough.
Blasphemy!

VonderBruegge (don’t even try and pronounce it), was looking for something more and wanted to move back to St. Louis, closer to her family. From a distance, off in Los Angeles, VonderBruegge saw the explosion of growth that St. Louis’ startup scene was having and she wanted to be there.

While the world knows that Living Social hasn’t been in the best financial place lately, after a series of layoffs it looked like VonderBruegge and her LA based position had survived, and it had. However in a by-chance meeting with Ray Gobberg, co-founder of Bonfyre, they struck up a good conversation. Gobberg explained that he worked at a startup in St. Louis and VonderBruegge told him that she worked for Living Social, itself still a startup.

By chance VonderBruegge called Gobberg just to catch up right when they had a project manager opening, and boom, the job was hers. So she did the reverse, packed up her car and moved to St. Louis.

While an official events coordinator may be in the works down the road for BonFyre, VonderBruegge has her hands full with several other “top secret” projects for the BonFyre crew, and she’s instrumental on their events side too.

VonderBruegge has been on the job for about six weeks and we got a chance to catch up with her at OneSpark in Jacksonville. VonderBruegge knows her stuff, startups, events, networking and Bonfyre. Her bright personality is definitely a perk for the mostly male dominated Bonfyre team.

Check out our interview with our latest “Bad Ass Startup Chick” below, and check out Bonfyre here.

See more of our Bad Ass Startup Chicks here.

Meet OneSpark Creator: BoneShaker, Really I Just Thought He Was Cool

There is no way that I can spin this into a startup story,except for the fact that Ron “BoneShaker” Schroer, is participating in OneSpark, the World’s Crowdfunding Festival.
Schroer spent many years working in animatronics, designing and creating Disney like animatronics for theme parks, and interactive exhibits for kids. The lifelong Jacksonville resident heard about the OneSpark festival and had to be part of it.

“There has been nothing like OneSpark before in Jacksonville and I wanted to create something for it”, Schroer harnessed his creative brain and his experience in animatronics and started to think about what to create. He had a ton of old fencing on his property so he proceeded to create “Ol Fence”.

“So I looked into my cupboard to see what I might bring. Thinking about how to incorporate my many Florida experiences, I realized how integral to the southern image is fencing- weathered wood, rolling and undulating, almost alive with personality- and thus was born Ol’ Fence- folk art meets process control. Ol’ Fence has 40 individual motions that can be combined for a wide range of actions. His ‘speech’ is created live with a talking drum, bowed and struck.” Schroer said in his OneSpark creator bio.

Combine all that with the fact that Florida probably has the most animatronics per capita of any state in the US, and you’ve got a match that is very creative, eye catching and perfect for OneSpark.

Kids passing through the Jacksonville Public Library where Ol’ Fence is on exhibit, are taking pictures with him in droves. Schroer has even opened up the back side of Ol’ Fence to show passerbys how the animatronics works.

He also has a work in progress on display, a time machine of sorts.

Schroer’s enthusiasm for the OneSpark event is infectious and it echoes what many Jacksonville residents have expressed about the inaugural festival since we’ve been on the ground here on Wednesday. Schroer has been reminding people to sign up and vote. He doesn’t care if he wins or not but he wants to see as many people as possible vote for something, to show how much of the community supports the event.

See more awesome Creators and OneSpark stories here at nibletz.com

Conquer Your Bucketlist with South Carolina Startup Bucquistador [video][onespark]

TJ Schallot, an entrepreneur and startup founder from Charleston South Carolina wants you to grab hold of your Bucket List like a bull and take it down. Conquer your bucket list with Bucquistador, that’s the motto at her newly launched startup.

Leading up to the launch of the socially integrated startup that allows people to take things off of their bucket list, Schallot has been hard at work promoting her startup. She was a presenter in the Startup Village at Everywhereelse.co 2013 and now she’s presenting as a creator at OneSpark the World’s Crowdfunding Festival in Jacksonville Florida.

So there are a lot of “bucket list” startups out there, what makes this one different? Schallot told us in an interview, it’s all about conquering your list and involving your socially connected friends. This idea is the foundation for how Schallot even came up with Bucquistador.

Schallot said her friends grew jealous of the fact that she was always doing things on their bucket list. She wanted a way to share with her friends the exciting things that she was doing without spamming them with email or useless Facebook updates. “I tried Facebook but my important posts were getting drowned out by pictures of cats” she told us. Of course we all know that pain.

Now Schallot’s bucket list items are available on Bucquistador for her friends to see and collaborate on. For example if you want to fly in a helicopter through the Grand Canyon on your bucket list, a friend of yours may be going to the Grand Canyon and want to do the same thing, why not knock it out together.

Schallot and her father are manning their creator booth in the SunTrust building in downtown Jacksonville. They’ve brought along a sumo wrestler suit, moonshine, and other items that may be on people’s bucket list. “Who doesn’t want to sumo wrestle in a sumo wrestler suit” Schallot said, now if that’s on your list you can do it right at the Bucquistador booth.

Check out our interview video below and for more info visit bucquistador.com.

In the words of the infamous Billy Mays, but wait there’s more OneSpark coverage here, a lot of it!

After 24 Hours Local Music Discovery Statup Aurora Is The Biggest Mover At OneSpark

Aurora,OneSpark,OneSpark standings,crowdfunding,vote

Angel Ayala Torres pitches Aurora At OneSpark (photo NMI 2013)

At 5:30pm the OneSpark staff took to the stage at Hemming Plaza and announced the biggest movers in the voting for OneSpark creators. Creators come in four categories; Art, Science, Music and Technology, with a fifth category for “other”.

Besides the biggest movers OneSpark had another huge announcement and that was that 20,000 people came out on Wednesday night for the opening ceremonies and entertainment district as part of “The World’s Crowdfunding Festival”.

464 creators are registered to receive the crowds votes and here’s the biggest movers after the first 24 hours.

Art

3. 20 Murals
2. One Wall
1. Rethreaded

Music

3. Girls Rock Jacksonville
2. Elestial Sound
1. Fathomsphere

Science

3. Kona School
2. One Food Park Project
1. Tiger Trail

Tech

3. Nerdular
2. The Forge
1. Aurora

Other

3. Live for today foundation
2. Five and Dime
1. 123 Fresh

We’ve got more incredible OneSpark coverage here at nibletz.com

Interview With OneSpark Creator Burro Bags [video][onespark]

We ran into Amanda from Burro Bags, who’s OneSpark project was set up at the Jacksonville Landing plaza. Burro Bags has been in business manufacturing bicycle accessories and messenger bags for the past five years.

Now though, they’ve introduced a new line called Impakt. With this line they are taking used promotional items and upcycling them into a variety of products. You’ll find handbags, messenger bags, and other accessories in their new line.

They showed off the creations they made using the flag pole signs for the recent Jacksonvilel Jazz festival. The banners are made of high quality, durable, vinyl and PVC. Typically after an event these things get tossed aside, or if they’re lucky, upcycled into things like drop cloths for painting.

Burro Bags found the value in the materials and the artwork itself and made an entire line out of it.

With all the signage in the downtown area for OneSpark, there is sure to be a nice OneSpark line for Impakt next year.

Although this falls outside the realm of startups, Burro Bags is crowdfunding here at OneSpark the inperson crowdfunding festival and it’s a great example of the variety you’ll find amongst the 464 official creators.

Check out Burro Bags here

We’ve got more OneSpark coverage here at nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else.

Out Of Toilet Paper? There’s A Startup For That: Restroom Alert [onespark][video]

Who’s ever gone to the bathroom at a public place only to sit down and find there’s no toilet paper in the toilet paper dispenser? Or you go through a beautiful looking store or a great restaurant and find paper towels all over the floor and a trashcan that looks like it hasn’t been dumped in days?

Well if you said yes, you’re not alone. These problems happen to millions of people every week at a variety of restrooms across the country. Going into a dirty, filthy or not well stocked bathroom affects businesses in ways you wouldn’t believe. One survey said that 94% of respondents said that a non well kept bathroom would make them leave an establishment.

Some believe that when going to restaurants a dirty restroom is a signal that the kitchen may not be that clean either. While there are people who will speak to a manager or an employee about the cleanliness of the bathroom, others are embarrassed to do so, or sometimes so grossed out they just want to leave.

Well now there’s an app for that. The multi-platform Restroom Alert, is a way for customers to anonymously report to a manager, owner or other employee that their restrooms need some attention.

It’s pretty simple. A business, small, big or gigantic, can sign up for Restroom Alert for $5 per month per room. The establishment will get signs that can easily be affixed to mirrors or walls with a short code to send a text message about the restroom. Does it need toilet paper? Do the sinks need cleaning? Is the trashcan overflowing? Is the toilet stopped up? All of these things and more can be reported anonymously via the text code.

On the business’ side, they get a text message as well saying what needs to be fixed. At that point a timer begins and the platform records how long it takes to go fix the problem.

The system can also alert owners, managers or employees when the restroom hasn’t been cleaned or checked in the allotted time. This wipes out the need for clipboards and paper restroom checklists, which often go unused.

Restroom Alert even supplies analytics detailing the restroom problems, how often they’re stocked and checked and other key factors. A clean restroom is just another way a business owner can provide excellent customer service.

Restroom Alert can be used by small mom and pop shops all the way up to Fortune 500 companies. The owner, or person in charge of such things, can get reports based on their entire network of restrooms. This way they can deal with employees that don’t give a crap about the way the restroom looks (you see what I did there).

While there are plenty of apps that can find you a restroom on the road, this seems to be the first startup to modernize the restroom checklist.

We got a chance to check out Restroom Alert one of the 464 projects found at OneSpark in Jacksonville.

Check out our video interview with Rod Dornsife one of the co-founders of Restroom Alert below.

For more on Restroom Alert visit restroomalert.com or follow them on Twitter @restroomalert

We’ve got a lot more OneSpark stories for you here at nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else

Aurora Rediscovering Cities Through Local Music, Launches At One Spark [onespark]

Angel Ayala Torres pitches Aurora At OneSpark (photo NMI 2013)

Aurora is a new Jacksonville Florida based startup that is looking to connect two mobile experiences in one cool functioning app. By using the Aurora app, people will be able to rediscover a city through that cities local artists. This app combines location discovery with artist discovery in a way that actually makes sense.

Creator Angel Ayala Torres took to the Hemming Plaza Pitch Deck stage on Wednesday afternoon to pitch Aurora to an enthusiastic audience.

I actually heard the pitch about an hour earlier in the day at the OneSpark food village when I bumped into Torres and at that time I didn’t totally understand the concept. Now, after watching him pitch and downloading the app, it makes a lot of sense. It’s perfect for local people and local artists.

As he says in the video, take downtown Jacksonville for instance. When you open up Aurora downtown it will immediately start streaming a local downtown Jacksonville artist. If you hear a slow song and you’re briskly walking or jogging and “shake” your iPhone it will change the song and match it to your “mood” they call this “mood swings”.

Now if you venture to the beach area of Jacksonville or even New York City, you’ll get artists that are local to those areas. The Aurora team calls those “Echoes”. In New York you’ll hear New York echoes and in Jacksonville you’ll hear Jacksonville artists.

Aurora is working on a market place where users can purchase the songs to keep on their phone. This way you could listen to the artists wherever you go.

Local Jacksonville artists are jumping at the chance to have their music in the Aurora platform. Really this is a great idea for local music discovery. Just think of the music you would get in a city like Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans or Seattle. Every city has it’s own unique music scene and through Aurora you can easily discover it.

Check out the pitch video here:

Find out more about Aurora here at their Facebook page.

We’ve got more OneSpark coverage here.