Al Leston is the host of the popular NPR documentary series, State Of The Re-Union. The NPR documentary style show has Leston going into communities across the country and chronicling the world around him. The show highlights, what makes the community.
Leston was on hand at the OneSpark crowdfunding festiva showing the next extension of State Of The Re-Union, a gigantic, digital tablet based wall. “The Wall” is an installation piece that he hopes to have setup in busy, high traffic areas in a town or city.
“bus stops, court yards, plazas and downtown street corners” are locations that Leston has in mind for this gigantic piece of interactive story telling art.
Just like SOTRU, The Wall will open up dialogue between people with different ways of life and different perspectives, promoting understanding and encouraging conflict resolution. If we can be connected with others in different regions, with different cultures, we will have a better chance of creating solutions to pressing issues. We will become better listeners. We will increase empathy.
The Wall challenges how media inhabits our space. The Internet is an ether, as intangible as it is infinite. But we have trapped ourselves – become idle, passive voyeurs of media. The Wall will surprise us. The Wall will touch us. The Wall will change us. And we will have the power to change The Wall. – From the OneSpark profile page.
In meeting Leston he was genuine, concerned about communities and extremely creative. A video loop showing throughout the week at his OneSpark booth showed what he hopes to create with the end result of the wall. He wants people in cities, towns and community’s to take a moment and discover the stories that are being home grown.
The community aspect, creativity and merged use of technology, in “installation art” are what made The Wall the top vote getter in the technology category during the OneSpark festival.
Last Wednesday OneSpark, the World’s Crowdfunding Festival kicked off in Jacksonville Florida. It was five days of creators, entrepreneurship, artists and startups. The creators, and entrepreneurs came from all different categories and all different walks of life.
During the opening ceremonies, led by voice of the Jacksonville Jaguars, Brian Sexton, we were given a glimpse of what was to come. Sexton invited random creators to raise their hands and come up and pitch their creation, business or startup to the crowd. Each of the five creators had 90 seconds to deliver an on the spot pitch. One of those pitches was Kristin Keen the founder of Rethreaded.
Rethreaded is a social startup that puts women who’ve suffered some of the worst abuse known to humans, sex trafficking, human trafficking and prostitution, and gives them a new sense of life, and worth through business, artistry and employment. Keen spoke to the crowd with a genuine passion. She had spent five years of her life in India where she helped empower women who had suffered the same kind of abuse through teaching them to sew.
Keen told Florida’s First Coast News that when she got back home to Jacksonville she couldn’t sit still she wanted to do something to continue her mission, and that she did.
She started Rethreaded, which crafts children’s clothes out of used t-shirts. So not only is she putting women who need a lift up a place to work and be creative, but she’s also upcycling t-shirts.
Little did she know when she pitched her company on Wednesday afternoon that she would be the runaway vote leader at the end of the week. She also didn’t know what was in store for her just a few moments later.
After all five creators had pitched, OneSpark volunteers handed out sealed white envelopes. Sexton informed the crowd that in those envelopes (which we weren’t allowed to look in) were $1 and $5 bills, $1000 dollars worth. The crowd was instructed to find the creators who just pitched outside of the creator lounge tent and hand over the envelope. Like me, many of the crowd didn’t even look in the envelopes.
I had made a core group of new friends at OneSpark and silently we all took our envelopes and walked over to find Kristin. We weren’t alone. She won that contest by a landslide.
The OneSpark staff did daily updates at 5:30pm each evening to inform the crowd of who the biggest movers in voting were and sure enough on Saturday evening Rethreaded was the biggest mover.
Their OneSpark booth was a hut constructed out of used t-shirts, which made a great make-shift shelter when the rain came pouring down Saturday afternoon.
Keen was one of the greatest creators we met. She was extremely kind and humble and we’re pretty sure she wasn’t even expecting the win. I caught a glimpse of Keen in her hut on Saturday afternoon, tearing up telling a group of passerbys that she never expected the outpouring of support she received at OneSpark.
Naturally I was gunning for a tech startup to win the overall vote during the five days of crowd voting, but I couldn’t be more pleased that the top vote went to Kristin Keen and Re-Threaded, a social entrepreneur with a heart of gold. With the most votes, Rethreaded took home $6,768.42 of the $250,000 crowdfunding prize. Event registrants voted for one creator using the OneSpark app and the money was distributed evenly among the top vote getters.
You can see how genuine Keen is in her 90 second pitch below:
Florida teacher turned entrepreneur Deb Bowers has an innovative, musical way to teach students adding and subtracting positive and negative numbers. She’s put it all to music and song using one of FAO Schwartz most popular toys.
Long gone are the days that one has to travel all the way to New York City to see FAO Schwartz signature toys. You know the ones made famous by many New York based Christmas movies including Home Alone. Toys-R-Us has created an FAO Schwartz section in all of their stores and one of their most popular toys from the brand is a gigantic piano kids can walk and jump on.Think Nintendo power pad meets keyboard.
Well Bowers has created a way to use that piano toy, affix a number chart on top and teach kids to add and subtract positive and negative numbers, while performing a song.
Musical Math Numberline comes with everything a parent needs to teach this method at home, except for the piano itself. You can either order it from Bowers’ site via a link to Toys R Us or go to your local Toys R us and pick it up. The numberline comes with the overlay for the piano along with a song book that is filled not only with songs, but songs composed by performing math problems.
To get the entire gist of the idea you should watch the video below. Bowers said she got the idea from her students. She would put masking tape on the floor and have them move about the front of the room adding and subtracting positive and negative numbers. Some students suggested that there had to be a way they could add music to it, so Bowers did.
She just showed off the idea at OneSpark the World’s Crowdfunding Festival where she hoped to get a jump start on bringing the company out to a bigger market. She told us there were lots of interested people that came to see her at her booth and that she was going to continue with Musical Math Numberline regardless of whether she was one of the companies to get funded at the event.
One thing that sucks about being on the “sneaker strapped startup road trip” is missing time with my kid. FaceTime makes it almost bearable, and home time is just that, home time. Now my daughter is going to start officially playing soccer in the fall and while I am going to try and schedule our road trip stops around the soccer schedule, inevitably I’m going to miss a few games.
Aaron Russell the founder of Jacksonville startup RUA Sport feels my pain, along with the pain of thousands of other parents who’s schedules dictate that they can’t be there for all the goals, home runs and triple doubles. Russell’s startup is also great for grandma’s and grandpa’s all over the country that want to keep up with their grandkids games.
RUA Sports is the creator of MyMobile Scoreboard. In essence this app crowdsources a network of users on-site at a youth sports event in a “play by play” style manner. You’ll never miss a goal, save or a triple play again.
Russell and the team at RUA Sports have also figured out a way to do some non-traditional fundraising for the schools that utilize the app and the social crowdsourcing play by play that it offers.
MyMobile Scoreboard costs $1.99 to download and RUA Sports will give back 50 cents of every download to the schools or youth sports organizations that download the app. Each organization will have it’s own mobile scoreboard so for example a high school could have a mobile scoreboard for their basketball program. Then the parents and others who want to keep up with the game can download the app and give back $.50 per download back to the school. For some schools with heritage and history this could prove to be a really good fundraiser.
Check out our interview video below with RUA Sports and for more info visit ruasports.com
Over the summer, when nibletz.com was in Charlotte for the Democratic National Convention, as part of our sneaker-strapped startup road trip, we got a chance to interview Amir Khoshnevis the founder of WeRx.org.
WeRx.org had just won the Startup Rockon pitch contest as part of the Startup America DNC festivities.
WeRx.org is an innovative crowdsourcing platform that would definitely be considered in the social entrepreneurship space. Khoshnevis and his co-founders discovered that people are paying way too much for their medication. Of course we’ve known this for years but what the WeRx team found was something that will blow most people’s minds away.
Take Lipitor for example. In it’s generic form the WeRx team found some pharmacies sold the drug for $11 and on the high end, $180 and that’s right in the Charlotte metro area. The unfortunate reality is that most people who require medication may do a limited cost comparison, and if they do they check the few pharmacies close by. If they can’t afford the cost of the medication close by they often decide to not take it. This can ultimately lead to death.
As another example Khoshnevis and the WeRx team found that in West Charlotte diabetes medications cost two to three times as much as they do in the Ballentine suburb of Charlotte. Why? Because the demographics skew more diabetic in West Charlotte.
Prior to their launch today, WeRX also won the Distilled Intelligence startup competition as well as the Reboot America competition in Washington DC. Now all of their hard work is set to pay off as they’ve launched the platform to the world.
The official launch is a huge step toward connecting consumers to the prescription price information and savings they need,” Khoshnevis said. “We started this company after being doctors in the trenches for many years and watching patients suffer simply because they can’t afford their medications. This is one of the last industries where consumers have not had easy access to price comparison tools and we have changed that today.”
Kosnevis continued, “We have a lot of positive momentum and have been extremely pleased with the recognition but we are keeping our focus on solving the problem. 100 million Americans lack prescription coverage or are underinsured and are at risk of not being able to afford their medications. Our goal is to leverage the power of consumer choice to create a more fair, open and transparent system for prescription meds. We sincerely believe that by empowering consumers and doctors with pricing information, we can allow patients to stay on their medications and remain healthy.”
Mark Foss spent most of his career in outside sales with technology companies. As an outside sales person he was constantly parking his car in new places. Finally he got fed up of bumping into curbs, and those annoying concrete things in parking lots that you can’t see over the hood.
So he did what any natural entrepreneur would do, he invented something.
That something is the Bumper Buzzer. A device that hooks to the front of the car and sends a signal by radio frequency to a receiver inside the car that alerts the driver to the fact that they are about to hit something.
Now a lot of newer cars have some kind of option for the car that may assist in situations like this, however that option is usually hundreds of dollars and doesn’t necessarily work all the time.
Foss hopes that the introductory price for the Bumper Buzzer will be in the neighborhood of $24.95 and the best part is that it’s completely user installable. A couple of screws and some automotive 3M adhesive that comes in the package, and you’re ready to go. Because the signal is operating via RF there is no need to run wires through the front of the car.
Foss is a lot further along with his startup than some that we saw at OneSpark. He has a prototype built and is already working on getting the Bumper Buzzer in front of Telebrands, the Pennsylvania based company that former Shark Tank shark Kevin Harrington runs, better known as “As Seen On TV”. Foss is convinced that with his easy set up and price point it’s a shoe-in for an infomercial.
And we concur.
Check out the video below and for more information you can visit bumperbuzzer.com
There were over 500 creators at OneSpark, The World’s Crowdfunding Festival, in Jacksonville from Wednesday through Sunday. They reported that over 115,000 people had been through downtown Jacksonville for the event. With 500 creators and over 100 tech/science creators, inventors and startups, there were a lot of people clamoring for my vote.
I saw a lot of creators I really liked. I’ll be doing my top 5 OneSpark startups and creators in the next day or two. However, a little after midnight Sunday morning I cast my vote for Jose Fermin and his startup Whata.tv. I thought I’d share a little insight into what exactly whata.tv is and why I voted this way.
Whata.tv started with Fermin who is originally from Venezuela. He migrated to the United States with his family nine years ago. While in Venezuela, Fermin, who has two degrees in engineering, had a high profile position in satellite and communications, working with some of the biggest defense contractors in the world.
He wanted to move to the United States because he saw a land of opportunity so he did. However when he got to the US he realized quickly that he would have to start all over from scratch. Because of immigration laws and security clearances, Fermin, who worked with the likes of Lockhead Martin and Boeing in Venezuela, all of the sudden didn’t have the proper security clearance to work with the same exact people once he moved to the US.
He had one good prospect. He had a job offer in New York that paid very well, where he would serve as the International Director of satellite communications for a huge worldwide company. The problem was they needed him to go to Peru two days after he signed the contract, and he was still under his two week international travel waiting period from the immigration department. After the two weeks were up they didn’t have a spot for him.
Unscathed Fermin did anything and everything he could to provide for his family and not give up on his American dream. He painted houses, did roofing, general contract work and even worked at a dry cleaners. All the while he tinkered with side projects.
As the startup scene in Jacksvonille started to take shape he would go to meetups and Startup Weekend’s. Things weren’t what they were in Venezuela but he had his freedom and was living the American dream. Except for one thing that always bothered him.
Except for the World Cup, Fermin was unable to watch his Venezuelan soccer on American TV. He couldn’t even find the games online, just the scores.
Last winter, with Startup Weekend approaching, he decided to do something about it and created whata.tv. He was chosen to build at Startup Weekend and was able to do some of the preliminary leg work. He is relying on his connections and strengths in satellite and communications to help get this thing off the ground.
What is it?
whata.tv is a paid subscription model tv viewing service. It works on tablets, smartphones and the web. The difference this time? The customer pays just $2.99 for a monthly subscription to a channel.
When Fermin originally pitched whata.tv it was just about Venezuela but the other entrepreneurs quickly made him realize he was onto something. As the service nears launch Fermin is in negotiations with tv channels across the world to carry their signals on whata.tv.
While we think they should be paying him for the added eyeballs, Fermin is giving them a percentage of every monthly subscription. In addition he plans on marketing his own advertising; including pre-roll on the channels as well as customized demographic advertising. He explained it to me like this: “Say you have a popular comedian coming to Orlando from Mexico. whata.tv will know how many people in Orlando subscribe to Mexican tv channels on the service and we could market the comedians ad specifically to them.”
The service is also great for military serving abroad to watch the U.S. channels that they are missing. The same goes for business people who travel all of the time. He is hoping to provide full streams of the channel including things like local news, something you can’t get a la carte from sites like hulu.
So why my vote?
Well I really couldn’t in good conscious vote for DJ Mercy, I was after all covering the startup angle (just kidding).
In voting for whata.tv it was as much about Fermin as it was about whata.tv and the disruption coming to the tv industry. While we shot this footage on Saturday afternoon, I had actually gone by their space on Thursday morning. That’s where I met Fermin’s high school aged daughter who gave just as good an interview, as her dad did a pitch.
Fermin called me on Saturday morning to make sure I wouldn’t miss the pitch, rain or shine he would be pitching. Fermin is also a startup community leader in Jacksonville. With the luck he had, first starting out in the US, it’s refreshing to meet someone like this.
And of course, in the wake of recent events, with everyone waving the “immigration reform” flag this week, Fermin and his family are a great reminder that great people come to the US from other countries all of the time.
On Friday we brought you an interview with Florida startup restroomalert. This startup, that accelerated at The Factory in St. Augustine, provides anonymous feedback about bathroom conditions to businesses big and small across the country. They also provide a huge analytics dashboard to their business customers.
Evan Diamond and his Jacksonville startup are taking a similar idea and approach, using text messages to alert those in charge at establishments when their are customer complaints, or even compliments.
Through a unique text code, a customer can send a text message to the business which has a greater chance of being read quicker. According to Diamond, 95% of text messages get read.
There were some privacy concerns about where the anonymous text numbers are stored with restroomalert and the same would hold true for AlertTheBoss. Diamond explained that all of their information is being held in a private, secure database that the businesses don”t have access too.
The problem is, that on the AlertTheBoss OneSpark profile it clearly says that a component of the startup is the ability to aggregate the texting numbers and use them for marketing. Unless AlertTheBoss plans to become an outbound text based marketing company, that seems near impossible to hold the numbers so privately.
While we really liked restroomalert for obvious reasons we wrote about here, it seems to me that there are some privacy concerns with AlertTheBoss.
The other thing to consider; with the move to mobile apps and native mobile apps in particular, the ability to SMS through mobile app seems much more effective. We’ll watch this one to see where it goes.
In the meantime check out our video interview with Diamond below:
ooWorldcoop is testing the waters in a new space in the social marketplace realm. Founder Anthony Tyson, has created the first ever social online market place co-op. Like any other co-op that means that the user base or membership will actually own the co-op together. While Tyson will always be the “founder” or “creator” he won’t be the owner, everyone will.
Co-Op models have been around for many years. Group buying co-ops are the most popular kinds of co-ops that still exist in the offline world today. Most cities have a grocery store or local produce store co-op. In that case, the members vote on what kind of items to buy and at what prices. They also dictate buying power with strength in numbers. The biggest benefit for the overall business in this case is that vendors know exactly what the buyers will buy.
In the case of the online co-op, after operating expenses, members will vote on where the co-op can spend its money. Profits will be reinvested, with member guidance, to offer more and better services to members.
A co-op also means that the accounting will be transparent to any co-op member.
Membership is free and comes with an easy to design and customize ooWorld.coop account/profile.
While ooWorld.coop may accept direct donations, most of the cooperative’s revenues will come from service/transaction fees and advertising. Surplus revenues will be used for various member programs such as affiliate commissions, education grants, micro and mini grants, and other programs voted on by the membership. We hope these will include affordable, renewable energy sources, affordable housing programs, and access to healthy food and clean water.
From the Certificate of Formation of ooWorld.coop, ‘… The purposes for organizing ooWorld.coop are, but are not limited to, to empower, support and encourage individuals to improve their quality of life and increase their earning potential; to promote, encourage and support the growth of micro-businesses and other business opportunities; to promote other worthy human endeavors including, but not limited to, arts and culture, scientific research, education, and human rights; to boost local communities while building a global community based on cooperation, collaboration and sharing; and to lessen the burdens of government. Tyson said on their OneSpark profile page.
How did people respond to this new kind of startup? Well out a crowd-funding festival they loved it. Although they didn’t finish in the top three when all was said and done on Sunday, ooWorldcoop was the biggest mover on Saturday.
We ran into Tyson’s partner Seth who filled us in, check out the video below and for more info visit ooWorldcoop.com
The Factory, St. Augustine Florida’s accelerator program, housed all of their startups at the Dalton Agency venue during the OneSpark crowdfunding festival in Jacksonville this week. They were also one of the first startups (creators) to pitch the crowd on the Community First Pitch Deck (stage) on Wednesday at the festival.
ProfileGorilla takes most aspects of a businesses administrative operations, that are currently performed across a multitude of software products and combines them into one collaborative suite of tools. While that may seem like a daunting task, they’ve just made life much easier for the people running the back end of a business.
Not only that, but ProfileGorilla is a collaborative tool which allows businesses to let their third party vendors and other folks that need access to their operations, to access them through their Profile Gorilla account.
While this is an enterprise software solution, co-founder Ed Baldwin is quick to point out that the scalable solution is perfect for any size enterprise at any stage in their development. Meaning that if you are with a legacy enterprise company with 700 employees, ProfileGorilla brings a huge advantage to your back office. If you’re a startup with two employees, it also brings a huge advantage to your back office.
With that, Baldwin is recruiting business clients of all sizes and invited startups at OneSpark to set up a free account.
One of the biggest advantages to ProfileGorilla is that it’s scalable in nature on the user size. It’s the perfect business management system for that one or two person startup and as the company grows, ProfileGorilla grows with it.
Check out our video interview with Baldwin below and go sign up for ProfileGorilla here at profilegorilla.com
No one has more OneSpark coverage than nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else.
Jacksonville startup Sportsbook Revolution is setting out to revolutionize sports betting for people who like the thrill but don’t want to bet away the house or the car. The best part is, it’s totally legal and based in Florida, not off on some island country.
Wayne Lachowicz, an admitted recreational sports better, designed Sportsbook Revolution to be a safer, less risky place to get the thrill out of sports betting.
Here’s how it works, a user signs up for a Sportsbook Revolution profile and pays a monthly subscription fee of $25. In exchange for the $25 the user gets 25,000 points they can use to bet on their favorite sports teams in NBA,NHL,NFL and MLB. The wagering works similarly to betting at the sports book in Las Vegas, but you’re betting points rather than betting cash.
At the end of the month your points carry over or you can cash them out for prizes. Lachowicz also says as they continue to evolve over the next few months they will eventually split the profits with the users and giveaway money as well.
Since you’re only risking $25 a month it’s a much safer way to gamble. Also, right now, there is no way to “re-up” during the month. This way you can’t blow through your $25 and continue to spend more money on betting. When you’re out of points, you’re sidelined until the next month when your points reset.
They’re considering some way to let you re-up effectively making it as risky as any freemium game or app with in-game purchasing, but that’s a decision that Lachowicz and his team are very carefully considering. Sportsbook revolution is more about the thrill and fun of betting on your favorite teams rather than trying to win money.
The site is in beta right now and they hope to open it up to the public in the next few months. It’s 100% legal, operating as a subscription based sweepstakes rather than online gambling. Sportsbook Revolution is putting the “game” into sports gambling.
On Saturday evening at OneSpark in downtown Jacksonville I heard some amazing turntablism coming from one of the 65 venues at the OneSpark crowdfunding and creators festival. I went down the street to check it out and was amazed to find 10 year old DJ Mercy on the 1’s and 2’s cutting and scratching to 90’s hip hop.
This kid was totally amazing and authentic. You hear about child prodigy’s all the time who take up the piano or the violin, this kid has an incredible knack for the turntable.
Someone should put DJ Mercy together with Kid President, that would be something epic to dance to.
His father is Jacksonville DJ shotgun and says his son his been practicing on the wheels of steel since he can remember. DJ Mercy plays out all the time and is part of a monthly arts walk in downtown Jacksonville as part of the Lyricist hour a showcase put together by Jacksonville native Mal Jones.
Check out this amazing kid in the video below, and then spread it and share it.
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
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.
Kyle
Al Leston is the host of the popular NPR documentary series, State Of The Re-Union. The NPR documentary style show has Leston going into communities across the country and chronicling the world around him. The show highlights, what makes the community.
“bus stops, court yards, plazas and downtown street corners” are locations that Leston has in mind for this gigantic piece of interactive story telling art.
