New Orleans Tech

GNO Inc. To Create Technology Advisory Group

NOLA Tech Writer — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:22:53 +0000

Greater New Orleans Inc is creating a Technology Task Force dubbed the TechNO Task Force that will became an advisory group to focus on initiatives related to the growth of the technology sector in the region, including workforce and marketing. The goals of the group will be twofold:

To create strategies that will develop and promote the Greater New Orleans as a technology brand to ensure the ability to attract businesses and workforce to the region.
To establish and advise workforce programs that will expose students to technology careers, ensure workforce diversity, and prepare an indigenous workforce to fill these jobs.

New Orleans has already been painted as an entrepreneurial haven with a lighter emphasis on technology but that is about to change. With the growth of the New Orleans Bio Innovation Center and a commitment from GE Capital to open up a Technology Center, the city is primed to show the rest of the country that it is serious about being a tech region. Another piece of the puzzle is the workforce; the people with the skills that will be able to fill the demand for highly technical jobs. The state has promised $5 million dollars toward IT education or programs to help boost workforce diversity in an effort to show other companies willing to move to New Orleans, that the skills can be found here.

The advisory group will be comprised of 15 people from around the city that include a diverse set of stakeholders that include C-level executives, community representatives, and education institutions. The groups first two primary areas will be workforce and communication. The workforce initiatives include such things as advising new programs for K-12, 2 year, and 4 years institutions while the communication initiatives focuses on developing an external brand that will work to change the perception of New Orleans as a tech hub.

GOOD Ideas For New Orleans Is Looking For Designers, Coders, & Artists To Help With Community Projects

NOLA Tech Writer — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:08:14 +0000

GOOD Ideas for New Orleans, a collaboration between Neighborland.com and GOOD.is are looking for local designers, coders, architects, artists and writers to participate in several community projects. GOOD Ideas for New Orleans, a program that recruits creative people to tackle real challenges proposed by civic leaders. As a collaborator, you'll work together to create a project that addresses an important issue in our city. The project can by anything that provides real value to a community leader dedicated to the issue--a print design, public art, a physical installation or pop-up event, or a simple web app. Neighborland will provide $500 to bring each project to life.

The program will focus the creative energy of New Orleanians on four challenges, each sponsored by relevant community leaders:

Making bike transportation easier and safer. - Bike Easy and Transport for NOLA
Bringing more food trucks to New Orleans. - The New Orleans Food Truck Coalition
Beautifying intersections to improve safety and foster neighborhood pride. - Sci Academy
Educating people about growing, buying, and cooking healthy local foods. - Grow Dat Youth Farm

What Other Cities Have Done

In Portland, Oregon designers collaborated together to provide the Bike Easy's crowd-sourced Incident Map and a intersection repair mural. Below you'll see how the group came up with a printed handout, an incident map using Google Maps, and an outdoor repair mural.

Example of Portland's Idea

How You Can Get Involved

If you like to get inovled or find out more information, you can register here. The registreration deadline is May 10th, after this date the group will host a kick-off meeting to pair collaborators with community leaders. On Thursday, July 12th, the teams will present your work to an audience of citizens, creatives, and civic leaders, at an event hosted by GOOD at Launch Pad. Your work will be featured nationally through GOOD and Neighborland.

GNO Inc. Puts Out RFP For Redesign of WorkNOLA.com

NOLA Tech Writer — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:36:10 +0000

Launched in 2008, WorkNOLA.com was setup between several community partners as the premier place to search for local jobs in New Orleans. Currently the site has 2,039 jobs posted from 819 companies. Greater New Orleans Inc (GNO Inc), the current administrators for the site have put out a request for proposal in order to revamp the functionally of the website. This is in line with it's newly created TechNO task force that has the initiative of creating a career map to help candidate hone the focus of their careers and also revamping the job board website.

Details About The RFP

The desired upgrades revolve around account management, site administration, increased functionality, and visual enhancements. Some of the main objectives also include

Visually appealing layout that functions in desktop, laptop, and mobile environments
Easily updated CMS from the front-end and back-end for greater control over listings and accounts by applicants, employers, and GNO, Inc. administrators
Ability to accept a full range of resume formats for uploads by applicants, added ability to store more than one cover letter
Site should be easily upgradeable

WorkNOLA.com RFP Timeline

The RFP will also go through a selection process based on a point system that grades each proposal using six different criteria for a total of 100 points.

More Info

The official RFP can be read on GNO Inc's RFP page. Final proposals submitted should be received no later than 4PM on Wednesday, May 16th, 2012. Four printed copies of the proposal must be submitted and one digital copy must be e-mailed to mwolfe@gnoinc.org.

The Official New Orleans Jazz Festival App

Chaz — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 04:18:53 +0000

Anyone who is a fan of good music, good times and good food has obviously gone or heard of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. New Orleans natives refer to it as the jazz fest for short. The Jazz Fest is held annually to showcase Louisiana music and cultural heritage. This Jazz Fest application has continued that tradition without any compromises. The producers of the application Seed Labs, LLC. has done a great job creating an application which is easy to use. feature rich, functional and speedy. This years application has been released on Android and IOS. The basis for my review will center on the Android versionLet’s begin with the design of the application. Its obvious to me that the android version of the application takes some functionality from the IOS version of the application. mentioning this fact does not take away from the overall design and feel. In my opinion, it only enhances usability and keeps things simple and compact. The application is also relatively light coming in at 9.72 Mb and quite snappy and responsive to user input and request. The application has an impressive feature list:
-Music Lineup: See every artist and where they are playing. Add filters by day and/or stage to drill down to what you want to see. Sort by name or time in any view. Add or remove artists from your schedule with one touch.

- Artist Info: Click on any artist in any list and read their bio, watch videos, go to the artist web site or go to iTunes to download their latest release.

- Now Playing: View all artists playing within the next two hours in the music lineup. See what's coming up on your personal schedule as well.

-Radio: Integration with slacker Radio to keep up with your favorite artist before during and after the show.

- Food Lineup: An organized list of all the food item available at Jazz Fest and which area they are located in. Touch a button to add food to your schedule at a specific time.

- Craft Lineup:An organized list of all the craft shops available at Jazz Fest and which area they are located in. Place a star next to your favorite shop.

- Map: a zoomable/scrollable map of the entire event. Click on a stage to go to the lineup view for that stage. During the Festival, see who is playing each stage on the current day.
- Social Media Integration: For any artist, take a picture from inside the app and have the caption automatically filled in with artist and stage info. Push the photo up to Facebook, Twitpic or both at the same time. You can also update your Facebook status or tweet about the bands.

- Sync: Pull down your custom schedule from www.nojazzfest.com using either the web site login or a Facebook login. Want to push your iPhone schedule back up to the website? You can do that too.

- My Schedule: A customized food and music schedule organized by day and remove items with a single touch.

- Webcast: live streamed coverage of select bands through YouTube beginning May 4-6.

To the Jazz Fest veteran and the new Jazz Fest convert this application is a great way to get started enjoying and sharing before during and after the festivities have long subsided. I highly recommend this app so give it a try and you will see why?

Source: Google Play, Jazz Fest, YouTube

Skillshare Visits New Orleans

Samantha Barnes — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 19:42:19 +0000

Fresh off the trail-blazing heels of SXSW comes Skillshare, the "un-university" of online universities. By "un-university," think along the lines of BarCampNOLA or BizCampNOLA's un-conferences, but in the social sharing platform of our online world. And when I mean here comes Skillshare, I mean, literally.

Tonight, March 13, 2012, at Capdeville from 5:30pm to 7pm, Michael Karnjanaprakorn (CEO/Co-Founder) and Abigail Besdin (BD/Partnerships) will be in town for New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week (If you haven't gotten the full scoop on NOEW, visit their schedule site and stare in amazement.) You can enroll in the "class" online here and enjoy some drinks with them after this afternoon's keynote speech.

Now, you might be asking yourself, what exactly is Skillshare and why should I care? Besides being highlighted by The New York Times, Forbes, TechCrunch, Mashable, and Wired, this New York startup gone national is fulfilling a niche that many have sought for a while: where can one market their skills and share with others like a teacher, but without the restrictions of universities and paperwork? Skillshare is like MeetUp, but tailored more towards the actual methods of teaching and learning rather than gathering for a variety of topics to discuss.

If you're looking to find out more information about Skillshare and what it can offer you, tonight is a perfect opportunity!

French Market Vendors Receive A Gift Of Google Ad Dollars From Micro Lender

Chaz — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Blueprint Investment Fund is a 501(c)(3), non profit economic development corporation who serve Low-income, disadvantaged, minority and women entrepreneurs with financial and technical resources. The mission of the blueprint investment fund is to alleviate poverty, chronic unemployment, and economic inequality in America's urban and rural centers. Blueprint investment funding accomplish this mission by providing private equity investment and micro lending services to entrepreneurs and small businesses. Blueprint received then subsequently disbursed a grant from Google in the amount of $500,000 in advertising dollars to nine French Market vendors. Each vendor was awarded up to $50,000 in advertising. For those of you who do not know, Google advertising dollars is a form of currency used to buy a variety of services such as advertisements from simple text ads to display and mobile advertising.

The requirements for selecting a vendor were based on (1) the need of the business (2) its current web presence, (3) ability to handle increased sales, (4) is the business a full-time operation and (5) is the product being sold made by the business. Blueprint executive director Lawrence Williams said “Each one was selected on their ability to have mass appeal and how well a managed advertising campaign could increase their sales.” Blueprint estimates the advertising campaign could bring in an additional $40,000 to $50,000 in additional revenues for the vendors. Charles Robinson of French Quarter Candles is a French Market vendor and a recipient of the award. “Someone who is in a competitive market like home decor, it’d be hard for Charles to sell $50,000 per year without advertising,” Williams said. “And he could handle that increase in sales.”

Why I Love New Orleans Art (and the Arts Council of New Orleans)

Stephanie Elder — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:24:34 +0000

In thinking about what I love about the Arts Council, their many exciting online initiatives and why you should love them too; I’ve mostly been thinking about why I love New Orleans art and how art is so fundamental to our culture. Mayor Moon Landrieu understood that when he appointed the Cultural Resources Committee which later became the Arts Council as we know it today. This blog is about technology and I am going to get to that but its also about our love for New Orleans so I will start there.

First, for the purposes of the arts council and me and this article, art includes: architecture, culinary, dance, film, literature, music, theater, and visual arts (as listed on the very cool artsneworleans.org site by the Arts Council to be discussed in more depth later). Many people hear the term art and think painting, drawing, sculpture but as Joseph Beuys said, “Every human being is an artist…” and I feel strongly that web designers, programmers, and other technology geeks are artists too. Many years ago, I was one and I can distinctly remember creating a program that was a thing of beauty.

There is not nearly as much information online about the history of art in New Orleans as I would like but its no secret that we have amazing food, costumes, architecture, and on... What I find is a bit of a secret is that those things are in no way confined to just the restaurants, stores, and tourist spots. The food created on a random Sunday night in many a New Orleans home is infinitely better than most restaurants throughout the country. The costumes created by laypeople in New Orleans throughout the year, not just Mardi Gras, rival those professionally designed for theater. We have a certain freedom to create. And we should exercise that right every day in every way to be New Orleanians and continue our legacy by supporting local artists.

As mentioned before, the Arts Council began as the Cultural Resources Committee in 1970. There’s more information about the history on their site but what I found fascinating is that their presentations to artists on important subjects like how to manage finances, incorporate your business, or copyright your work were traditionally done in person. However, space considerations and the inability to reach artists post-Katrina brought them to the web, creating what has become an awesome resource for artists locally and around the world. Arts Council of New Orleans webinars can viewed by artists live and an archive remains to be viewed and re-viewed as needed. Not to mention paused and rewound as I typically watch them while working.

That's me watching Protecting Your Art Online Webinar

If you haven’t seen ArtsNewOrleans.org, go immediately. It is a super fun website to browse around. Check out their guides - if you’re feeling really inspired, there’s one on places to take art classes in New Orleans. I’ve been sick in bed but New Orleans has been right here while I watch The New Generation Jam in Congo Square, an interview of burlesque artists Trixie Minx and Wild Cherry, and G-Easy’s “Run Around Sue” in the multimedia section. Not to mention the artist profiles! If you know an artist (Remember - architecture, culinary, dance, film, literature, music, theater, and visual art) encourage them to create a profile on ArtsNewOrleans.org. It’s a fantastic feature for New Orleans artists to promote and share their work with the world. Not to mention, a great way to be reminded that these people are your neighbors and friends because you live in a city where everyone is an artist.

ArtsNewOrleans.org screenshot

TurboSquid Launches 3D Programming Contest With Top Prize of $1000

NOLA Tech Writer — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 14:16:37 +0000

TurboSquid, a New Orleans based 3D modeling company, is hosting a Checkmate Tools contest until March 31^st 2012. The challenge is to create a tool that automatically inspects a 3D model within 3ds Max, then generates a detailed report outlining how well the model meets the CheckMate Pro standard. CheckMate Pro is the industry’s first standard for 3D models.

Example of 3D Model

On the TurboSquid Blog, they list several target features for entries. The goal is to check for as many points of the CheckMate Pro specification as possible, providing a report that artists can use to easily check their models. Participants can use MAXScript or any other programming language to write the tool.

Official Rules & Info

To enter, you must be a TurboSquid member that is 18 years of age or older. For other restrictions and full details; please see the contest rules page. Participants can also be outside the continental U.S.

How much can you win?

The prizes for this contest are:

1st prize: $1000
2nd prize: $500
3rd prize: $250

For more info, check out the TubroSquid blog post at: http://blog.turbosquid.com/2012/02/08/announcing-the-checkmate-tools-contest/

Ruby On Rails Classes in NOLA

Christopher Boudy, Sr. — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:01:09 +0000

Learning to code can be a daunting task. Sure there are books, online tutorials, and videos but what if that’s not enough? Sometimes having one on one time with a teacher can help you work through problems you run across or questions you may have. Kurtis Rainbolt-Greene hopes this is true by putting on a series of Ruby on Rails classes in New Orleans called NOLA on Rails. Mr. Rainbolt-Greene has done numerous one-on-one sessions, mans the Rails Hotline daily, has been working with Rails for almost two years, and also does consulting for apps built on Rails. Ruby on Rails is a popular open source programming language that can be used to build web applications. Business such as Basecamp, Twitter, and Groupon use this programming web framework to run their websites. According to City Business, companies in New Orleans will be looking for programmers and software engineers in the near future with a variety of skills. IT professionals can benefit for learning new programming languages or techniques, allowing them to have more tolls in their skill set toolbox.

NOLA On Rails

The NOLA on Rails classes will run from February 28^th, 2012 until April 10^th, 2012 on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 5:30pm to 6:45pm at LaunchPad NOLA. A six week programming course where you’ll learn how to write your own Rails application, get an intro to MVC frameworks, and other development tools. Mr. Rainbolt-Greene believes that his classes are an investment in your future. “There is a growing need for Rails developers in New Orleans and the NOLA on Rails classes will teach you the tools you need to build robust applications” said Mr. Rainbolt-Greene. Participants don’t have to any prior programming experience and will be able to “hit the ground running”.

See the prices of the classes, register on the NOLA on Rails website, follow the class on Twitter, and sign up for the newsletter for more information.

Code NOLA: A Civic Hackathon in New Orleans

Liz Money — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:24:59 +0000

While the Code for Americas fellows are in New Orleans working with city government on building a specialized system for citizens to use, they also plan on having a civic hackathon from Feb 24^th and Feb 25^th 2012. A hackathon is an event where people can get together and use technology and their collective skills to build solutions and solve problems around a common theme. What makes a civic hackathon special is that people can work on solving programming using tech that affect their community. Code for American New Orleans is hosting one of eight Civic Hackathons as part of Code Across America: A National Day of Civic Innovation, a nationwide event organized by Code for America.

Dennis Warren Ross revealed during a recent Net2NO meeting that the city will release new datasets for people to work with at the event. These datasets will allow developers, planners, and problem solvers to use city data for whatever project they will be working on.

Code For America Hackathon in New Orleans 2012

What Will The Hackathon Consist Of?

DAY ONE

Friday, Feb 24th: Kickoff Happy Hour at Capdeville

5pm: Registration, meet and greet
5:30pm: Releasing several new data sets from City Hall
6pm: Pitch potential project ideas
6:30pm: Form teams and mingle!

DAY TWO:

Saturday, Feb 25th: Hackathon at Launchpad

9am: Light breakfast (provided)
9:30am: Get to work!
1:30pm: Working lunch (pizza provided)
5:30pm: Time's up! Showcase your apps to our judges
6pm: Judging and prizes
6:30: Closing remarks
7pm: Afterparty at Capdeville

How Do I Register?

To register, check out http://codenola.eventbrite.com and see other that are going as well!