Following a successful pre-launch incubator panel at IIT’s University Technology Park, midVentures has announced a partnership with SocialDevCamp Chicago, the unconference of social application and platform developers, evangelists, and enthusiasts. The event, held August 13-15 on IIT’s Main Campus, explores emerging trends surrounding the development, business, and culture fueling the social web.

The winner of the SocialDevCamp Hackathon will be given a table in the mVDemo Area at midVenturesLAUNCH to demo their new startup/app.

Follow SocialDevCamp on Twitter: @SDCChi.

IIT students receive a discounted rate to attend SocialDevCamp! Become a fan of the Knapp Center on Facebook to learn more.

Full-time writer Scott Berkun interviews Dan Roberts about his first book, The Innovator’s Sourcebook. Roberts talks about the inspiration for his book, developing problem finding skills, and approaches to innovation.

In addition to being a first-time author, Roberts is founder of Sidestax, a KEC business.

Read the full interview here.

Chicago Startup Weekend attendees had trouble reaching a consensus when asked about the best part of the event. That’s not surprising since the Startup Weekend attracts people from a variety of backgrounds—business managers, marketing gurus, developers, students, investors, startup enthusiasts and others— who work together to transform ideas into companies.

The Knapp Entrepreneurship Center sponsored eight IIT student entrepreneurs. Daniel Krieglstein, PhD candidate in clinical psychology at IIT and cofounder of the Knapp Center startup The JournalWiki, remarked, “Startup Weekend was a great place to find contacts. I met many graphic designers and business managers. This is the best place to find [software] developers.” The opportunity “to work on a different project led to fresh ideas about our own startup,” The JournalWiki co-founder Ed Madrigal added. For Ed Suda, an IIT alumnus and co-founder of Knapp Center startup eMotion, Startup Weekend was a chance to do something that he has never done before: “engage in a purely web experience—it’s amazing to see how quickly a unique web business can be created.”

The event began Friday, June 25th with pitches from some of the 85 attendees. The participants formed nine teams that solidified the concepts and created a business plan. The weekend culminated with presentations from each group.

The startups varied from AppTriumph, a website that allows college applicants to track their application process to Remnant Retail Space, an online marketplace for renting vacant property on a short-term basis.

One of the groups was CityMurder.com, a hyperlocal marketing tool disguised as an adventure game. CityMurder.com is the brainchild of Víctor Sánchez and Ramon Recuero, recent graduates of IIT’s Information Technology and Management program. Along with Raul San Narciso and Nozomi Yamawaki, they are currently working on urki.me, an innovative web application that enables users to create dynamic and media-rich web pages.

According to Startup Weekend judge Jonathan Pasky, “Chicago’s tech scene is really coming together, and the quality of the startups pitched this weekend [was] phenomenal.” As for us at the Knapp Entrepreneurship Center, it is difficult to avoid the temptation toot our own horn. Accordingly, our favorite takeaway from one of the Startup Weekend attendees was, “People were jealous that we are connected to the Knapp Entrepreneurship Center and get to work with Nik Rokop. We were excited to see that the Knapp Center has a great reputation in Chicago entrepreneurship community.”

To find out more about Chicago Startup Weekend, visit http://chicago.startupweekend.org/.

In a recent Crain’s Chicago Business article, Phil Leslie reveals the secret to ProOnGo’s success and longevity in the mobile market: “[We focus] on making money within [the] app, not at the initial point of purchase.”

Phil Leslie is the Knapp Center’s Entrepreneur in Residence. As such, he often works closely with and hires IIT students to work with him on mobile application development.

In her diary Anne Frank remarked, “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world,” and Shayok Mukhopadhyay, Yamini Girey, and Krishna Rao Vijayanagar (pictured below from left to right) couldn’t agree more.

Vijayanagar and Girey have recently received their master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT. Mukhopadhyay is pursuing his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. Together they make up Coders Inc. and have recently won the 2010 Microsoft Imagine Cup People’s Choice Award for their project AwareNet, an online forum where non-governmental organizations, volunteers, donors and vendors can interact and share resources. The Imagine Cup competition is designed to empower students to use technology, innovation and creativity to help some of the world’s most challenging social issues as outlined in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

Vijayanagar and Girey became interested in the Imagine Cup Competition after attending Chicago Microsoft Academic Developer Evangelist Krishna Kumar’s presentation at IIT in the fall of 2009. After teaming up with Mukhopadhyay, the three of them began brainstorming ways to increase enrollment in schools in rural regions. “We started looking for resources and realized it is difficult to find information to implement these ideas,” said Girey.

“Even if you want to start something, you’ll first have to find if someone already is doing such a thing over there and then you have to find volunteers and the resources. There isn’t a database or repository where you can go and easily find this information,” Vijayanagar added. Undaunted, the team saw the problem as a challenge and decided to build a social network “to connect people who are interested in volunteering or those who are already doing social welfare so that it is easy to find information and resources in a single place.”

“Putting such a platform on the Internet will enable people from all over the world to collaborate,” explained Mukhopadhyay. “Look what Wikipedia has become. Everyone contributed to it and now it is an indispensable resource. Why not do that for welfare?”

AwareNet, which is aimed at bringing together NGOs, volunteers, donors and vendors can be particularly useful in major emergencies, to enable organizations to better coordinate and plan rescue operations through AwareNet. Users can register and provide criteria about their wants and needs, research the available opportunities, and reach out to other users.

A unique feature of AwareNet is “Connectivity”, a project management tool. Using graph theory, Connectivity monitors communications between people to determine whether the task is heading in the right direction. As a result, Connectivity enables volunteers to be more successful in managing their projects.

The Coders’s work over the course of the semester came to fruition. Public support for AwareNet topped that of the other nine nominated teams in the national finals competition and led to Coders winning the People’s Choice Awards.

“We would like to thank the IIT and Georgia Tech communities, and our friends and relatives back home for supporting us during this event and helping us win the People’s Choice Award,” said Vijayanagar. “ We also thank Krishna Kumar, who helped us immensely at the competition and was a great source of guidance.”

To keep AwareNet sustainable, Coders Inc. wants to commercialize Connectivity to other venues, such as healthcare and information technology companies. The team plans to fully develop AwareNet in the coming months and commercialize the venture.

Visit the AwareNet blog for the latest details and you can also see their Facebook page at http://bit.ly/9TW1XU.

When Polonius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet said, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t,” he was onto something. Indeed, research in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics shows that our irrational behavior follows patterns. We don’t always make rational decisions or choose the option in our own best interest. We often overeat, text while driving, or fail to take advantage of our 401(k) plans. How do we actually make decisions? We rely on mental shortcuts to help us quickly evaluate information.

A group of six Masters of Design students from IIT Institute of Design took this concept to the next level during a year-long capstone project in 2009-2010.

Nikki Pfarr, Ann Hintzman, Van Vuong, Miguel Cervantes, Jennifer Lee and Jerad Lavey wanted to explore how insights from the fields of cognitive psychology and behavioral economics could be used to design better products, services, experiences and business strategies.

Cognitive psychology is concerned with the study of memory, language processing, perception and problem solving. Some practical applications of cognitive research include ways to improve memory and methods to increase decision-making accuracy. Behavioral economics explores how social, cognitive, and emotional factors influence the way people consider trade-offs, options, and priorities when making decisions.

The IIT Institute of Design team has developed the Brains, Behavior and Design (BB&D) Toolkit to take behavioral economics findings out of the lab and apply them to develop robust and effective solutions. The BB&D Toolkit was created to help designers quickly understand and apply research on people’s irrational decision making. The kit makes decision-making concepts more accessible and actionable to the general population and provides a great new lens for the design process.

The BB&D Toolkit features several tools, ranging from Reference Cards that help explain basic behavioral economics concepts to Strategy Cards with ways to change user behavior. The toolkit is available for free download at BrainsBehaviorandDesign.com.

The BB&D Toolkit has also become the foundation of ongoing educational workshops. Having attended one of the workshops, I can attest that the tools have the greatest impact when introduced through hands-on engagement. Working with the toolkit helps embed this new information in your mind so that you know when and how to use it.

Upcoming workshops focus on the effects of loss and time on consumer decision making, along with new methods for designing more appealing offerings. The workshop is intended for designers, design researchers, industry leaders and others interested in creating more desirable products, services and strategies that really reflect the way people make decisions. The team is also developing online learning modules and group facilitation guides to give the hands-on value of the workshop remotely.

Be sure to visit here to learn more about the workshops and here to learn more about the Brains, Behavior and Design Group.

TheFunded.com is a source for information on venture-capital firms. Entrepreneurs can rate and comment on their experiences with these firms. Avelo Roy, founder and co-CEO of eMotion, Knapp Entrepreneurship Center business, provided comments on TheFunded.com in this Crain’s Chicago Business blog.

Chicago Daily Law Bulletin
June 08, 2010 Volume: 156 Issue: 111

By John Flynn Rooney
Chicago Law Bulletin staff writer

A Chicago law student, along with a local lawyer and two other partners, has started an online business aimed at helping consumers seeking legal services find lawyers.

Nearly 500 consumers have used TheLawyerMarket.com since it was launched almost three months ago, said Richard Komaiko, 24, who just completed his second year at Chicago-Kent College of Law. About 150 Illinois lawyers have signed up at no cost for the site.

“People who provide legal services and and who need legal services should have a common place they can come together,” Komaiko said.

The website was designed for sole practitioners and lawyers with small firms, Komaiko said.

“A lot of solo practitioners and lawyers in smaller firms are literally spending half of every day searching for new clients,” Komaiko said. “The problem with this is you can’t bill for time spent searching for clients.”

Komaiko will work full-time this summer on the start-up venture.

Lawyer Beibei Que, 27, said she quit a job with a law firm to work full-time on the site. She handles legal matters and the website’s design.

“The demand for involvement became greater and greater,” Que said. “We’re seeing a lot of momentum.”

Que met Komaiko in 2006 when both were students at the University of Illinois. Que attended the university’s law school, while Komaiko was an undergraduate.

Komaiko and Que bounced ideas off one another and came up with the concept for the business, Que said. They then reached out to two friends, Stephen Kloder, a computer scientist, and Jiang Yang, who now has an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Kloder and Yang, the other two partners in the business, are also in their 20s, Que said.

When consumers contact the website, they are asked 10 to 20 questions to determine the facts of a case, Komaiko said. The facts of the case are then shown to lawyers who have joined the site.

“The consumer has to choose the lawyer he’s most interested in,” Komaiko said. “We will give the consumer the contact information for the lawyer he chooses.”

Lawyers or law firms pay a $30 fee when a user selects them, Komaiko said.

“We take ethics very seriously,” Komaiko said. “We are not selling clients. We are selling advertisement.”

Komaiko said he relied for advice on Chicago-Kent College of Law Dean Harold J. Krent and Nik Rokop, managing director of IIT’s Knapp Entrepreneurship Center while developing the site.

Krent said he tried to serve as a sounding board on various issues ranging from pricing strategy to potential ethical issues.

“The key insight to TheLawyerMarket.com is matching consumers to attorneys in an inexpensive way that permits both sides to gain information about the potential arrangement before any agreement is reached,” Krent said. “I am pleased that many of our students are entrepreneurial; Richard’s efforts have been notable for their creativity and breadth, as his success at the business plan competition attests.”

Komaiko acknowledged that helping to develop a business while attending law school leaves him little time for sleep.

But juggling both school and the business does have an upside, Komaiko said.

“Running a business, I think, allows me to have a better understanding for the course material,” Komaiko said. “Obviously, understanding the material helps me run the business in a more orderly fashion.”

While the site’s current focus remains on the Chicago area, other regions could be added later.

“When we feel we’ve made a really big dent in the Chicago market, then it’s time to expand,” Komaiko said.

jrooney@lbpc.com

This Chicago Tribune article discusses how clean energy startups could get financing from various sources. MagDrive, a company founded by two IIT doctorate students that worked closely with the Knapp Center, is presented as an example of being financed by state and local grants as well as private foundations.

Additionally, 58 percent of the 800 business owners surveyed by the nonprofit Small Business Majority reportedly support adoption of new energy policies and want their businesses to be a part of it.

If you ever wondered what it is like to be a spark plug in an engine, you should have been at the Knapp Entrepreneurship Center in September 2009. Around this time the Knapp Center began planning the first KnappLab iPhone App Challenge weekend, an opportunity for students to create a GPS navigation system for the IIT campus. “I want [the Knapp Center] to be a resource for whatever the students are looking for,” said Nik Rokop, managing director of IIT’s Jules F. Knapp Entrepreneurship Center, within the university’s Stuart School of Business, and host to KnappLab, the mobile app lab.

“The goal was to create buzz about iPhone development on campus,” said Nikhil Mandrekar, an alumnus of IIT’s business administration and applied science program who set up and until recently ran the app lab. Indeed, the weekend challenge generated significant interest from students and the IIT community, sparked discussions about using mobile applications to benefit IIT and led to the second KnappLab iPhone App Challenge. Not only did the second weekend challenge attract more students, it also brought in more people from the industry, including Mohan Vaze, senior technical leader at Roundarch, a digital consulting firm, and Phil Leslie, founder of the Chicago-based software start-up ProOnGo, LLC, and creator of the eponymous mobile expense reporting application. Whereas the first application was a map of the campus with information about the points of interest, the second application was more robust. The second application included dining menus, a shuttle bus schedule, IIT radio show and information about administrative buildings. “It was an opportunity for industry professionals to see how talented our students are and a good way for students to be introduced to industry professionals,” says Mandrekar.

For instance, as the result of participating in one of the weekend challenges, Muyiwa Jimi-Salami, a third year IIT student majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering, got an internship at ProOnGo. Jimi-Salami is one of eight student programmers employed by ProOnGo.

The enthusiasm for mobile development spread throughout the campus. Michael Saelee, a computer science instructor at IIT, brought his passion for the subject when he taught a mobile application development course during the spring semester. The course teaches students how to develop applications for the iPhone and Android operating system as well as how to apply a variety of software engineering concepts. “By the end of the course, students can develop their own applications, sell them at the iPhone app store and make millions,” said Saelee.

The applications students have developed so far have been impressive, many and varied. Although a 3-D game engine was not initially a topic in the course, Saelee decided to teach it after the class showed interest in the topic. Many students pursued the idea further, designing applications on the iPad, such as a game with fighter planes that allows a player to control the plane just by tilting the device.

Several students in the course were also taking an inter-professional projects course (IPRO) unique to IIT. As part of an IPRO and using the skills learned in the mobile application development course, one student designed an interactive trip planner for the Brookfield Zoo.

During the spring semester students had to use their own software or utilize the KnappLab. Recognizing the amount of interest application development was generating, the computer science department at IIT purchased 30 iMacs, as well as several iPads and iPod Touches, for students to use in the coming semesters. According to Saelee, “Next year, the possibilities are endless.”

One of the students who took Saelee’s mobile application development course is Chris Curtis, who is pursuing a computer science degree at IIT. What did Curtis get out of the class? “Well, the short answer is I got a job,” said Curtis. “Between the things I learned from Saelee’s class and coding at the KnappLab and the industry events I heard about through the Knapp Center, I became involved in the Day of Mobile and got an offer.” Day of Mobile is an annual mobile conference that was held this year at IIT and sponsored by the Knapp Entrepreneurship Center. A key part of the conference is Mobile Hackathon, an opportunity to design a mobile application and present it at the conference. Curtis won first place in the student competition with Sodexho Votes, an application that enables students, staff and faculty to vote via Twitter about the lunch menu and see real-time results showing the consensus. Curtis caught the attention of several recruiters, including one from Pathfinder Development, a software firm that does projects for startups. He currently has an internship developing iPhone and iPad applications for the company.

While undergraduate students at the main campus were developing their own individual applications, graduate students taking the software development project course at the Rice campus this spring were focusing solely on the IIT mobile application, working on features such as the inclusion of course schedules and university news.

An earlier foray into mobile development on the Rice campus led to the creation of Tourist Eye, a travel and tourism application that enables users to create custom tours and go on tours created by others. With the consent of the class, one student used the concept as the foundation of a company that took off in 2009. The Tourist Eye application is currently available for the Blackberry, iPhone and Android devices.

Recognizing the interest and talent in mobile development on campus, Val Scarlata, Information Technology Management instructor at IIT, pooled students from the KnappLab iPhone Challenge and the IIT mobile application classes and built a coalition. Together faculty and students in computer science, information technology management, and technical communication, in collaboration with the Office of Communications and OTS, are working on the official IIT mobile application for the iPhone and iPad. The university application will provide students and visitors with access to news, events, maps, course listings, emergency alerts and more. The application is scheduled to be released July 1st.

Opportunities for students such as working on the IIT mobile application are important because it puts students at an advantage in their job search. “Students need to know the skills that are in demand and mobile development is really cutting edge,” says Scarlata.

Industry experts agree. In a recent interview with Reuters, Mark Suster, a partner with GRP, a Los Angeles-based venture capital firm focused on technology investment, said, “I think it’s really innovative… Any institution that understands [the unique issues of the mobile environment] is definitely ahead of most universities.” Indeed, few universities have yet to develop practical skill-based curricula that can be directly applied to the market.

With the announcement of IIT’s plan to provide iPads to incoming undergraduates, the opportunities for students can only grow. IIT is one of only three schools in that nation that has publicized its intent to give free iPads to all freshmen.

“We are a university that wants to enable the thoughtful use of technology across all aspects of the curriculum-how it supports academic life, how it supports cocurricular activity, learning about what happens with Engineers Without Borders, being up to date with what is happening with an IPRO, what is happening in terms of lectures, when the next intramural game is,” says Gerald Doyle, Vice Provost of Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid. “The iPad provides a rigorous and easy means for alert notification, supports academic learning in and out of the classroom and lets students know what is happening around campus.”

The iPad also provides faculty with a unique opportunity to create content and make courses more interactive. Andrew Howard, a biology professor at IIT, plans to use the iPad to deliver lectures and give exams. Of course, in true IIT fashion, students are not sitting on the sidelines. Already a group of students are working on Tabule, an application that facilitates communication and collaboration between students and professors in real time.

Click here to read a recent story on Reuters about the IIT iPad app class.