IIT’s Institute of Design (ID) is a world-renowned school of design. ITM professor Alon Friedman is also the Director of Information Technology for ID, and in the Spring 2013 term, he will be conducting a 3-credit-hour joint ITM-ID workshop course with two ID faculty members, Stan Ruecker and Anijo Mathew. The only prerequisites are ITM/ITMD 411 and an eagerness to work with designers to learn the communicational challenges and successful strategies for taking an agile methods approach to the creation of online prototypes of experimental human-computer interfaces. The course is open to both undergraduate and graduate students, and is great opportunity for graduate students to work with an interdisciplinary team in a real-world-style setting.

The workshop will be on Thursdays from 2pm-5:30pm at the Institute of Design, on the 4th floor at 350 North LaSalle Street, Chicago. This is a a 20 minute trip on the Green Line to Clark&Lake with a short, four-block walk to ID.
Email Professor Friedman (alon@id.iit.edu) for a permit to register for for 3 credit hours in:
   25895 ITM 497-135 Special Projects (Undergrads)
   25766 ITMT 597-135 Special Problems in IT (Graduate students)
Click “Read More…” for full details and course descriptions: Read more…

Bring your game: Three sessions, two days, one objective: Create the world’s first killer M2M app!

June 11-13, 2012 during the Connected World Conference at the Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles, IL

Hackers nationwide are invited to participate in the first ever M2M app Hackathon-with fame and fortune as the reward for your creativity and skills! We provide the energy drinks, snacks, developer kits, and the room to code-all day and all night. The winners will receive not only cash, but a secure place in the history of hacking-guaranteed by a cover story in the nationally distributed Connected World magazine.

Drop your mouse and check out these incentives:
1st place: $3,000 plus be featured on the cover of Connected World magazine and mentioned in the cover story
2nd place: $1,500
3rd place: an iPad
4th place: a cellular signal booster

About the Hackathons:
Join us June 11 from 4:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m., and grab some free food and drink, as well as your developer kit to get started. You may participate in one or all three Hackathon sessions-either as an individual or as a team. Space is limited so sign up to participate today.

Additional details at http://connectedworldmag.com/conference/index.php?q=hackathon

“Billionaire or Bust” is the headline on an article in Chicago’s RedEye featuring two undergrads in Information Technology and Management. Waylon Janowiak ’13 and Joshua Hensley ’14 are partners with graphic designer Jenna Compton on GoSosh, a site that will allow businesses to reward customers through social media. The article chronicles the travails of the three young entrepreneurs as they tweak their product in preparation for an unveiling set to take place later this year. Janowiak and Hensley are both honor students in the ITM program and are members of IIT’s chapter of Gamma Nu Eta, the National Information Technology Honor Society; Janowiak is the Vice President. In the story Hensley comments on their efforts: “Success is not achieved by earning a mountain of cash or securing some great corporate title. Success is finding your passion and using it to effect positive change in the world.”

On Wednesday January 18th many of your favorite websites–Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, Reddit, Boing Boing and more–will be blacked out for a day to protest two pending pieces of legislation now before the Congress of the United States: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and PROTECTIP (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet, stifle online innovation and creativity, and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States. They appear to violate provisions of the U.S. Constitution by operating with a presumption of guilt and denial of due process, and could seriously harm the integrity of the Internet Domain Name System, particularly ongoing efforts to implement DNSSEC.  For more information about this legislation please see the Electronic Frontier Foundation‘s  site  and please contact your Senators and Representative to make your opinion heard.

(L-R) Sravani Chancharem, JaeKyoung Jeong, and Nitish Tipparaju

A Student Innovator Award competition is held at the end of each ITM 582 Business Innovation course to evaluate innovative solutions developed and presented by students. In this competition each student gives a 5-minute elevator pitch to promote his or her innovation.

All presenters were winners that day as they proudly showed off their innovations and demonstrated their ability to create new solutions. Nitish Tipparaju, JaeKyoung Jeong and Srvani Chancharem won the top three places for their Phone-based healthcare, Diet Bracelet and Dress Size Estimator innovation projects, respectively. All of the student presentations can be viewed on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/ibusinessinnovation.
Read more…