the excitement of a startup company

no, i didn't quit my job to join a startup. but, i have been working with a startup company, knowledge reef systems, for the past few months. its been a lot of fun working with these guys.

Integrating patent-pending technology licensed from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Knowledge Reef System’s innovative kReef™ software platform is designed for hosting online, information-intensive communities that exist wherever knowledge workers are found—businesses, government, academia, professional societies and even consumer-oriented groups where learning and sharing information is paramount. Its unique information recommendation system uses the power of social behavior to automatically discover and intelligently route information to community members based on their interests and needs. The kReef platform simplifies the discovery and delivery of knowledge in online communities of shared interest. Knowledge communities hosted on the kReef platform offer well-targeted audiences that will accept relevant, data-rich advertising from the kReef’s integrated product data delivery system. Founded by Gary Ebersole, an experienced serial entrepreneur, Knowledge Reef Systems seeks Series A funding. http://www.techventures.org/NM-ECS/presenters.php

knowledge reef systems main product is kReef systems.

The kReef (pronounced kay-reef) resource networking service helps knowledge workers discover, organize and share information in the social context of trusted colleagues. Designed to mimic how information naturally flows between people in the physical world, the kReef software uses the relationships between members as "filters" and "routers" to ensure that only relevant information is recommended to members. It goes beyond basic social networking services and search engines to bring community to content in a uniquely integrated resource networking service that delivers an information-rich experience for its members. kReef's resource networking discovery algorithms can locate and recommend information resources stored in kReef that would not be easily found with user-created profiles and conventional keyword search technology.
http://www.k-reef.com/kReef/index.html

i worked with KRS on pumping robotics data into their service and returning the analyzed data to the user in a customized widget. (not sure how much more details i can give at this point). it was fun working on those components. and it was cool to see the usefulness of their service come to life. startups are exciting.

here is a PDF of their company information.

dinner 2.0 with neil abercrombie

last week (september 2) i was invited to dinner 2.0 with neil abercrombie. this invitation was kind of out of the blue and i didn't know quite what to expect. it turns out that it was a casual dinner (on paper plates for that matter) with the congressman. he greeted us individually; there were only about 20 people. and we all sat down for dinner (from kakaako kitchen).

it turns out that it was basically a meet and greet. a chance for us to ask the congressman questions. and just talk story. the cool thing was that it was streamed live on ustream. i was told that there were upwards of 400 people tuning in. (did any one see me?)

there were many interesting talks. some of not were:

the congressman's energy independence bill. we spent a while on natural gas.

the congressman's thoughts on how the legislators are changing. he mentioned a couple times that it seems that more than ever people are out to demonize each other. it seems that respect and honor has been replaced by winning at all costs.

he talked about the shipyard the cola

scott from http://www.hosef.org/ was there

he explained why he was having these types of dinners. he wants to get back to what he called "direct government". meeting with the people face to face and even virtually. the congressman is a techie. he uses NING as his campaign site; http://neilabercrombie.ning.com/, he went to the geek meet at ala maona park a few months ago, and of course he has a twitter account. overall it was a really interesting night. he's definitely a cool dude.


oh.... wait. so i did have one comment about the dinner. so, i did find the discussions to be a little "old". i understand that all the issues were important. but, it obviously wasn't the most relevant discussions for for 20somethings in hawaii. actually, i don't really hear any of our politicians talking about things that i'm most concerned with. hmm... haha and i'm not sure how to ask those questions either.

an idea for relationship management

every once in a while i have random ideas for cool sites or services. this one takes the cake for randomness. but here are some others

should have tried to do the android competition 2

an firefox extension idea for copying links

an idea called moody

wordle for my blogs and an idea

an idea for twitter

an idea for ESPN

resume visualization

google reader process improvement

geosearch

a crazy hackystat idea

google reader feature requests

things that i want from google

actually, those are most of the ideas that i blogged about. i made it a point to try to write "idea" posts to help me formalize my ideas better. anyway here comes a new idea...

an idea for relationship management

think online financial management for your relationship. i'm serious. really! okay, i'm not that interested in a software service telling me how my relationship with my wife is going, but i just see a huge market for this. online dating services is a million dollar industry (Yahoo! Personals, Match.com, and eHarmony). there are probably hundreds of ways to meet people online. the funny thing is that i would think that the sites want you to meet people and possible date, but ultimately fail and come running back to their site.

so from a pure business standpoint there seems to be a huge market for this. i kind think of this as the next generation of financial management sites, diet sites, or even things like WebMD. anyway, my imagination is kind of flying around these days. i kind of think that there are some very social and very dynamic things that haven't hit the mainstream technology yet. another totally random idea that fits this idea is social networking for religion. or better yet, a site that teaches you a specific religion. this seems to be uncharted waters.

UPDATE
someone instant messaged me with:
[12:30 AM] READER: what kinda of relationship manegment
[12:30 AM] READER: gimmie an example
[12:31 AM] Aaron: not sure...
[12:31 AM] Aaron: i think that question is interesting.. haha.
[12:31 AM] Aaron: can computers even help with that.
[12:32 AM] READER: i dont know
[12:33 AM] Aaron: i think that would be an awesome advancement in technology. or i guess social science.

anyway, the point is that i don't know how one would manage a relationship via technology. is that even possible. i don't know? but i do think that there are many of these types of social problems that current technology and/or science doesn't really help yet. maybe its the thing of the future.

inspiring kids to learn about technology

Computer Science is awesome, but it needs our support. For some crazy reason enrollment is declining. I don't get why; its one of the best jobs ever. Building the newest and coolest technology is so much fun and so challenging. I don't get why kids are eating it up. Nevertheless, things aren't that great in the computer science field these days. here is a little quote from a recent google blog

At a time when more and more digital technologies are becoming indispensable to millions of people, the field of computer science (CS) is in trouble. Enrollment and retention of CS students, particularly those historically underrepresented in the field (women, African-Americans, Native-Americans, and Hispanics) has declined sharply. According to the Computing Research Association, CS enrollment in the U.S. was at its peak in 2000, with 15,958 undergrads. By 2006, enrollment declined by roughly half: 7,798 undergrads. And enrollment among already-underrepresented groups has dropped even more sharply.

i totally think we need to promote computer science to kids in grade school to get the more interested and inspired to want to join our field. i would like to really figure out how i can do that in hawaii. so far, i've been limited to events like lacy veach day of discovery and the college of engineering junior expo. those were awesome events, but i want to reach a broader audience. i often wonder how much career guidance is done in elementary and intermediate schools. do we do any at all? do we need to do more? can industry participate.

here is one idea to reach kids; Pathways in Computer Science. this video is put together by the university of washington Computer Science & Engineering school. its a pretty good video that explains why the students got interested in computer science (its probably appropriate for intermediate kids).

wouldn't it be cool if all students in hawaii watched this video? how would i go about doing that?

btw, UWCSE has a lot of other videos. check it out here.

or maybe we need to teach innovation!
standford's entrepreneurship week is another attempt to foster creativity and innovation. the cool thing is that this creativity and innovation eventually leads to technology.

(http://eweek.stanford.edu/2008/about.html)

there are so many great resources here:

imagine it! - What would happen if you gave thousands of students around the world a single pad of Post-it® Notes and challenged them to innovate... in one week! What would they do? How would they use their imaginations? What would they create? This is the story behind the first film in the documentary series imagine it! (you can download this version).

imagine it2! - Imagine It!² ("squared") weighs in on the most important conversation of our time. Imagination, creativity and innovation can unleash human potential to help solve the world's grand challenges. Imagine It!² proves that positive is greater than negative, and in the process takes you on a journey to a brighter, more prosperous future, where the next generation engages their curiosity in ways we can only imagine. Imagine It!² isn't just a movie…it's a movement.

winners of the 2008 innovation tournament - These videos were recognized at the Stanford Innovation Tournament Showcase. Teams were given one week to create value from rubber bands and then documented their work with video. Click on the links below to see the winning submissions and other videos that were recognized.

should have tried to do the android competition 2

a few months ago i wrote about should have trying the android competition. a couple of cool things about this post was a guy named Jeffrey Sharkey had a similar idea than i had. jeff's idea was called android scan. another cool thing was my post had a comment from software by rob (well at least i think its him):

This is a good idea; I've discussed this exact concept with a few different people over the past year. I'm glad someone finally executed on it.

I actually explored it pretty intently about 6 months ago and started to put a team together to pursue it, but decided against it due to lack of resources and time - apropos given my quote. I knew I'd have to shut down my consulting business and go full force at this one for it to have a chance at working, and the timing wasn't right.

You're on the right track. Let me know when you have another idea like this one :-)

anyway, back to jeff and his android work. i just found out that jeff's android scan has made it all the way to the 275K prize. congrats goes out to him. he slightly changed the name and the description; but CompareEverywhere still has similar ideas that i had. oh well, i suck and jeff rocks.

guy kawasaki on bytemarks cafe

guy kawasaki was on bytemarks cafe the other day. i got a little quote (from the hawaii blog) about what he said on hawaii education.

Calling himself a “supply-side guy,” he said the best thing Hawaii could do is “to properly fund and create the school of Engineering at the University of Hawaii.”

“If you have a great School of Engineering, you have great engineering professors and great students and those great students will come up with great ideas. And if you have students with ideas, the money will flow, the corporate financial attorneys will flow, the PR firms will flow… everything is because of two guys in a garage with a great idea. Yes, you can create funds to make that easier for two guys in a garage, but if you don’t have two guys in a garage, it doesn’t matter how many funds you have.”

first of all, i absolutely agree. its all about the students and generating awesome talent. but, i'd like to point out to mr kawasaki that there is a College of Engineering and a Department of Information and Computer Sciences.

I felt like i had to make this comment because I'm starting an ICS alumni group, and its hard to shine the spotlight on the smaller ICS department. in general there is a lot of support for the CoE, but not so much for the ICS department (for example the engineering banquet vs the ics alumni lunch). my goal is to change this. even if it takes one student at a time; i'm going help make them awesome.

and you can help me! check out the ICS topcoder competition.

Dept ICS TopCoder Software Engineering Competition

YES!!!! this is going to be awesome.

Greetings,

Exciting news! The department is putting on a coding competition (see
the ics website). This is great news and should be a really fun experience for the students.

We are planning to support the department by providing mentors for the teams and prizes. I'm coordinating our support effort and have been in communication with Dr. Ikehara. The wheels are already in motion:

- Tomorrow I'm meeting with a few of the alumni that have already volunteered to help.
- I have already talked with a couple of the Dual Use companies about donations for prizes and general support
- I'm looking into forming a formal alumni association; non-profit organization. i'll hopefully setup a meeting with the College of Engineering alumni association soon.
- We are considering changing to use NING instead of Google Groups for our ICS alumni website.

There is so much to do. But, I'm so happy that the department has made a commitment to the students. And I think that they really need our support to keep these sorts of events and activities alive.

Please let me know if you can help in anyway. A few very small things that you can do now is
1) spread the word about the competition
2) find the ICS alumnis in your company and spread the word about the ics alumni association

thanks, Aaron Kagawa