Pittsburgh Innovates: The Contest

Are we innovative or what?

When the Greater Oakland Keystone Innovation Zone (GO KIZ) announced a contest called Pittsburgh Innovates to recognize and reward the most promising new technologies, products and ideas in the region, it collected 76 entries, a remarkable number for the inaugural competition and one likely to rise in the future.

“People want to know where the contest is going,” says Kathryn Connor, GO KIZ coordinator. “Once they’ve heard about it, they’re more likely to enter.”

The contest was inspired by the belief that the region’s innovators and best ideas are flying under the radar due to a lack of promotion and the insularity of our tech sector.


Getting the Word Out
“The tech community, especially the economic development community, felt it was talking to itself,” Connor says. “We were telling each other about these great things, but the average person in Pittsburgh doesn’t know what’s going on in the technology community. So we wanted to use technology to market technology.”

GO KIZ achieved that by posting thumbnail sketches of the entries and inventors/entrepreneurs on a website and providing links to related sites. Beyond that valuable publicity, the contest offers two cash prizes — $20,000 for best of show, $10,000 for the “People’s Choice” as determined by on-line voting.

Announced just days ago, the finalists in the competition include the following entries: GTECH, Maglev Haptics by Butterfly Haptics, Go Green at Yougee.me, Quasi, Inventionland, Winds of Orbis, Differential Generator, Get in Line, Working to Save Babies, and Fiber Optic UV Light for Catheter Infections.

See the finalists and learn who the winners are at CityLIVE! on November 24, 2008 at 6:30 PM at the New Hazlett Theater.  The event is free but reserve your spot now!

Maximum Exposure
For some concepts with huge developmental costs, the prizes are far less significant than the showcase the contest offers.

“The biggest problem is that we’re not getting the exposure that we need,” says Fred Gallart, president and CEO of Electric Owl Studios, which submitted K.I.C.K. —Kid’s Interactive Creative Kiosk. “Winning this contest would help a lot. We would use the prize money for more serious marketing activities.”

For others, cash could be the ticket to the next developmental stage. That’s the case with Paul Trichon, a senior at the University of Pittsburgh whose entry, Yougee.me, is a website that would serve as a clearinghouse for “green” services.
 
“I’ve burned through half my life savings,” says Trichon, “but I’m good through December.”

Contest submissions are wonderfully diverse. They come from students, first-time inventors, serial entrepreneurs and established companies.

“I’m really excited that people from all backgrounds entered,” Connor says. “One concern was that we would get people with technology backgrounds only. But that’s not the case. We wanted to show the breadth of things going on in town, some by start-ups and some by individuals. There’s a lot of creativity locally, and it doesn’t always come from the traditional sources.”

A number of entries represent relatively mature products. Semiotic Technologies, for example, submitted The Semiotic Engine, a game engine that facilitates development in Flash. The company already has a host of clients as well as five employees. The platform was developed at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, and if there’s one subtle motif of the contest, it’s the growing influence of ETC on our local tech sector. Many entries, particularly those in the gaming and social networking spaces, have their roots in ETC.

Still other entries are blue sky, figuratively or literally. CMU student Brian Feldman submitted the idea of a pedestrian bridge to cross Forbes Avenue at Morewood. That’s not invention; that’s intervention, as in divine intervention, which is what it would take to breathe life into that baby.

The contest experienced one snarl. While site visitors were limited to one vote per entry, per day, some found a way to circumvent the rules and vote early and often, resulting in several thousand tainted votes.

“In Pittsburgh, we have a lot of people good at computer science who know how to hack a system,” Connor says. “We got rid of all the extra votes, but some people were very creative.”

That glitch fixed, GO KIZ is set to announce the winners in late November. Here’s a look at some of the leading categories and most interesting or unusual entries.

Going Green
Trichon’s idea for Yougee.me stemmed from his desire to contribute more to community improvement. He says:

“I wanted to get sustainable shoes, recycled clothing — I knew my commitment could rub off on others. I found that nothing was available. There was no way for me to be more green except to recycle and get new lights. I wanted to make a bigger impact. I had an image in my head of a social community that wasn’t focused on drinking and partying, more on what you do to benefit society.”

Thus, Yougee, a site where you’ll be able to find local services to make your home or business greener.

“If you find that your neighbor composts and you want to do the same,” Trichon says, “you don’t have to call anyone. You can go next door and talk to Fred.”

The site also will bestow a “Carbon Offsetter of the Week” (COW) award, and, in Trichon’s most far-reaching dreams, publish the results of green building inspections that Trichon hopes will become the local law. Trichon has launched a “glog” (green blog) and will present Yougee at the Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization competition in Chicago.

“I still have lots of inventions that I plan to pursue,” he says. “I didn’t know the right people before.”

Getting greener also is the goal of Matt Scala, whose personal light bulb clicked on during a fierce windstorm.

“I was driving around and saw trash all over the road,” he recalls. “I thought, ‘There must be a better idea.’”

His better idea: SnapCan, trashcans fitted with molded plastic “barbells” recessed into the bottom. The barbells would snap into weighted bases filled with sand or staked into the ground. SnapCans would stay upright in even the strongest winds.

Win or lose the competition, Scala, director of information technology for the Freedom Area School District in Beaver County, plans to proceed with development.

“I could picture walking into Lowe’s or Home Depot and seeing it there,” he says.”

Medical Devices.
With the region’s prominence in medicine, it’s no surprise that this is a popular category. Among the entrants is SD Medical’s portable oxygen concentrator for sufferers of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. They tout the device as lighter, smaller, quieter, more efficient and cheaper. SD Medical is lead by veteran tech entrepreneur Michele Migliuolo.

Others in this category include a neonatal massage apparatus developed by TLneoCare and Etcetera Edutainment’s Medical Device Viewer, a platform that allows users to interact with medical devices in three dimensions. Etcetera projects training and sales applications for the viewer.

Old Economy. While many entries focus on young, tech-savvy audiences, a fair number deploy new technology to help traditional manufacturing. Etcetera Edutainment is represented here by “Safetyworks LiftTruck,” a system that provides touch-screen training for forklift operators. A tiny niche, perhaps, but if it succeeds, that same technology could be used more broadly as a manufacturing training tool.

Kid Stuff. What are roBlocks? Says Eric Schweikardt:

“It’s sort of an answer to the question, ‘What happens if we take some of the new tools — tiny microcontrollers, sensors, actuators — and embed them in construction kits?’ roBlocks is a stab at that.”

Imagine a traditional LEGO kit with this twist: each block is equipped with a chip, and each can be connected with any other to make reconfigurable robots that flash, whistle and move. roBlocks are aimed at youngsters 9-14.

 “Kids are responding really well,” says Schweikardt, a CMU graduate student who partnered with his academic advisor, Mark D. Gross, on the invention. “They seem to get it in a more intuitive way than adults.”

roBlocks received funding from CMU’s Office of Technology Transfer and is pursuing limited additional financing.

“We’re not trying to get a whole bunch of venture capital and become a toy store product,” Schweikardt says. “We’re not really into this to make a fortune. We just want to take the next step and get a bunch of them out there.”

Then there is K.I.C.K., Electric Owl’s kiosk. The touch-screen units, which stand about four feet high and are bolted to the floor, offer preliterate kids what Gallart calls “quick bursts of interaction.”

“No more than 20 minutes,” says Gallart, a native of West Palm Beach. “They’re not immersed or trying to beat a boss or high score. We’re trying to do something that’s non-immersive but also fun. We look at it as a series of digital toys rather than games.”

After spinning the idea out of ETC and receiving Idea Foundry seed funding, Electric Owl placed a prototype at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, which was so impressed with the results it ordered eight more kiosks. Electric Owl since has sold three more.

“It can pretty much go anyplace — airports, doctors’ offices, children’s museums — where there are congregations of kids who need something to do,” Gallart says.

With four employees and four interns, Electric Owl has moved into an East Liberty office. Hmmm. A Florida native relocates to the ’Burgh, invents and successfully commercializes a product, creates jobs and bases his business in a hard-hit neighborhood trying to reinvent itself. If more stories like Electric Owl emerge from the contest, the region will be the ultimate winner.

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Captions: Competitors Sanna Gaspard, Working to Save Babies, TLneoCare, LLC; Fred Gallart; Paul Trichon; Matt Scala; Mark Gross, business partner to Eric Schweikardt; Garth deAngelis and the Winds of Orbis team.

Photogrpahs copyright Brian Cohen