U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park posted these two tweets, among others, about his INNOV8 experience in Lafayette last week: "Silicon Bayou — aka Lafayette, Louisiana — is the best kept secret reservoir of innovation mojo in America." "Massively inspired after spending time a #cajuncodefest — amazing competitors; go innovators go!"
Ending childhood obesity was the mission of CajunCodeFest, an INNOV8 Lafayette event that took place Friday and Saturday at the Picard Center, Abdalla Hall and LITE on the UL Lafayette Research Park campus. With a grand prize of $25,000, the event attracted software designers and engineers, undergraduate/graduate students, health care policy leaders, hospital administrators, wellness/nutrition experts, researchers and entrepreneurs who have a stake in improving kids’ health care. Twenty teams comprised of more than 125 participants competed, with more than 260 people attending. The event was “completely sold out,” says Ramesh Kolluru, director of UL Lafayette’s Center for Business and Information Technologies. “[We] turned away over 60 people.”
The center partnered with U.S. Health and Human Services, Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, FiberCorps and the private sector on the competition. The two-day coding competition transformed health care data into innovative technology solutions that address childhood obesity.
Public sector leaders in attendance included Park, who was recently appointed chief technology officer of the U.S. by President Obama, and Bruce Greenstein, secretary of the Louisiana DHH. Park helped create healthdata.gov, a publicly accessible health data website, in addition to hosting code-a-thons like CajunCodeFest across the nation. It was Greenstein who stepped up to make Park’s participation happen, Kolluru says.
In the past 1.5 years, code-a-thons resulted in more than 50 products, including apps and websites to help patients locate doctors and better manage medications, and launched startups that commercialize those technologies. Joining CajunCodeFest from the private sector were Jay Walker, founder of Priceline.com and curator of TEDMED; Sean Nolan, who runs the HealthVault team at Microsoft; Jose Ramos from Northrop Grumman; and Lafayette native Jared Quoyeser from Intel Corporation.
Competing teams had just more than 24 hours to analyze data, brainstorm ideas and create digital prototypes. The stakes were high: the winning concept and team, “PlayFit” by team BE CAMP VB, received $25,000 and entry to the invitation-only U.S. Health Datapalooza competition.
BE CAMP VB created a system to manage “pickup” games and events, targeting at-risk kids and engaging community groups like churches and the YMCA. “In today’s world it’s much harder to wander downtown and find folks to play ball with — I love that they’ve revived a concept that has both physical and emotional benefits,” Microsoft's Nolan wrote on his blog.
The other cool thing about this team was that they didn’t even know each other before the event. “I matched them up and they just clicked,” Kolluru says.
“The Eating Game” by team Flying Fighting Mongooses were the surprise student team winners, taking home $10,000. Microsoft's Nolan, who served as one of the judges, wrote of the students’ concept: “In one sense this was a classic diet-based challenge system. Eating choices are awarded points, and students and classes in schools compete to get the most points. What I loved about this solution was the details. The team really honed in on how to make this relevant to schools. They knew their market and they had laser-focus. This is so often missing, and it’ll kill a startup. They also took a novel approach to the problem of “cheating” — designing a game that was still effective at education even if kids do cheat. These kids rocked, and I really hope they’ll work with the Lafayette Parish School System soon to pilot their program in the school system.”
“Health Hero” by team PixelDash won “best use of Microsoft technology,” taking home some Xboxes and HealthVault-connected pedometers, plus tuition to attend the new gaming academy in Lafeyette. “This was the first ever nutrition “game” I would actually play,” Nolan wrote. “They used the Kinect to build a grocery bagging game, forcing you to identify quickly-approaching foods as ‘fruits’ or ‘veggies’ and putting them in the right bag. Imagine ‘high fat’ vs. ‘low fat’ and other categories here. The gameplay was fun and engaging, kind of like a physical version of the old Diner Dash. This isn’t easy to do, and especially not in 36 hours.”
Read more from Nolan, a Microsoft "Distinguished Engineer"-turned-honorary-Cajun, here.
The talented team members:
BE CAMP VB included people who didn’t know each other, except through email intros Kolluru made.
Alla, Vamsee
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- Dept. of Veterans Affairs, Berlin, Conn.
Burriss, Christopher
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- InfiniEDGE Software Baton Rouge
Molnar, Peter
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- Clark Atlanta University Atlanta
Oriade, Banjo
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- Bethany College Lindsborg, Kan.
Rowe, Jackie
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- Southwest Louisiana AHEC, Lafayette
Tanory, Betty
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- Independent, Prairieville
Tanory, Robert
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- Amedisys Inc., Baton Rouge
Warner, Meredith
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Womans Surgical Specialty, Group Baton Rouge LA
Flying Fighting Mongooses were students from UL Lafayette (grad and undergrad)
Champagne, Jarad
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Deshotels, Luke
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Hefner, Daniel
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Higginbotham, Brady
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- VCExperts.com, Lafayette
LeDoux, Charles
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Miles, Craig
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Spear, Phil
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Pixel Dash (from Baton Rouge-based companies)
Caro, Dane
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Harvey, John
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Smith, Evan
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Tate, Jason
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New Old Schoolers won the best start-up potential award.
Ashworth-Sides, Luke
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- independent, Lafayette
Bain, Josh
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- independent, Lafayette
Jelveh, Reza
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- Flying seagull consulting, Hamburg, Germany (came because he wanted to develop a startup in Lafayette)
Miller, Bob
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- independent, Lafayette
Webb, Keven
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- independent, Lafayette
Woerner, Tyler
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- PixelBrush Studios, Lafayette
"There is no problem America can't invent its way out of," an enthusiastic Park told the participants at the opening of the competition, calling CajunCodeFest an "epic event."
"You came out of nowhere to make this happen," he continued. "This is why I'm so optimistic about America."
Let’s just hope Park took his excitement back to D.C. He certainly is in a position to make big things happen for Lafayette.
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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