Tag: Geekdom (Page 2 of 10)

Remote Garage Stores Clutter by the Box

May 13, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Jaakko Piipponen, founder of Remote Garage, photo by Laura Lorek

Mei Butler, a senior at Trinity University, needed to store some household goods while she studied in China for seven months.

“I didn’t want to rent out a storage unit since I didn’t have enough belongings to take up the whole space,” Butler said.

Instead, she signed up with Remote Garage, a San Antonio-based storage on demand startup. It provides a storage bin and even picks up the goods.

Butler’s storing kitchen supplies, bathroom supplies, decorations and other home furnishings with them while she’s studying in China.

Last year, Jaakko Piipponen, launched Remote Garage with his friend Valdas Galdikas. And in December, they received a $25,000 investment from the Geekdom fund. Since then, they have been marketing the company and enrolling more customers while working on the technology behind the site and securing partnerships.

Piipponen is from Finland. He earned his undergraduate degree from the Helsinki School of Economics and studied abroad at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles. He also worked previously for an investment bank in London and founded another startup, Kiitos Technologies, a marketing service for online videos. He moved to San Antonio in 2013 with his girlfriend. She is attending medical school at the University of Texas Health Science Center.

At first, the Geekdom Fund turned Piipponen down, but he came back the next month with customers and partners, said Cole Wollak, spokesman for the fund. They were also convinced of his expertise in the storage market and were impressed with the beta version of his product, Wollak said.

Storage is a $25 billion market, Piipponen said. About one in ten Americans use self-storage facilities, he said. But that’s doesn’t work for everyone, especially for people who don’t have a lot to store and can’t afford to pay $1,200 a year or more for a storage unit, he said.

That’s where Remote Garage comes in, Piipponen said. It’s there for the rest of the population with smaller storage needs, he said.

“They pay by the box,” Piipponen said. “We pick up, store their stuff securely and let them monitor it online and they can get their things back whenever they want.”

Remote Garage partners with well-known, professional storage and delivery companies. It charges $7 per box for a month with the average order of five boxes.

The company does face some competition from other on-demand storage services like Makespace, a New York-based micro-storage startup that has raised $1.3 million, Boxbee, based in San Francisco has raised $2.3 million for its storage on demand service and PODS. And Austin-based SpareFoot, which works with storage companies, to fill up their space through its online marketplace, is not really a competitor, Piipponen said.

Remote Garage has been marketing the company by working with apartment leasing agents. They are seeking to fill the niche for apartment dwellers that store things on their balconies, which is usually prohibited by the complexes. Now the apartments can offer up Remote Garage as an alternative storage source. Piipponen has signed up more than 50 apartment complexes in San Antonio including The Broadway, The Crescent and Mosaic.

Butler heard about Remote Garage from her boyfriend. She decided to try them out and she’s been pleased with its “excellent customer service.” She thinks the service has a lot of potential.

“Its appeal lies in the fact that it does not require you to make a big commitment in terms of rental length, or amount of space you rent,” she said.

UTSA Hosts the Open BigCloud Symposium

May 7, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Some of the biggest trends in technology today are the cloud, a fancy name for data centers, and big data, the massive bits and bytes of information flowing through those data centers.

At the University of Texas at San Antonio, more than 100 people met Wednesday to discuss hardware, software and networks around those topics at the first Open BigCloud Symposium.

“This is about the future of cloud computing and big data,” said UTSA President Ricardo Romo.

He compared the ideas and innovation around the Open Cloud environment to Detroit during its heyday of the automotive industry.

“A collision of ideas that’s what’s going to happen here,” he said.

Romo also cut the ribbon to officially open the UTSA Open Compute Project Certification and Solutions Laboratory. The only other lab of its kind is in Taiwan.

Frank Frankovsky, president and chairman of the Open Compute Project Foundation, praised the project.

“There are incredibly innovative people in the state of Texas driving the industry forward,” he said.

The two-day Open BigCloud Symposium features more than 20 speakers in the HEB University Center Ballroom at the UTSA main campus. Most of it is highly technical with sessions like “Using ZeroVM and Swift to Build a Compute Enabled Storage Platforms” and “Composable Rack Scale Archecture Storage.” But some of the sessions address universal issues facing the technology industry like the shortage of women in technology and fostering entrepreneurship.

In 2012, Rackspace hosted the Open Compute Summit and hosted more than 500 people involved in the Open Compute Project, which Frankovsky and his team launched at Facebook in 2011. The project’s goal focuses on creating the most efficient computer hardware and software for data center. Major players like Facebook, Rackspace, Hewlett Packard, Dell and Microsoft back the project.

The Open Compute Project is driven by collaboration, contributions and consumption or the adoption of the technology by industry, Frankovsky said.

UTSA is becoming a nationally recognized hub of innovation in the Cloud and big data technology, said Lorenzo Gomez, director of the 80/20 Foundation and Geekdom.

The 80/20 Foundation has donated more than $4 million in endowed partnerships in cloud computing technology to UTSA, Gomez said.

The research, the academia and industry coming together at UTSA is extremely important said John Engates, Rackspace’s Chief Technology Officer.

“We at Rackspace believe open is supercritical,” Engates said.

Open and collaborative environments help companies innovate faster, Engates said. It also means freedom. It also allows people to do their work remotely easily, he said. An open environment also allows companies to share the risks and rewards of research and development and innovation, he said.

“Getting people on a bobsled together and going in together I think that’s supercritical,” he said.

In 2010, Rackspace and NASA jointly created the OpenStack , an open source cloud software. Today, Rackspace runs the largest OpenStack cloud in the world today, Engates said.

Competition Heats Up for the San Antonio MX Challenge

May 7, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Already 30 teams have registered to compete in the San Antonio MX Challenge, said Jesus Salas, head of the project.
Salas gave an update on the San Antonio MX Challenge Tuesday night at the SA NewTech meetup. About 50 people attended the meetup, which was organized by Cole Wollak and Michael Girdley.
The San Antonio MX Challenge begins in September and is a competition to see who can best foster the tech entrepreneurial connection between Mexico and San Antonio by fostering startups here.
The competitors will be judged on sustainability of the business plan, sustainability of the project in San Antonio, revenue generated and the number of jobs created, Salas said.
The San Antonio MX Challenge will award $500,000 to the team, business or organization that best meets that challenge.
The 18 month competition will officially kick off at a special San Antonio MX Challenge Summit in San Antonio on September 15th and 16th. The event coincides with Mexican Independence Day and will incorporate local celebrations of that holiday, Salas said.
Salas has visited Mexico City and Guadalajara to spread the word about the San Antonio MX Challenge, which is an offshoot of the HeroX challenge, a smaller and more localized version of the X Prize.
At his meetings, Salas emphasized San Antonio’s growing entrepreneurial community and its large workforce in the biosciences, cybersecurity and information technology industries.
In addition to Salas, three teams, made up of former Code Up students, pitched their capstone projects from their class. The teams graduated from the program recently.
The projects included Spotspy, a parking reservation app, VIND IT, a lost and found app and EatSafe-Sa.com, which provide restaurant ratings based on city health inspection reports.

Join a Special 3 Day Startup Focused on Cyber Security in San Antonio

May 5, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Did you know San Antonio has the second largest concentration of cyber security professionals outside of the Washington, D.C. area?

The bulk of them are at the National Security Agency’s (also nicknamed as No Such Agency) Texas Cryptology Center. The NSA leased and renovated the old Sony chip manufacturing plant in 2005 and was expected to hire as many as 1,500 workers. The NSA’s facility has two buildings for a total of 475,000 square feet, including a data center.

Even before the NSA, San Antonio had deep roots in the cyber security field with the U.S. Air Force Intelligence Agency at Lackland, nicknamed Security Hill and the University of Texas at San Antonio recognized by the NSA as a center for academic excellence in information assurance education.

So it just made sense for the first Cyber Security 3 Day Startup to take place in San Antonio. 3DS selects 45 people to participate in the weekend long program in which the group breaks up into teams and form startups, create a prototype and then pitch their companies. The 80/20 Foundation is sponsoring the Cyber Security 3 Day Startup.

The Cyber Security 3 Day Startup is now recruiting “passionate individuals with an entrepreneurial drive, including Computer Science (PhD, MS, undergraduate) MBAs, law students, graphic designers, PR, business undergraduates, etc” to participate in its program to be held May 23rd through May 25th at the old Geekdom on the 11th floor of the Weston Centre.

To apply for the program, please visit Cyber Security 3 Day Startup.

Geekdom Moves Into its New Headquarters at the Rand

April 21, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

The geeks might inherit the earth eventually, but for now, they’ve got their own building in downtown San Antonio.

On Monday, two Geekdom flags flew from the top of the historic Rand Building at 100 E. Houston St., signifying the move in of Geekdom members. It’s their new headquarters.

On the seventh floor, Lorenzo Gomez, director of Geekdom, thanked everyone involved in the yearlong renovation of the space and move to the new 12,400 square foot space. (Eventually Geekdom will takeover the entire building, but for now it’s occupying one floor) He thanked Geekdom Staffers Kara Gomez, Julie Campbell, Ryan Salts and Zac Harris as well as Nick Longo, co-founder of Geekdom, the place where startups are born. Geekdom tailored the space to meet the needs of its community members.

“Here we have more useable space for the community,” Longo said. “We doubled the size of the space for community members.”

Geekdom members toasted with mimosas served in red solo cups and celebrated the new space with sweet rolls and macaroons from Bakery Lorraine.

A year ago, Graham Weston, chairman and CEO of Rackspace, through his Weston Urban LLC., bought the Rand Building from Frost Bank with plans to create a permanent home for Geekdom, a thriving community of technology workers in San Antonio. The space serves as the epicenter of the city’s technology community, Gomez said.

Alamo Architects‘ Irby Hightower and his team worked with Geekdom and its members to tailor a space specifically to their needs, Gomez said. It features a large community space for members with an open kitchen and bar stools nestled around a long table. The office is functional and looks cool with exposed pipes in the main room and a wooden ceiling by the kitchen, funky light fixtures, red and black carpeting to muffle the noise, murals, whiteboards and writeable walls. The signs to the conference rooms pay homage to video games of the past.

The space also features bike racks and showers. And it has 23 offices and several conference rooms and a telephone room for private phone calls. It even has a mother’s lounge for new moms who need a private space for pumping breast milk.

Geekdom’s community space also has multi-level workstations for people who like to stand while they work as well as desks for sitting.

The new Geekdom office also has lots of windows and offers spectacular views of downtown San Antonio.

Eventually, Geekdom will take over the entire Rand building. For now, it has moved into the seventh floor, but in a few months, the larger companies like TrueAbility, ParLevel Systems, Codeup, Pressable, Promoter.io, FlashScan3D and Sammis & Ochoa will move to the sixth floor.

“We have a Champagne problem,” Gomez said. “We have more demand then there is supply for. We have more startups that want space than we have space for. Next year this time, when the rest of Frost moves out it’s going to be a really big question we’ll have to figure out the answer for whether it’s more offices, more community space. We don’t know the answer yet.” It could be one big company with 100 employees moves in to an entire floor, he said.

For the past two and a half years, Geekdom has been housed on the 11th and 10th floors of the Weston Centre, about a block away from the Rand. But the technology incubator and coworking space has grown dramatically with more than 750 members and needed a building of its own, Gomez said.

Later this summer, Geekdom will also open an events center on the first floor of the Rand Building. But for now, it’s hosting its events at the Weston Centre until the space can be finished out.

Geekdom’s new building is designed to launch, nurture and expand San Antonio’s technology industry through startups, Gomez said.

Laura Thompson, a public relations expert, joined Geekdom about a year ago. She plans to launch a startup called The African American Network, a broadcast company.

“I hope to be one of the companies that grows into a bigger space here,” she said.

The new space got rave reviews from Geekdom members.

“It’s cozy and warm,” said Jorge Amodio, a hardware developer and Geekdom member for more than a year.

The glass doors on the conference rooms are more inviting for collaborating and coworking, Amodio said. The natural light is also a bonus, he said. But the real draw is the people, he said.

“Geekdom is about being part of a smart, vibrant community,” Amodio said.

Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News

Geekdom on the Move

April 18, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

For the first time in its more than two year history, Geekdom will close its doors Friday at 2 p.m.
But don’t fret.
It’s only temporary.
Geekdom, the downtown technology incubator and co-working space in San Antonio, is moving to the historic Rand building, which dates back to 1913, this weekend. It will reopen on Monday in its new digs on the seventh floor with a celebratory brunch complete with mimosas and pastries from Bakery Lorraine.
Geekdom will occupy the sixth and seventh floors of the eight story Randy building and it’s also renovating a bi-level events space on the first floor. But until that space is complete, Geekdom will continue to hold its events on the 11th floor of the Weston Centre.
Its bigger companies like TrueAbility will move into the sixth floor of the Rand building later on this year.
And speaking of development in downtown San Antonio, Geekdom got a big shout out in this Wall Street Journal article.
“The building will eventually have a cafe, a rooftop bar, and other amenities “that the geeks want,” said Randy Smith. Mr. Smith is the president of Weston Urban, a real-estate development company founded in 2012 that aims to “create the ecosystem for tech entrepreneurialism” in San Antonio, Mr. Smith said,” according to the article.”Mr. Smith co-founded Weston Urban with Graham Weston, a native of San Antonio who is the chairman and chief executive of Rackspace, a cloud-computing company valued at $4.5 billion. Over the next five years, Weston Urban plans to develop a downtown district using four surface lots the group bought last year, along with three buildings it already owns, and by buying other properties. The plan includes 1,000 rental apartments plus restaurants, shops and other businesses designed to create a lively downtown.”

Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News

Codeup Bootcamp Aims to Turn Non-techies into Web Programmers

April 4, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 7 Comments

By ZACH REED
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Photos courtesy of Codeup and Geekdom

Nathaniel Medrano wrapped up a recent internship feeling that, while the experience gave him great exposure, the job’s DIY learning model-via telecommute no less-still had him looking for ingrained traction in the technology. His work setting up search engines for local directories at a telecommunications company had given him a taste for the role and its tasks, but now he wanted a bootcamp experience that would help him understand the “why.”

He chose Codeup, an immersive 12-week cohort program launched out of the Geekdom tech startup incubator in downtown San Antonio. “Iron sharpens iron…and Codeup gave me exactly what I was looking for,” Medrano said. He graduates in a few weeks. The program “strengthened what I did know, and filled in all the gaps.”

Citing a Bureau of Labor Statistics study that job growth for developers is expected to grow 30 percent between 2010 and 2020, Codeup bills itself as an “in-person bootcamp that takes you from non-techie to web programmer.” It targets would-be web developers who are early career or second career with an intensive program that combines instructor-led training and self-study. Graduates are guaranteed that if they don’t land a job within six months, half their tuition will be refunded.

Fresh off the glow of his team winning the 2014 InnoTech Beta Summit, CEO Michael Girdley talked about what differentiates Codeup from courses available in community colleges and other bootcamps. “All a computer science degree gives you is theory, and then someone has to pay you to learn what to do with it,” he said. The value that Codeup tries to provide graduates and employers is “we cut out those first three years” that newly-minted web developers normally spend cutting their teeth on applied learning, Girdley said. A list of 55 employers formally recruit from Codeup, ranging from other Geekdom startups to established firms such as Globalscape and Labatt Food Service.

The typical student experience starts with a considerable amount of prep work even before the first class. “You’re coding within the first 45 minutes of Day One,” Girdley said. Subsequently, most days include six hours of classroom training, bookended by several hours of study hall where instructors are still available for assistance. Codeup punctuates the learning with lunchtime speakers, and recently held a hackathon competition. Throughout the 12-week course, students are continually assigned textbook reading. The emphasis is a hands-on learning of Lavarel, as PHP used in the creation of hundreds of millions of websites.

It’s an immersive, structured curriculum that Medrano was able to root in: “It filled that space between the ‘Pythagoras Theorem’ and ‘Here’s what to do,” Medrano said. He likens it to learning a new language, with the immediate focus on code that is immediately functional, “worrying about syntax later”. He particularly likes that the learning is iterative: material covered in the first week is used as a core that is continually revisited and built up from.

The next cohort of 30 students starts May 6th and is already half full, with 15 applications accepted out of 70 submitted, Girdley said. The review process involves a round of interviews with Codeup instructors. “What we ask ourselves during the interview process is ‘Can we help?’ and ‘What is their learn rate?” Girdley said. “I also want people I’m willing to be locked up with in a room all day,” he added with a good-natured laugh.

Prospective students can watch the current class via livestream or in-person, as well as read the team’s bios. The Codeup team includes four Instructors and three Lab Associates. “You’ve got a very experienced team here,” said Girdley, who has written four textbooks.

Coworking Options for Yogis, Dog-Lovers and Everybody Else

April 3, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Photo licensed from iStock

Picking a co-working space is like a cross between choosing a place to work and finding your favorite hangout. What’s important to you? Ergonomic chairs? Community? The vibe? The snacks? Or, as one Yelper explained, the fact that they “play the same tunes I have on my iPod?”
And considering that the people around you might become your friends, clients, business partners and tribe what do you want them to be like? Older professionals? Hackers? Hipsters? Artists? Do you want to bring your dog? Do you want to share a coffee machine with investors? Do you want a yoga class in the same space?
Austin has a great array of coworking places that offer all of the above and more. We’ve compiled a directory of some of the area’s hottest co-working spaces for you to find your spot.

Capital Factory

In many ways, Capital Factory is the hub of all things startup. On the 16th floor of the Omni building, this is where you can rub elbows with many of the area’s most promising new companies, and the investors and successful entrepreneurs who mentor them. You get access to giant pillows and snacks like candy, chips, fruit, and the occasional pizza. Co-workers don’t get all the designer ergonomic office systems. They share long tables in a common room. But they are at hand for many cool events and meetups that happen in Capital Factory space.
Membership Fee: $150 for 15 hours a month; $350 for unlimited access
Address: 701 Brazos St., 16th Floor, Austin
Website: capitalfactory.com/work/coworking

Conjunctured

Conjunctured is a funky work space in an old house on the East Side. Started by a couple of geeks, Conjectured prides itself on the community its co-workers have created. Members not only work at the space during the day but also have happy hours, volleyball games, board games at one another’s homes and go tubing and group skydiving. Conjunctured plays music from its members’ iPods but also has a quiet room for people who need minimal distractions. And it’s dog friendly—if you call first.
Membership fee: $25 to $275 a month
Address: 1309 E. Seventh St., Austin
Website: conjunctured.com

Center61

Center61 in East Austin, is where you might want to be if the focus of your work is social good. Like, if what gets you up in morning is the environment or global justice or racial harmony and you’re looking for likeminded people to collaborate with, this would be the place to work.
Modern, airy and quiet, Center 61 is scientists, artists, business owners, technologists and more.
Membership fee: $10 to $200 a month
Address: 2921 E. 17th St. #4, Austin
Website: center61.com

GoLab Austin

In an old building on groovy East Sixth, the GoLab is a combination art gallery and coworking space. Founder Steve Golab offers lunch and learns and encourages the software and social platform developers to birth new ideas through collaboration and community.
Membership fee: $250 to $350 a month
Address: 621 E. Sixth St., Austin
Website: golabaustin.com

Link Coworking

Link Coworking is one of the best known and longest-lasting co-working spots in Austin. With a funky, modern space with ergonomic Turnstone furniture, Link has private, dedicated spaces as well as open working spaces. If offers a place for experts to come and give free consulting to members and the community and it holds and myriad events for networking and for fun.
Membership fee: $200 to $500 a month
Address: 2700 W. Anderson Lane, #205, Austin
Website: linkcoworking.com

Opportunity Space

Started by startup veteran Erica Douglass, Opportunity Space is specially designed for startups, rather than freelancers or solopreneurs. Operating out of a charming old house on Caesar Chavez, on the East Side Opportunity Space offers each startup a dedicated desk and, if they want, a dedicated room. And it has one thing few co-working spaces offer…a shower!
Membership fee: $500 a month for a dedicated desk
Address: 2125 E. Cesar Chavez St., Austin
Website: opportunityspace.com

Perch Coworking

Perch coworking in East Austin offers ergonomic chairs, mail delivery and a community of what it calls “self-contained business people.” Perch has clean, modern space and focuses hard on the business aspect of getting work done and meeting with likeminded people who might also be good business contacts.
Membership fee: $175 a month; drop-ins are $25 a day
Address: 2235 E. Sixth St., Austin
Website: perchcoworking.com

Posh Coworking

Posh is the first Austin co-working space specifically for women. Elegant, if a little girlie, Posh not only provides co-working spaces but quiet meeting areas—named Elizabeth, Audrey and Marilyn–for members to meet with clients. Members rave about the warm feel, the writing lab, and the help of the owner, Blossom.
Membership fee: $125 to $400 a month
Address: 3027 N. Lamar Blvd., Suite 202, Austin
Website: poshcoworking.com

Soma Vida

So what if your requirements go way beyond ergonomic chairs and snacks? Soma Vida is a wellness community described by several Yelpers as “Nirvana.” It’s a yoga collective, a wellness center, a veritable Vallhalla of work life balance in an old house in East Austin. And best of all, it’s way less expensive than most co-working spaces. And memberships come with free yoga classes and entrance to networking events. Namaste.
Membership fee: $25 to $65 a month
Address: 1210 Rosewood Ave., Austin
Website: somavida.net

Tech Ranch Austin

Tech Ranch is another major startup hub in Austin, north of downtown. It’s an incubator that helps businesses from seed to scale. In a quiet office park off 183, Tech Ranch offers a range from general co-working in a modern setting to a dedicated desk, chair and locking cabinet space. Another great place to rub elbows with entrepreneurs and investors who are making new things happen.
Membership fee: $150 to $300 a month
Address: 9111 Old Jollyville Road, Suite 100, Austin
Website: techranchaustin.com

Vuka

The owners of Vuka envisioned the space as a co-working place, event venue and all around community gathering space. A giant, open warehouse with incredible tree light fixtures and funky furniture, Vuka is the perfect place for people who want to combine art with work. The venue has almost no parking, however, and some members report that all that combining of art, work and community can be a little distracting.
Membership fee: $150 to $300 a month; drop-ins are $15 a day ($5 on Fridays)
Address: 411 W. Monroe St., Austin
Website: vukaaustin.com

San Antonio Coworking Space

Geekdom

Geekdom is the place for San Antonio coworking. The local startup hub, Geekdom is steps away from the Riverwalk and offers month to month membership as well as dedicated desks and office spaces. Because it’s the hub of entrepreneurship, it’s also the place to encounter the up and coming companies and the investors and mentors who are helping them. The coworking space is moving into the historic Rand building downtown in late March and will have a specially designed space featuring showers, bike racks, kitchen, postboxes, phone booths and a special events center.
Membership fee: $50 to $200
112 East Pecan, 10th & 11th Floors
San Antonio, Texas 78205
Website: http://geekdom.com/san-antonio

Soloshot, BiblioTech, Cloud Academy and SMSGate at SA New Tech

April 2, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

On the first Tuesday of every month, a group of people interested in the latest technology developments in San Antonio gathers at Geekdom for the San Antonio New Tech meetup.
The hour-long program showcases some of the latest startups in the city along with other interesting projects.
Cole Wollak, Jeremy Karney and Michael Girdley head up SA New Tech, which has grown to become one of the city’s most popular meetups with 672 registered members. SA New Tech has held 19 events since its founding more than two years ago.
On Tuesday, Geekdom and Codeup sponsored the event providing free beer and pizza to the more than 70 people in attendance.
Soloshot, a robotic cameraman, SMS Gate, a marketing messaging service, Open Cloud Academy, a Linux administrator and technical training center, and BiblioTech, the nation’s first all digital library, pitched to the crowd for five minutes and then answered questions from the crowd.
Chris Boyle, co-founder and CEO of Soloshot, a tripod device that allows a camera to track and film a subject automatically, gave an update on his company.
Soloshot is on the second generation of its product, the Soloshot2, the robot cameraman. The latest model includes new features such as vertical tracking, camera control for automatic zooming and start/pause recording, a smaller lighter transmitter and compatibility with third-party professional tripods.
The San Antonio-based company now has 15 employees. It also has 19 patents issued or pending and its product is available in more than 200 retail stores.
Soloshot has been featured in Popular Mechanics, the Discovery Channel, Fast Company magazine, TechCrunch and other publications. It has won several prestigious industry awards. Soloshot also won the 2013 InnoTech Beta Summit.
Soloshot, founded in 2012, originally sold its products to sports enthusiasts and professional athletes in the surfing, kiteboarding sports. But others quickly adopted its device to film snowboarders, soccer players, rugby teams, equestrians, skiers, wakeboarders, skateboarders, motocross racers, racecar drivers and parents seeking to capture their kid’s events.
Catarina Velasquez, BiblioTech Community relations liason, gave a brief overview of BiblioTech, which has more than 20,000 digital books available for download to Bexar County residents. It’s the nation’s first digital public library.
The $2.5 million library has 48 iMacs and it loans e-readers, which can hold up to five books to county residents with a BiblioTech library card. The library is open seven days a week and is located on the city’s South Side at 3505 Pleasanton Road.
Felipe Castillo pitched his startup, SMSGate, which provides a direct marketing service to companies through text messages. The company is from Mexico. The company is looking for Beta testers to try out its product for free. For more information, visit its website at SMSGate.co.
A representative from the Open Cloud Academy, on the sixth floor of the Weston Centre, gave a brief overview of the year-old technical training center. Rackspace’s Chairman and CEO Graham Weston started the academy to provide Linux administrator training to the general public. The program is based on the Rackspace Academy, which trains its employees in technical fields. The 10-week Linux Administrator training program costs $3,500 and the program provides some scholarships and other financing. Recently, the Open Cloud Academy launched Linux for Ladies, its first program targeted exclusively at training women to become Linux system administrators. That class, which begins in June, is already full. The demand is high for the classes. Jobs for Linux system administrators are plentiful and the jobs pay more than $50,000 a year, on average. More than 200 people attended an information session to learn more about the Linux for Ladies program.

Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News

Geekdom Ignites San Antonio’s Tech Industry

March 21, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Founded in late 2011, Geekdom has served as a catalyst for San Antonio’s technology startup industry.

Graham Weston, chairman of Rackspace and Nick Longo, founder of CoffeeCup Software, founded Geekdom.
Lorenzo Gomez now serves as the director of Geekdom.

It hosted the Techstars Cloud program, which graduated two classes of companies from its three-month accelerator including Par Level Systems and TrueAbility, which are both still based at Geekdom.

Other startups operating out of Geekdom include Pressable, Remote Garage, Monks Toolbox, CodeUp, VentureLab and Health eDesigns. It has helped more than 200 startups so far. The Geekdom Fund also offers San Antonio-based startups a chance at $25,000 in funding. The Geekdom Fund board meets monthly to evaluate startups and award funds.

Geekdom membership costs $50 per month or $200 monthly for a dedicated “tech startup desk” in an office.

Geekdom also hosts all kinds of events including a monthly Master’s Series featuring accomplished speakers in the technology industry, hackathons, 3 Day Startups, Startup Weekends, the monthly San Antonio Startup Grind and Health 2.0.

Geekdom last year launched a San Francisco office.

For the past two years, the collaborative coworking space, technology incubator and accelerator, has occupied the 10th and 11th floors of the Weston Centre downtown. But at the end of March, Geekdom will move to its new home in the historic Rand building, a former bank and department store building built in 1913, on Houston Street. The sixth floor will be for established companies with large numbers of employees and the move in date for that floor is set for Mid-April. The seventh floor will be for the general membership and it’s move in date is March 31st. Eventually Geekdom will takeover the entire 8-story building as its current tenant Frost Bank moves out.

The new offices will have bike racks, showers, and lockers, changing rooms, a nap room, a kitchen and more.
The space will contain a lot of white boards and other writeable surfaces and it will have reliable high-speed Internet with lots of outlets for wired service as well as Wi-Fi. It will also have a vault of mailboxes.
The main floor of the building features an events center where Geekdom will hold member and public events. The events will be livestreamed online from there using NewTek’s Tricaster equipment. The space is two stories and has a balcony and has doors that are accessible from the street.

Editor’s note: this article originally appeared in Silicon Hills News’ print magazine, launched at SXSW Interactive 2014. Also, Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News.