Are you attached to your mobile device?
RU a 14 yr old girl or txt like 1?
Do you love beautiful info-graphic animations?
If you answered yes to any of these then check out our most recent animation for Mobile Future – The “2011 Mobile Year in Review“. 2010′s Mobile Year in Review can be found here and has been seen over 150,000 times.
I’m amazed to learn that America is only graduating about 15,000 computer science majors per year (see the full report below). The demand for talent of this kind nationally has got to be 3-4x that.
There is our gap – call it 50,000 high paying gigs that our tech companies can’t fill. Perhaps StartupVisa (more from Tech Crunch) will pass someday and “sort of” fix this. Perhaps CodeNow can teach a generation of kids to code.
Maybe college kids will stop studying things that have no hope of employing them and adding meaningfully to our economy (like finance – and all these other majors). I wouldn’t put my money on it though. The incentive to learn meaningful engineering skills are clearly lacking. Who’s got the answer? Anyone have a solid plan for encouraging more Computer Science majors in this country?
Most of us in the tech industry know there’s a huge issue in America with regard to engineer scarcity, as well as the broad digital divide between the digerati and the under-served.
CodeNow is a DC startup non-profit that aims to solve both problems by teaching disadvantaged kids to code.
This holiday season CodeNow is pushing to raise money to buy kids netbooks so they can teach more students crucial programing skills in DC. iStrategyLabs is a huge fan – we were CodeNow’s first sponsor – and so is the Whitehouse (read here).
Buy a kid a netbook. Contribute anything – even $10. Donate your latte fund. Whatever. IT WILL ACTUALLY MATTER. Watch the videos below and contribute to this great program.
If you do…please comment on this post or email me (peter at istrategylabs dot com) to tell me – I’m going to invite every single donor this season to a super secret VIP happy hour on me just to say thank you. The donation link is http://codenow.eventbrite.com.
We’re cranking away on our products over here – and it got me thinking about the dating life of tech entrepreneurs. Which one do you like best?
1. Freemium models are your competition at the bar.
2. When you’re talking, they’re thinking about users.
3. When you’re laying in bed, they’re thinking about #winning.
4. They think lusting after 22 year old programmers is okay for grown men/women to do.
5. They make awkward sexual remarks like “I’d call that API”.
6. They think a startup consists of not having a job, while programming.
7. They think they have multiple startups in the form of multiple unfinished apps.
8. If they’re from NYC, they grow really silly mustaches and wear really tight jeans.
9. If they’re from SF, they wear really tight jeans and grow really silly mustaches.
10. If they’re from DC, they’ll wish they could grow a really silly mustache and have tighter jeans.
11. If they’re in Austin, they’re probably puking on something during SXSW.
12. They think you care about their monetization strategy.
13. They don’t care how hot you are – if you don’t “get it” then you’re toast.
14. They think referencing Paul Graham essays in causal conversation is normal.
15. They have to schedule dates spontaneously 3 weeks in advance.
16. They’re too tired for a booty call.
17. Their exit strategy includes paying him/her.
18. You’ll be signing a prenup.
19. You’ll learn the meaning of the word manic.
20. You’ll need to follow them on Twitter to know what they’re up to.
21. You’ll need to follow them on Foursquare to bump into them randomly.
22. You’ll need to pretend you’re not jealous of the quality time they spend with their Siri.
23. Their idea of a date is meeting you at starbucks for 30 minutes.
24. They keep pushing you to hire a team to manage and grow your personal blog
25. They won’t talk to you if you don’t believe in agile/lean everything.
26. Pillow talk sometimes includes references to Jack Dorsey.
27. Pillow talk also includes “when I raise that round baby…”
28. Ship early, ship often does not include gifts on your birthday
29. Fail fast applies to your relationship.
31. Vacation includes co-working sessions, networking, skype, and writing proposals.
32. When they wake up, the first thing they reach for is their iPhone.
33. You’ll get friend requests from people even they’ve never met in person.
33. They’re just weird people.
34. Their alcohol tolerance is that of a pre-pubescent teenager.
35. Their their tantrums are also like that of a pre-pubescent teenager.
Ford’s Tweeting Cake and the Rise of Social Machines
Check out the sweet recap video:
Ford was the perfect fit of DCWEEK because they continue to push the envelope using social media to engage audiences across the web. At DCWEEK Ford also used iStrategyLabs’s brand new social data visualization technology called Grandstand enabling them to show fans photos, tweets and klout scores in real-time.
As if that weren’t enough, we collaborated with world famous Charm City Cakes to build the “Ford Tweeting Cake“. Simply, when you tweeted with the right #hashtag, the cake would say your tweet. Super fun, super social, super experiential. What else could you ask for? The mini-documentary we produced about it says it all:
The Ford Tweeting Cake is part of the inspiration behind a new product/service offering we’re working on called Social Machines. After building the cake, a FourSquare Unlock Box, Grandstand and playing with other digital + physical mashups, we’re almost ready to roll out the Social Machines offering for brands and organizations that want to infuse the physical word with social data…in order to remote-control it. Most soon!