Happy Friday everybody! Its spring break next week but the Dingman Center is still hard at work preparing for the upcoming Cupid’s Cup Business & Innovation Showcase and Competition! Have you gotten your tickets yet? If not make sure you register on our eventbrite page NOW so we won’t have to turn you away later because we’ve filled the theater again!
And now for some things worth reading from the week:
In case you’ve been out of touch, South by Southwest is in full swing in Austin, Texas and the interactive segment gave us a lot to talk about regarding cool new technologies and businesses emerging from around the nation. For those of you who missed the festivities, Time gives a good recap of their top 5 highlights from SXSW, and inc.com gives us 8 lessons learned for entrepreneurs everywhere.
Speaking of technologies to change the world, a prominent Silicon Valley investor launched the Sandy Hook Innovation Initiative last week, challenging entrepreneurs to create safer technologies for the firearm industry. What other controversial issues can entrepreneurs solve through by using innovation to bypass all the politics?
Google also made a big splash in the news this week by acquiring DNNresearch, a university incubated startup from the University of Toronto. With a trendsetting company like Google digging into University based startups, could this be the beginning of a new renaissance in tech commercialization?
Finally in UMD news, In the Capital ran a great feature on UMD’s new student-run incubator, Startup Shell. No doubt it’s an exciting time for entrepreneurship at the university and we can’t wait to see what happens next. Which reminds me, don’t forget to reserve your seat for Cupid’s Cup!