THE BOOK SUMMER 2018
Tech Square ATL is a membership community with a media publication dedicated to connecting you to people at the heart of Atlanta’s tech scene. We spark these connections through our special events, featured stories, and collaborative workspace. Learn more at TechSquareATL.com.
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Talent Aquifer Tech Square’s biggest unfair advantage is our abundance of super smart, talented people you find here. From college students to seasoned veterans, Tech Square is filled with breakthrough talent. This summer, we focused our energies on enlarging and deepening this talent aquifer. We connected high school innovators from across the state of Georgia through the Day One Challenge. Tech Square Summer Camp helped college interns from across the country and state feel at home. Throughout the summer, we followed the progress of Georgia Tech student-led companies participating in the CREATE-X Summer Startup program that included an impressive Demo Day at the Fox Theatre. Not to be outdone by the young guns, talented Tech Square ATL members of all ages gathered for a summer-long series of Power Meals focused on artificial intelligence. To bring it all to a glorious conclusion, we gathered teams at Technology Enterprise Park for the North+Northside Field Day for some leisure sports, barbecue, and kickball.
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What is Tech Square?
“A collaborative “Diverse, innovative, community linked via and vibrant.” shared experiences.” 3
“A hotspot for new ideas.”
Tech Square by the
100+ Startups
NUMBERS 10 Top 10 Engineering Programs
Startup Accelerators
Research Labs
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Corporate Innovation Centers
1,300+ Students call Tech Square home
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10
1 Top 10 MBA
Program
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Day One
CHALLENGE 6
Starting off Early The Day One Challenge is a state-wide innovation competition for high schools across Georgia. While most events focus on the college and university level, this one makes sure that the brightest high school minds in Georgia get better connected to the tech community. With the support of the Georgia Department of Economic Development and Nebo Agency, Day One challenged high school students to come up with ideas on how they could use artificial intelligence in the areas of health, education, and sustainability. The challenge launched on March 5 and students had 30 days to come up with their solutions. On May 5, 12 finalist teams gathered for the Day One Summit, where they presented their ideas to their peers and judges.
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Day One by the
NUMBERS
45 Teams
Over
$7,500 in prizes
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Finalists From
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Counties 8
1st place:
Lambert High School CALM (Cholera Artificial Learning Model)
2nd place:
Maynard Jackson High School Materialize.AI
3rd place
Athens Community Career Academy Expand Literacy
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From Students: Srikusumanjali Pinnamareddy
Kathrine Boone
Lambert High School
A. R. Johnson
“Visiting Tech Square and competing in Day One has been an eye-opening experience for me and I’m very grateful.”
“I believe that the best high school challenges or competitions help us as students develop the necessary tools for communicating while broadening awareness of divergent topics.”
From Teachers: Johnelle Simpson
Athens Community Career Academy
“This is one of the greatest challenges I’ve seen students participate in. Most other competitions allow students to demonstrate their mastery level with one particular skill. This opportunity was multifaceted and challenging.”
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Day One Work Session
When Lambert High School team reigned supreme at the Day One Challenge summit in May, little did they realize their work had just begun. The team was invited back for a two-day work session in July, when they met with various experts from the Tech Square ATL community to help develop and improve their project. This time together helped shape how the students viewed the way of creating such projects - turning an idea into reality takes a community, not just a handful of people and experiences.
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“For high school students, this feedback and mentoring would normally require months of communications. Day One Challenge lent legitimacy to our project which we wouldn’t have had otherwise and brought together specific experts to aid in the variety of challenges our project presents.”
Rohil Badkundri
Lambert High School
Tanishk Sinha
Lambert High School
“We are astounded by how willing all of the experts were to help us, but perhaps even more by how committed you were to taking our project to the next level. What started as just as an idea, now has the means and potential to truly change lives. It means the world that you believe in us, a bunch of high school kids with nothing but naive ambition.”
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Tech Square
SUMMER CAMP 14
Summer of Adventure During June and July, Tech Square Summer Camp 2018 offered a variety of outside-of-work opportunities for interns to meet peers and mentors from other companies while connecting with the wider Tech Square ATL community. Forty interns working for 11 different companies. All exploring the neighborhood and city together over seven weeks.
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Summer Camp by the
NUMBERS
40 Interns 11 Companies
126 Unique
Connections
4.2
Miles Hiked 16
Mentor Circles
A perennial favorite of the summer session, Mentor Circles gave interns the chance to learn from a wide range of mentors in an informal setting. Group discussions and 1:1 speed mentoring sessions gave interns the chance to ask whatever burning questions came to mind.
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What They Learned from the Mentors “Few people really know exactly what they want to do.”
“To make something big and change anything, you need to include everyone.
Aubrey Olandt
Joie Wang
“Be open to all industries and go after the job you really want.” Katie Harrison
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S’more than an Internship
Cookouts, supper clubs, mentor sessions, an outdoor adventure to Arabia Mountain, and a community service project wove together an experience to help the interns grow their networks and as a person.
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Georgia Tech
CREATE-X 22
Starting a Business One of three CREATE-X programs, CREATE-X Startup Launch 2018 included more than 40 startups who spent the summer building companies instead of interning for someone else. Started four years ago with a gift from tech entrepreneur and investor Chris Klaus, the program gives students the chance to test their own ideas and culminates in an annual big Demo Day at the Fox Theatre. This year, student entrepreneurs tackled market opportunities in a wide range of sectors, including software, fashion, healthcare, aviation, and more.
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CREATE-X by the
NUMBERS
40+ Teams
Each with over
12
Weeks
4
$20,000 in funding
Catagories 24
Kalmed Healthcare Revolutionizing the blood diagnostic testing industry by creating a patent-pending blood collection device. 25
“We have completed a 3D printed proof of concept for a blood collection device and have made some slight alterations to optimize its functionality. CREATE-X helped us gather feedback from a variety of people that we didn’t think to speak with before like hospital administrators, nurses, and pharmacists. It also connected us with engineers who reviewed our designs and offered great input. The funding and support that came with the program definitely helped us get to the prototype phase faster.”
-Alan Kalinda, Founder
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“Every week, CREATE-X would bring in a key speaker, sometimes featuring past CREATE-X teams that are now successful businesses. They gave great advice that we needed. One of my favorite things a speaker said was, ‘With a startup, you will have the highest highs and the lowest lows.’ It made me recognize there will be times you want to give up, but these are the moments that make you stronger. Seeing successful companies come out of CREATE-X is inspiring.”
-Sarah Hamer, Founder
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Das Duo
Business casual clothing that doesn’t limit active lifestyle or prevent you from fitting a workout into a hectic day. 28 20 22
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Hazy, not
LAZY
The summer brings a different heartbeat to Tech Square. Think more opportunities to fire up the grill, ice down the drinks, go crazy for the World Cup, and deepen friendships.
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Power Meal
TIMELINE
JULY 7
AI and Accountability
JUNE 28
Why Make AI Human?
MAY 29
Gathering Data for AI Jeff Garbers
Ajay Ganapathy
Jackson Morgan
JUNE 26
New Hub For AI MAY 16
MAY 31
Limitations of AI
AI and the Job Revolution Olaf Westerstahl
Amelia Davis
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Austin Lee
JULY 7
AUGUST 9
Is AI Hype or Reality?
AI and the Modern Supply Chain
AUGUST 15
AI and Storytelling
Don Newton Ian Edelson Sammi Hudock
AUGUST 2
AI and Innovation JULY 17
The Future of AI and Music Steve Justice
Peter Evans
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Insights Eric Pate
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AI today can be a force to multiply human work rather than outright replace it. Such as one human piloting a convoy of trucks.
Ashley Summerall
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It’s interesting to think about what humans are better at than AI. My initial thought was intuition but someone brought up a good point, that intuition is based on experiences.
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John Avery
Atlanta might be able to find a niche in AI for “ logistics. Lots of industry interest by companies that don’t directly compete and would be willing to work together on this. ” Rhea Perkins
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an AI feature like Siri is used to assist, the “If‘personality’ shouldn’t default to female. Assisting doesn’t have to be gendered ” Ajay Ganapathy how stories “Differences in culture candifferdictate from each other. ”
Power Meals by the
NUMBERS
200 Unique
60 Unique
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Power Meals
Connections
Attendees 34
Field Day
Talk about a home run! This summer’s North+Northside Field Day was the biggest and best yet. We had 205 people enjoy an afternoon filled with friendly competition, tasty eats, and kickball battle royale. Congratulations to all the folks from Vero Biotech, Kemira, Abbott, Georgia Tech, and GCMI/T3 Labs who gathered one last time before summer ended.
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THANK YOU! To Our Team The team who make all the Tech Square ATL magic possible is small and mighty. We move fast and pull off audacious ideas on short timelines because of this team. Next time you see them, give them the props they deserve. Team: Ashley Summerall, Hannah Franklin, Amelia Davis, Sammi Hudock, Scott Henderson, Nona Dowling, Mehnaz Ruksana, Rachel Zick, and Jared Serfozo.
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To Our Partners Tech Square ATL became the membership community and media publication it is today because of the unwavering support and active collaboration of our partners. Everything we do is shaped by their ideas and involvement. We can do all of what we do because of the resources and advocacy they contribute to our work.
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