For those who aren’t aware of why I haven’t posted an article in a while, I joined IDC in October 2019, and all of my tech industry writing is now being done for IDC.
I am IDC’s Research Manger, Print Industry Forecasts at IDC. Here’s my profile on the corporate website, listing some of the reports I’ve written or contributed to in my six-plus months there. As part of the Imaging, Printing & Document Solutions team, I write about single-function and multi-function printers, print consumables, and related topics.
It has been a great learning experience for me. Beyond the usual learning curve, I have been creating and revising forecasts regularly during the unfolding of the COVID-19 pandemic and slowly getting to know contacts and key players in my industry. It’s fun to be in a position where I can focus more intently on one market segment over months and years after mostly making a career of being able to get up to speed quickly across loosely related market segments. Admittedly, even something as focused as my research area has enough sub-segments to keep things interesting, so there’s a lifetime of opportunity to build expertise in related areas, but it’s still much more focused than any of my previous industry analyst work.
I am, of course, tweeting regularly. Those who follow my Twitter account know it now has deep coverage of print news, some tweets about interesting tech and telecom articles in areas I’ve covered in “past lives,” and, of course, a bit of music. And when I attend events, I’ll still be live-tweeting from them.
Indeed, I’ll continue to be present in the Boston-area tech and startup communities, attending events once it’s safe to do so again. And getting to as many online events as possible, in the meantime.
Thanks for reading. I’m sure, at some point, I’ll begin publishing more here at the blog about events I attend in my spare time in areas not covered by IDC. Until then, please do check out old articles here. Especially from some of the startup events I have attending, where I write about (and link to) many of the cool tech (and other) startups in the Boston area.
This month, Boston New Technology’s startup showcase, BNT103, featured Mobile App startups. It was hosted at Hult International Business School in Cambridge.
Boston New Technology’s July startup showcase featured six Mobile App startups.
Market 2day presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
As always at a Boston New Tech startup showcase, the evening began with an hour of food and networking before the beginning of the presentations. First, each of the sponsors in attendance is given a few minutes to introduce themselves; then the remaining sponsors are recognized while their slide is shown on the screen. Sponsors who attended BNT101 and introduced themselves were Hult, The Boston Headshot, Your Profile Video, Chuck Goldstone Strategies and Stories, IntroVoke, Stripes, and Tom Maloney Coach. After that, the showcasing startups present.
JumpR presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Below I introduce the presenting companies briefly with a paragraph each. These write-ups are based on material distributed before and during the event, sometimes expanded upon with information contained in the presentations. Of course, my notes are merely high-level. To get the straight skinny on any of the companies, please click through on the links, and contact the companies directly for additional information.
Products & Presenters
Finalee is an app offering a faster and more accurate local search, helping users find what’s nearby more quickly than Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor, or other services.
Lets All Be Heard presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Market 2day‘s slogan is “Local Food for Busy People.” Via the Market 2day e-commerce app, consumers can purchase food from local food vendors, for delivery from local farmers markets. Essentially Market 2day is a “taxi service” for food. During its presentation, the company touted early repeat customer usage, noting that, since launching five weeks ago, almost every person who placed an order has ordered more than once.
JumpR is a mobile ticketing app for bars and nightclubs that allows consumers to pay cover fees via the app and “skip the line.”
LetsAllBeHeard is an app geared toward political campaigns, PACs, unions, and similar orgaizations that enables them to communicate with their members and supporters on their smartphones.
hollarhype presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
hollarhype offers a way for supporters and friends to help motivate runners in real-time via voice messages. Whether checking statuses, supplying real-time motivational messages, or connecting for fundraising – during its presentation, hollarhype noted that up to 75% of marathon and half-marathon runners are raising money for charity! – this app takes support for runners to the next level.
TallyLab is a data capturing and analytical app that contains big data analytical tools while focusing on privacy first. As someone who works with big data, out of all of the evening’s presentations, this is the one app that had me most imagining the sorts of problems I might solve with it.
TallyLab presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
The collection of presenters this month was interesting, and the solutions were varied. If one of the above products sounds interesting, please do your own additional research; my brief paragraphs were meant merely as introductions.
Looking Ahead
Boston New Technology is a not-for-profit, community-supported network of 24,000 business professionals focused on Boston’s tech community. Through the events it hosts, BNT helps businesses in the tech and startup community launch and grow. BNT hosts a few events each month, including these monthly startup showcases.
Boston New Technology’s June startup showcase featured six HealthTech startups.
Medley Genomics presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
After an hour of food and networking, the presentation portion of the program began, as usual. After a quick introduction, the sponsors who were in attendance that evening each introduced themselves. Then, as usual, sponsors not in attendance were recognized with a slide and a mention before the showcasing startups gave their presentations.
Below I’ll write a sentence or two about each of the presenting companies. These write-ups are based on material distributed before and during the event, sometimes expanded upon with information contained in the presentations. If you want to learn more about one of the companies, don’t rely on my notes; rather, follow the links I provide and contact the companies directly for more information.
Products & Presenters
Carescribr is a medical charting platform that helps medical teams efficiently document patient visits so they can focus more on the patients than on the documentation. The presentation noted that a key component of physician burnout is data entry. With Carescribr, the patient enters information into a kiosk to establish an agenda for the visit, and Carescribr helps develop a pre-visit plan that includes the patient’s agenda and relevant medical history, all designed to improve physician-client interaction during a visit.
Toast! presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Medley Genomics applies data analytics to individualize cancer care. It is built around the problem of genomic heterogeneity. The presentation did a great job of making this concept make perfect sense, so rather than try, I’ll instead suggest checking out the Medley Genomics website and contacting the company.
Toast! Before You Drink Gummies are the first gummy on Toast!’s mission to produce fun, tasty, functional supplements. While the hangover-preventing gummy is the company’s first, they are eyeing other verticals such as a sleep aid.
Robilis presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Robilis‘ StandX is a standing chair designed to be used with a standing desk. With StandX, standing desk users can change the way they sit periodically – standing, sitting, standing on one leg, etc. – to remain comfortable for an entire day while enjoying the benefits of a standing desk. I kind of dig the company’s tagline, “Sitting Reinvented.”
eMotionRx is a company whose self-powered exoskeletons/exosuits are designed to help with rehabilitation, affordably.
eMotionRx presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
The evening’s final presenter, Loro, is a smart social companion robot designed to help those with ALS, MS, spinal trauma, and other physical and/or neurological challenges. It currently mounts on existing wheelchairs and uses the wheelchair’s power.
As always, my summaries were quite brief. For more details, please follow the links I provided to the companies’ websites. Yet again, this Boston New Technology showcase featured an interesting set of presenters representing some cool companies in Boston’s tech startup community.
Looking Ahead
Loro presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Boston New Technology is a not-for-profit, community-supported network of 24,000 business professionals focused on Boston’s tech community, with a mission of helping businesses in that community, especially startups, launch and grow. To that end, the group hosts monthly startup showcases in addition to other events.
To remain abreast of BNT’s events, including its monthly startup showcase, check BNT’s upcoming event calendar at its website periodically as events are added. And be sure to get on the BNT mailing list, which contains a calendar of other startup and tech events around the city, as well.
I conclude my blog post trilogy about Boston’s 2019 Embedded Systems Conference with coverage of the remaining ESC talks. You can peruse my overview article and my coverage of the robotics talks by following the hotlinks. I made the rounds talking to ESC booth vendors, as well as several vendors showcasing at the collocated BIOMEDevice and Design & Manufacturing New England conferences.
In addition to the three robotics talks featured in yesterday’s article, I was treated to presentations about IoT security, 5G, and cloud-to-edge migration, plus the BIOMEDevice keynote talk.
“How to Secure Your IoT Project”
My first presentation was that of IAR Systems’ Shawn Prestridge, “How to Secure Your IoT Project.” He talked about attack vectors, authentication problems, and hardware options; Root of Trust and Chain of Trust; and did a deep-dive into how to secure devices via a secure workflow.
“Fireside Chat: Discussing Medtech 4.0 and the Future of Care”
Scott Huennekens delivered the BIOMEDevice keynote on Wednesday, “Fireside Chat: Discussing Medtech 4.0 and the Future of Care.” Dubbing himself a forward-looking futurist but also a pragmatics, Huennekens noted that in MedTech 3.0, it’s not just the products, but the products are connected, and it’s about the data. A key point of the presentation was the promotion of open architecture. Per Huennekens, open architecture creates opportunity, closed platforms in medtech are slowing development and growth, and open architectures will improve patient access and outcomes.
Digital surgery and robotic surgery were addressed, as was the importance of diversity of culture and people.
“Wrapping Your Head Around 5G: A Primer for the Enterprise Community”
My telecom background and mid-2000s coverage of the millimeter wave and microwave carrier market is the foundation of my strong interest in 5G, so I was looking forward to this presentation by Verizon’s Joshua Ness and Taru Jain, “Wrapping Your Head Around 5G: A Primer for the Enterprise Community.”
Ness touched upon the history of wireless standards (1G through 5G), the difference in 5G capabilities vs. 4G, and some of what 5G will usher into the future by enabling the growth of edge computing.
Jain noted that 5G will driving the fourth industrial revolution. She noted that the four pillars of 5G are fiber, spectrum, software-defined networks, and multi-access edge compute. And she discussed use cases in retail, manufacturing, and healthcare.
And, worth noting since it was at the Embedded Systems Conference, Ness pointed out that Verizon had just, the day of the presentation, rolled out a narrowband IoT network.
In all, a great introduction to 5G for those unfamiliar with it, and a solid recap for those of us already familiar with the technology.
“How to Migrate Intelligence from the Cloud to Embedded Devices at the Edge”
Arm’s Chris Shore went into great depth about “How to Migrate Intelligence from the Cloud to Embedded Devices at the Edge.”
On the topic of security, Shore noted that security cannot be optional, a recurring theme over the course of the last three Embedded Systems Conferences I attended. He touched upon four types of attacks: communication attacks, lifecycle attacks, physical attacks, and software attacks. He discussed software isolation. And he talked about Arm’s Platform Security Architecture.
On the topic of functional safety, Shore gave examples of the need across the industries of automotive (autonomous driving), industrial (factory automation), healthcare (robotic surgery), transportation (train control systems), avionics (flight systems), and consumer (domestic robots). He talks about the need for security as necessary (but not sufficient) for safety. He touched upon types of fault – random faults vs. systematic faults. And he dove into digital signal processing.
Shore closed his presentation with this remark: “Hope that inspires you to create highly-compute capable, safe, secure edge devices on the IoT.”
Conclusion
As always, the Embedded Systems Conference provided an educational, interesting glimpse into the current and future states of the IoT industry. It’s a shame the ESC is ending its run in Boston; it was an event I always circled on my calendar. As noted in my ESC overview article, the Embedded Systems Conference has partnered with the Drive World Conference & Expo for its next incarnation, in Santa Clara, CA in August – August 27-29, 2019.
As I mentioned in my overview article, Boston’s 2019 Embedded Systems Conference included its usual blend of embedded systems/Internet of Things-focused vendors and presentations, but robotics were also at the forefront this year. Or, at least, they were the focus of more of the presentations that caught my attention this year.
“Exploring Real World Applications for Dynamic Robots”
Thursday’s keynote presentation by Boston Dynamics’ Kevin Blankespoor, “Exploring Real World Applications for Dynamic Robots,” discussed the unique capabilities and design-purpose of Boston Dynamics’ quadruped, humanoid, and wheeled robots Spot, Atlas, and Handle. And those in attendance were treated to a demo of Spot led by Boston Dynamics’ Bryan Hollingsworth. Without going into detail, a quadruped robot is great for inspection in industries such as construction, energy, and public safety. A wheeled robot like Handle excels at tasks like moving boxes in warehouses, pallet-building, and unloading trucks. And humanoid robots are great R&D platforms, looking many years into the future.
“Advanced Vision Systems for Safe Human-Robot Interaction”
Veo Robotics’ Patrick Sobalvarro delivered an interesting talk about robot-human interaction, “Advanced Vision Systems for Safe Human-Robot Interaction.” For those of us not familiar with industrial robotics, Sobalvarro provided an exceptionally useful primer regarding the fencing-off of industrial robots and the protocols required when humans enter the robots’ cages in industrial settings. I’ve seen very few presentations about robotics in my career, so I really appreciated the background portion of this presentation; it was informative and set the stage for those of us with limited robotics backgrounds to be able to follow the meatier portions of the talk.
Power and force-limited robots are designed to allow human-robot interactions because if the robots will not injure people if they do come into contact, but they are weak and slow. So Veo Robotics is designing robots that would use a 3D sensing and control system so robots would be able to avoid coming into contact with people entirely.
One of the interesting Q&A questions was about collision avoidance. Veo uses a full-stop safety approach because, as Sobalvarro explained, their customers prefer their robots to follow a planned trajectory, though he could see the possibility of that in the future.
“Introduction to the Robot Operating System”
The PTR Group’s Michael Anderson presented “Introduction to the Robot Operating System.” This presentation dove into the details of ROS, which is “an asynchronous publish/subscribe message-passing middleware.” Designed for writing robot software, of course. Anderson dug deep into the hows and whys of ROS. And noted the differences between ROS and ROS 2. ROS was designed for the single robot use case, while ROS 2 is designed for (among other things) robot swarms.
Coming Next
Those were the three robotics-focused talks I caught at ESC. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s with quick summaries of the other four talks I attended, in and around the time I spent chatting with attendees at their booths.
2019 was my third consecutive year attending the Embedded Systems Conference. An event that brings together key vendors and provides a full slate of interesting talks about the Embedded Systems market, this event co-locates with two others, BIOMEDevice and Design & Manufacturing New England. My usual path through the showcase floor involves meeting all of the ESC vendors and then cherrypicking those from the other conferences involved in tech markets I follow. And, of course, I attend as many of the interesting presentations as I can fit into two days.
This year, as always, the ESC exhibitors were a mix of software, hardware, and consulting services companies, with the usual significant contingent of test and measurement vendors.
A lot of the ESC talks in past years have been security-focused. There were plenty of security talks again this year, but I noticed the robotics portion of the program more this year. I haven’t researched past topics, so the mix may not have been any different, but because one of the two keynotes was robotics-focused it brought the robotics element more to the forefront.
The two keynotes – one each day – were split between the BIOMEDevice program and the ESC/D&M program, to the extent robotics spans both of the co-located non-med conferences.
Wednesday’s keynote featured Scott Huennekens in a “Fireside Chat: Discussing Medtech 4.0 and the Future of Care.” Thursday’s keynote starred Boston Dynamics’ Kevin Blankespoor with “Exploring Real World Applications for Dynamic Robots.”
I also attended a few more Embedded Systems Conferences talks. IAR Systems’ Shawn Prestridge presented “How to Secure Your IoT Project.” Verizon’s Joshua Ness delivered “Wrapping Your Head Around 5G: A Primer for the Enterprise Community.” The PTR Group’s Michael Anderson provided an “Introduction to the Robot Operating System.” ARM’s Chris Shore discussed “How to Migrate Intelligence from the Cloud to Embedded Devices at the Edge.” And Veo Robotics’ Patrick Sobalvarro talked about “Advanced Vision Systems for Safe Human-Robot Interaction.” In subsequent articles, I’ll write about these talks (in varying detail, depending on the quality of my notes).
This month, Boston New Technology’s startup showcase, BNT101, featured EdTech and CareerTech startups. It was hosted at Hult International Business School in Cambridge.
Boston New Technology’s May startup showcase featured seven EdTech and CareerTech startups.
After an hour of food and networking, the presentation portion of the program always begins the same, with a quick introduction. Then the sponsors who are in attendance that evening each to introduce themselves. And after that, sponsors not in attendance generally get recognized with a slide and a mention.
After the quick sponsor introductions, each of the evening’s seven showcasing startups gets to deliver a five-minute presentation, which is followed by a five minute question-and-answer period.
The Family Learning Company presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Below I’ll write a sentence or two about each of the presenting companies. These write-ups are based on material distributed before and during the event, sometimes tweaked based on the content of the presentations. If you’re interested in learning more about one of the companies, don’t rely on my notes; rather, follow the links I provide and contact the companies directly for more information.
Products & Presenters
BlocksCAD is 3D CAD software that helps schools teach coding, math, and design. It makes this sort of learning easier and more engaging, and the company presented statistics showing the split of engagement with it product for boys vs. girls is relatively close to 50/50.
Validated Learning Co. presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
The Family Learning Company showcased its Family Literacy software. The software is designed to help families learn together. The Family Learning Company’s presentation touched upon how it’s designed so parents with literacy shortcomings can help their children learn. Its goal is to improve literacy by connecting adult learners with their children, providing a better literacy outcome for both. During the Q&A period, a question about gamification was asked; that is not in the plans, as it would not improve learning. Also in response to a question, the Family Learning Company envisions this product as being a corporate benefit.
ForagerOne presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Validated Learning Company showcased its Question Xchange peer-to-peer quiz question sharing marketplace. Using crowdsourcing and machine learning, it helps teachers find and share high-quality quiz questions.
ForagerOne is a tool that helps connect students, faculty, and administrators at colleges and universities to improve students’ access to research opportunities by leveraging universities’ internal faculty information and allowing students to get their research interests and backgrounds in front of the faculty members with whom they want to connect.
ArcLive presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
ArcLive gives researchers access to physically historical archives remotely. Important because less than 10% of archival documents are available online. By using a camera and viewing system (with built-in protections against copy-making), researchers can view information they would otherwise have to travel to see. ArcLive touts that the cost of accessing these historical archives through a local surrogate via ArcLive can be half the cost of accessing them via international travel. As an added bonus, it gives researchers the ability to access information at multiple, distant sites, particularly helpful if those additional sites contain smaller amounts of information that would have been otherwise unlikely to have warranted a visit at all.
Passion Analytics presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Passion Analytics‘ PAT is an automated career coach with a natural language user interface. It is designed to guide users through career decisions and to help them find their career passions. To the extent possible, it’s a self-contained product, but if necessary, it will direct users to an actual human. Right now, Passion Analytics is targeting students 18-25.
Unfundable is an academic health research simulation card game that pits players against each other in pursuit of grants. It’s marketed toward high school and early college students and is meant as a way to introduce grant-based research to those potentially interested in careers in that field, with the goal of also appealing to a broader audience.
Unfundable presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Looking Ahead
Boston New Technology is a not-for-profit, community-supported network of 24,000 business professionals focused on Boston’s tech community, with a mission of helping businesses in that community, especially startups, launch and grow. To that end, the group hosts monthly startup showcases in addition to other events.
June’s startup showcase, BNT102, is scheduled for June 10th at Foley Hoag, LLP in Boston’s Seaport District; it will be HealthTech-themed. July’s BNT103 will feature Mobile Apps and Tech, and it’s already scheduled – July 15th back at Hult International Business School in Cambridge. BNT hosts other events each month, as well, so check out BNT’s upcoming event calendar at its website periodically as details are added for those events, too.
A Tech in Motion Boston event held at PTC, Boston, MA
May 15, 2019
On Wednesday, May 15th, I attended an event at PTC’s Boston seaport headquarters. I trust Tech in Motion to put on good events, drawing a very techy crowd and featuring interesting topics. As usual, I wasn’t disappointed. Wednesday’s Smart Cities & Urban Innovation: Demos & Drinks covered the topic of urban tech.
Before and after the presentation, there was time for networking and for visiting several area companies in the urban innovation space.
BetrSpot is an app that allows people to trade spots. Spots in line. Spots at the bar. It’s a marketplace for physical first-come, first-served spaces.
Beta Blocks is attempting to create smarter, more connected Boston communities.
Cambridge Mobile Telematics is the company whose Drive Well platform is being utilized as part of Boston’s Safest Driver Competition, mentioned above.
Soofa was showing off its cool Soofa Sign community news feed display units – or, as they call, them, “the world’s first outdoor 42” electronic paper display for downtowns, neighborhoods, parks, and campuses.” (I’m enthralled and look forward to trying them out.)
Tolemi is a “governing intelligence” platform. What I recall most about my conversation with them was the detailed maps.
Getaround is a service/app that facilitates peer-to-peer car rental, sort of like an Airbnb for cars. I previously mentioned Getaround very briefly in this article about a Boston New Technology event in September 2018, and I first encountered Getaround at a BNT event earlier in 2018, though I didn’t mention the exhibitors in that write-up. Certainly seems like a product capable of gaining traction in its chosen market.
And I first encountered Zome just last month at Boston New Technology’s April 2019 startup showcase. Zome is a tool for creating and controlling micro power grids, allowing another way to control power grids during peak usage or other energy-constrained periods.
In all, it was a great sampling of city-focused technology. Hosted by PTC, of course, at its seaport district headquarters. The event was held on PTC’s demo floor, which contains showcases of several of PTC’s augmented reality products. And the group of attendees was Tech in Motion’s typically tech-focused audience.
I attended the Embedded Systems Conference last week, as well, on Wednesday and Thursday. You can expect coverage of some of the presentations I attended at that conference here in the blog over the coming days.
World Series Champion Boston Red Sox Select Acronis as Official Cyber Protection Partner
Acronis Red Sox Day, Fenway Park, Boston, MA
May 10, 2019
On Friday, May 10th, the Boston Red Sox and Acronis, via an event at Fenway Park, announced the Red Sox selection of Acronis as the team’s “Official Cyber Protection Partner.” Presentations by Acronis Vice President and General Manager Patrick Hurley and Boston Red Sox Senior Director of Technology Operations Randy George were followed by a chat with former Red Sox Bob Stanley and Jerry Remy and, later, an appearance by prolific Red Sox slugger David Ortiz.
Patrick Hurley; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Acronis, long known for its backup and recovery products, also offers robust cyber protection. The Red Sox, meanwhile, conduct a massive data analytics operation, as is typical of Major League Baseball teams.
Hurley’s presentation discussed Acronis’ service offerings and its partnerships with major professional sports operations around the globe, as featured at the company’s acronis.sport website.
George’s presentation focused more on the ways the Red Sox would utilize Acronis’ capabilities, including increased speed and security of the team’s analytics, plus the impact on back office operations.
Randy George; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Materials about the announcement cited Acronis’ cutting-edge hybrid cloud architecture, disaster recovery, file sync and share, blockchain notarization and e-signature services, multi-machine deployment provisioning, enterprise-level managed file transfer, and anti-malware protection.
Red Sox Vice President of IT Brian Shield was quoted as saying, “We’re thrilled to have Acronis as our Official Cyber Protection Partner. Acronis’ services offer an innovative blend of data protection and cybersecurity that will ensure all of our data, regardless of volume, is safe and secure so it’s available precisely when and where we need it. We look forward to a long and highly successful partnership with Acronis that will benefit our organization on and off the field.”
Bob Stanley and Jerry Remy; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Hurley added, “Everyone at Acronis – particularly those at our Burlington, MA office – is thrilled that the Red Sox decided to team up with Acronis. As a Boston native and life-long Red Sox fan, the opportunity to contribute to the success of one of baseball’s most storied franchises is very exciting. Acronis shares the Red Sox’s commitment to excellence and with the world’s most secure cyber protection solutions defending their digital environment, they’ll be empowered to achieve even more.”
This month, Boston New Technology’s startup showcase featured Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence startups. Boston New Technology is a not-for-profit, community-supported network of 24,000 business professionals with a mission of helping Boston’s local technology startups launch and grow.
April’s showcase, BNT100, was hosted by Mendix at their offices in Boston’s Seaport district.
This month’s event was rather special. It was BNT’s 100th event, so it featured tributes at the beginning and cake at the end. At the very beginning, though, before the speeches and the startup presentations, was the usual hour of food, drinks, and networking.
Your Profile Video introduction; photo by Geoff Wilbur
The quick sponsor introductions are generally followed by the meat of the program, five-minute presentations (plus five minute Q&A time) by each of the evening’s showcasing companies.
The Boston Headshot introduction; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Tonight’s six showcasing company presentations were, however, preceded by a presentation about the Boston Innovation Ecosystem from Boston’s Startup Manager, Matheus Lima. Matheus spoke at length about the inviting Boston startup ecosystem. A key point of his presentation was that he specifically mentionted the three different constituencies his office supports: startups, institutions that deal with startups, and entrepreneurs.
City of Boston Startup Manager Matheus Lima; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Next up were the showcasing companies. As always, my notes are brief, so I’d encourage you to follow the links if you seek any more information, and then contact the companies directly if you have a particular interest. Spanning the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) markets, this batch of startups is on the cutting edge of the tech world.
Mendix presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Products & Presenters
Mendix, the evening’s host, kicked things off. Mendix is a no-code/low-code platform that allows people who aren’t coders to be able to design and create apps. I had been very much looking forward to this demonstration, as a quick walkthrough of “how it’s done” is far superior to all the reading in the world.
Zome presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Up next, Zome is a tool for creating and controlling micro (power) grids. It allows power grids to curtail demand centrally whenever desired – for example, in case of reduced supply or non-competitive pricing. In addition to its presentation, Zome showcased a demonstration, which gradually slightly adjusted the heating/cooling system of a group of its participating residences.
Divinio presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Divinio is a robust, unobtrusive, multi-sensor measuring platform that is designed for use in sports and industrial equipment. It was put through its paces via a field test in a challenging environment, the sport of cricket, and it passed that significant stress test. The device uses a bluetooth connection to transmit data from the sensors to an edge device.
Posh presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Posh is one of the evening’s chatbots. It’s a context-aware conversational bot that can be used across multiple channels, across text and voice. Though its client list extends well beyond the financial services industry, Posh’s initial focus is upon selling into the banking industry. Specifically, it has made significant inroads with large players in the credit union market.
Orbita presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Orbita is healthcare-focused conversational AI, utilizing both voice and chatbot powered assistance. Counting among its user base such healthcare organizations as Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Mayo Clinic, Amgen and Merck, Orbita is playing in the big-time healthcare space.
The final presenter of the evening, Talla automates customer support via machine learning and natural language processing. For its niche, Talla focuses specifically on customer service interactions that require quick turnaround.
Talla presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur
Obviously, my summaries above are quite brief. For more details, please follow the links I provided to the companies’ websites. As usual, Boston New Technology assembled an interesting group of presenters from among Boston’s tech startup community.
Looking Ahead
Next month’s BNT startup showcase, BNT101, is scheduled for May 20th at the Hult International Business School in Cambridge, and it will feature EdTech and CareerTech startups.
Telecom and Tech.com 