List of Ithaca & Finger Lakes Entrepreneurship Resources

At a recent Finger Lakes Entrepreneurship Forum meeting we were reflecting on all of the support and resources that are now available to current and aspiring entrepreneurs in the area. If you are thinking about starting a new business in upstate New York, then all of these organizations and the people in them want to help you:





The Johnson School at Cornell University
Cornell Center for Technology Enterprise and Commercialization
The Whitman School at Syracuse University
Syracuse Tech Garden
Metropolitan Development Association
Entrepreneurship@Cornell
Cornell Entrepreneurship Network
Finger Lakes Entrepreneurship Forum
Upstate Venture Association of New York
SmartStart Venture Forum / UNYTECH
Pre-Seed Workshop
Elab

3D is all the rage -- at nerdy tech conferences

In the past month I have attend three major display industry trade shows, SID, ProjectionSummit, and InfoCOMM. As is typical with these types of tech shows, the new, cool thing gets a lot of attention, and more and more, it's 3-Dimensional displays. (and, ahem, picoprojectors).


I see 3D people

In between people throwing out big fancy concepts like anaglyph, psychovisual, and switching polarizers - I got to see these things in action, and they are AWESOME! Samsung had one that the glasses had a sensor, and as I moved, the 3D plane on the screen moved too. A lot of fun, and makes me look at my fancy HDTV as downright mundane.

The holy grail of this world is a glasses-free 3D display, just like we saw in the first Star Wars. I think it's telling that even in the visionary world of Star Wars, the image is low-def. This stuff isn't easy to do, but it's cool!

Widetronix Wins Again!

Last year I wrote a note about Ithaca company Widetronix winning the $250K DFJ Venture Challenge. This year they did it again by winning the MDA Creative Core $100,000 Emerging Business Competition!


The Force is strong with this Widetronix

This marks the third year in a row that an Ithaca/Cornell company has won this competition. e2e won in 2007, and Mezmeriz in 2008. It's a nice hat trick for the community, but it's not really a surprise to anyone here. That's because of the strong supportive environment fostered in the community. Of the 10 semifinalists, 5 were from Ithaca, and three of them were in the same building!

Well done Widetronix! Now, who wants to be next year's winner from Ithaca?