Drownproofing 2.0

Georgia Tech graduates who are at least my age (or a little younger) will remember "Drownproofing." … [Read more...]

Seven Minutes of Terror

I'm taking advantage of my column this month to talk about something that seems completely unrelated to EI2, but I promise to connect it back in the last few paragraphs. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the story! On the evening of Sunday, August 5th, a crowd started gathering in the Hodges Room on the 3rd floor of Centergy. By 6:00 pm, we had … [Read more...]

NSF I-Corps National Network

Two weeks ago, I was invited to Washington DC for the National Science Foundation's one-year celebration of the I-Corps program. NSF is one of the largest funding sources for science and engineering research in the world, investing over $7 billion last year. I-Corps (or "Innovation Corps") is an incredibly ambitious effort to increase the impact … [Read more...]

Atlanta Magazine “Groundbreaker” Award

We got some nice coverage in Atlanta magazine this month as one of eleven "Groundbreakers" in helping to transform the city. Here's the cover and pages 76-77 of the August 2012 issue. … [Read more...]

Reinventing Workforce Development

I just returned from the annual Southern Growth Policies Board meeting, which was held in Chattanooga this year. The topic was "Reinventing Workforce Development" and it was fascinating to hear how much opinions have shifted on this topic in just a couple of years. … [Read more...]

Revenue Diversification 2012

Since the state budget cuts began to bite EI2 in earnest a few years ago, one of our responses has been to look for new sources of revenue. … [Read more...]

Eating Our Own Dogfood

At the last quarterly meeting, we spent a bit of time talking about myGThealth.com and what we're trying to do to promote health and wellness inside EI2. There was a lot of discussion, and we've gathered even more information from those of you who responded to the survey. Nearly half of you have signed up and completed the initial online … [Read more...]

Flashpoint: The First Cohort

During January, the first class of Flashpoint graduates pitched their businesses at three events in Atlanta, New York City, and Menlo Park, California. I've written about Flashpoint before, but I find that a lot of EI2 employees still ask "So does Flashpoint compete with ATDC? Is it replacing VentureLab?" Now that we've seen our first results, it's … [Read more...]

Looking Back on 2011

A new year is a good time to look back at the old year and see how far we’ve come. It’s a classic “can’t see the forest for the trees” problem... we’re all so busy working on our own individual projects, it’s hard sometimes to see the overall growth and vitality of EI2 as a whole. Below is a necessarily-incomplete list of EI2 accomplishments … [Read more...]

Cooperation with Korea

In the fall of 2008, Atlanta was experiencing a major gasoline shortage.  Hurricanes Gustav and Ike had rocked refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.  Carl Rust asked David Bridges and James Seals if they could go to Savannah to help with a large College of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) proposal.  Fortunately, the duo had just enough gas to … [Read more...]