First-ever Software Innovation Showcase a Success

By Geraldine Power

The Software Innovation Showcase debuted for the first time at OMSI on October 18, 2005. John Tortorici, president of the Software Association of Oregon, said, “The intent was to showcase software innovation from high schools, colleges and the business community. In addition, we wanted to cross-pollinate these groups by putting them together in one venue. Based on all the positive feedback we received, we believe it worked.”

The event featured companies such as Tranxition (pronounced “transition”) and Cognitopia, QMIND and Integrated Management Resources. High schools and programs, such as Saturday Academy, North and South Salem, Hillsboro, Sherwood and Benson Polytechnic, as well as the University of Oregon, Oregon State, Western Oregon and PSU also participated.

Tranxition
Tranxition has just developed a prototype product that can virtualize any guest PC to the user’s own PC instantly. Tranxition loads a user’s software on a USB “thumb drive.” Once the user has finished his work and unplugged the drive, the guest PC returns to normal, with no trace of the user’s own software on the guest PC. So no more do we have to lug our laptops everywhere we go. The thumb drive can be easily carried in a brief case to use on guest PCs at hotels and other public venues. The thumb drive product is scheduled for release in the spring of 2006.

Michelle Christopher, vice president of marketing and product management, is a Canadian, from Vancouver B.C, on a visa to work in the United States. Michelle said she prefers Portland over Vancouver, because “Portland is a smaller city, compared to Vancouver B.C. with over four million people, and the cost of living is more reasonable in Portland, considering the horrendous taxes a Canadian citizen has to pay.”

Congnitopia
Tom Keating Ph.D, principal partner of Congitopia LLC, created software specifically for people with cognitive and physical disabilities, including those with traumatic brain injuries, autism, mental retardation and elders with dementia. Cognitopia is a recent startup whose mission is to develop the commercial potential of Picture Planner and other life management systems for individuals with disabilities and caregivers. Picture Planner is an icon-driven life management application, accessible to non-readers and others for whom commercial software presents barriers. It also provides group and schedule management tools for teachers and caregivers. Picture Planner is the first commercial product resulting from a multi-year program of grant-funded development and field-testing. Picture Planner is scheduled for release in December 2005.

Tom is adjunct faculty in the computer information sciences department at the University of Oregon and director of the Eugene Research Institute, a private non-profit entity engaged in research and development of assistive technology, with a special emphasis on individuals with cognitive disabilities.

Tom has a Ph.D in special education and rehabilitation, and was motivated to develop these kinds of software by his brother with autism. Tom said that the show “turned out to be a very worthwhile event for me. I wanted to attend with the hope that I would meet potential investors and legal resources, and at the show, I was able to do so.”

Tom added, “I’m used to presenting to special education or rehabilitation audiences, and I was surprised by the interest in my product in particular and the general interest in making software accessible for people with disabilities.”

University of Oregon
Andrew Fortier, graduate research assistant in the computer and information science department at the University of Oregon, was also at the showcase exhibiting Picture Planner, the same application created by Tom Keating of Cognitopia. Andrew’s advisor, Steve Fickas, is a colleague of Tom’s, and they were using Picture Planner as part of their effort to develop support systems for individuals with traumatic brain injury.

QMIND
Michael Berkley, CEO of QMIND, featured an online courseware development system called QMIND Design Collaboration Platform. The platform is targeted to e-learning professionals within large enterprises and e-learning development agencies.

Michael said, “The QMIND Design Collaboration Platform is quite unique in the corporate training and academic courseware marketplace. QMIND offers the only team-based multimedia development system that is 100% web-based. It enables teams of people, no matter where they are, to collaboratively create rich, interactive media courseware to be delivered over the Internet.”

For e-learning professionals, the QMIND platform streamlines the entire courseware development process, from instructional design, to story boarding, to project management, to asset management, to multimedia production. Because of this integration of features, QMIND’s solution reduces time and cost of developing learning content over 50%, compared to traditional schools. The QMIND platform empowers teachers, trainers and business people with no programming skills to create sophisticated multimedia productions, using text, audio, images, animations and video. The product became available in September 2005.

Integrated Management Resources
John Hampton, systems consultant with Integrated Management Resources, developed a spam filter called Email Shock Therapy (EST) designed for small to medium-size companies. It is meant as a solution for onsite administrative assistants to implement to enhance their email systems.

John said, “EST is free of charge. However, it is also open source, so that the company implementing EST is not locked into a specific vendor. It also allows the company to modify the product to best meet its needs, with flexibility being one of the product’s main goals. It has been designed so that all of the actual mail filtering is done by ‘plug-ins.’ While all of the plug-ins will be shipped with the base product, I hope the users will devise their own plug-ins that fit their needs. The plurality of the plug-in filters will benefit all, as there will be a wider arsenal of filters to implement against spam.”

Another key feature of the filter is its reporting. A spam filter is only as effective as the user perceives it to be. The goal of the reporting in EST is to present to the user a view of how accurate the filter is. It shows such statistics as how many messages have been received and how many have been spam vs. false positives or false negatives. The product will be available by December 2005.

Benson Polytechnic High School
William Diss, instructor at Benson, along with members of his computer software technology class represented high schools at the showcase by exhibiting a flight simulation program. Various companies donated the equipment, including the pneumatic chairs, logic analyzers and computers.

Asked about Benson, Bill said, “Benson is a first-class high school, with a curriculum focused on mathematics, English, modern languages, science and extra-curricular activities, etc. Additionally, all of the students take professional technical classes for four years and have a major. We offer majors in various areas of health and technology. I am involved in the technology area and we offer majors in electrical and software engineering, electrical technology, microcomputer technology, automotive, aviation, drafting, architecture, construction, welding, fabrication, plastics, photography, video production, web design, computer applications, carpentry and more.”

Bill went on to say, “We are very connected with industry and colleges in that we have an advisory board of people from the business community and most of our majors within Benson have college credits with Portland Community College or Oregon Institute of Technology. We meet regularly with people from industry, Portland Community College and Oregon Institute of Technology. In fact, in our spring meeting in 2005, the advisory board asked me to start teaching UNIX along with Microsoft Operating Systems programming”

Bill added, “Our programs change constantly to be in line with what is needed by colleges and industries. These changes make my head spin, then I refocus and know that we have to keep our students up-to-date. I worked in the electronics and computing industries for 21 years, so I know that many changes take place both with hardware and software.”

“All of us at Benson really enjoyed the Software Innovation Showcase and appreciated the opportunity to interact with others in academia and industry,” said Bill.

Positive feedback on the Showcase
Jim Long, assistant professor in the computer science and electron technology department at Oregon Institute of Technology, was at the showcase and said, “I will have to commend you on how well the event was run. I traveled to Portland for the day from Klamath Falls and I am very happy to have made the effort. What a great idea to bring high schools, universities and industry together to foster relationships in support of the seamless entity targeted at educational and technical innovations in Oregon.”

Tim Hickey, former CEO at Lingo Systems, said, “That was really an excellent event on many levels. I enjoyed it and benefited from it, and I know many others did.”

Stephen Rogers with LRS Solutions said, “One thing that really caught my attention at the Software Innovation Showcase was the maturation of weblog techniques, which does seem like a ‘big idea’ that will continue to grow and affect the mainstream much more going forward. It is a good example of an area of the software-centric techniques, resources, opportunities and best practices that has universal application and appeal across diverse audiences, i.e., individuals, businesses and education.”

John Tortorici said, “I heard a great deal of positive feedback on the showcase, particularly from the schools. This event got the kids excited and helps build their confidence in technology while giving them a path and view into industry. In hockey, one would say this showcase was a hat trick of job, workforce and economic development.”

People’s Choice award winners
The winner of the People’s Choice award was FreeRange Communications (http://freerangeinc.com).

FreeNews is an RSS news- and blog-focused application made for mobile phones. Using RSS technology, users receive customized lists of news headlines and article summaries. The service constantly checks for new information, downloading it and preparing to send it to users’ phones as soon as they press “update.” FreeNews is unique from other services in many ways. It is not a WAP browser, so it allows for fast downloads of customized feeds. Users can get the full story on their phones, completely through the FreeNews network. FreeNews is a Java-based application. FreeRange Communications shipped its first product in May 2005.

The second place winner was Saltire Software (www.saltire.com).

Saltire Software is a math software development studio. We work with clients throughout the product cycle to build and maintain math-heavy products. Occasionally we market such a product ourselves. Saltire’s Innovative Math software is embedded in the Casio ClassPad calculator, which allows for the integration of geometric and algebraic representations. Saltire released its first product in 2003.

Academia and industry making connections
By all accounts, the Showcase met its goals the first time out. It was designed as a format that would encourage communication between academia and industry, forming ongoing bonds to strengthen the Oregon software industry long term. In addition, the Showcase highlighted a range of exciting new products and companies developing within Oregon.

According to John Tortorici, “The connection between academia and industry has to do with workforce development. This kind of seamless bond can bring academic ideas and research projects to industry that might not happen otherwise without the dedication of academia. Conversely, it opens doors for students at all levels of education to connect with and get jobs in industry. So, it’s a double edge sword, if you will.”

About the author
Gerrie Power worked at Intel Corporation in marketing, editing, and writing and has an M.A. in professional writing from Carnegie Mellon University. She is based in Portland, OR.