telling Arkansas' historic entrepreneurial story at UP Global Summit

A few weeks ago, Mike Steely and I attended the annual UP Global / Startup America Summit in Iowa City, IA. It was a great opportunity to meet other champions from around the country and to share the story of Arkansas' historic entrepreneurial successes and modern achievements.  

We shared the progress Arkansas has seen in the last few years and about the many things to come.  

http://blog.up.co/2013/10/28/away-go-america-summit/ 

weekends full of startup activity in Arkansas

Last weekend we all had a blast at the first Startup Weekend in Little Rock, Arkansas. This weekend there was another awesome event in Fayetteville - a first of its kind hackathon for Arkansas and the Arkansas Academy of Computing held its annual meeting at the University of Arkansas. 

​We need more weekends like this that go in-depth with tech stacks and provide ample opportunity to not only meet folks but to really get to know them. Its how you solve big problems, find a great co-founder or team members and start awesome startups. 

​@ttagg co-founder Kenny Cason demos his language translation tool to David Moody.

​@ttagg co-founder Kenny Cason demos his language translation tool to David Moody.

​Startup Arkansas Champion and ABC Financial Senior Architect Luke Coleman speaks to the Arkansas Academy of Computing on new initiates taking place in K-12, college and professional training for developers. 

​Startup Arkansas Champion and ABC Financial Senior Architect Luke Coleman speaks to the Arkansas Academy of Computing on new initiates taking place in K-12, college and professional training for developers. 

Little Rock Startup Weekend, represented well

​I am very impressed with the attendance, leadership, quality, talent and diversity of the teams who entered the Little Rock Startup Weekend last weekend which was held at the Clinton School of Public Service. There were nearly 100 folks. The ideas were cool-things that I would see in the valley, Austin or in any of the major startup hubs. @LittleRockSW proves that startups can happen anywhere. 

Read press articles and see photos and videos at: StartupArkansas.com​

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@Travvell competes in @ATT & @AmericanAir #atthack #newAmerican #SXSWi hackathon

Over the last weekend the @Travvell team participated in the @AmericanAir and @ATT hackathon at SXSWi in Austin, Tx. We had a blast and built an iPhone and iPad app with a completely scalable mySQL/Java App backend using Spring on Amazon's Cloud. While we didn't win-we had a blast, got access to AT&T and American Airline's APIs and built a production-ready product that can scale to millions of concurrent users. We're all looking forward to the next one.​

The product we developed is called NearlyThere. Its a mobile app that allows you to transmit your GPS location to the Gate & Flight Crew. Its perfect for when you're running to the Gate to catch a connecting flight and you want to let the staff know you're NearlyThere. Of course the Flight Crew may not hold the door for you, but then again - they might if they knew how close you were. ​

We had a great time at the event and meeting the AT&T and American Airlines Developer teams, as well as, the many other API providers and partners who were there.​

http://developerboards.att.lithium.com/t5/AT-T-Developer-Program-Blogs/AT-amp-T-Mobile-App-Hackathon-SXSW-2013-Recap/ba-p/34414