A week at VT KnowledgeWorks

The big day

2011-08-31T15:49:00.004-05:00

We woke up early to check out and to be ready for this long day.

The competition started with the first presentation : Kera10. So, let's present the teams :

bio-science diagnostic

A simple diagnostic test for the fast and efficient diagnosis of specific tumors. Based on the concept of the home pregnancy test, the idea is easily adapatable towards other diseases.

INKeyboard

This is an innovative technology-based keyboard. The new product innovates the keyboard experience by introducing e-ink buttons, which allows for more flexibility, fulfilling a widespread need among computer users.

Kimeltu

Kimeltu is a web platform which allows educators to measure students performance and to monitor their progress by taking easily generated tests. It’s a freemium service where any person can create tests to be taken by a limited amount of students by choosing questions from a “public question bank” or by adding their own questions to the bank. Institutions can pay to generate their own, private question bank and to have access to detailed analysis of their students’ progress with easy-to-understand statistics. It also helps to validate and measure questions' difficulty, guaranteeing high quality tests. In the future, it will become an e-market where institutions can sell or share their question banks with others.

Kera10

Kera10 is the cosmetics arm of bio-materials regenerative company KN LLC. Kera10 has exclusive access to the proprietary biomedical grade keratin. Its parent company, KN LLC, manufactures and protects with 26 patents. Kera10 has demonstrated that this purified keratin performs better than the crude industry norms, and will provide innovative solutions to meet the ever changing demand for new products in numerous multi-billion dollar cosmetic industries.

Lujure

Lujure provides an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop platform that empowers everyone to easily create stunning Facebook fan pages. Our platform allows folks to grow their brands by creating fan pages that help with engaging their fans. We are constantly trying to stay ahead of our competition and it is important to us that we provide the best and most reliable fan page creation service.

OOHLALA Mobile

OOHLALA is a mobile application that helps college students navigate their campus life, and provides a platform to student unions, and services to engage with students.

We are the 3rd scheduled presentation. We are quite nervous but we have rehearsed a lot and are ready to do this. Actually, we did a great job, but respond to question is a little more difficult and our answers are less precise.

The competition continues and we assist the other presentations. Every team has done a really really good job. The VT team did show us what really looks like a american presentation/show ! Everybody can win...

In the evening, we had a ceremony to announce the winners. Everybody was there : teams, hosts families, organizers, jury...

And finally, th winners are :

Kimeltu ($25 000), Bio-science diagnostic ($5 000) and OOHLALA Mobile ($5 000).

We all went then to the German Club, a big fraternity of VT to get the pressure down.

3rd day at Virginia Tech

2011-08-31T13:15:00.001-05:00

Another day, the same trip… This day started with high emotions. When preparing the bags, we ranged our suits hoping to be prepared for the big day.

“Did I learn my speech by heart?” That’s what every one asked himself when we took the WIFI-equipped bus to Roanoke. After leaving our luggages in the hotel, we went to the Taubman Museum of Art just next to the hotel. A volunteer showed us the museum. Very interesting tour I have to say! Some artworks had nice stories. That was what captivated us the most.

The tour was followed by a quick launch in the sunny yard of Norah’s Café outside the Museum. We joined the hotel after that to sit in for Jim Flowers’ presentation. The main topic was, of course, entrepreneurship. We got many tips about how to succeed in a start-up. The conference was illustrated by a lot of examples showing the keys of the success.

We checked in the hotel by 4:00 pm. Well, this day especially, most of the teams had chosen to get to know more about the others. You could see many groups of different teams wandering together in the hotel or having diner together. Speaking of diner, it was an incredible prestigious reception, quite formal. The mayor of Roanoke and some other personalities attended it. A group of music and a group of dancing were playing during the buffet while we were talking to some people about our project. It was a pretty nice moment before joining our rooms in order to rehearse, the eve of the event.

In fact, we were waiting for the demo to be sent to us, so we can illustrate our presentation with a concrete application. Once we received it, we put all the slides together. We spent a long time rehearsing and trying to refine, as much as we could, our 10 minutes presentation. We couldn’t sleep without making sure that no detail was neglected.

To wrap up this long day, we went to bed for few hours before the big day…

The WePulse Team

2nd day at VT

2011-08-30T18:26:00.003-05:00

The second day… The wake up was a bit earlier. We had to get ready to our first presentation in front of our host company: “Adaptative Technology Inc”. Our host families drove us to their headquarter at 9:00. 5 persons cheerfully welcomed us. We recognized 3 of them. They shared our table yesterday in launch. We timidly started our presentation. Some parts were missing. But, it was a first real attempt of it. Then we exchanged some points with “our dear company”. Every one of them tried to improve some points. Well, we hadn’t got to change the thread of our presentation but we got to highlight the points that we had neglected. The conversation was very fruitful. Our second attempt to present was obviously better. At 11:30, our coaching company’s member invited us to a Mexican restaurant in Christiansburg. There, we talked more about Adaptative Technology Inc when eating a very tasteful meal. Our meeting with Adaptative Technology Inc ended there. Well, it is an opportunity to thank them through these words.

The afternoon seemed to be very entertaining. It was a nice discovery of a huge campus with outstanding sports facilities worthy of a professional club. The biggest surprise was a 65 000 places football stadium: The Lane Stadium. We had a detailed presentation of it before going for a short tour in downtown.

Meanwhile, an earthquake hit Blacksburg and other places. All the media talked about it, but strangely we just didn’t feel it.

The day ended with a very lovely dinner with our host families. It was another opportunity to get to know more each other. Then, we just went to sleep. It was a quite a tough day before leaving to Roanoke the next day.

The WePulse Team

First day in Virginia Tech, the contest looks hard!

2011-08-24T08:24:00.008-05:00

We landed on Sunday at Roanoke airport, then we met our host families. We spent the evening with them, hoping to be in a good shape for the week that we had been looking forward for months.

On the Monday, at 11:00 AM, Jim Flowers welcomed us and explains the program of the week. He also showed us the amazing prize of the Challenge and the big 25 000$ cheque reserved for the winning team!

We met the other teams, from US, Canada, England, Chile, Austria and Italy that quickly presented their speech elevator. All the projects are original and the contest looks difficult.

We also met our host company, Adaptive Technologies Inc that develops intelligible communications systems and hearing protection. We shared our lunch with five people from their staff and they enjoy our project !

On the afternoon, Jim Flowers explained us what was expected by the judges, and we worked the whole afternoon.

For the dinner, we went to a restaurant with all the teams and the host families. We met Artbeating members who are spending some months in Virginia Tech. An acapella chorale band came to sing several amazing songs.

We went back at home, wainting for the next day, and the approaching contest...

New summer, new blogger

2011-08-21T15:31:00.001-05:00

Hi everybody !

Finally, after a great competition, it is WePulse (formerly impulse) who won the special prize of the 2011 Entrepreneurial Project Challenge and succeed to Artbeating and MulteeGaming. As well, we would like to thank all the partners and organizers of this great adventure.

It is now time for us – WePulse – (and we are glad to do it) to resume control of this blog. We hope we will make you live this week at Virginia Tech as if you were here with us.

We will present our project there on Thursday and for those who don’t know it, here is a little summary :

With We Pulse you can buy tickets for a festival or cultural event, or make donation for charitable organizations from your Smartphone, in front of an ad in the metro or in a newspaper and in just 2 steps. Scan the QR Code on the advertisement and We Pulse will provide you with information on the product and lets you buy it! Thanks to We Pulse, shopping has never been so easy...and advertising has never been that effective!

You can follow us on twitter !

The WePulse Team

Qui sera lauréat du Challenge Projets d'Entreprendre 2011 ?

2011-03-15T13:09:00.029-05:00

Bonjour à tous,

Nous profitons de la fin du 12ème Challenge Projets d'Entreprendre - qui s'est déroulé du 4 au 11 mars 2011 sur le campus de Telecom Sudparis & Telecom Ecole de Management - pour poster un dernier article avant de passer le flambeau à l'équipe qui sera victorieuse le 26 juin prochain.

Le CPE 2011 s'est donc déroulé la semaine dernière et a vu l'émergence de nombreux projets innovants et orientés NTIC (deux critères importants dans la sélection des meilleurs projets). Sur les 79 équipes présentes au début de la compétition, 16 ont été finalistes et ont passé la difficile épreuve de l'oral, devant un jury d'experts avisés (nous félicitons d'ailleurs toutes les équipes pour leur esprit d'innovation et les encourageons à poursuivre cette extraordinaire aventure qu'est l'entrepreneuriat !).

Au final, 4 projets ont été récompensés et ont remporté la somme de 1500€ ! Ces 4 projets sont les suivants :

- Auticiel : Editeur de logiciels et d'applications à destination des personnes autistes et de leur entourage,

- Grinetis : Plateforme d'échange autour du marché des déchets agricoles entre les producteurs, les recycleurs (sociétés de transformation) et les industriels,

- BeTrend : Solution de simulation sur Internet de son habitat en 3D et d'achat en ligne de mobiliers et de produits de décoration adaptés,

- Impulse : Application de M-commerce d'achat de billetterie utilisant la technologie des codes-barres 2D (QR Code).

La bataille sera donc rude dans la course à la victoire, car seul l'une d'entre elles pourra remporter le prix spécial et ainsi partir une semaine à Virginia Tech pour participer au Global Concept Challenge 2011 et tenter de remporter 25000 $ !

Mais attention, ça n'est pas tout ! L'équipe qui sera la grande gagnante du CPE 2011, aura, de plus, l'(immense) honneur de reprendre ce blog afin de raconter ses aventures américaines !

Mais ne vous inquiétez pas, vous pourrez toujours continuer à suivre Artbeating en allant sur notre blog ou sur artbeating.com ! (ouf!)

Alors bonne chance et que la meilleure équipe gagne !

L'équipe Artbeating.

Thank You

2010-09-07T08:21:00.004-05:00

Here we are : the end of this amazing week!

We would like to thank the whole organization of this first Global Student Challenge and especially Lindsey Eversole and Jim Flowers. We really hope and believe that this event will grow and be one of the best global entrepreuneurship competition. This week wouldn't has been possible without our schools TELECOM SudParis and TELECOM Ecole de Management, the Challenge Projet d'Entreprendre partners and the incubator administration : Sebastien Cauwet, Augustin Radu and Sandrine De Groot.

Special thank to our host company Modea - where people have been very helpful for our project - and to our very nice host families Anne, Jane, Sharon, Richard and Vinny.

Finally, thank YOU readers that have followed us on this blog and see you soon on Artbeating.com ;)

The Artbeating team.

Friday, September 3rd : last day in Virginia Tech

2010-09-06T11:30:00.010-05:00

On friday, we spent the morning shadowing Modea again. This time, we met David, the CEO who gave us a lot of helpful advices about entrepreneurship.

In the afternoon, we went to the New River Valley Mall with VT students. Then we went to Floyd where people play and listen bluegrass music every friday night. Finally we spent the rest of the night at the manor of The German Club, a fraternity where the most gentle and kind people of VT are gathered :P.

Then, we had to come back to our host family to pack our stuff...

See you in France or in Blacksburg next summer (maybe ;-) )!

The Artbeating team.

Wednesday & Thursday, September 1st & 2nd : The Global Student Business Challenge

2010-09-05T12:51:00.008-05:00

These last days were so busy that we couldn't manage to write an article before today!

In fact, on wednesday, we went to the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center early in the morning. This hotel is very luxurious and impressive! In one of its conference room, Jim Flowers talked about entrepreneurship and his concept of "Moxie" : an entrepreneur never give up! After this long but interesting speech, we went to the NCTC Fall Gala (the local biggest gala about new technology) and practiced pitching for the challenge before going to bed.

On thursday morning, after a short night, we made our presentation in front of the challenge jury, the other participants and some other people. Just after the buffet lunch, the projects Ecosy (the Irish team), T2T (the English team) and Easycheck (the Israeli team) were awarded. Even though we didn't win, we had very good feedback by many people.

After this friendly competition, we went together to the Wikiteria Café in order to celebrate the end of the challenge.

See you soon,

The Artbeating team.

Tuesday, August 31th : Second day in VT

2010-08-31T20:51:00.003-05:00

QuaterBack Matthew at the bookstore!

Hey Hokies!

Today, we spent the whole morning with our host company (Modea). We actually split into two groups : one went with the design team and the second with the development team. If you have some time, you should check their website and see how creative their digital solutions are.

Then, after the lunch, VT students took us on a tour of their huge campus with the other participants of the challenge. Thus, we were able to see the main buildings gathered around the Drillfield, a huge lawn (around 1 mile long) in the center of the campus.

We also went on a shopping trip downtown and especially in bookstores, kind of shops where you can buy almost anything linked to Virgnia Tech or the Hokies (local sports teams), even sofas or paving stones !

Finally, we had a pizza party at the Squires Student Center, a building where all student organizations or clubs have their own room.

Tomorrow is a special day : we will go to Roanoke (1 hour drive from Blacksburg) very early to participate in the Global Student Business Concept Challenge. Things are getting serious!

See you soon,

The Artbeating team.

Monday, August 29th : First day in Virginia Tech

2010-08-30T20:36:00.013-05:00

Welcome back everybody!

After long flights from all over the world (well... Paris, Miami and Montreal), we finally arrived in Blacksburg, Virginia on Sunday and met our host families.

Romain and Mathieu are hosted by Vinny and Jane Argentina, Perrine by Richard Hammer and Catherine Fae, Hugo by Sharon Day, and Martin and Charles-Eric by Iain and Anne Clelland.

Today, after recovering from the jet lag, we went to Virginia Tech to have a welcome buffet lunch with the organizers of the challenge (Joe Meredith, Jim Flowers, Lindsey Eversole) and our host company, Modea, which is a growing digital services agency.

Then, we spent the afternoon practicing our speech for the challenge and attending to VTKW member companies presentations. During these lectures, we learnt many things about entrepreneurship and how to start a business here in the USA.

For the dinner, we were invited with our host families by the VT Office of Outreach and International Affairs represented by John Dooley at The Inn, a hotel and conference center. It was a very formal dinner : for instance, we were impressed by students of VT who marched carrying the flags of every teams country. We had a great evening and enjoyed our meal together. We also saw the trophy ;-).

See you soon,

The Artbeating team.

The VTKWGSBCC

2010-08-10T08:25:00.023-05:00

From August 29 to September 4, Artbeating will fully experience the VTKWGSBCC, also known as VT KnowledgeWorks Global Student Business Challenge Concept, in Blacksburg and Roanoke, Virginia.

What is the Global Challenge ?

It is the first international student business concept competition with student teams from all over the world ! To date, teams from England, Northern Ireland, Finland, France, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Uruguay and USA which have already won a significant entrepreneurial competition in their respective country are going to compete for this international entrepreneurial challenge to win a $25,000 grand prize !

The contest finals will consist in a 10 minutes stand-up presentation followed by 10 minutes of questions/answers in front of a panel of judges and a large audience.

Above all, the competition finals are part of student entrepreneurship week in Virginia, where we will establish a global network, spend time with successful entrepreneurs and local families.

What is our business concept ?

Artbeating.com is an online marketplace which promotes students’ skills and creativity in communication, product, fashion and interior design as well as CGI animation. Brands can submit their brief to the community through a rewarding contest.
It enables not only them to get a wide range of creative solutions but also the students to get worthy references to start their career. Artbeating also provides information and various collaborative tools in order to enhance their opportunity to win and thus become essential to their day-to-day artist life.

Follow our departure to VT in the next post ;)

The Artbeating team.

Once upon a time...

2010-08-10T07:47:00.026-05:00

The Artbeating team (Charles-Eric, Romain, Perrine, Hugo, Mathieu and Martin)
at the “11th Entrepreneurial Project Challenge” winning ceremony of Telecom SudParis & Telecom Business School.

The Entrepreneurial Project Challenge has been organized every year since 1999 in our schools, Telecom SudParis and Telecom Business School and took place this year from April 16 to April 22. During this week, 50 student teams were in competition to think and build up a business plan for their start-up concept.

We were selected with 3 other teams for the final round of the competition on June 18, hosted by Ms Jego-Laveissière, CEO of Orange Labs. Among the audience of our stand-up presentation were Sebastien Cauwet, Augustin Radu and Sandrine De Groot from the Business Incubator, the administration of our schools and the Challenge partners :

Société Générale
Orange
SFR
Bouygues Telecom
Telindus
Communauté d'Agglomération Evry Centre Essone
ENSIIE
Linagora
Telecom & Management Alumni
Virginia Tech KnowledgeWorks !

We finally won the 1^st prize, and thus, one week of leisure, business relationship and celebration of student entrepreneurship at VT KnowledgeWorks in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Keep in touch !

The Artbeating team.

One blog, two stories

2010-08-10T07:35:00.027-05:00

Hello everybody !

Welcome back to the official blog relating the Annual VT KnowledgeWorks International Week.

Last year, the winning team of the 2009 Entrepreneurial Project Challenge, MulteeGaming, created this blog to let you follow them during their amazing week in Blacksburg, VA.

The time has come for us - Artbeating – to follow their lead and share with you this great experience we’ll be living during our trip in Virginia Tech, and particularly for our participation to the first VT KnowledgeWorks Global Student Business Concept Challenge (we'll talk about it later).

Enjoy the reading,

The Artbeating team.

Welcome on board !

2009-09-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

Hey there !

Welcome to the official blog relating the First Annual VT KnowledgeWorks International Week.

Discover or rediscover the main moments of the amazing trip in Virginia Tech by 5 French Entrepreneur students.

Have a good read,

The MulteeGaming team.

Everything started off with ...

2009-09-15T08:18:00.009-05:00

The winning ceremony of the 10th Entrepreneurial Challenge

of Telecom & Management SudParis ran by Sebastien Cauwet, director of the Incubator of the school

... the Annual Entrepreneurial Project Challenge organized in our schools, Telecom SudParis and Telecom Business School, which took place at the end of March. Each team composed by engineers and managers had to make a business model of a future company in a week. Four teams, included MulteeGaming, were selected at the end of the week for the finale competition at Bercy in Paris, with Mme Christine Lagarde, the French Minister for the Economy, Industry, and Employment.

Our MulteeGaming Team finally won the 1rst Prize of the Challenge, a week of leisure and learning at the VT KnowledgeWorks in Blacksburg, VA. Let's read more details about our week below.

The MulteeGaming Team.

Departure for Virginia Tech, USA !

2009-09-13T10:00:00.003-05:00

From left to right : Augustin, the business manager of the incubator of our school, Florent, CEO of MulteeGaming, Damien, VP Finance and Strategy, Audrey, VP Business Development, Vincent, COO, and Mathieu, VP Engineering.

After 10 hours flying and a jet line of 6 hours, we finally arrived at the Roanoke Airport at 8:30 pm. Jim Flowers, the VT KnowledgeWorks's director, picked us up and drove us to the incubator of Virginia Tech.
Each of us was waiting by a host family living in the area of Blacksburg and went back to family's home for a good night !

Tuesday, September 8th : 1st day at VT !

2009-09-12T10:00:00.001-05:00

Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

After a long night in our families, we went back to the VT Knowledgwork and enjoyed a visit of the offices and a lunch with our host companies !

Audrey met Bill from Rackspace, Damien met Kamzan from Click and Pledge, Florent met David from NewCity, Mathieu met John and Helen from Tele-Works and Vincent met David from Modea.

We spent the afternoon in the host companies' offices. Each of us learnt a lot of interesting things about entrepreunership and how to manage a company as well as technical points about Websites.

For the dinner, we were invited with our host families by Outreach, the International Affairs of Virginia Tech at the Old Guard Room at The Inn. We had a very good evening together with Joe Meredith, the President of the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center and John Dooley, the Vice President of Outreach.

Wednesday, September 9th : 2nd day at VT !

2009-09-11T10:00:00.001-05:00

The MulteeGaming Team in their cabin

After a long night in our host families, we continued shadowing our company leaders and employees all the morning. At noon, we went back to school and met American students learning French during a course about Dreams.

Claire, one of the American students, and Stephanie, a French friend of us who worked for her business Ghaya all the summer, stayed with us for lunch at the Moe's, a Mexican food restaurant ! We enjoyed a good meal and were picked up by Jim, his wife Brigitte, and Lindsey, the Member Services Manager of the VT KnowledgeWorks.

Thursday, September 10th : 3rd day at VT ! Mountain Lake !

2009-09-10T10:00:00.001-05:00

From left to right : Jim, Lindsey and Florent.

After a MulteeGaming Poker night, we woke up early to have breakfast and continue the curriculum. We began with reflexions our future life, our future projects and how we see MulteeGaming in a few years ... Thanks to the help of Jim, Sebastien and Augustin, we worked all day on the MulteeGaming's elevator speeches in front of investors as well as customers or partners. Andy, an other young entrepreuner, was there with to learn more about the creation of a start-up. His business is recreating biological cells to test vaccines, if we understood well !

We were very pleased with a break for an aperitif and a good dinner ! At 8 pm, we had an accounting course in which Vincent fall asleep ;) before going to bed ! The most courageous, Damien, Mathieu and Audrey, walked down to the hotel, the place of the Dirty Dancing film, for a short visit.

Friday, September 11th : 4th day at VT ! Nature Hike and Students' Parties !

2009-09-09T10:00:00.002-05:00

From left to right : Jim, Sebastien, Augustin, Damien, Florent, Audrey, Brigitte, Mathieu and Vincent.

When we woke up that morning, the weather had turned from clouds to a sunny day with blue sky ! We had a short ride around the lake and the hotel before the last part of the curriculum. Jim asked us to make a commitment about the Business, it was not easy for anyone to find something possible and measurable within a given time, but we all answered the request.

After lunch, we enjoyed a 3 miles nature hike in the middle of wonderful landscapes !

We went back to Blacksburg at the end of the afternoon to get ready for evening parties ! Each of us were assigned to VT students ! We were received at first in the house of a VT teacher at the top of a hill, then we went to student parties downtown. Great night for all of us !

Saturday, September 12th : 5th day at VT! The Football Game!

2009-09-08T10:00:00.004-05:00

The Hokies vs Marshall, first home Football Match of the season!
52-10 for the Hokies!!

Let's go Hokies!

That was the shouting of every fan of the Football Virginia Tech Team : The Hokies!

We started with the Alumni Tailgate party in which we were invited and continue with another one, where people parked their cars on the grass, trunks opened and barbecue turned on! So many people all around the VT stadium already 5 hours before the beginning of the Football Match pitting The Hokies against Marshall!

Sébastien, Augustin, Jim, Joe, Stephanie and the MulteeGaming Team, all of us were invited in the presidential box to watch the Match! Very impressive place! We met the Mayor of Blacksburg and the Mayor of Roanoke as well as the President of Virginia Tech, Dr Charles W. Steger.

We enjoyed a lot the match : The players' entrance, the flyover, the game. Amazing & astonished !

Finally, the Hokies won 52 to 10 against Marshall, perfect!

We did some shoppings at the end of the afternoon and went back to the town for our last evening with VT students!

Sunday, September 13th : 6th day at VT ! sniff, it's nearly the end ...

2009-09-07T10:00:00.001-05:00

Nice evening with our hosts, what a pleasure to meet all of you ...

We got together at noon for a lunch at our favorite restaurant : The Moe's !

Then, we walked to the Smithfield Plantation for an visit of the old house. We went back at 3 pm in host families in order to get ready for the dinner with host families at Jim's house. It was a delightful evening with our hosts and are looking forward to come back next summer !

Monday, 14th September : last day at VT !

2009-09-06T10:00:00.002-05:00

Time for leasure, time for work and time to return home and MulteeGaming offices ...

We spent our last morning in host companies and came back for lunch at the VT KnowledgeWorks.

At 1 pm, it was time to say goodbye and Jim drove us to the airport of Roanoke.

What a wonderful trip, so many kind people encountered ...

Un grand Merci ...

2009-09-05T10:00:00.001-05:00

We would like to thank the whole organization of the Challenge Projets d'Entreprendre, our two schools, Telecom SudParis and Telecom Business School, the Incubator of Telecom SudParis as well as the VT KnowledgeWorks and our host families which welcomed us marvelously. A special thank to generous host companies and VT sponsors.

We had a fantastic time at Virginia Tech and are very pleased to be back in Blacksburg next summer !

The Team MulteeGaming