BMIC

More Updates

So let’s just get right to it:

Students that need Visas

If have still not received your Visa letter and are not in a current discussion between GSMA and BMIC, contact shino@bmic.org

Travel Stipends

Be aware that we will be awarding one check, in full, to each team.  Please work out the reimbursement distribution amongst your fellow teammates.  Bring your receipts or you can email them to files@bmic.org.  We need these for potential non-profit 501(c)(3) auditing by the US Internal Revenue Service.

Presentation Materials

We are relaxing any previous submission deadlines.  We recognize that many of you are still revising presentations and demos.  I predict you will have more edits after boot camp, too!  Make sure that your final presentation is with BMIC by the end of dinner Wednesday night.  Due to tight time constraints, we require all competition material be on a USB drive.  We ask that all demos on simulators be pre-recorded and transferable.  No executive summary is required, but your pitch should represent your business plan in some visual way.

Files, files, files!

There is a correction is the email address.  Use file@bmic.org if you are sending any attachments.  This includes, presentations, expense receipts, photos, mini-biographies.

Housing Arrangements

Arrangements have already been made at Hostel Lenin.  All students that have RSVP’d directly with Shino Jomoto are booked from Tuesday check-in to Friday check-out.  If you plan on arriving before or are staying after Friday, you must arrange your own accommodations.  I have made reservations for those stu$5dents that are intending to have additional team members attend.  If you have more than two students that require housing accommodations, those additional students are responsible for payment.  However, again, reservations have been made to include you.  If your stipend has room to include this expense, then please take that opportunity!  Otherwise, checks must be made out to the “Berkeley Mobile International Collaborative” for the amount of $57USD/additional student.  Official reservation documentation can be found here.

Boot Camp, Wednesday February 29

Visa Students

• You should receive your Visa letters from GSMA before the end of week *if* you have registered for your event pass.  You must register for Mobile Congress to initiate the process.
• I have sent you all as much info on our accommodations as I can to date.  I will send you the official receipt as soon as I get it which should be by tomorrow morning PST.  In the meantime, the supporting documentation and wire confirmation is the best I can do.
• I have sent you an invitation, as well, on behalf of BMIC.  If you need an ink signed copy, please contact me directly.
• If you are unsure about receiving a visa in time for the competition, you must purchase refundable plane tickets.  You will still be able to compete remotely via recorded video.

Housing

• Housing has been booked at Hotel Lenin
• Directions from the Hostel to Mobile World Congres
• Check in: Tuesday afternoon, 2/28
• World Check out: Friday morning, 3/2
• We are covering three nights for 2 students from each team.  However, I have booked more beds in consideration of teams that want to bring additional teams members because we want you housed at the same location.
• If you are bringing more than three, please send me a follow up email just so that I’m sure that I have an accurate headcount.  Additional members and faculty are responsible for all accommodations; however, BMIC has prepaid the entire projected headcount in order to minimize costs.  I can talk to those teams individually about payment and expenses.  
• If you are arriving earlier than Tuesday or leaving later than Friday, you must arrange your own housing accommodations and are at liberty to book anywhere, but it would serve you to conveniently stay at Hostel Lenin, so their contact info can be found at the link above.

Travel Stipend FAQs

I need the money now.  Can you send the stipend now? 

• If you absolutely need the money in order to make travel arrangements, contact info@bmic.  There are a few emails I have not responded back to.  I appreciate your patience.  Please resend to the info@bmic alias and we will work with those teams with immediate financial need.

I don’t need the money now, so when will I receive reimbursement?

• BMIC will award you with your check in full at the event.
• You must bring or email me your travel receipts in order to receive your stipend.  

If we find a cheaper means a traveling to Barcelona, can we use the leftover funds to bring along additional team members or pay for hostel accommodations for nights before Tuesday and/or after Friday?

• Yes!  We encourage you to maximize your stipend if it means you can cover any additional expenses related to the competition.  While we wish to cover everything and for all team mates, we don’t have the funds to make it happen this year.  Please save all receipts to hand in during reimbursement exchange.

Are we responsible for our meals?

• BMIC will cover dinner Wednesday night at the meet and greet banquet and pre-competition gathering.  All other meals and snacks must be covered by all individuals unless covered by your stipend.

Event Passes

• You should have all received an invitation to register with the GSMA if you filled out my pre-reg form.  If you have faculty members or additional team mates that are planning to attend, they must also fill out the form so that I can arrange to have event badges set aside for them

Student Photos, Bios and Resumes

• Before February 20th, I need a photo of you, a brief (100 word) student bio and a team photo.  These will be posted up on BMIC.org.
• Resume submissions are optional.  Our sponsors past, present and future are deeply interested in the pool of talent from our competitions.  There is no deadline and it is not mandatory.  
• All submissions of any attachment should be emailed to files@bmic.org.  This includes expense receipts, student pictures, bios, presentation materials, videos.  If any attachments are too big, let me know.  You can also cc: info@bmic.org if you need me to see the attachment as well.

Submitting presentation materials 

• Final presentations will be required on one USB Drive on the morning of the competition.  I realize that many of you are still working on your pitch/slide decks and demo videos.  This is okay.  One the week of February 20th, I will ask that you submit your most up to date presentation slides, videos or screen shots to files@bmic.org.  Rest assured, you will be able to provide Helen or another BMIC staff member with an updated version.  This is just for internal and sponsor review.  
• If you have not done so, please also upload your materials to your “doc” page within your university’s team page on BMIC.org.

6 Weeks Left Before Barcelona!

BMIC’s 2nd annual university mobile challenge is fast approaching.  Thanks to all of those that have registered to compete in this year’s competition.  We are anticipating as many as 15 to 20 finalists. On February 7, BMIC will announce those teams that are qualified to compete at Mobile World Congress. In the meantime, while you wait…

So What’s Next?

Here are a few good things to check up on while you wait:

• Make sure your school is listed on our University Roster and that you are able to join your school group page.  Under the ‘documents tab’ upload your preliminary executive summary and your pitch demos and presentations.  Email shino@bmic.org if you are running into issues.
• Make sure your passports are valid!
• Not sure if you need a Visa to enter Barcelona?  Check here.  We will work with GSMA to get you a visa supporting letter.  Even though we have not announced finalists, contact shino@bmic.org if you require a supporting letter.

We hope that you all like the new BMIC web site.  With it’s social networking and communication tools, we wanted to put the tools into the hands of students, faculty, and sponsors to support the collaboration and communication needs of  your teams.   Our focus was to get the new site out by the fall term and we’re thrilled that we made it with time to spare. But we also want to continue to improve it; so let us know your thoughts by sending me a quick note @paul using the site and I’ll see what we can do.

That said, I wanted you to know that we take the Mobile part of BMIC very seriously.  I think that BMIC would look pretty foolish if our web site did not work on mobile phones and tablets.  Well, I have good news for you — it does!

Read the rest of this entry →

We’re so excited about the new BMIC web site because it speaks to the heart of BMIC – a community! The new site is a social networking site that allows every member of the BMIC community to communicate with each other.  It helps faculty to share ideas around the globe.  It helps sponsors to reach out and help young entrepreneurs in building their dreams.  Hopefully, you’ll find ways to extract value from it that we’ve not envision!

When you create an account on the new site, you’ll discover exciting capabilities:

• Personal Page – You have a profile that you can use to tell everyone about you, your background, and your aspirations (and you control what is published and to whom) and you can post documents, photos, and videos that might be of interest to others
• Groups – you to show your organizational relationships
• Universities – there is a group for each University that we’re working with
• Teams – each student team will have a group in their own
• Sponsors – there’s a group for each sponsor
• BMIC Alumni – if you’ve participated in a BMIC event in the past – this group will help you keep in contact with the others that you met at the event
• BMIC Staff – for those that are working on making BMIC happen
• Groupware – and we’ve also created pages that allow the groups to share information amongst themselves
• Friends – you can create links between yourself and others on the BMIC site
• Activity Streams – when you do something on the site or within the group, it is posted on the activity stream associated with you or the account
• and much more

We hope you find this new capability not only cool but useful.  So jump in, start using the new site, and let us know how we can improve it.

Paul

Microsoft, Google, Sun, Dell, Facebook, Yahoo, Apple, Cisco, HP…

What do these companies have in common? Beyond market and technology leadership and a legacy of achievement – college students founded all of these companies.

People who started working on their ideas in their dorm rooms founded almost every great technology company. (There are many notable exceptions to this rule, particularly in enterprise software. There are also a large number of successful companies where college students formed large parts of the founding team – including Zynga, Netscape, and Silicon Graphics.)

But why have these dominant positions in technologies like search, web portals, personal computers, operating systems, and so many other areas been taken by relatively inexperienced college students, instead of the many larger technology companies steered by experienced executives?

While I certainly don’t know (and the answer is at least a little bit unknowable), I have some ideas:

-The Incredible Role of Iteration in Technology Startups – When we dig into the history of each of these companies, we find they each went down a variety of dead-ends, and had several false starts. As eminent venture capitalist and entrepreneur Marc Andreessen tells us, most startups that were successful were not successful by executing their first idea. (Marc talks a little about what they did at LoudCloud before he talks about iteration.)

I think college students are less afraid to make mistakes – and fundamentally less afraid to say “oh, this isn’t working – let’s try something else” then traditional executives. College students will experiment – and this is what leads to great companies.

Bringing Together Students From Different Disciplines – In The Medici Effect, Stanford Professor Franz Johansson talks about how truly innovative ideas often come from the intersection of disciplines. At large companies, people become true experts in micro-scopic areas, but college students study a large variety of different disciplines, and hang out with a true variety of people.

Steve Jobs has talked about the impact of his calligraphy class on the ultimate typography of the Macintosh – what seemed to be random, unrelated knowledge picked up by dropping in during a course reappeared years later, as a groundbreaking feature in a truly new device.

On Calligraphy Class:“None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.”

The Beginner’s Mind

“In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind, there are few.” – Suzuki Roshi, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Traditionally, computer systems have been difficult to deal with, staffed by a curmudgeonly technological priesthood and used for things like accounting. If you’ve worked with computers in an enterprise environment (especially before the current era of IT), you’ve probably thought of them as something less than delightful and personally transformative.

As I look at the companies that have made information technology smaller, more ubiquitous, and more social, I see college students behind all of them. In the pursuit of making technology friendlier, lack of preconceptions is a virtue – especially when later combined with experienced executives.

How BMIC Helps

At the Berkeley Mobile International Collaborative, we believe that college students can drive technology innovation. The mobile internet is a new area with unique potential – the most ubiquitous, internet connected consumer device, at the locus of location, social networks, and payment. The mobile opportunity is bigger than we’ve ever guessed – more than 5 billion (that’s billion with a B) devices will be coming online soon.

If you’re a student and you want to learn more about how you can be part of the next wave of technology innovation, check out our ‘for students’ section. If you’re a faculty member looking to get your students involved in mobile innovation and plug into a network of support from industry, trade organizations, and non-profits, please reach out to us and we’ll see how we can help. And if you work for a player in the mobile space, you can tap into a network of college students innovating by becoming a BMIC sponsor.

P.S. – College students also start excellent non-technology companies like FedEx and Kinkos.

What do you think? Why are so many consumer technology companies started by college students? What’s your favorite company started by a college student? Leave a comment and share with the community…

January 2010
Berkeley, CA

Dear Reader,

Over the past 12 months many executives, analysts, investors, pundits, and entrepreneurs have focused on the emergence of mobile phone applications as the next big market changing or “killer app” opportunity. The embrace of mobile applications by consumers and business is becoming the engine to drive new revenues, opportunities, and innovations in the technology sector. The mobile application store, as masterfully crafted by Apple in the iTunes mechanism, has whetted the public’s appetite to buy a plethora of useful to entertaining apps that improve, divert, edify, or simplify people’s lives even to a greater or small degree.

As we greet a new decade in 2010, there is little doubt that a vast supply of usually inexpensive mobile applications combined with a nearly frictionless digital sales and distribution tool that instantly, seamlessly, efficiently satisfies the customer’s demand is transforming the global marketplace. In short, the enormous selection of mobile apps +instant-gratification mobile app stores = new frictionless marketplace.

The evolution of the mobile marketplace is transforming the mobile tech ecosystem around the globe. While the greater Silicon Valley has long been the center of gravity for most technology innovation, it has been a relative backwater within the telecommunications and mobile industries. But today, the Silicon Valley is fully engaged in leading innovation in mobile technology. As we enter this new decade, what will follow is a period of unprecedented economic growth in mobile software.

Because of these developments, a group at Berkeley started pursuing a vision of enabling universities and mobile telephony companies around the globe to collaborate on tapping into the energy and enthusiasm of students by encouraging them to become mobile applications entrepreneurs. Mobile applications are a global phenomenon and they offer clear, real world incentives for students. These young people are poised to become the next generation of entrepreneurs, developers, technology leaders and visionaries. To make mobile applications innovation and entrepreneurship happen, the mobile industry needs to collaborate with and support mobile technology entrepreneurship in the curriculum and extra-curriculum of all of the world’s major universities. By attracting and inspiring students, there is a significant opportunity for universities and mobile companies across the globe to collaborate through innovation.

We have created the Berkeley Mobile International Collaborative (BMIC) as a classic non-profit start-up corporation that aims to bring the Mobile Application courses combined with a competition to students around the world. This is something that we have already proven to work at Berkeley and now it is time to expand to students and universities internationally.

Universities provide a natural and stimulating environment for students to connect with the the next wave of mobile application energy. University education thrives on competition and challenge. Strong universities can bring students and company sponsors into alignment by collaborating to use academic competitiveness to create some very valuable, visible, and viable opportunities – not unlike university athletic competition.

Our vision is to start with the existing Mobile Application entrepreneurial course here at Cal and promulgate the concept of a business competition to universities and students everywhere. The concept behind the course is to attract engineering, business, and other undergrads interested in entrepreneurship and to give them practical experience through the mobile industry. The students in a university’s entrepreneurship course will form teams that combine both technical and business skills. Students participate in the course meetings and lectures while simultaneously coming up with an innovative idea for a mobile application. Each team is given the task to build a working mobile application on the handset of their choice and build a rational business plan for taking the mobile application to market. By the end of the term each student team is expected to have: (i) a working mobile application that demonstrates their concept ; (ii) a business plan complete with pro-forma financials, a proposed business model, and a go-to-market strategy; (iii) a slide presentation to present publicly to a panel of prospective investors; and (iv) a well rehearsed 6 – 8 minute presentation involving all members of the team where the app is demonstrated, the business plan explained, and a request for financial support made to the panel of judges.

After the final presentations are made the panel of judges composed of mobile industry leaders and investors, are given the opportunity to ask questions and make comments regarding their real-world assessments of the strength of the concept(s) behind each mobile application pitch. The culmination of the class competition takes place when the winning team and mobile app is announced.

In the next stage we plan to make this mobile application course a global competition. We are currently inviting 25 to 50 universities around the globe with entrepreneurship programs similar to the Berkeley program to participate in the 2011 Mobile Challenge that will have world finals at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain in February of 2011. We have considerable interest and support expressed by mobile technology companies who want to help build the collaborative and make the Challenge happen. But we seek a leader. We would love to have your involvement, support, guidance, and leadership. Please contact us immediately to get involved.

Bill Washburn

email [bill DOT washburn AT bmic DOT org]