June 4, 2021 — Santa Cruz, CA

(Photo above: Sara Isenberg founded the Santa Cruz Tech Beat website in 2013. Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz)

After eight years running the central news and information site for the local tech industry, Sara Isenberg is ready for a reboot that includes hitting the road to pursue her passions tango and tennis.

Eight years ago, Sara Isenberg had an idea. She wanted to start a website that would follow and document the activities of Santa Cruz’s small but robust high-tech industry. And from that idea, Santa Cruz Tech Beat was born.

A few months before the pandemic, she had another idea: Maybe it’s time to do something else.

This month, Isenberg is acting on that second idea, and stepping away from the first.

“I’m walking away,” she said. “And I’m not doing it lightly. I’ve actually evaluated a lot of options and this is the one that seems right to me.”

Since its inception, Santa Cruz Tech Beat has served both as a means for players in the local tech industry to talk to each other, and as a lens through which those outside the industry could understand and make sense of it. The site and her accompanying newsletter have gathered and published everything from company news announcements to interviews with local executives to job listings.

But with no successor lined up to pick up the mantle, it’s possible that the era of Santa Cruz Tech Beat is at an end.

Isenberg insists this isn’t a story of burnout. She points no fingers at tech, at Santa Cruz, or at the grind of producing the material for the site: “It’s really just because I’m ready for a new adventure. I mean, I am so ready. It’s really just about my personal life. I’m ready for a change.”

Continue reading here: https://lookout.co/santacruz/business-technology/story/2021-06-04/santa-cruz-tech-maven-sara-isenberg-steps-away-from-tech-beat-site

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[Full article]

By Wallace Baine
Lookout Santa Cruz

June 4, 2021 — Santa Cruz, CA

(Photo above: Sara Isenberg founded the Santa Cruz Tech Beat website in 2013. Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz)

After eight years running the central news and information site for the local tech industry, Sara Isenberg is ready for a reboot that includes hitting the road to pursue her passions tango and tennis.

Eight years ago, Sara Isenberg had an idea. She wanted to start a website that would follow and document the activities of Santa Cruz’s small but robust high-tech industry. And from that idea, Santa Cruz Tech Beat was born.

A few months before the pandemic, she had another idea: Maybe it’s time to do something else.

This month, Isenberg is acting on that second idea, and stepping away from the first.

“I’m walking away,” she said. “And I’m not doing it lightly. I’ve actually evaluated a lot of options and this is the one that seems right to me.”

Since its inception, Santa Cruz Tech Beat has served both as a means for players in the local tech industry to talk to each other, and as a lens through which those outside the industry could understand and make sense of it. The site and her accompanying newsletter have gathered and published everything from company news announcements to interviews with local executives to job listings.

But with no successor lined up to pick up the mantle, it’s possible that the era of Santa Cruz Tech Beat is at an end.

Isenberg insists this isn’t a story of burnout. She points no fingers at tech, at Santa Cruz, or at the grind of producing the material for the site: “It’s really just because I’m ready for a new adventure. I mean, I am so ready. It’s really just about my personal life. I’m ready for a change.”

She has, in fact, been planning this exit for a long while. In late 2019, she began to feel the tug to follow other passions in her life. Her original plan was to slip away from her duties in the summer of 2020, after a graceful handoff to someone else. Then came COVID-19, and everything got scrambled. The pandemic changed the plans of the person lined up to take over the site. It also changed Isenberg’s exit strategy. Travel plans were canceled, and inertia won the day.

“Actually, I’m just enacting the plan a year later,” she said. If anything, the year in animated suspension made her more resolute to move on at the proper moment.

“I think the pandemic has caused a lot of people to look at themselves and evaluate (their lives). From what I read from others and experienced myself, the pandemic has been an opportunity to be mindful about what we all want from the rest of our lives.”

“To me, (Tech Beat) has always been a bridge between the university, the industry, and the community around tech,” said Margaret Rosas, who works at the Santa Cruz-based data analytics company Looker and was an early supporter of the site. For Rosas and others in the local tech sphere, Tech Beat filled a vacuum, a communications hub dedicated to tech, similar to the role Silicon Valley Business Journal fills in Silicon Valley.

“We just didn’t have that industry rag that was like, ‘hey, what if I want to know what’s going on in Santa Cruz tech, where do I go?’” Rosas said. “(Tech Beat) became this kind of one-stop-shop where you can plug in all these different things.”

Isenberg has no journalistic training, and she states outright, “I’m not a journalist.” She comes, in fact, from the tech world, having worked in the computer industry for decades, including at Santa Cruz Operation. Tech Beat came about in 2013 when her son went away to college and, anticipating an empty nest, she was looking for something new to engage in. “My only thinking at the time,” she said, “was to do (Tech Beat) until my son was out of college.”

At the time, city leaders in Santa Cruz were eager to engage and support the growing tech industry locally, but they knew little about it. Isenberg figured she could help then-Mayor Hilary Bryant and others connect with local tech leaders through a newsletter. Bryant became an early subscriber.

“I would meet with city leaders and say something like, ‘Oh, there’s this new company called Looker,’ and they would say, ‘Oh, tell me about that,’” said Isenberg. “There were a lot of civic people and business leaders who really didn’t know there was a tech industry here.”

Early on, Santa Cruz Tech Beat not only connected tech startups to the greater community, but it crossed town-gown barriers as well by informing many in the private sector about what was happening at UC Santa Cruz and CSU Monterey Bay in the realm of biotech and other areas. Startups like Looker were just getting off the ground, and other big players in local tech, such as Amazon’s Santa Cruz office, had not even been established.

The tech ecosystem in the Monterey Bay area has grown in various directions since then, from the rise of new forms of agriculture tech to aerospace/aviation, as represented by the Santa Cruz-based Joby Aviation.

Isenberg said that her news site has uncovered a master narrative when it comes to tech in Santa Cruz: “The overall message is that now Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay, in general, have proven that we can be a viable region to start and grow tech companies. I don’t think that was clearly the case eight years ago. But it’s clearly the case now.”

In her life after Tech Beat, Isenberg plans to pursue other lifelong passions, namely tennis, which she has played regularly for more than 30 years, and Argentine tango. Her canceled 2020 travel plans all had to do with tango festivals. “I’ll keep playing tennis for as long as my body allows it,” she said. “But the real excitement for me is the tango travel.”

As for Santa Cruz Tech Beat, it’s unclear if the site will continue after Isenberg’s exit. But if it does evaporate, Looker’s Rosas said the tech industry will feel its absence.

“To me, the valuable thing has always been (Isenberg’s) curation. She’s been curating for a lot of people for a lot of years, collecting things from all these strings,” Rosas said. “So we’re going to miss having that curated stream of what’s happening in the industry. And now it just puts the burden on everyone in that community to go figure stuff for ourselves.”

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June 4, 2021 — Santa Cruz, CA

Santa Cruz Tech Beat has helped forge connections, raise awareness of new opportunities, and bring together a diverse community of innovators, business leaders, and entrepreneurs.

Since its founding in 2013, Santa Cruz Tech Beat (SCTB) has been an invaluable partner for the UCSC Baskin School of Engineering, helping tell the story of the remarkable work of its faculty and students to the Monterey Bay Area business and technology community.

Its eight years in publication have corresponded with an explosion in the Santa Cruz tech industry, and SCTB has arguably contributed to this growth by helping forge connections, raise awareness of new opportunities, and bring together a diverse community of innovators, business leaders, and entrepreneurs.

The expansion of the Santa Cruz biotech industry has accompanied an exciting evolution in engineering at UC Santa Cruz, and SCTB has consistently chronicled the school’s innovations and discoveries. Stories about start-ups and spin-offs led by the school’s faculty and graduate students have inspired readers, including a piece by founder/publisher Sara Isenberg on the emergence of Claret Bio, a biotech startup spun out of Ed Green and Beth Shapiro’s paleogenomics lab, and a recent story on the growth of Ontera, a company that offers single-molecule detection and genome analysis utilizing silicon nanopore chip-based sensors

These start-ups and spin-offs have as their foundation original and creative research, and SCTB has told the story of remarkable breakthroughs in research at Baskin Engineering.  It has told the story of Baskin Engineering research that uses Internet of Things (IoT) technology to create the next generation of fire detection and prediction, and Electrical and Computer Engineering faculty are developing an innovative all-electric power train that will help enable net-zero carbon emissions for commercial aircraft. And a recent story by UCSC writer Tim Stephens describes new research led by Baskin engineer Holger Schmidt to create a novel chip-based antigen test that can provide ultrasensitive detection of the viruses that cause COVID-19 and flu. This technology’s market transfer potential includes the possibility of point-of-care diagnostics, obviating the need to send samples off for laboratory testing.

Santa Cruz Tech Beat has shared the stories of innovative work by Baskin Engineering students, as well, such as the story of Social Impact Student Founders fellow Fatemeh Mirzaei. The mission of Mirzaei’s decentralized fact checking and exploration platform Wiseper is to keep the general public well informed about pressing issues like health, food, and climate change. Understanding the impact of technology on society is integral to the school’s research and teaching mission, and SCTB has consistently published stories on research efforts that are explicitly aimed at serving the public good, such as the development of a “smart” fidget spinner designed to help improve people’s attention, alertness and emotional regulation.

In addition, SCTB has given voice to emerging tech journalists and student writers, such as Tatum Whitehead, who wrote for SCTB as a high school writing intern and is now a Data Science student at Northwestern University. Whitehead covered a gathering of women in tech held at NextSpace in 2019. Then-CSUMB student Donald Brennan wrote about CruzFoam, a company founded by Baskin engineers to create a sustainable alternative to the polyurethane foam used in the productions of surfboards since the 1950s. And UCSC student Xochitl Rojas-Rocha, now a science writer at the Qualcomm Institute, wrote about new solar panel technology in an article that was picked up by the United Nations University.

Alexander Wolf notes that “during my five years as dean of the Baskin School of Engineering, one of my priorities has been to increase the impact of our work by raising the visibility of engineering at UC Santa Cruz. Sara Isenberg — who has a degree in computer science from UCSC — has been an important partner in this effort, and Baskin Engineering is grateful to her and to the entire SCTB team.”

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May 27, 2021 — Santa Cruz, CA

(Image above: Hunting for the neighborhoods of enigmatic, fast radio bursts (FRBs), astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope tracked four of them to the spiral arms of the four distant galaxies shown in this image. Credits: NASA, ESA, Alexandra Mannings (UC Santa Cruz), Wen-fai Fong (Northwestern), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)]

These mysterious flashes of radio energy that disappear in the blink of an eye originate from young, massive galaxies

A new study led by astronomers at UC Santa Cruz has traced the locations of five brief, powerful radio blasts to the spiral arms of five distant galaxies.

Called fast radio bursts (FRBs), these extraordinary events generate as much energy in a thousandth of a second as the sun does in a year. Because these transient radio pulses disappear in much less than the blink of an eye, researchers have had a hard time tracking down where they come from, much less determining what kind of objects are causing them. Therefore, most of the time, astronomers don’t know exactly where to look.

Locating where these blasts are coming from and, in particular, what galaxies they originate from is important in determining what kinds of astronomical events trigger such intense flashes of energy. In the new study, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal and available online, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to study eight FRBs, helping to narrow the list of possible FRB sources.

Flash in the night

The first FRB was discovered in archived data recorded by the Parkes radio observatory on July 24, 2001. Since then astronomers have uncovered up to 1,000 FRBs, but they have only been able to associate roughly 15 of them to particular galaxies.

“Our results are new and exciting. This is the first high-resolution view of a population of FRBs, and Hubble reveals that five of them are localized near or on a galaxy’s spiral arms,” said lead author Alexandra Mannings, a graduate student in astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz. “Most of the galaxies are massive, relatively young, and still forming stars. The imaging allows us to get a better idea of the overall host-galaxy properties, such as its mass and star-formation rate, as well as probe what’s happening right at the FRB position because Hubble has such great resolution.”

Coauthor J. Xavier Prochaska, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, added, “We are increasingly optimistic that by dissecting the locations which transmit FRBs we will fully resolve the mystery of their origin.”

In the new study, astronomers not only pinned all of the FRBs to host galaxies, but they also identified the properties of the types of locations they originated from. Hubble observed one of the FRB locations in 2017 and the other seven in 2019 and 2020.

“We don’t know what causes FRBs, so it’s really important to use context when we have it,” said coauthor Wen-fai Fong of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. “This technique has worked very well for identifying the progenitors of other types of transients, such as supernovae and gamma-ray bursts.”

The galaxies in the study existed billions of years ago, so astronomers are seeing the light from them as they were at about half of the current age of the universe.

Many of them are as massive as our Milky Way. The observations were made in ultraviolet and near-infrared light with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. Ultraviolet light traces the glow of young stars strung along a spiral galaxy’s winding arms. The researchers used the near-infrared images to calculate the galaxies’ mass and find where older populations of stars reside.

Location, location, location

The images display a diversity of spiral-arm structure, from tightly wound to more diffuse, revealing how the stars are distributed along these prominent features. A galaxy’s spiral arms trace the distribution of young, massive stars. However, the Hubble images reveal that the FRBs found near the spiral arms do not come from the very brightest regions, which blaze with the light from hefty stars. The images help support a picture that the FRBs likely do not originate from the youngest, most massive stars.

These clues helped the researchers rule out some of the possible types of stellar objects thought to cause these brilliant flares, including the explosive deaths of the youngest, most massive stars, which generate gamma-ray bursts and some types of supernovae. Another unlikely source is the merger of neutron stars, the crushed cores of stars that end their lives in supernova explosions. These mergers take billions of years to occur and are usually found far from the spiral arms of older galaxies that are no longer forming stars.

Magnetic monsters

The team’s results are, however, consistent with the leading model that FRBs originate from young magnetar outbursts. Magnetars are a type of neutron star with powerful magnetic fields. They’re called the strongest magnets in the universe, possessing a magnetic field that is 10 trillion times more powerful than a refrigerator door magnet. Astronomers last year linked observations of an FRB spotted in our Milky Way galaxy with a region where a known magnetar resides.

“Owing to their strong magnetic fields, magnetars are quite unpredictable,” Fong explained. “In this case, the FRBs are thought to come from flares from a young magnetar. Massive stars go through stellar evolution and become neutron stars, some of which can be strongly magnetized, leading to flares and magnetic processes on their surfaces, which can emit radio light. Our study fits in with that picture and rules out either very young or very old progenitors for FRBs.”

The observations also helped the researchers strengthen the association of FRBs with massive, star-forming galaxies. Previous ground-based observations of some possible FRB host galaxies did not as clearly detect underlying structure, such as spiral arms, in many of them. Astronomers, therefore, could not rule out the possibility that FRBs originate from a dwarf galaxy hiding underneath a massive one. In the new study, careful image processing and analysis of the images allowed researchers to rule out underlying dwarf galaxies, according to coauthor Sunil Simha, a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz.

Although the Hubble results are exciting, the researchers say they need more observations to develop a more definitive picture of these enigmatic flashes and better pinpoint their source.

“We expect to discover and pinpoint another 100 events in the next few years to greatly advance this research,” Prochaska said.

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Originally published here: https://news.ucsc.edu/2021/05/frb-sources.html

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May 27, 2021 — Salinas, CA

(Photo above: Candace Wilson, VP of Business Development at GreenVenus. Source: LinkedIn)

Candace Wilson talks about CRISPR gene editing and the incremental gains in both traditional and new breeding

[Editor’s note: Voices of the Valley is a podcast hosted by Former Mayor of Salinas and Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology (WGCIT) Lead Dennis Donohue. In the series, Donohue interviews leaders in agricultural technology and innovation.]

Voices of the Valley is back with a brand new episode on how agricultural technology has evolved in 2020 and 2021.

Candace Wilson, who led operations at Seminis/Monsanto/Bayer for the past 15 years and now serves as Vice President of Business Development at GreenVenus, touches on the incremental gains in both traditional and new breeding, and speaks about the difference between CRISPR gene editing and GMOs.

She shares tips about how to bring real solutions to growers and consumers. This includes conversations that start on the farm and then flow into the marketplace, developing technology as a “team sport,” and taking a global approach to solving problems and moving agriculture forward. Want more tips? Listen to Episode 63 of Voices of the Valley!

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May 27, 2021 — La Selva, CA

From PFT newsletter:

Parallel Flight Technologies’ Regulation A+ offering has reached the $4,000,000 funding milestone! Thank you to all of the investors who have joined us in our mission to create unmanned systems to save lives, property and the environment.

As our funding has grown, so has our customer pipeline…

Parallel Flight recently received two more signed letters of intent from companies that are interested in utilizing our heavy-lift drones for applications including agriculture, supporting law enforcement, mapping, and search and rescue.

If you haven’t invested in our Regulation A+ campaign, don’t miss your chance to own a stake in the future of drone technology.

Learn more here: https://www.startengine.com/parallel

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May 27, 2021 — Santa Cruz, CA

“Nearly all of Joby’s success can be attributed to two major factors: Engineering discipline and prioritization.” — Paul Sciarra, Executive Chairman, Joby Aviation

Since its beginnings of a small team of engineers working out of “the barn” in 2009, Joby Aviation has continuously made new headlines: In 2012, Joby was selected to collaborate with NASA on electric-flight projects; in 2019 the first production prototype began flight testing; so far Joby Aviation has accumulated over 1,000 test flights. In 2020, Joby became the first eVTOL company to agree to a “G-1” certification basis for its aircraft with the FAA and was granted the first ever eVTOL airworthiness approval in scope of the U.S. Air Force’s Agility Prime program. Lastly, in Q2 of 2021, Joby plans to become a publicly traded company upon the successful closing of its SPAC merger agreement with Reinvent Technology Partners, with a post-money valuation of USD 6.6 bn. Along this exciting journey was Paul Sciarra – now Executive Chairman at Joby Aviation, but also co-founder of Pinterest and Joby’s first outside investor. Read our interview with Paul Sciarra about Joby’s plans and what is yet to come!

You have been the first outside investor of Joby – What was your main motivation to invest?

Paul Sciarra: I have known the Joby team for a long time. I first heard about Joby and their important and ground-breaking work with electrical aviation on NASA’s X-57 program as well as together with the DoD on high-altitude drone applications. When I joined, the Joby team consisted of only 5 employees. What amazed me most about the Joby team was their focus on simplicity: Joby was open and willing to think about the simplest principles and solutions to take an electric aircraft off the ground. At that time, Joby was working on a 2-passenger eVTOL aircraft, but we made the right decision shortly after to develop a 4-passenger aircraft in order to provide a viable urban air mobility service one day. We did focus on the right product over the right technical solution, so development constraints of the eVTOL aircraft were centered around high speed and minimized charging time to provide an affordable service. An incredibly complex task, but the Joby team was willing to take on this challenge. Today we are 700 people and are still committed to the right product. As executive chairman, my work mostly focuses on fundraising, finding and securing the right partnerships as well as laying out the path towards commercialization.

What is the main advantage Joby has over its competitors?

Paul Sciarra: Nearly all of Joby’s success can be attributed to two major factors: Engineering discipline and prioritization.

Continue reading here: https://www.rolandberger.com/en/Insights/Publications/Urban-Air-Mobility-Successfully-combining-eVTOL-vehicles-with-demand-modelling.html

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May 26, 2021 — Scotts Valley, CA

Paystand – the fastest growing, blockchain-enabled B2B payments platform – today announced its partnership with Sage, the market leader in cloud business management solutions. The partnership enables a “Venmo for businesses” through Paystand’s B2B payment network, which is now integrated with the Sage Intacct cloud financial management system and is available via the Sage Intacct Marketplace.

For the first time, Sage Intacct customers will be able to create a “self-driving money” experience for their customers and receive payments instantly across Paystand’s zero-fee bank network. The Paystand Sage integration also gives Sage Intacct customers a modern Payments-as-a-Service model, which moves them off the legacy banking infrastructure and provides a cloud-based payment platform that unlocks scalability and helps finance teams improve margin and operating cash flow.

Delivered as a native integration to Sage Intacct, Paystand’s technology lets customers:

• create smart invoices with embedded payment options and a branded, next-gen payment experience
• streamline cash flow management with automatic reconciliation of daily bank transfer data
• save time through automated cash application and the ability to easily reconcile deposits, refunds, disputes, fees, and adjustments.

The partnership with Sage further expands Paystand’s vision for cashless B2B payments by providing all businesses within the Sage Intacct ecosystem a way to put their receivables and revenue on autopilot. By enabling more businesses to move off the legacy banking infrastructure, Paystand is accelerating the adoption of a more open finance industry where businesses themselves control the movement of money. Paystand saves businesses 50% or more on the cost of receivables by eliminating transaction fees and also speeds up time to cash by 60%, which helps them scale and increase ROI significantly.

“Blockchain has created the blueprint for decentralized finance, and money is now software,” says Jeremy Almond, CEO of Paystand. “Yet, in 2021, businesses and finance teams are still held back by pre-internet infrastructure and monopolistic banking practices that limit their full potential. Our integration with Sage Intacct gives an entire class of companies access to a new payment network that unlocks growth and puts businesses first – not the card networks.”

“Our goal at Sage is to help businesses improve productivity, make effective decisions, and optimize efficiency through automation,” said Melody Williams, VP of Sales Strategy and Operations at Sage. “Partnering with Paystand is a way to make this goal a reality, and we’re excited to work with an industry pioneer that shares our vision of helping businesses scale faster, drive growth, and increase ROI.”

To learn more about the Paystand and the Sage Integration, visit the Paystand Sage resource center.

About Paystand

Paystand is on a mission to create an open commercial financial system, starting with B2B payments. Using blockchain and cloud technology, the company has pioneered Payments-as-a-Service to digitize and automate the entire enterprise cash cycle. Paystand makes it possible to digitize receivables, automate processing, reduce time-to-cash, eliminate transaction fees, and enable new revenue. Paystand has been consistently recognized as a top innovator in enterprise financial services and was named to the Inc. 5000 list as the #9 fastest growing private company in Silicon Valley. For more information about Paystand, visit us at paystand.com. Follow our blog, and connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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May 19, 2021 — Montreal and Santa Cruz

AI Redefined (AIR), a human-AI collaboration technology start-up, has fulfilled its own corporate algorithm of sorts by adding G. Craig Vachon, a successful serial entrepreneur, investor, corporate advisor, and author, as CEO.

This brings significant growth experience to the company as AIR enters a new phase of its development. Founder Dorian Kieken will transition to the role of President to focus on the vision and product aspects of the company. Kieken will also remain on the Board of Directors.

The founder of Chowdahead Growth Fund, a seed investment firm, Vachon earned success leading P&L operations, new product development, corporate development, sales and business development, finance, and product marketing with start-ups and high-tech companies throughout the world. He has raised more than $1.6B in private equity and venture capital investment with more than 30 companies in seven countries. He also serves on the Board of Directors for Yseop, the leader in natural language AI, and as a special advisor to the CEO of SupplyShift, a supply chain transparency platform used by Walmart and Amazon. In addition, Vachon is a Trustee at both Of/By/For All, and Seek Common Ground, while also assisting the Naval Postgraduate School Foundation with appropriation to new and existing innovation projects. Vachon also serves as Senior Partner, Head of US Operations for NextStage Asset Management, based in Paris. 

“What drew me to AIR was the superlative team working on a human-centric approach of adding empathy, ethics, and nuance to AI’s input, and likewise, translating AI’s output into action and narrative that is compelling and accountable,” Vachon said. “If we do not teach AI to have nuance, and the human aspects we want it to have—beyond the veneer of today’s human-AI efforts—things could end poorly. AI needs to be trusted and collaborative. It’s this enormous vision to impact all AI, defined by co-founders Dorian Kieken and Fabrice Condominas, that convinced me to take on this exciting new role.”

AI Redefined was founded in 2017 to enable human-machine synergy in AI systems. Executives and engineers have used their expertise in machine learning, simulation and gaming to develop Cogment 1.0, its first widely available product, to be launched in the very near future. 

“As the company entered a new phase of its development, it became clear that we needed someone with strong entrepreneurship and business acumen to help us navigate it. We found in Craig, a serial tech entrepreneur and investor, not only a great fit for what the company needs, but also someone whose values resonated with our own, a person of curiosity and integrity.” Kieken said. “In the end, what made Craig our top choice, was realizing how passionate and committed he was to securing the benefit of humankind via our human-AI collaboration technology. This synergy is critical as we manage our way through the AI’s industry’s expected exponential growth.”

About AI Redefined

AI Redefined’s (AIR) vision is to build a brighter, smarter future by improving the synergy between humans and AI; its mission is to enable humans and AI to trust and continuously learn from each other via a dynamic human-AI orchestration platform. Its first product, Cogment, is a high-performance, open source framework that allows multi-agent, multi-reward, continuous live training of AIs and humans together in the same environment. For more information, visit https://ai-r.com/. Follow us on Twitter @AI_Redefined and LinkedIn @ai-r.

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May 19, 2021 — Monterey, CA

The Monterey Conference Center and Immersive Design Studios has announced a new 10,000-square-foot CANVAS Studio at Monterey, a state-of-the-art space available for virtual or hybrid meetings and events. The Studio will open in June, abiding by all local safety protocols.

The CANVAS Studio at Monterey sets a new standard for professional events, providing an immersive and engaging environment for speakers and attendees alike. Located on the second floor of the Monterey Conference Center within the Steinbeck Ballroom, the Studio is equipped with 360-degree wraparound screens and Immersive Design Studios’ CANVAS software platform. Meeting and event speakers can see thousands of remote attendees up on the screens at once, with the flexibility to zoom in on any individual on the fly for spontaneous and authentic interactions. Attendees feel immersed in the crowd from anywhere in the world. Everyone benefits from the two-way interactivity and dynamic energy that simply can’t be replicated in a traditional livestream.

Studio users can reach vastly larger audiences and new markets around the globe at a fraction of the resources it takes to organize a physical event. The Studio can also enable hybrid events: up to 80 guests can fit comfortably inside the studio space to attend in person, with thousands more tuning in virtually.

For the first time, business leaders, performers, and others can safely and cost-effectively reach their audiences without compromising on the quality and communal energy of an in-person event.

“We’re thrilled to be opening this innovative and high-end studio space to enable our clients to expand their reach and augment their revenue streams,” said Doug Phillips, general manager of the Monterey Conference Center. “This past year we have creatively developed solutions to better serve the industry in a post-COVID world, and we believe that offering a blend of hybrid and virtual events well into the future is an excellent way to ensure that meeting planners have flexible and cost-effective options for whatever circumstances may arise.”

“Over the past year we’ve seen the potential of CANVAS-powered studio spaces to transform how business leaders and entertainers can connect with their audiences, while maintaining both the authenticity and the production value of a physical event,” shared Kora Van den Bulcke, co-founder and president of Immersive Design Studios. “We are excited to bring CANVAS to the Monterey Conference Center, based in a destination where innovative ideas flourish.”

For more information about the CANVAS Studio at Monterey and to book a meeting or event, visit MontereyConferenceCenter.com.

About Monterey Conference Center

Monterey Conference Center is located in the heart of downtown Monterey, California and is the focal point for welcoming and encouraging cultural and economic prosperity for the breathtaking coastal city. By providing a modern, state-of-the-art meeting facility combined with award winning service and professionalism, the Conference Center goes beyond the expectations of its guests and provides them with a transformative experience unsurpassed in the industry.

About Immersive Design Studios

Immersive Design Studios is a leading technology company whose enterprise-grade CANVAS software platform is powering next-generation interactive experiences for the entertainment, corporate, and education markets. CANVAS is dynamically reimagining how enterprise clients can achieve two-way interactivity with their audiences through both physical and virtual spaces, at unprecedented scale. Based in Montreal and serving an international clientele, Immersive Design Studios is setting the standard for virtual and hybrid events.

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By Stephanie Metzinger
Western Growers

May 19, 2021 — Irvine and Salinas, CA

[Editor’s note: Many of these selected companies are associated with Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology (WCGIT) in Salinas.]

Teams with potential to rapidly accelerate agricultural automation have been selected by farming and tech giants to participate in first-ever Global Harvest Automation Initiative cohort

Western Growers has selected 13 innovators for the inaugural cohort of its Global Harvest Automation Initiative (GHAI), a groundbreaking project that aims to automate 50 percent of specialty crop harvest within 10 years by accelerating the commercialization of harvest automation innovations.
 
The companies chosen for the cohort all specialize in agricultural robotics, mechanization and automation and will receive exclusive resources to help them launch and scale. This includes 1) Mentoring (mentor support from leading ag and tech companies, including feedback on product offerings, strategy and go-to-market options); 2) Field Trials (facilitation of field trials with growers); and 3) Case Studies (success of field trials will be published as case studies which will be available to growers). Most importantly, the cohort will receive systems integration to integrate industry-standard components (called technology stack) into their product roadmap so their robots can get into fields and markets faster.
 
“Most harvest startups build the entire technology stack themselves — from imaging and artificial intelligence to robotic end-effectors and automated movement up and down the fields. Western Growers’ Global Harvest Automation Initiative will now build this technology stack for them,” said Walt Duflock, vice president of innovation at Western Growers. “The innovators in this cohort are both startups and established companies that will get help integrating with industry-standard tractors, robot arms and sensors, which can commoditize up to 60–80% of the startup’s technology stack.”

The following are the innovation companies selected to receive hands-on support for all aspects of their businesses for rapid scaling:

•   Advanced Farm Technologies: provides advanced farming tools, such as automated strawberry harvesting robots, for harvesting services
•   Antobot: builds a team of small intelligent agriculture robots with advanced computer vision and robotics technology
•   Augean Robotics: helps solve the labor problem facing farmers by making autonomous collaborative robots
•   Earth Rover: makes field robots that automate scouting, harvesting and weeding, and provides farmers with per-plant data from seed to gate
•   FarmWise: designs driverless tractors that use machine learning and computer vision, rather than herbicides, to eradicate weeds from farmers' fields
•   FFRobotics: develops a reliable, robust harvesting platform emulating human-hand picking process for efficient, cost-effective and bruise-free fruit harvesting
•   Muddy Machines: builds a new generation of field robots that help growers manage labor-intensive crops by conducting fieldwork
•   Oxbo International Corporation: designs, manufactures and distributes innovative harvesting equipment and related products
•   Ramsay Highlander: manufactures specialized harvesting aids for the vegetable growing industry
•   Ripe Robotics: builds and manages fruit-picking robots
•   Robotics Plus: enables sustainable growth of the horticultural and fiber industries through robotics and automation
•   SPUDNIK Equipment Company LLC: manufactures potato harvesting and handling equipment
•   Strio AI: automates labor-intensive tasks for specialty growers, starting with runner cutting for strawberries

Each innovator was selected based on market traction and potential for successful scale as well as feedback from Western Grower members and industry groups, including the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission.

GHAI Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), a group with expertise in precision ag, robotics, artificial intelligence, equipment manufacturing, harvest automation and grower/shipper operations, will work with the cohort on priorities that can accelerate their development efforts.

The SMEs are as follows:

•   Trimble: Mike Dentinger (Phase 1 Project Management) plus four Trimble SME’s
•   Bosch in North America: Andreas Fuchs, Fabian Henrici
•   ‎Oxbo International Corporation: Kathryn Van Weerdhuizen, Scott Korthuis (retired), Chris Schloesser (retired)
•   Spudnik Equipment Company LLC: David Offerdahl, Evan Steel
•   Ramsay Highlander: Frank Maconachy, Greg Weisenfeld
•   Driscoll’s (formerly): Michael Christensen
•   NWFM LLC: Keith Veselka
•   Red Rooster Consulting: Scott Jacky
•   ProMach: Don Wickstrum
•   Milano Technical Group: Dominic Milano, Soummya Datta
•   All-Phase Co: Ken Hite
•   Grimmway Farms: Jeff Morrison
•   Turlock Fruit Company: Neill Callis
•   Church Brothers Farms: Josh Ruiz
•   Illume Agriculture: Kevin Andrew
•   Superfresh Growers: Mike Van Pelt

 
Resources and detailed information about the GHAI can be found on the WG Center for Innovation & Technology webpage here.

About Western Growers:
Founded in 1926, Western Growers represents local and regional family farmers growing fresh produce in California, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. Our members and their workers provide over half of the nation’s fresh fruits, vegetables and tree nuts, including nearly half of America’s fresh organic produce. Some members also farm throughout the U.S. and in other countries so people have year-round access to nutritious food. For generations, we have provided variety and healthy choices to consumers. Connect and learn more about Western Growers on our Twitter and Facebook. 

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