Announcing the Finalists for the #CloudInnovateHERxDigital Pitch Challenge 2.0!

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Women in Cloud is announcing the following finalists for the #CloudInnovateHERxDigital Pitch Challenge, and we are proud to present their solutions

Special congratulations to our 7 finalists that will be pitching their solutions on Friday, September 4 as they compete for the chance to win $5,000 in cash and cloud credits. Click here to see video teasers from the finalists!

  • UNpkl empowers customers to own and control their network data and puts network security on auto-pilot.
  • Captain’s Care takes the hassle out of boat ownership and gives you a trouble-free day on the water. We offer a variety of options to suit every need for marine maintenance and care. We fill the need for the owner operator that does not require a full-time captain or who needs expertise and assistance with marine services needed for their vessel.
  • The Scientific Data Engine (SDE) is a drug development platform that expedites delivery of safe and effective scientific innovations (drugs, vaccines & diagnostics) using disease specific, real-time clinical data powered by AI.
  • RevWork Platform has the intention to change the face of learning forever by providing actionable learning content that can be practiced around day to day events.
  • illuxi Intelligence is a cloud based, hosting and content delivering platform. We also produce, advise and support clients using our business intelligence tools for their content delivery.
  • Proverbs Events and Conferencing – Event managers and event marketers seek better, integrated tools that give us the right data we need to deliver meaningful, engaging events. “Integrated” is the keyword here as it’s not just about the event itself, it’s about tying the event into the brand experience all year round to build trust, loyalty and excitement. In 2020, there’s been a growing appetite for aggregated analytics dashboards. These dashboards pull data from multiple sources such as CRM’s, registration solutions, marketing platforms and social media.
  • iWeb IUMS has created a unique student universe that provides students, professors and administrators an amazing academic experience through a comprehensive digitized educational application provided on a FREEMIUM model that brings banks, fintech, edtech and several other student service players on a common platform.

With this pitch challenge, we wanted to go one step forward as we did in the last #CloudInnovateHERxDigital and give our audience a chance to choose their favorite solution among the lot. We are very happy to announce that, of the above finalists, the audience will get to vote for a solution they believe is revolutionary during the #CloudInnovateHERxDigital Pitch Challenge on Friday, September 4, 2020. As an added benefit, all attendees will have the chance to participate in up to one hour of open networking in the virtual lounge! Click here to register to attend and have your chance to vote. Use Code WIC2020 to access sponsored tickets!

The #CloudInnovateHER Pitch Challenge which was designed to help women tech entrepreneurs across global markets develop, showcase and win enterprise customers. This competition was designed to provide economic access and industry visibility to women tech entrepreneurs while also giving them an opportunity to present technologies that create a sustainable impact in today’s world.

The digital pitch challenge event will kick off with a special keynote by Seema Chopra, Global Technical Leader of Boeing on “Innovating Tech Solutions in a Turbulent Landscape”. Following that, our distinguished panel of judges will listen to each 3 minute pitch and ask questions to learn more about each solution before voting for the overall winner.

Our virtual pitch challenge is breaking the geographical barrier during the COVID-19 era while incorporating new-age technology like Remo. Remo is designed with a focus on large events to be hosted online with a special focus on community networking capabilities at small “roundtables”. The event is supported by Microsoft, M12 – Microsoft’s Venture Fund, Global Affairs Canada, The Boeing Company, Meylah and Remo.

This pitch challenge gives opportunities for women around the world to showcase their cloud solutions to industry leaders and cloud experts. Women in Cloud’s mission is to help bridge the access gap through this pitch challenge and help women technology entrepreneurs reach their goal and contribute to economic growth.

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Karen Fassio is one of the top finalists of the FFA 2020 Champion Awards. Let’s support her with your votes.

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The Women in Cloud leadership is very excited to share that our Co-founder, Karen Fassio is one of the top finalist for the 2020 Champion Awards hosted by Female Founders Alliance.

Female Founders Alliance is a startup community and through their private network, investor community, and corporate partners they provide white glove experience through their programs. The Champion Awards recognize people and organizations that champion equity and diverse leadership across workplaces. There are seven categories for this award. 

Karen Fassio, Director of Partner Marketing & Channel Inclusion at Microsoft and Co-founder Women in Cloud, has been selected as a finalist in the Sponsor Category. A sponsor leverages their network and resources to help the women that they mentor advance and succeed in their career. 

Time and time again, she has always believed in helping women entrepreneurs and leaders and we would like to thank her for her continued dedication to help other women leaders and entrepreneurs realize their dream.

We would like to congratulate her and wish her all the best. 

Can everyone please take 5 minutes to do 2 things?

1.  Vote.  Please click here to vote and help Karen win!   

2. Share, and ask your friends (who have no clue why you are always going on about WIC and all this stuff) to vote:  https://www.linkedin.com/posts/female-founders-alliance_we-are-proud-to-announce-our-finalists-for-activity-6692546785854009344-kOiG

What our community is saying:

Karen has been an incredible leader in this organization, and a patient sponsor and advisor of Automaton since the day we met at the first WIC cohort.   — MH Lines, Founder of Automaton

Karen Fassio is such a wonderful supporter of SO many female-founded businesses, including Lions + Tigers this is a much-deserved nomination!! — Brea Stemer,  Founder of L&T

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Digital Etiquette: Showing Up Well for High Impact Virtual Networking Events

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The era of virtual events is here. We are living a life in the outside world without stepping out of our pajamas or homes thanks to the internet and technology. 

Since March 2020, the world is witnessing an indefinite standstill and the internet has become our haven. According to Forbes, Virtual events are up 1,000% since Coronavirus, says a virtual events platform. 6Connex platform has seen more than 52,000 events and subevents since COVID-19. While virtual life and events are convenient, there are still some digital etiquettes one must follow.

The Women in Cloud #CloudExecConnect is right around the corner and will be the biggest virtual event we have hosted so far. #CloudExecConnect solves a specific need within the community to stimulate cross-pollination and bi-directional conversation that can make a meaningful difference in whether or not these businesses are able to succeed. The two-day event is a curated virtual experience which will let you connect with industry leaders from Microsoft and tech giants. The #CloudExecConnect consists of two different events #CloudEnterpriseConnect and #FemaleCloudFoundersBrunch.

We wanted to share a few tips and tricks with our attendees to make their experience seamless and memorable.  

  1. Stable Internet Connection – This is our number one advice, ensure you have a stable internet connection to enjoy the event without missing any bit of the event. This also helps to keep the event flow without any disruption. Another addition to this point would be ensure your hardware is ready to roll. Laptop, chargers, webcam, speakers, earphones are all within reach to help you fully commit to the event.
  2. The Right Spot – We think it would also help to find a nice corner with no noise or disturbance at your home to enjoy any event like you would if you were attending it in person. It would also help if you would mute yourself unless required to help reduce the background noise for everybody attending. 
  3. Know the Platform – There are hundreds of virtual event platforms, each different from the other. When attending an event it is advisable to understand how a certain platform functions, and what are its features to ensure you get the best virtual experience.

On July 20 – 21, #CloudExecConnect will take place on Remo, an immersive virtual space that empowers people to communicate, connect, and collaborate with each other just like they would in real life. We want to help you understand Remo’s features and interface so you enjoy #CloudExecConnect with no hassle. 

Some of the interesting features Remo offers are, 

  1. A roundtable experience which allows 6 people at a table to interact with one another. 
  2. The floor bifurcation which allows you to experience different hubs at the same time like you would in-person
  3. A biocard option that lets you access people’s LinkedIn and other social media profiles for instant connection
  4. It allows you to have a table chat, personal chat or general chat. It also lets you ask questions anonymously, without fear of judgement. 
  5. There is a whiteboard facility for every table which allows the participants of that table to  draw, write, upload content, add mind maps and diagrams, etc. 

Remo is also extremely easy to use and navigate, and if you would like to familiarize yourself with the platform here is a quick video. 

The Women in Cloud team is excited to bring the #CloudExecConnect to your doorstep this July and we are hopeful that this 2-day virtual event will be an experience like none other and we look forward to your presence. 

For more information on #CloudExecConnect, click here. 

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The SheTrades Invest Course: EQUALS, the International Trade Centre and Women in Cloud are bringing webinars to your home

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Earlier this year Women in Cloud joined the EQUALS Global Partnership, which brings together more than 90 stakeholders including, governments, private sector, United Nation entities, academia and not-for-profit organizations to accelerate efforts towards bridging the gender digital divide and fostering gender equality in the digital age.

Last week, we were happy to announce that our very own Co-founder and President, Chaitra Vedullapalli joined forces with the International Trade Centre (ITC) to deliver a SheTrades Invest course webinar in support of EQUALS. 

Earlier this year Women in Cloud joined the EQUALS Global Partnership, which brings together more than 90 stakeholders including, governments, private sector, United Nation entities, academia and not-for-profit organizations to accelerate efforts towards bridging the gender digital divide and fostering gender equality in the digital age.

The SheTrades Invest course is a 5-part webinar series designed by ITC’s SheTrades Initiative to help women entrepreneurs succeed in the technology sector by improving their access to finance. The SheTrades initiative aims to connect 3 million women entrepreneurs and women-owned businesses to international markets by 2021. The initiative offers a blueprint of seven global actions to unlock markets for women as well as a web and mobile app for women entrepreneurs to connect to buyers, investors, and new markets. 

On 23 June 2020, Chaitra Vedullapalli presented the fifth and final webinar in the course on the topic of, ‘How to get ready for corporate contracts: The art of winning & keeping enterprise customers’. Chaitra as the Co-founder of Meylah Corporation has had her ups and downs in the tech industry in terms of securing customers and contracts during her initial days and was well placed to share her learnings with course participants during the live 1.5-hour interactive webinar.

There are also other course webinars including , ‘Identifying the right financial instruments for your technology company’ co-hosted by Dr. Gitanjali Swamy, Managing Partner at IoTask & Representative to the EQUALS Leadership Coalition that can be accessed via the EQUALS website here.

The SheTrades Invest course on access to finance is very timely as the International Finance Corporation (IFC) estimates that MSMEs face a financing gap of approximately $5.2 trillion dollars annually. According to the World Bank, women led enterprises receive only 3 percent of all venture capital funding. The SheTrades invest course aims to close this gap by equipping women entrepreneurs with the skills, tools and knowledge to meet the needs of investors and securing financing. 

Women in Cloud as a community is striving through the collaborative efforts of our partners and members. In this regard, we are extremely honored to contribute to the SheTrades Invest course webinar and the efforts of EQUALS Global Partnership and the International Trade Centre. Furthermore, to watch a recording of Chaitra’s session and access other webinars in support of EQUALS,  please visit:  https://www.equals.org/leadership-webinar.

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ApertureData Awarded Competitive Grant from the National Science Foundation

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ApertureData has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant for $225,000 to conduct research and development (R&D) work on scaling ApertureData’s visual data management platform for enterprise scale applications. 

The proposed research will take ApertureData closer to realizing the vision of a unified data backend for all stages of machine learning (ML) from edge to cloud, removing inefficiencies introduced by repurposing systems designed for other workloads. Capturing business value from data via ML comprises multiple steps (data collection, curation, training, etc) and is currently being addressed by multiple siloed solutions that, when integrated, result in an inefficient system. Given that each of the different steps interacts with data in one way or another, offering a unified and efficient way to interact with the data regardless of the stage reduces the complexity of ML pipelines as they scale.

“NSF is proud to support the technology of the future by thinking beyond incremental developments and funding the most creative, impactful ideas across all markets and areas of science and engineering,” said Andrea Belz, Division Director of the Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships at NSF. “With the support of our research funds, any deep technology startup or small business can guide basic science into meaningful solutions that address tremendous needs.”

“Improvements in ML have made it possible for businesses to extract rich insights from visual data (images, videos). Handling big-visual-data for ML requires storage and access methods that are designed with visual ML in mind. With the current off-the-shelf alternatives, ML engineers and data scientists are forced to glue data solutions not designed for visual data management. With our focus on the data side of ML deployments, ApertureData is well positioned to be the technical leader in addressing the next generation of challenges for ML based applications. This NSF grant will enable us to address the scalability challenges that are particularly magnified when dealing with image, videos, and its corresponding metadata like annotations and embeddings”, said Vishakha Gupta-Cledat, CEO and Co-founder of ApertureData, who will serve as the Principal Investigator for this grant.

Once a small business is awarded a Phase I SBIR/STTR grant (up to $256,000), it becomes eligible to apply for a Phase II grant (up to $1,000,000). Small businesses with Phase II grants are eligible to receive up to $500,000 in additional matching funds with qualifying third-party investment or sales.

Startups or entrepreneurs who submit a three-page Project Pitch will know within three weeks if they meet the program’s objectives to support innovative technologies that show promise of commercial and/or societal impact and involve a level of technical risk. Small businesses with innovative science and technology solutions, and commercial potential are encouraged to apply.All proposals submitted to the NSF SBIR/STTR program, also known as America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF, undergo a rigorous merit-based review process. To learn more about America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF, visit: https://seedfund.nsf.gov/

About the National Science Foundation’s Small Business Programs: America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF awards $200 million annually to startups and small businesses, transforming scientific discovery into products and services with commercial and societal impact. Startups working across almost all areas of science and technology can receive up to $1.75 million to support research and development (R&D), helping de-risk technology for commercial success. America’s Seed Fund is congressionally mandated through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The NSF is an independent federal agency with a budget of about $8.1 billion that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering.

About the Author – Vishakha Gupta

Vishakha is Co-founder and CEO of ApertureData. Prior to that, she worked at Intel Labs for over 7 years where she led the design and development of VDMS (the Visual Data Management System) which forms the core of the ApertureData Platform. Vishakha holds a Ph.D in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a M.S. in Information Networking from Carnegie Mellon University. Her research interests encompass systems in general with particular inclination towards virtualization, embedded and real time systems as well as distributed systems. She has worked on graph based storage and applications on non volatile memory systems. She loves to work on systems which impose stringent requirements in terms of software design and coding and call for innovative solutions. She has served on the program and steering committees of several premier systems conferences.

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