Events showcase Miami’s growth as tech center

One by one, representatives from six startup companies walked onto the wooden stage and presented their products or services to a full house of about 200 investors, mentors, and other supporters Thursday at Incubate Miami’s DemoDay in the loft-like Grand Central in downtown Miami. With a large screen behind them projecting their graphs and charts, they set out to persuade the funders in the room to part with some of their green and support the tech community.

Just 24 hours later, from an elaborate “dojo stage,” a drummer warmed up the crowd of several hundred before a “Council of Elders” entered the ring to share wisdom as the all-day free event opened. Called TekFight, part education, part inspiration, and part entertainment, the tournament-style program challenged entrepreneurs to earn points to “belt up” throughout the day to meet with the “masters” of the tech community.

The two events, which kicked off Innovate MIA week, couldn’t be more different. But in their own ways, like a one-two punch, they exuded the spirit and energy growing in the startup community.

One of the goals of the TekFight event was to introduce young entrepreneurs and students to the tech community, because not everyone has found it yet and it’s hard to know where to start, said Saif Ishoof, the executive director of City Year Miami who co-founded TekFight as a personal project. And throughout the event, he and co-founder Jose Antonio Hernandez-Solaun, as well as Binsen J. Gonzalez and Jeff Goudie, wanted to find creative, engaging ways to offer participants access to some of the community’s most successful leaders.

That would include Alberto Dosal, chairman of CompuQuip Technologies; Albert Santalo, founder and CEO of CareCloud; Jorge Plasencia, chairman and CEO of Republica; Jaret Davis, co-managing shareholder of Greenberg Traurig; and more than two dozen other business and community leaders who shared their war stories and offered advice. Throughout the day, the event was live-streamed on the Web, a TekFight app created by local entrepreneur and UM student Tyler McIntyre kept everyone involved in the tournament and tweets were flying — with #TekFight trending No. 1 in the Miami area for parts of the day. “Next time Art Basel will know not to try to compete with TekFight,” Ishoof quipped.

‘Miami is a hotbed’

After a pair of Chinese dragons danced through the audience, Andre J. Gudger, director for the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Small Business Programs, entered the ring. “I’ve never experienced an event like this,” Gudger remarked. “Miami is a hotbed for technology but nobody knew it.”

Gudger shared humorous stories and practical advice on ways to get technology ideas heard at the highest levels of the federal government. “Every federal agency has a director over small business — find out who they are,” he said. He has had plenty of experience in the private sector: Gudger, who wrote his first computer program on his neighbor’s computer at the age of 12, took one of his former companies from one to 1,300 employees.

There were several rounds that pitted an entrepreneur against an investor, such as Richard Grundy, of the tech startup Flomio, vs. Jonathan Kislak, of Antares Capital, who asked Grundy, “why should I give you money?”

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Driver of fatal MIA bus crash that killed two offers his “deepest sympathy.”

The driver behind the wheel of a bus that rammed into an overpass at Miami International Airport — killing two passengers and leaving many more injured — expressed his sympathies Thursday to those affected, while a group of survivors began speaking with a lawyer.

On Thursday, a relative sent out a short statement in Spanish from driver Ramon Ferreiro. In it, Ferreiro extended his “deepest sympathy” to the families of those killed in “the terrible accident.”

“I know there are no words of comfort for what happened, but my family and I are praying for all those affected and their loved ones,” he wrote in Spanish. “I’m emotionally and physically very shocked by what happened, and for this reason I ask you to respect my family’s privacy during this difficult time.”

The crash happened a few minutes before 7:30 a.m. Saturday. The bus carried members of a Jehovah’s Witness congregation on their way to the annual general assembly meeting in West Palm Beach.

Ferreiro, 47, took a wrong turn on Le Jeune Road. He sped past multiple signs warning of the low clearance at the airport’s arrival concourse, smashing the 11-foot-tall bus into an overpass.

Two people sitting in the front were killed; the remaining 30 passengers went to hospitals for examinations and treatment.

As of Thursday, four people from the crash remained at Jackson Memorial Hospital, spokeswoman Lidia Amoretti said. Of the group, three were in good condition and one was in critical.

Another eight people admitted after the crash already had been discharged.

And some of the survivors have begun speaking with West Palm Beach lawyer Patrick Cousins.

Cousins, who also is Jehovah’s Witness, said that members of his religion tend to shy away from legal battles, and that’s why he hopes to settle the matter with the bus service’s insurance company out of court.

The goal, he said, would be to get compensation for costs such as their hospital bills.

“We are not the type of people to create problems or issues,” Cousins said. “But this is not something we really created. We just want to make sure everybody gets their compensation.”

Saturday’s accident appears to be the first blemish on the record of both the driver and the bus company, Miami Bus Service Corp., which is owned by Mayling and Alberto Hernandez.

Ferreiro has a valid commercial driver’s license with the proper endorsement to carry passengers, according to records from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

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New equity options exchange owned by Miami company starts trading on Friday

MIAX Options Exchange, a new fully electronic, equity options trading exchange, said it will begin trading on Friday.

MIAX Options Exchange is based in Princeton, N.J., but its parent company is Miami International Holdings. While MIAX’s executive offices, technology development center and national operations center are based in Princeton, additional executive offices, and a multi-purpose training, meeting and conference center will be located in Miami, the company said.

MIAX Options Exchange’s trading platform has been developed in-house and designed for the functional and performance demands of derivatives trading, the company said.

INA PAIVA CORDLE

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To win in 2014, Florida Democrats must build on momentum

Democrats just concluded their most successful Florida election cycle in more than three decades, not just delivering the state to President Barack Obama and re-electing Sen. Bill Nelson, but also picking up state House, state Senate, and Congressional seats.

But don’t get cocky, Florida Democrats. In many respects, 2014 is more important for the vitality of the party than 2012.

As you prepare to elect a new state party chairman there’s every reason to worry heading into the new election cycle, even against vulnerable Republican Gov. Rick Scott.

You won’t have the massive Obama grassroots machine registering and turning out tens of thousands of new voters. Or a lavishly funded TV campaign like Obama’s. And if past is prologue, Florida Republicans will have far stronger turnout than Democrats.

“Democrats have a long history of not coming out to vote in the non-presidential election years. We’ve seen that four times in a row,” Alex Sink, the 2010 Democratic nominee for governor and potential 2014 candidate, said in a Political Connections interview on Bay News 9.

“The big question I believe for Democrats in the next election is how much of that energy and enthusiasm that we had during this presidential election can carry on to the 2014 races,” Sink said. “I think it’s probably going to be unfortunately very difficult.”

On Jan. 26 in Orlando, Democratic Party leaders will elect a new leader to succeed former state Sen. Rod Smith of Alachua, who took the helm of the state party after a GOP wave left Democrats holding just one of Florida’s six statewide offices, Nelson’s Senate seat.

Against that change of leadership, there is no more important question facing the party than whether it can take advantage of demographic changes in Florida and come even close to following the model set by the Obama campaign.

“We’re at the threshold of a new Florida, and we’ve got to seize that opportunity,” said Alan Clendenin, an air-traffic controller and union organizer in Tampa running for party chairman against Annette Taddeo-Goldstein, a Miami-Dade County businesswoman and former candidate for Congress and County Commission.

“Demographics are on our side, the issues are on our side, the wind is at our back, and we just can’t screw it up,” said Clendenin, 53, whose extensive “Rebrand, Rebuild, Recruit” plan for the state party includes decentralizing to create at least five “regional hubs,” more emphasis on low-dollar fundraising, and a “bottom-up” structure for grassroots organizing.

A key to Obama winning Florida’s 29 electoral votes was his strong performance among African-Americans, Hispanics, and voters under 30 — overwhelmingly Democratic groups that tend to show up in much lower numbers during off-year elections.

“The question is how do we take what is the Obama coalition and translate that to a Democratic coalition that outlasts Obama,” said outgoing party chairman Smith.

Consider that in 2008 the Florida electorate was 42 percent Democratic and 39 percent Republican. Two years later, when Scott narrowly beat Sink, it was 45 percent Republican and 39 percent Democratic.

In non-presidential years, the Florida electorate is invariably older, whiter, and much more Republican.

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Casio’s new G-Shock smartwatch can display alerts from your iPhone [video]

Since the Dick Tracy cartoon days, every gadget nerd’s dream has been to have a smartwatch. And while smartphones have largely made the need for wearing wristwatches unnecessary, companies continue to search for ways to connect watches and smartphones. Casio’s GB6900AA G-Shock is the latest smartwatch that connects to Apple (AAPL) iPhone 4S and iPhone 5. Using Bluetooth 4.0, the watch can provide a number of notifications such as alerting you when you have new calls, text messages and incoming email. The G-Shock also has a “Phone Finder” feature that’s similar to the Find My iPhone app that lets you locate your misplaced iPhone with the press of a button on your watch. To our disappointment, the G-Shock doesn’t have a built-in microphone for one-button Siri operation, but it does have an automatic time adjuster that changes time zones on the fly.

As with all G-Shocks, the GB6900AA is one tough watch. It has a two-year battery based on 12 hours of Bluetooth syncing per day and 200 meters of water resistance and shock absorption. Casio’s selling the watches for $ 180 at select U.S. department stores and its online website.

A video demonstration of Casio’s new Bluetooth G-Shock follows below.

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Dancing with the Stars Partners Reunite on Big Screen

Dancing with the Stars pro Karina Smirnoff is joining her Season 12 partner Ralph Macchio in a new movie, Us Weekly reports.

RELATED: Ralph Macchio Gets 'Happily Divorced'

According to the news source, the 34-year-old dancer plays a woman who becomes the object of a 10-year-old boy's fascination when he sees her dancing in a neighboring house.

"It is a dream come true to have this opportunity in working with Ralph again," she says of her former dance partner who writes and directs the film. "He wrote such an inspiring script, and I'm grateful to be a part of it. The story is sweet but profound, and my character is very compelling. I'm loving the process!"

This is Smirnoff's first movie role but she gave her acting qualifications, saying, "I feel like I've always acted within a dance ... Now I get to just act, and I'm extremely excited for the opportunity."

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Schools boss $$ scold

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott warned of deep cuts for teaching staff, music, art and sports programs and larger class sizes if an agreement isn’t reached with the union on a new teacher-evaluation system.

Gov. Cuomo has said the city’s new guidelines must be in place by Jan. 17, but Walcott says he is moving up the deadline to Dec. 21.

If talks fail, the city school system and its 1.1 million students would lose out on 4 percent of state aid, or more than $250 million.

Walcott lambasted the current evaluation system as “inadequate and outdated” at a forum between the Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research yesterday.

“The current system makes it impossible to distinguish great teaching from good, good from fair, and fair from poor,” Walcott said.

State law stipulate that 40 per cent of teachers’ evaluations will be based on student test scores and 60 per cent on principals’ observations.

“We need a new system that accurately aligns teacher practice with student outcomes.”

Union head Michael Mulgrew blamed Mayor Bloomberg and Walcott for “playing politics with our schools.

“Rather than establishing bogus deadlines and threatening parents with the loss of teachers and services, they should be focusing on reaching an agreement that will actually help make the schools better.”

“Making schools better also means the administration needs to provide the things that teachers and students need but which the DOE has largely ignored — curriculum, smaller classes, and an acknowledgment that their job is to actually assist schools and students, rather than just preaching accountability.”

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Innovate MIA puts spotlight on startup community

If you think the next week is all about art, you may be surprised to learn there are also six entrepreneurship events vying for your time.

And that is all by design.

In much the way that Art Basel helped put Miami’s arts community on the international map, organizers of the first Innovate MIA hope their weeklong grouping of events will shine a light on the city’s growing tech startup community and its position as the gateway to Latin America.

Many of the events — ending with Florida International University’s Americas Venture Capital Conference — are after Art Basel. That’s also why the third annual AVCC was moved to Dec. 13-14 from its previous mid-November dates.

“Our message is come for Art Basel, and stay for AVCC,” said Juan Pablo Cappello, a lawyer, entrepreneur and investor who is on the steering committee of the venture capital conference and several other Innovate MIA events. And all week, there will be plenty of opportunities for Miami’s entrepreneurs, creatives and investors to mingle with their counterparts from all over the Americas and beyond.

In addition to the AVCC, there’s Incubate Miami’s DemoDay, where its class of startups present their companies, the martial arts-inspired TekFight and HackDay, which dangles a $50,000 cash prize. Endeavor, the global nonprofit that promotes high-impact entrepreneurship in emerging economies, is bringing its two-day International Selection Panel to Miami, and Wayra, an international accelerator, is holding a one-day event to showcase its promising startups from Latin America and Spain. It’s all part of Innovate MIA week: “I don’t think anything like it has ever been organized here in South Florida,” Cappello said.

The AVCC will be the big draw, with about 300 people expected to attend the two-day event at the JW Marriott Brickell. The conference, themed “Data, Design & Dollars,” will feature thought leaders from all over the world, particularly Latin America, and presentations by 29 selected companies. This year, the format has been overhauled and energized, with lots of short talks and more time for question-and-answer sessions and networking, said Jerry Haar, associate dean of FIU’s College of Business, director of the Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center and AVCC co-chair.

The AVCC’s 36 speakers include Martin Varsavsky, Argentine tech entrepreneur, investor and founder of Viatel, Ya.com, Jazztel and FON; Hernan J. Kazah, co-founder and managing partner at Kaszek Ventures and co-founder of Mercadolibre; and Jason L. Baptiste, CEO and co-founder of Onswipe. There’s also Michael Jackson, former COO of Skype and now a venture capitalist; Albert Santalo, founder and CEO of Miami-based CareCloud; and Bedy Yang of 500 Startups.

Chosen from more than 100 applicants, the 29 presenting companies hailing from all over the Americas will be giving either two-minute or five-minute pitches, fielding questions from a panel of judges and competing for prize packages valued at about $50,000. Eight of the startups are from South Florida: itMD, Kairos, Trapezoid Digital Security, Esenem, LiveNinja, OnTrade, Rokk3r Labs and Zavee.

The presenting companies have “proven innovation, proven management teams and the ability to scale well and be a pan-regional player,” said Faquiry Diaz Cala, president of Tres Mares Group and co-chair of AVCC. “The word is out this is a great place to come and pitch to great investors in addition to potentially being one of the prize winners.”

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On shared stage, Sen. Marco Rubio and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan take steps toward 2016

WASHINGTON --
Just days after he was sworn in, Sen. Marco Rubio was trying to knock down speculation.

"This is the one job that I wanted. I wanted to be a U.S. senator, not a vice presidential candidate, not a presidential candidate," he told a radio interviewer in January 2011. "I didn’t run to use it as a stepping-stone."

But Tuesday night at the Mayflower Renaissance Hotel, Rubio took another step in reaching for the next thing.

Encircled by the buzz over a potential run for president in 2016, the Florida Republican delivered a speech on ways to lift the middle class, calling it "the answer to the most pressing challenges we face" as he tried to project a fresh outlook for a GOP still reeling from last month’s election.

Rubio shared the stage, and a similar message, with another GOP hotshot and likely presidential candidate, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan. The ambitious, young politicians — Rubio, 41, Ryan, 42 — competed for the spotlight under the watch of several hundred guests, more than two dozen reporters and viewers of C-SPAN.

Rubio is more polished and charismatic, using the emotional power of his immigrant parents’ tale to drive his message. But Ryan, of Wisconsin, is beloved among conservatives and was equally well received.

The positioning was acknowledged only through a joke.

"You’re joining an elite group of past recipients — so far, it’s just me and you," Ryan said to Rubio, who was given a leadership award by the Jack Kemp Foundation at the group’s banquet Tuesday at the Mayflower. "I’ll see you at the reunion dinner — table for two. Know any good diners in Iowa or New Hampshire?’’

Rubio, who traveled to Iowa on Nov. 17, later joked, "I will not stand by and watch the people of South Carolina ignored."

For Rubio, who arrived in Washington by defeating a sitting governor knocked as a relentless office climber, his continued national emergence is a delicate balance of managing his vow to focus on the Senate with his political drive. He played down talk of becoming Mitt Romney’s running mate, a job that went to Ryan, but with the GOP left without a clear leader and searching for direction, Rubio won’t close doors.

Romney’s loss and other election disappointments have left the party searching for a new direction, and Rubio’s and Ryan’s speeches reflected their efforts to appeal to a broader group of voters. Both made an effort to distance themselves from the impression Romney left that half the country is hopelessly dependent on government — the infamous "47 percent" comments delivered at a private fundraiser in Boca Raton.

They pulled back on partisan rhetoric and tried to project a more hopeful and inclusive vision with a heavy focus on middle-class families.

"Some say that our problem is that the American people have changed," said Rubio, born in Miami to Cuban immigrants who worked blue-collar jobs. "That too many people want things from government. But I am still convinced that the overwhelming majority of our people just want what my parents had — a chance."

Ryan, in his first speech since the election, said: "We’ve got to set aside partisan considerations in favor of one overriding concern: How can we work together to repair the economy? How can we provide real security and upward mobility for all Americans — especially those in need?"

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Adorable Tots: Celebs and their Cute Kids!

Mariah Carey & Nick Cannon

"Monroe's in paradise," posted Mariah Carey along with an adorable snap of her daughter lounging in a room full of Hello Kitty toys as her twin brother Moroccan looks on.

"Roc doesn't share the fascination lol," she remarked.

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