I recently had the pleasure of judging the Moot Corp competition. Teams from all around the world came to Austin to compete for a prize package worth $100,000. Most of these teams are coming from universities from around the world. You know, college kids. My expectations were low. Two of the four teams that I had the pleasure of seeing absolutely blew me away with their passion, energy, and presentation skills. One of the teams [...]

Since I’m on a little bit of a clean energy spree, I wanted to plug an innovative company based in Pasadena, California not far from where I grew up. Soliant Energy has developed a new type of solar panel. What makes solar panels expensive is that the material that converts sunlight to energy is the same material used to make computer microchips. So you can take a sheet of that material and make one solar [...]

Clean Energy Pt. 2 It wasn’t until I met (thanks Mary Ann) and heard from a few people at Austin Energy (Roger Duncan) that I realized how forward thinking our own Austin Energy is. The list of innovations is long, and experts around the country have recognized that innovation. It’s one of the few businesses I know of that is trying to put themselves out of business by getting their customers to rely upon them [...]

I’m currently at the Austin Clean Energy Venture Summit for what I hope will become an annual event. Many organizations have come together for this event including the Clean Energy Incubator (one track of the Austin Technology Incubator), Austin Energy, and the University of Texas. The Clean Energy Incubator is helping to grow several clean and green companies. I saw a presentation today from AccuWater that was really astonishing. They have some technology that takes [...]