Gov. Perdue (NC) gives a “shout out” to JUTE Networks
Around 4:00pm EDT today I got a few text messages from people attending the Institute for Emerging Ideas (IEI) Forum in Raleigh, NC. Governor Bev Perdue (D-NC) had just highlighted JUTE Networks as a company that had started a “tech startup” in North Carolina. Thanks for mentioning us Gov. Perdue!
In response, I wanted to say thanks, tell you a little bit about IEI and check out any data I had on Gov. Perdue.
IEI is self-described as:
The Institute for Emerging Issues (IEI) is a public policy, think-and-do tank that convenes leaders from business, non profit organizations, government and higher education to tackle some of the biggest issues facing North Carolina’s future growth and prosperity.
You can learn more at their website: http://www.ncsu.edu/iei/
I went into the data I had readily available from the National Institute for Money in State Politics. What I had were the top donors in NC–just a few people–but two of them had given to her campaign. You can see that and some more visualizations in the gallery below.
(Red = Republican; Blue – Democrat; thick line = a donation of $2k or more)
Social Network Visualization of the Presidents of the USA
I recently attended a MeetUp of the Los Angeles Semantic Web & PHP Meetup Groups. It was a presentation on the Factual API. Factual is a very cool company building a platform for “open source data.” I pulled down some data to test and created the following visualizations, which reveal…well, something about American Presidents. I’m not quite sure what that something is, but it’s interesting to me. What do you think?
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Interconnectivity of Presidents Over Time
This shows the shared connections to universities & branches of the military over time. I have grouped them into groups of 5 presidents at a time, which are the ones highlighted in yellow. This is the most interesting case I found. The middle of the 20th century appears to be the least interconnected.
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Presidents & Their Colleges / Universities
This is interesting because it is not, as I would have hypothesized, all Harvard and Yale folks. In fact, the Harvard / Yale crowd is most best represented at the beginning of the country and in the last 50 years. A lot of presidents did not attend college.
followup: State Money visualizations for California
As a followup to the last blog post on State Money in Florida, here are the visualizations I rendered from the State Money data on California:
Top donors with donation sizes indicated by link thickness; republican = red; democrat = blue.
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Top Republican donors. One does NOT donate to Gov. Schwarzenegger.
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Why does this guy support the one Democrat?
State Money Analysis: Florida in 2008
Over the last month, I’ve been working with Edwin Bender and The National Institute on Money in State Politics (NIMST), which operates FollowTheMoney.org. This not-for-profit organization provides a database similar to the Sunlight Foundation’s database of political donations, but NIMST focuses exclusively on state elections.
Their data has been featured prominently in many publications. Most recently, I came across it in the New York Times article “Health Lobby Takes Fight to the States,” which cites the NIMST report “Take $2 Million…and Call Me in the Session Health Care Interests Gave Healthy Doses of Contributions.”
This is an excellent use of this type of data. I encourage you to read the article and the report.
For a test run, NIMST gave me a sample set of data to process in Jute. Admittedly, I have not perfected the analytic techniques here and there is a lot more work to do to make the data relevant. Edwin Bender said to me in a prescient email
“Clay Johnson of Sunlight Foundation said recently that data visualizations are a dime a dozen, but meaningful visualizations are priceless.”
These are the top 5 donors to state candidates in FL in 2008. The largest donations went to the FL Republican Party. These donors give a large number of $500 donations (shown in orange).
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So this is my first attempt at meaningful visualization. I give myself a “B-” on it. I took the data from FL, a state where I’m familiar with state politics after playing a prominent volunteering role with my mother’s unsuccessful run at the state house in 2008.* In the following visualizations, there is a very simple visual index: REPUBLICAN = RED; DEMOCRAT = BLUE; $500 DONATION = ORANGE.
The interesting about this is:
1) The top donors in the state are largely bi-partisan in their giving. Why? Do their recipients sit on influential committees? Is there a specific piece of legislation they wanted to support? A specific fundraising volunteer who brokered these donations?
2) There are a surprising number of $500 donations. Why so many?! What is the significance of a $500 donation to a state official? UPDATED: ”$500 is the legal limit for a campaign contribution to an individual candidate. That amount can be given once during the primary and once during the general election.” according to Linda McDonald, my mother.
Why? I’m not sure. I hope this blog post will help me find out.
FYI: you can access this data set in a network document called “state money FL v1″ by using the Jute guest account. Or, request your own account and I’ll share the data set with you.
Top 2 Donors in FL State Politics in 2008
These are the top 2 donors in FL state politics. What is their political bias?
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Paul Tudor Jones, II
Mr. Jones supports candidates from both parties and both parties' state offices. Why?
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Guy M. Spearman, III
Guy M. Spearman, III also supports candidates from both parties and both parties' state offices. Why?
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Whole Network Analysis: Top 5 FL Donors
Whole Network Analysis shows a surprising number of $500 donations among the top 5 donors in FL state politics in 2008. $500 is the maximum donation permitted.
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Assumed Industry Affiliation
By extrapolating industry affiliations from the companies where donors self-report that they work, we can look at trends of how industries' money flows to parties. This is not really a factually valid analysis--just an exercise in using Jute to crunch NIMST data.
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Finding meaning in this data…
This data set is just a trial, and this blog post is just to get some initial feedback. My hope is that we can elevate this into a funded research project, analyzing trends in the NIMST data, and finding specific, relevant examples that we can publish. Also, I’d like to work with a campaign to help them in their fundraising and strategy development.
There is a lot more than needs to be done to “take this to the next level.” That includes:
Cross-referencing this data with other data sets, like: which campaigns actually won seats in the State Legislature; which committees the elected officials sit on and chair; which federal candidates these donors supported; and, ideally, which candidates I know (or my clients know) and how they can leverage existing relationships to get value out of this analysis. (That last one comes from existing, internal databases.)
But for now, I hope you’ll help me find meaning in this data. If you’d like access to more analysis from other states, or you are interested in publishing this material, please contact me via email or via phone at 828/545.9539.
Sean McDonald
co-founder, Jute Networks
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*A little editorial here: Linda McDonald ran a hell of a campaign against a competitor with an exponentially larger war chest. In a district where a Dem hadn’t had a chance in a generation, she lost by a razor thin margin. And the people of the state of Florida are worse-off because she doesn’t represent them.
Guide to importing data in JUTE NRM Prototype
This video will walk you through the entire process. If you’re more of a self-starter, follow the steps below and consult the video if you need help.
Create a new Network and choose a template.
There are three standard templates in JUTE NRM PROTOTYPE: two for political data (one with full names, one with parsed names) and a Basic Network template. The Basic Network includes only people and businesses, as well as four standard relationship types (Professional, Personal, Family, Civic).
(If you are uploading data into an existing network, open that network, then go to Overview > Import Contacts & Paths.)
Creating Custom Network Templates
You can customize any network document by opening the network, then going to Setup. From here you can add new types of contacts and relationships (or “paths”) and create new fields.
Copying existing Network Templates
You can copy a Network Template when you are creating a new network by using the “Use an existing network as the base” option in the Create a New Network wizard. There is a bug in this dialog that requires you to click the option for “Use an existing network…” then choose the network you want to copy, then in order to advance, you have to click the “Start from a standard network type” button again, then click the “Use an existing network” button again.
Add initial data
From CSV
If you are using the Create a New Network wizard, in step 4 you will be asked to add data into your newly created Network Document. Option 3 is to add a CSV file. When you follow this option, you will be taken to the JUTE DATA IMPORTER, a nifty little tool we built to help you import data into a network format.
The first step is to select a file to import.
Click the “Select” button, then “Upload a New File” and “Browse.” If you have uploaded other CSV files, they will be in your file cabinet below. Once you have chosen a CSV file, choose if from the CSV file folder below (double-click the folder to open it), then select your CSV file and click “select.”
Next, choose the appropriate import settings.
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- “First row is a header row” means that your CSV file has a header row on it. This is used in the “detect data structure” feature and keeps JUTE from importing your headers as nodes and links.
- “Detect data structure” automatically places fields in the field of the matching name to the header row in the data set. If you are importing large or complicated networks, this is an extremely time-saving tool. Note: In PROTOTYPE, this function only works for nodes, not for links. This is a buggy script and will not always work 100%, but it is still very helpful.
- “Merge Duplicates” will automatically merge dupes across the entire network document. By default, JUTE will rely on the field that is identified as the “label” in the Network Template to de-dupe. While some other processing takes place, it is not reliable. If you need to assign a unique id, that is possible. Email Sean to ask how.
Once you click upload, you’ll use a visual interface to “drag & drop” data from the spreadsheet fields into the appropriate node and link fields. This will create a “logic” for structuring the network.
You’ll start by assigning the appropriate fields to the nodes. Then, hold CTRL (CMD on Mac) and click one node, then draw a relationship to another node. This will create a relationship field and you can drag & drop the appropriate data into those relationships as well. Click “Continue” and your import should happen in 10-60 seconds, depending on the size of data.
(This part should be pretty intuitive. Watch the video if you struggle with it.)
There is a limit on how many nodes & links JUTE NRM PROTOTYPE can handle in each Network Document. While there is no “magic number” where importing stops working, there is a limit. That limit will be impacted by the degree of interconnectivity in a data set. A simple data set may allow you to upload up to 8,000 nodes (this is the most we’ve uploaded successfully) and a complex data set may stop working at 2,000 nodes.
You can sometimes “cheat” this limit by parsing your data into multiple CSV’s, but no guarantees that this will work.
If you encounter problems uploading…
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- If you are using OpenOffice, you need to save the CSV in a special way. When you save it, choose the “Edit filter settings” option and uncheck the “Save cell content as shown” box.
- Sometimes problems will come up if you add / delete a lot of nodes or links in the visual importer step. The solution is to just try again and not make as many mistakes.
- Jute will often have trouble adding more data to an existing network when there is already 3,000+ nodes in that network.
- You can email Sean if you have a hangup. He’ll help if he can..
From Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail / MS Live mail and AOL / AIM
THIS FEATURE IS CURRENTLY SO BUGGY THAT IT BARELY WORKS.
Sorry. You can try but it probably won’t work.
Visual Data Input
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- Add a relationship at any time by holding down CTRL (CMD on a Mac) and clicking on one contact then drawing a new relationship and clicking on the other contact.
- To add contacts (nodes) inside of the Network Document, click the “Add Contacts & Paths” button. Drag & drop the appropriate node type.
- There is a “Batch” mode for both Contacts or Relationships. Once you enable a Batch mode, you can drag & drop as many as you’d like to have. When you click “Save and Exit” you will be walked through a wizard to fill in additional information.
Editing information
You can edit information from the Profile view of any node or link. Just click on the field and edit away.
API
JUTE NRM PROTOTYPE does have a RESTful API. Email Sean to learn more.
How to use “guest access” for Jute NRM
We want to make it as easy as possible for you to try Jute NRM. So you have two options:
1) Contact us and request an account and you’ll get free access for 30 days.
2) Use the “guest” account (instructions below) to get access to an open account.*
*Keep in mind, this account is public and anything you do in this account can be seen by other guest visitors.
Instructions for using the guest account:
1) Visit http://nrm1.jutenetworks.com
2) user name: ”guest@jutenetworks.com
password: “networks”
3) Open the “You Network” public demo
Video walkthrough of using the guest account:
Old School Business Networking
An amazing article was recently published by Katherine Rosman of the Wall Street Journal. In “What Facebook Can’t Give You: Over 52 Years, These Men Have Evolved Into Movers and Shakers—Together,” Rosman writes about The Wednesday 10, a group of men who gathered every Wednesday in Manhattan. She opens the piece this way:
Before there was Facebook, there was the Wednesday 10.
In 1957, as men in their late 20s, they began meeting—initially over breakfast, then over dinners held at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel or at the Harvard Club in midtown Manhattan. Few were born to means. Many were sons of immigrants. Most went on to become luminaries in their fields—presidents of television networks, partners at banks, editors of magazines.
The article (take the time to read it!) goes on to show how their trusted relationships evolved into invaluable business relationships, and she goes into anecdotes about the group and her time meeting with them. It’s an extraordinary testament to what a small group of trusted relationships can do, when cultivated and put to work, with ambition but also with discretion.
These are the kind of trusted relationships we want Jute to help people to build.
We live in a time of hype about the power of social networks. We live and work in time where Facebook blurs the boundary between personal and professional relationships. But we can’t forget that Facebook also blurs the line between the people with whom you have close relationships, and the people you barely know. My family and closest friends can see pictures of my mountain biking trip, but so can some of my clients, and some people I barely remember from high school.
Today, people find their customers, clients, business partners and sometimes even their lovers online. In most cases, the people they meet online are strangers, who evolve into trusted relationships. On occasion, one person makes an email introduction because she thinks that other two people ought to know each other.
But rarely to we get to have a lot of insight into the close relationships of the people we already know. Rarely do we really know “who knows whom and how.” It’s not only that this is a tremendous amount of information to collect and remember, it is also a social challenge to ask people who they know and how well they know them. So we learn little bits and pieces at a time about who knows whom and how.
In amazing, influential networks like the Wednesday 10, one of the things they know is who knows whom, and how. At least, that tends to be the case. That information is shared throughout the group. Introductions are made, and new relationships blossom.
With the type of networks that we analyze and visualize with Jute, we can see large portions of people’s networks of relationships. This transforms the process of learning who knows whom and how from a lengthy, social process to a rapid, business intelligence process.
Unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, Jute is focused on trusted and often valuable relationships.
In a perfect world, the use of a tool like Jute could help people form thousands of groups of people who have an “enlightened self interest,” like our old friend the Swamp Fox talks about all the time.
Montana businesses networks — via implu
I recently came across implu (www.implu.com). It’s self-described as:
implu is an online tool for prospecting, networking and market research. No other site keeps you informed with daily news, custom searches and daily email alerts. No other site provides you with an executive’s business associations allowing you to network your way into new clients. No other site provides comprehensive company information on just one page.
Seems to provide a lot of interesting information by scraping the web. I pulled a CSV file from implu (and gave them big props for having an easy way to do that…) and uploaded into Jute NRM Prototype.
Nothing spectacular in the results, but it’s interesting. It would be much more interesting as a layer of data mixed with my personal data.
Montana Businesses — Whole Network
H&R Block Executives in Montana
Key Networks in Montana Zip Code 63141
What do you think?
Advanced Analytics & Business Network Visualization
Gartner offered up their top 10 list for strategic technologies in 2010. [read the full article on ZD NET]
Ranking in at #2 is “Advanced Analytics” which aren’t exactly defined, but are address in the quotation below. My perspective is that Jute is a form of Analytics–it’s analytics for your network of professional relationship. Jute helps you make better decisions with the data that you have by converting that data to information. That process of analysis and visualization is the hallmark of great analytics software of every stripe.
Here’s what ZD Net quoted:
On the analytics front, Gartner said in a presentation:
We have reached the point in the improvement of performance and costs that we can afford to perform analytics and simulation for each and every action taken in the business. Not only will data center systems be able to do this, but mobile devices will have access to data and enough capability to perform analytics themselves, potentially enabling use of optimization and simulation everywhere and every time. This can be viewed as a third step in supporting operational business decisions.
The rub: New technologies need to be created to search and organize unstructured content and data.
That’s right. And that’s what Jute offers–a solution to search and organize that unstructured data.
Gartner's Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009 / 2010
Your network determines your behavior
In September, 2009, The New York Times Magazine ran a controversial headline: “Are your friends making you fat?” Then they went on to prove that, yes, in all likelihood, your friends are making you fat.
I encourage you to read the whole article. I’ve pulled out a few of my favorite passages below.
New York Times Magazine - "Are your friends making you fat?"
Behaviors are “contagious” across relationships
…Two years ago, a pair of social scientists named Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler used the information collected over the years about Joseph and Eileen and several thousand of their neighbors to make an entirely different kind of discovery. By analyzing the Framingham data, Christakis and Fowler say, they have for the first time found some solid basis for a potentially powerful theory in epidemiology: that good behaviors — like quitting smoking or staying slender or being happy — pass from friend to friend almost as if they were contagious viruses. The Framingham participants, the data suggested, influenced one another’s health just by socializing. And the same was true of bad behaviors — clusters of friends appeared to “infect” each other with obesity, unhappiness and smoking. Staying healthy isn’t just a matter of your genes and your diet, it seems. Good health is also a product, in part, of your sheer proximity to other healthy people.
Sociograms–little maps of who knew whom
FOR DECADES, SOCIOLOGISTS and philosophers have suspected that behaviors can be “contagious.” In the 1930s, the Austrian sociologist Jacob Moreno began to draw sociograms, little maps of who knew whom in friendship or workplace circles
Different classes of relationships
co-workers did not seem to transmit happiness to one another, while personal friends did. But co-workers did transmit smoking habits; if a person at a small firm stopped smoking, his or her colleagues had a 34 percent better chance of quitting themselves. The difference is based in the nature of workplace relationships, Fowler contends.
Your network is HUGE
As Fowler pointed out, if you want to improve the world with your good behavior, math is on your side. For most of us, within three degrees we are connected to more than 1,000 people — all of whom we can theoretically help make healthier, fitter and happier just by our contagious example. “If someone tells you that you can influence 1,000 people,” Fowler said, “it changes your way of seeing the world.”
Starting Point: data you can use in Jute
I was recently asked for a “Top 10″ list of data sets that might be used in a project with Jute. While there is no “one size fits all” of data sets, I thought it’d be good to compile a list of links that helps someone get started. Most projects end up combining 2-4 data sets, so it’s seldom that all of those can be identified ahead of time. It’s also important to remember that most organizations have not just an internal database, but email address books and social software accounts like LinkedIn–all of which are databases.
So, this list isn’t perfect and it isn’t complete–but it should be a good starting point.
Feel free to comment if you have any questions about a specific type of data set that is not listed here. I’ll get back to you…
Not-for-profit
Blackbaud’s ResearchPoint service culls together a variety of data points on individuals and helps you see not only there giving history, but also critical information like net worth.
Foundation Center Online A compiled list of grants and granting institutions.
NOZA Search Data pulled from across the web on major donors to non-profits, sorted by sector, location and a variety of other attributes.
Charity Navigator’s “Charities performing similar types of work” feature would be helpful on certain projects.
Guidestar A well known data provider for donors and non-profits.
Corporate / Investment
Dunn & Bradstreet / Hoovers The 800 lb gorilla of databases, D&B provides a huge range of data about companies, markets, industries and even individuals.
VentureDeal.com Tracks the deals that take place in the venture capital space around North America. Good balance of accuracy and economics at $25 / month.
The Director’s Database A database of corporate governance.
Dow Jones Factiva
Politics
FollowTheMoney.org (National Institute on Money in State Politics) Tracks political donations and money flowing through lobbyists in all 50 states. Allows users to see which lobbyist represents which clients. [API]
OpenSecrets.org Provides a variety of data points focused on exposing the role money plays in political influence. Available for personal use or for purchase. [API]
Data.gov As part of the Obama Administration’s plan to make government more transparent, they have created this site to open up unclassified government data. Currently, there’s only 597 data sets, but it grows every day. Hoping to find a history of the Toxic Release Inventory in American Somoa? Data.gov is for you…
LittleSis.org “We bring transparency to influential social networks by tracking the key relationships of politicians, corporate executives, lobbyists, financiers, and their affiliated organizations.” [API]
Aggregators
iWave Prospect Research Online Aggregates ZoomInfo, NOZA, Guidstar, High Net Worth Alert, HEP GiftsPlus, Prospects of Welth, Foundation Finder and Pro Data. I’ve never used this service, but it looks very promising. If it really does provide all that for a $3k subscription, it’s a great deal! (Interestingly enough…they have a caveat that their service is available exclusively to not-for-profit purposes.)
StrikeIron has created web services out of a range of popular data products, ranging from address verification to business intelligence / market research data.
WealthEngine Aggregates regulatory data, voluntarily reported data and statistically modeled data to provide a view of an individual’s habits, interests and resources.
Free & Open Source Data
DBpedia Converts Wikipedia into a database, which allows for interesting things like seeing the connections between Presidents and their Cabinets. (And the million other interesting things you can find in Wikipedia…)
Datamob.org Datamob highlights the connection between public data sources and the interfaces people are building for them.
InfoChimps.org An “open marketplace for data” where people access huge data sets and obscure data sets: from corporate reporting to the top 100k crossword puzzle words of all time, you can find almost any type of data here.
Swivel.com Web community of data enthusiasts who create many types of chart / graph visualizations for the data sets they submit.
Get specific!
It’s important to remember that some of the best data comes from local and / or localized data sources. Chamber of Commerce directories, business council directories member-based organization directories (think: churches) and alumni databases can all be very valuable in expanding your network.
Another incredible set of data that is too diverse to list here is Industry Trade Association data sets. Whether it’s the rubber industry or the Green Building Council, getting access to the key players and their association’s local, regional and national structures will benefit your network data by leaps and bounds.
Good lists / other blog posts about data.
Trust Networks’s wiki of networked data sets. (Awesome list!)
FEC data in Jute Prototype
We recently got a question the FEC data we put in Jute Prototype last year. So I brushed off a walkthrough and thought I’d share with the world. Check it out:
SoCalTech.com Interview with Sean McDonald
Ben Kuo from SoCalTech.com sat down with Jute co-founder Sean McDonald last week. Ben’s posted the interview on his site, which is the leading source of information about the venture / startup industry and culture in Southern California.
Read the article and check out the rest of SoCalTech while you’re there.
Ask Slashdot: The answer is small groups of trusted relationships
On a recent Top Post on technology mega-site Slashdot (”news for nerds. stuff that matters.”), a user who goes by Rival stimulated a lot of conversation around this topic:
“As an inquisitive and creative geek, I am constantly coming up with ‘clever’ ideas…On the admittedly long chance that an idea is genius, however, what is the best way to ask for another’s insights while mitigating the risk of them stealing or sharing the idea? Asking a stranger to sign a contract before discussing an idea seems like a good way to get a door closed on my face. What are your experiences and suggestions?”
User lordsid summed it up in a response to the post:
“Talk to people you trust.”
The upcoming release of Jute Beta includes Jute Groups–the perfect tool for Rival and others to use to connect with those small groups of trusted relationships. Register now to be one of the first to receive access to Jute Beta.
How can we help?
Case study
The team behind the Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client has started heavily promoting their Mozilla Service Week, which is coming this fall. Among the projects they suggest that their fan base–largely technologists–take on in local communities are:
- They teach senior citizens how to use the Web.
- They show a non-profit how to use social networking to grow its base of supporters.
- They help install a wireless network at a school.
- They create Web how-to materials for a library’s computer cluster.
- They refurbish hardware for a local computer center.
- They update a non-profit organization’s website.
It’s a great project and I encourage anyone reading this to get involved.
(I’ll point out that, Mozilla does plenty to make the world a better place by creating an open browser and making it successful and widely-adopted. This initiative won’t come close to that level of impact, but it is noble.)
The big picture
This is a great segue to one of the defining questions of our age: who will teach the millions of Americans and billions of people around the world how to put the best technologies of our time to use in their own lives? There are lots of follow-up questions here, including: who is responsible for doing so? should all technologies be designed in a way that they are “intuitive enough” for anyone to use them? should the end user play a role in maintaining the technology or is it OK to have a driver/mechanic (user/expert) relationship with core technologies like a person’s computer? This list goes on and on…
How can we help?
The question for a startup like Jute Networks is: how can we help ensure that all people have access to technologies that make their lives better?
We help most by making our company successful. Jute NRM is a truly innovative user interface for complex relationships data. The better the interface, the more valuable that information is to a broader audience. In a world with more data than our greatest minds know what to do with, data visualization’s great promise is to increase all people’s ability to at least understand data that impacts their lives and potentially make better decisions that increase their quality of life.
From an action-oriented perspective, we’ve got to start finding clients that really need our help to fulfill their missions. Large non-profits, innovative startups…any operation that lives and dies by its relationships. In a perfect world, our clients will be dedicated being the change we want to see in the world (to paraphrase Gandhi). We believe in a progressive approach to business, government and stewardship of the earth. We believe that entrepreneurship and technological innovation offer great promise to create a more perfect union, domestically and the world round.
If you need to get more value out of complex relationship data and your organization seems like a fit, contact me, Sean McDonald, today.
Creative Juice. Sponsored by…
You heard it here first, folks. Google has officially sponsored the Creative Juice competition, alongside Asheville start-ups Digital Chalk, American Green TV, economic development leaders Advantage West and yours truly, Jute Networks. The grand prize winners for the national competition will win a trip to sunny Mountain View, CA to tour the Googleplex!
Creative Juice is:
Creative Juice is a collegiate competition which will challenge student teams to create value while communicating a message of environmental responsibility through the use of imagination, innovation and creativity around the use of a “throw-away” item. Teams will record their experience via video and upload to YouTube for judging.
We’re a proud sponsor. Matt and Sean first saw a competition like this at Stanford, when we went for entrepreneur week. It is an effective way to teach innovative practices and foster an entrepreneuring spirit.
(Facebook’ers–take a minute to join the Creative Juice group)