Startup Talk: Delta Regional Authority partners with historically black schools to boost minority entrepreneurship

Editor’s note: Each Thursday, Talk Business & Politics provides “Startup Talk,” a round-up of startup, technology and entrepreneurial news.

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DELTA REGIONAL AUTHORITY PARTNERS WITH HISTORICALLY BLACK SCHOOLS TO BOOST MINORITY ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The Delta Regional Authority is collaborating with five Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to push for more entrepreneurial opportunities. DRA is partnering with the Allen Entrepreneurial Institute and Mississippi Valley State University to launch the inaugural HBCU Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Initiative.

The initiative will help HBCUs and their student populations expand their local entrepreneurial ecosystem by engaging HBCU leaders, community leaders, and student entrepreneurs in a series of activities that support the growth of minority-owned businesses on college campuses in the Delta region.

“Entrepreneurship presents an important opportunity for youth to channel their creativity into business success and economic activity for their local community,” DRA federal co-chairman Chris Masingill said. “HBCU campuses present a great space to cultivate student entrepreneurs and build a more inclusive and supportive ecosystem for minority entrepreneurship to grow and help transform the Delta.”

Campuses participating in the inaugural round of the initiative will be selected through a competitive application that is open now through May 30, 2016. Interested schools can review the initiative’s application guidelines here.

TECH PARK APPROVES RESOLUTION ENDORSING 30 CROSSING PLAN

The Little Rock Technology Park Authority on Wednesday during a specially called meeting unanimously approved a resolution to throw its support behind the “split diamond plan” for the controversial I-30 Crossing project proposed by the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department. The Tech Park board endorsed the newer proposal with the caveat that it would redesign the relationship between the Fourth and Sixth Streets and Capitol Avenue to maintain downtown’s Capitol Avenue as pedestrian-friendly traffic flow. The Highway Department sent a letter to the Tech Park board requesting the authority’s public endorsement, officials said.

STINSON AND LANE LEAD CO-WORK SPACE FOR THE INNOVATION HUB AND ACCELERATOR COHORTS

With new co-working space available for use at the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub in downtown North Little Rock, the startup and maker lab has added new staff. Jeff Stinson and Kim Lane have joined the Hub crew and will be helping with some of the accelerator programs and advisory services for new companies. Read more on their roles and what’s being offered at this link.

JOHN DEERE FARM TRACTOR MEETS IBM’S ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

In a unique pilot project, agricultural machinery manufacturing giant John Deere is transitioning its production workflows to smart manufacturing with IBM’s Watson AI, or artificial intelligence. Unveiled at the Hannover Messe industrial trade show this week, the pilot project based on IBM’s smart manufacturing platform has been underway in the John Deere’s plant in Mannheim, Germany since January.

IBM and John Deere are currently working on integrating cognitive maintenance. For example, as IBM Watson’s deep-learning platform comes into play, a worker can take a photograph of their workstation and the artificial intelligence uses an image recognition algorithm to determine the cause of the fault. To learn more about the John Deere-IBM collaboration, click here.

COMMERCE DEPT. OUTLINE PLANTS TO USE TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION, DATA ANALYTICS TO IMPROVE PUBLIC SAFETY

The U.S. Department of Commerce has issued the Public Safety Analytics R&D Roadmap, which outlines opportunities to spur innovation and improve public safety by making data more accessible and useful for police, firefighters, emergency medical services and other first responders. Published by the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST), the report evaluates software, network and device technologies that could improve public safety response, communications and operations over the next 20 years.

The new analytics roadmap suggests how data collection, processing, analysis and visualization techniques could generate valuable intelligence for public safety in the short-term (0 to 5 years), medium-term (5 to 10 years) and long-term (10 to 20+ years). The roadmap identifies trends and drivers, technology capabilities and gaps, enabling actions and actors and potential operational benefits such as improved situational awareness. The roadmap will also guide planning for public safety communications research, including how to allocate the $300 million NIST is to receive from the 2015 wireless spectrum auction.