The eight-day Innov8 Lafayette festival will showcase Lafayette’s entrepreneurial and business culture and promote economic opportunities.
From April 19-26, it will ֱ conferences, exhibits, workshops and other activities at venues that include UL Lafayette’s Research Park, the Cajundome and Southwest ֱ Community College.
“There will be events for everyone from musicians to people who have designed new soap powder and want to market it,” said Chris Allain, Innov8 Lafayette co-chair and Vidox Motion Imagery CEO.
Innov8 activities will be grouped into four main categories: entrepreneurship, technology and health care, education and arts and culture. The University, businesses, civic groups, non-profits, economic development groups and governmental entities will participate.
Begun last year by the Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce, Innov8 will serve as a forum for connecting entrepreneurs with potential investors.
“There will be an extraordinary level of ideas and entrepreneurship, but it’s also a platform to create a marketplace for innovation,” said Dr. Gerd Wuestemann, Innov8 co-chair and executive director for the Acadiana Center for the Arts.
The iOpener event, hosted by UL Lafayette from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday on April 20, will ֱ a free open house at the University’s LITE Center and another, sponsored by the College of Engineering, near Fletcher and Rougeau halls.
More than 30 exhibits, displays and presentations will detail projects at the LITE Center, Pixel Magic, Picard Center, Abdalla Hall, Academy of Interactive Entertainment and the College of Engineering.
“We pride ourselves in the innovation that happens in University Research Park and on the main campus of the University, and the iOpener is a great opportunity to showcase what we do at UL and how our research matters to this community,” said Dr. Ramesh Kolluru, interim vice president of Research at UL Lafayette.
Through interactive displays, iOpener participants will be able to play a new video game, “drive” underwater robots, explore LITE’s virtual reality cave or lift 5,000 pounds of concrete with a human powered crane.
For more information about iOpener, visit .
The theme of CajunCodeFest 2.0, set April 24-26, is “Own Your Own Health.” The event will focus on national health care discussions and a 27-hour coding competition to develop new health care technology that can help patients make knowledgeable health care decisions. It will be held at the Cajundome.
The winning team will receive $25,000. Additional prizes will be awarded in at least five other categories, including best student team.
In addition to the coding competition, there will be speakers in healthcare and technology, an economic development roundtable discussion, and social events, including a crawfish boil.
Registration is open to health care professionals and software developers, entrepreneurs, educators and undergraduate and graduate students from all majors.
More than 275 people from three countries, 15 states and 40 cities attended the first CajunCodeFest last year. Of those, 45 participated in the health care coding competition, 94 were health and information technology professionals, 42 were entrepreneurs and 35 were students.
More than 300 participants are expected to take part in CajunCodeFest 2.0, said Cian Robinson, associate director for the Center for Business and Information Technologies at UL Lafayette.
Robinson said he would like to see more students take part in the coding competition or attend CajunCodeFest 2.0 simply to network. “This kind of event creates the opportunity to build relationships,” he said.
Speakers include:
· David Callecod, Lafayette General Medical Center;
· Richard Dickie Howze, ֱ Department of Health and Hospitals;
· Zac Jiwa, HHSentrepreneurs and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services;
· Kathy Kliebert, ֱ Department of Health and Hospitals;
· Chris Lunt, HHSentrepreneurs and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services;
· Dr. Farzad Mostashari, national coordinator for health information technology;
· Sean Nolan, Microsoft;
· Jared Quoyeser, Intel Americas Inc;
· Bryan Sivak, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services;
· Greg Trahan, ֱ Economic Development; and
· Lucas Tramontozzi, ֱ Department of Health and Hospitals.
As a whole, Innov8 is designed to be informative and productive, but also fun, said Wuestermann. Business consultant Doug Hall, for example, will conduct his entertaining Innovation Engineering Experience seminar.
Dateline NBC calls Hall, who has conducted past seminars without shoes, “an eccentric entrepreneur who just might have what we've all been looking for...the happy secret to success.” Nike, Ford and American Express and Walt Disney are some of the high-profile clients who have enlisted Hall’s unorthodox consulting services.
Hall’s seminar will be held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on April 23 at the Picard Center in University Research Park.
For more information, go to:
innnov8lafayette.com
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