A Silicon Valley-based accelerator program will launch a cohort of semiconductor-related companies in Kissimmee in January.
The Osceola County Board of County Commissioners formalized the agreement to bring Plug and Play to Kissimmee at its meeting Monday.
As part of the deal, the County will pay $1.5 million a year for three years starting next year. An additional $500,000 will be set aside in early 2024 for capital improvements on facilities.
In return, Plug and Play commits to a minimum of 20 startups considered for the accelerator program each year.
“This strategic partnership represents a quantum leap forward in realizing NeoCity’s potential as an epicenter for technological innovation,” Osceola County Commission Chairwoman Viviana Janer said in a press release. “There is seamless connectivity within Plug and Play’s ecosystem that fosters an environment of unparalleled advancement.”
Who is Plug and Play?
Plug and Play has some of the most in-depth experience in running industry-specific accelerator programs around the world.
Major tech firms like DropBox, Zoosk and SoundHound have completed the accelerator in the past.
The new accelerator will become the first for Plug and Play in the semiconductor industry, though the organization has invested in some industry firms.
The program will become one of the latest projects based out of NeoCity, a 500-acre tech and innovation district. NeoCity is a partnership between the county, UCF and other business entities.
Plug and Play has in the past partnered with large companies like Bentley, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Intel and Samsung.
The companies have already expressed interest in Plug and Play’s upcoming foray into semiconductors, said Rouzbeh Borhani
Borhani leads the organization’s semiconductor efforts.
“Within our dynamic ecosystem, innovative startups stand ready to address the entire semiconductor value chain, and NeoCity is an ideal place to kick things off officially,” he said.
Plug and Play will include at least two cohorts per year.
Make no mistake about the upcoming MetaCenter Global Week in downtown Orlando.
It has a chance to transform the city’s reputation as a tech hub, providing a spotlight on projects being built in tech here.
It’s a chance to showcase the medical technology in Lake Nona alongside the gaming scene downtown.
In addition, there will be nods to the huge defense cluster that thrives near the University of Central Florida.
But to do that, you need all major entities, including public and private, to be on the same page.
“It’s bringing in an element of global attention to our city,” said Charlie Lewis, an Innovate Orlando board member who has been one of the leaders in bringing MetaCenter Global Week to life. “But to do that, you need buy-in from the city and county so we can execute and show the highlights as they want them to be shown.”
MetaCenter Global Week will take over downtown Orlando from Oct. 17-19, with conferences, trade shows, competitions and entertainment all packed into a single, dayslong event. It’s a joint program that incorporates this year’s version of Synapse Orlando and the Immerse Global Summit.
An All-Star lineup
Professionals from companies like Meta, Google, Sony, Unity and Lockheed Martin have already come on board to participate.
Orange County officials said one goal for the week is to change the conversation about what Orlando offers.
“They want innovation to be a part of the county’s narrative,” Lewis said. “We want to show off what we have and roll out the red carpet for people coming in on a global scale.”
Orange County Chief Innovation and Emerging Technologies Officer Simone Babb said the event promotes a unifying initiative around technology.
She said a partnership between the county, the City of Orlando and the Orlando Economic Partnership can both attract and retain talent. In addition, it could bring resources and stakeholders together to push toward the same goal.
That is, building the region into a recognized technology hub.
“I value the synergistic energy and passion in our community around technology,” said Babb, recently appointed to a role on the Innovate Orlando board. “Together, we can shape the direction and footprint toward being a recognized and respected tech and innovation hub. (That would) unlock a world of fresh opportunities to foster entrepreneurship in Orange County.”
The committee spearheaded the mapping and connecting of various stakeholder groups to ensure a vibrant and thriving ecosystem, she said.
“This is of huge value to solving community challenges together and in seeing positive results and impact over time,” she said. “We recognize the importance of lining up the talent pipeline and the valuable roles that various groups serve to benefit our community’s focus on technology and innovation.”
Business leaders buying in
Waymon Armstrong has been part of the Orlando tech community for more than two decades.
His company, Engineering and Computer Simulations, has been a sponsor of Synapse.
Armstrong, meanwhile, has been a frequent attender, speaker and presenter since it rolled out in Orlando in 2019.
“It’s important to support events, such as MetaCenter Global Week, to promote our MS&T industry,” he said. “We are looking forward to watching its ongoing success and continuing to learn from it.”
MetaCenter Global Week appears to be something of an informal nod to the popular variety shows of the past.
The format is part business conference, part entertainment showcase and part concert series.
As the week has neared, organizers have started to trickle out information about what to expect.
For instance, they announced this week a set by 29-yearo-old Belgian DJ Lost Frequencies as the week’s closer, along with a concert by local musicians and a scavenger hunt downtown.
But the first hurdle was securing support from the city and county by going directly to them and selling their vision.“We wanted a well rounded board, with representation from institutional businesses like EA, other developers, community leaders and the public sector,” Lewis said. “We asked ourselves, ‘How does technology and innovation impact all citizens of Orange County and Orlando?”
John Meo might have hit on the perfect analogy for a hackathon at the Armed Forces Jam this weekend.
Fresh off his team’s win at the Armed Forces Jam last weekend, Meo compared it to a physically taxing experience that sneaks up on you but provides a satisfying result.
“It was like running a cross-country race,” said Meo, who in his first Armed Forces Jam led a team that built a Battleship-like game in 48 hours. “It requires a lot of effort but once you finish, you are glad that you did it.”
A $1,000 prize for his team likely also contributed to his satisfaction after the event. That amount represented the top prize at the jam, which is in its third year.
Armed Forces Jam brings together developers and other members of the community to build products that solve specific problems for the military.
Meo said the experience of going from zero to working game in a weekend can be a lot.
“It was stressful at the beginning because we had a blank page and you are literally drawing just a dot on the screen,” he said. “To go from that to a working game in two days is a lot.”
Although the event stressed Meo out a little, his background indicates that perhaps he was well-suited for getting things done quickly.
The 22-year-old graduated from Oregon State University at the age of 19, finishing in three years after graduating high school early.
“I genuinely like school and learning so it wasn’t that hard,” he said.
What was hard, though, was the Jam. He said he enjoyed the event but it required him to work long hours.
“It’s the hardest thing I have worked for in my life,” said Meo, who works with Applied Research Associates. “I don’t know why I was so motivated. I almost had no sense of time.”
It wasn’t Kendra Kennedy’s first jam.
She has been to a handful and says she comes back, in part, because of the excitement of the weekend.
“It can be pretty intense,” said Kennedy, a programmer with Orlando-based Design Interactive. “When you are put under time constraints, there is no preplanning. A lot happens on the fly.”
While several people in attendance echoed Kennedy’s thought that the jam is a fun exercise, she also used it to learn new software development skills.
Her team’s project, “Escape from the Killer Orange,” didn’t ultimately place.
However, exposure to new people while reconnecting with old friends ensured the event was a success, she said.
“You learn from new people,” she said. “You get to see how amazing they are in their own different crafts. Sometimes there is tension but usually it’s pretty easy to iron out differences to make an awesome experience.”
As the jam entered its third year, organizer Kunal Patel said logistics get easier, even as his team continues to learn from year to year.
Because Indienomicon Foundation leads several jams a year, with a Halloween-themed event set for October, the organization gets smoother.
In addition, it has become a staple on many organizations’ and industry leaders’ calendars, he said.
“There are now people who expect it and can’t wait for it,” he said. “What always seems to happen is we get more attention from the various groups within some industries. It takes time to do that.”
Patel said word-of-mouth has been crucial for the Jam’s growth.
“There are people who have been in the industry for 20-plus years,” he said. “They are filled with expertise and gray hairs. Even they discover something new here. This event forces you to discover new things.”
As more people within the community participate, the ideas, development cycles and end products continue improve.
In addition, the collisions and experience built at the events could help create a talent surge in the region, as well, Patel said.
For Meo, the feeling of winning the competition paled in comparison to being able to build something in a weekend.
He will take the win, of course.
But being around like-minded people for 48 hours was his favorite takeaway.
“The whole room was just a bunch of people working,” he said. It was a pretty cool environment. Honestly, having the game at the end is just as good a result as winning.”
Sheena Fowler could likely gain Hollywood actor Wesley Snipes’ endorsement as a …
Neto’s idea drew a team of six people to work on it during the jam, a weekend-long hackathon that has 11 teams competing for prizes.
The idea behind EX-Ray Vision is to use augmented reality specs – this team is building for the Microsoft HoloLens 2 – to detect and transform invisible signals on the electromagnetic spectrum into visualizations.
“It’s very antiquated,” Neto said of the Department of Defense’s current solution. “We want to clarify the signal and visualize it. This just takes something that is invisible and, when you see the visualization, it’s like you get a superpower.”
The hackathon brings together teams of artists, programmers and other subject matter experts to build a product in a weekend.
Neto, for instance, did not know anybody on his team before Friday night.
Throughout the first couple of days, they ran into some obstacles.
But, that’s just the reality of development work, he said.
“Nothing works the first time,” said Neto, who runs the cybersecurity firm PC Warriors in Orlando. “There will always be little things that delay you.”
As he worked through the day and into the evening, Neto said he expects it to be a long night before meeting the judges Sunday evening.
“I’m probably staying up all night so by tomorrow we can have something to demo and showcase,” he said.
Christopher Pineyro should feel pretty comfortable with his Armed Forces Jam team this weekend.
The team members have already had years together both at the University of Central Florida and as interns, professionally.
That was kind of the plan heading in, he said.
“It’s easy to talk things out,” Pineyro said. “If we didn’t know each other, it probably would be awkward. It helps because it makes it easier to communicate and you’re not scared to say anything.”
Pineyro’s team has been building “Escape the Grove,” an escape room modeled after the host venue Central Florida Tech Grove.
It’s one of the challenges at the Jam this weekend, which would earn the team $500.
Pineyro pitched his idea on stage during the Jam’s opening day on Friday.
Today, it’s been all about building.
After an initial snag, the team has been on a roll through the middle of the day.
“We are trying to keep it fun,” he said. “At the end of the day, we are game designers and didn’t want to stray too far from that. An escape room had the right balance.”
While the work has been enjoyable, Pineyro says his takeaway will be more than just a working escape room.
“Whatever tools we use, it will be nice to just have the knowledge of how to use them,” he said.
When Angela Alban first moved to Central Florida in the mid-1980s, the region was known for tourism and citrus groves.
But there was something else brewing in the community – a bubbling tech ecosystem that could change the region’s landscape but just had the timing off a bit.
Florida Tech University had long been renamed University of Central Florida.
Martin Marietta, which had opened in the 1950s, would not merge with Lockheed Corporation to form Lockheed Martin for another decade or so.
However, fast forward 35 years and Alban says the time for the city’s tech community to step forward might be now.
“We have continued to evolve and that growth justified revising our message,” said Alban, CEO of Simetri, a company that uses technology to create realistic mannequins for medical and military training. “That eventually improved our ability to attract talent and notoriety across the globe as a high-tech region.”
A high-profile event next month called MetaCenter Global Week represents a showcase of the long-expected emergence of technology in the region, Alban said.
“We’ve made it,” said Alban, a board member of Innovate Orlando. “We are delivering on what was promised.”
MetaCenter Global Week a hard-charging effort
MetaCenter Global Week represents a hard-charging effort to unite, reshape and direct the region’s technology ecosystem in one direction.
During the course of several days starting Oct. 16, MetaCenter Global Week will put global technology leaders alongside regional experts on stage to dig into the transformative technologies Orlando specializes in.
Thus far, the effort has brought on partners that include Meta, Unity, Sony, Snap and several others.
The showcase will spotlight and highlight the community, Alban said.
“This will offer like-minded attendees the opportunity to meet and potentially collaborate to grow together,” she said. “This event will allow those of us who are already here to celebrate our successes and the future opportunities ahead.”
The effort has brought in leaders from a number of tech sectors that have some heft in Central Florida. These include gaming, simulation and health.
The big week will offer an opportunity to show off just what has been brewing in the region.
“The week symbolizes Orlando’s status as a prominent global tech hub, demonstrating its top-tier standing,” said David Adelson CEO of Innovate Orlando and one of the lead organizers of MetaCenter Global Week.
Community supporters
While board members have certainly come on board to support Innovate Orlando, others in the community have, as well.
Innovate Orlando had been part of Orlando Tech Community until it spun off this summer.
“I have been a fan of what the Orlando Tech Community has been doing since it started,” said Tim Hill, former commander of NAWCTSD in Orlando who now serves as director of Central Florida operations and Florida innovation for Intuitive Research and Tech Corproation. “This notion of coalescing all of these factions is a really big thing. When you start to get a central branding campaign, that’s a big deal.”
The long-held belief within the military that innovation must come from the Department of Defense has slowly been relinquished.
Instead, he has seen more embrace the notion that innovation that helps the U.S. Armed Forces can come from other sources, namely, the private sector.
“We recognize (now) that technology and the world itself has moved much quicker than our Cold War-based world can move,” said Griffin, the director of science and engineering for the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marines Orlando-based research, development and training site, known as NAWCTSD. “It’s taken us 20 years to understand that.”
As part of that process, the Orlando military community two years ago embraced Armed Forces Jam. The hackathon brings private sector professionals into a room for a weekend to build products for the military.
Griffin appreciates This partnership with the public because it can offer solutions for real problems the military faces.
“We are now communicating to the world that we need to open our aperture,” he said. “The solution is not always living within our ecosystem but in other areas, like game development and other enterprises. To innovate, you have to open that aperture to bring in talent, ideas and invite them in rather than keep them at arm’s length.”
The mechanics of a hackathon
Armed Forces Jam starts Friday with military leaders letting those in attendance know some of the problems they face.
Teams form around specific projects and spend the weekend building, testing and showing off what they built in 48 hours.
“It really concentrates innovation in a short amount of time,” said Kunal Patel, cofounder of Indienomicon Foundation, which organizes Armed Forces Jam. “People always talk about what they want to do or achieve. But here, in 48 hours, you can have something visible and tangible.”
Indienomicon Foundation has hosted hackathons since its first event in January 2013. Ever since, it has become astaple in Central Florida’s technology community.
The results and attendance numbers have varied from year to year.
However, indienomicon continues to host hackathons that partner with the area’s space and health industries.
Indienomicon’s presence in Orlando received a jolt when it partnered with Orlando’s defense industry and launched Armed Forces Jam in 2021.
“There is a center of excellence in Central Florida with the Armed Forces,” Patel said. “But, like a lot of places, everybody has their heads down, working, almost living in a bubble. This acts as a bridge between bubbles.”
The event has found quick support among Orlando’s defense community.
“It’s a cool opportunity to get the rest of the community an understanding of what the DoD is up to and what problems they face,” said Tim Hill, former commander of NAWCTSD who expects to actively participate in the Armed Forces Jam for the first time this weekend.
Hill now serves as director of Central Florida operations and Florida innovation for Intuitive Research and Tech Corproation.
“This can open doors and minds to folks who maybe don’t think of defense as a business they’d thrive in.”
It’s Year 3 for Armed Forces Jam
Griffin has been involved with the Armed Forces Jam since its inception.
He said a mark of success has been seeing teams and participants return year after year.
In addition, he said the event has become one of his most anticipated events at the Central Florida Tech Grove because, among other things, it can expose the military to potential partners.
“That communication back to us allows us to be better decision-makers and challenge our preconceived notions about what your talent can bring to our mission,” he said. “Maybe the government is a scary thing to work with. But a game jam is an awesome opportunity to get in there, have fun and show what you are capable of.”
