The GeekSouth website now understands OpenID, both for user logins and for leaving comments.  If you’ve got an OpenID (and odds are you do even if you don’t know it), you can now use that to either signup for an account here or add it to your current account so that you can login to the site using it.

What is an OpenID?

Existing Users

First, you need to login to the GeekSouth website using your current username & password.  Once logged in, you should see a section on the left-hand menu called Users which will have an optioned titled Your OpenIDs.

You can then add your OpenID.  

Note: This will set the website in your profile to your OpenID url as a security measure mandated by the plugin.

New Users

Head over to the Registration Page, and instead of entering a username & email insert your OpenID in the OpenID field.  Once you are authenticated with the OpenID provider you will be taken to the Wordpress Profile page so that you can fill in the rest of your information.

By default, new users to the site are not allowed to make blog posts.  If you’ve got something you’d like to post email geeksouth@gmail.com and let us know.

Your OpenID?

As I said, you most likely have an OpenID even if you do not realize it.  Following is a list of example OpenIDs:

• openid.aol.com/yourname
• yahoo.com
• google.com/accounts/o8/id
• yourname.wordpress.com
•  yourname.blogspot.com
• yourname.livejournal.com
• flickr.com
• yourname.vox.com

Help?

Email geeksouth@gmail.com if you run into anything odd.  We’ll try to get back to you as soon as we can.

Let’s try to make 2009 the biggest and best year yet for GeekSouth.  Anyone who wants to and can make it, we are planning to meet Next Saturday January 10th to plan things out for the year.  Come ready with topic ideas, location ideas, and well just good ideas.

So we know we want to have a meeting… and we have a day… but that is all we know  Please respond to the following two polls to help decide a time and a location.

For the location, it is a must that it has wifi as we are going to try and stream the meeting over the web for those who can’t make it in person.  I just added a quick couple of suggestions… please add your own if you want somewhere else.

2008 is nearly fading away, so it is once again time for our year-end GeekSouth meetup.  No topics, no speeches, just time to hang out with old friends and make new ones.  

Several people requested it, so we are booked for Ole Chile in Johnson City at 7:00pm on December 16th.  Ole Chile is located right next door to Bailey’s at 2102 North Roan Street.

Please head over to this link and add your name to the list so I can tell the guys at Ole Chile how many to expect.  Hope to see everyone out, bring someone new!

Congratulations to all the companies and folks that won and participated in tonight’s get together in Knoxville. This event is part of Global Entrepreneurship Week UnleashingIdeas.org along with WillThisFloat.com.

First Annual Knoxville Overground Awards
In conjunction with KO/EOK Entrepreneurial Lollapooloza 2008
and Global Entrepreneurship Week

Rules:

1. All nominees must reside at least 30 miles from downtown Knoxville.
2. All businesses must adopt a “triple-bottom line” philosophy – meaning they a) are profitable, b) endeavor to not have an adverse impact on the environment, and 3) seek to improve the quality of life for people.
3. Nominations must be received through knoxvilleoverground@gmail.com before November 10, 2008.
4. Individuals cannot nominate themselves or a company they own.

Award Descriptions:

PINK Excellence in Entrepreneurship for Women Award
This award is given to a female entrepreneurial executive that best exemplifies the values of KO such as building community, public service, and demonstrating innovation in business leadership.

PINK WINNER: April Cox, President and Cofounder of Efficience for http://www.flockgps.com

GREEN Successful Green Startup Award
What company in Knoxville was one of the early adopters to the emerging green industry boom that has already experienced tremendous success?

GREEN WINNER: James “Vig” Sherrill, President and CEO of Aldis; http://www.aldiscorp.com.

WHITE Model Nonprofit Entrepreneur Award
Nonprofits and grassroots organizations bear the same degree of challenges as for-profit ventures. This award is given to an individual who has over the past three years started up either a nonprofit or a grassroots organization from scratch that benefits the community in an innovative way that was only possible with the entrepreneurial spirit of its visionary.

WHITE WINNER: Monika Miller, Community Organizer for Green Drinks; http://www.greendrinks.org.

RED Power to the Persistent Award
Entrepreneurs are known for their drive and determination. By the time most people would have given up, these “bulldogs” are just getting started and never give up on their vision. This honor is given to the individual who has overcome what seemed to be insurmountable odds but yet still came out on top.

RED WINNER: Gavin Baker, CEO of http://www.abunga.com.

BLUE Best Patent of 2008 Award
Inventors are abundance around Knoxville. What’s been the most exciting patent to be filed in 2008 in Knoxville and by whom?

BLUE WINNER: Chris Clark, Nexnet Corporation; http://GetThePearl.com

BLACK Elevating Intrapreneurship Award
Being your own boss isn’t the only way to get involved with a successful venture. Several corporations now of days have to stay on the cutting edge of their learning curve as they continuously explore new emerging markets and develop new brands and products to meet those demands within their organization. Who is the a model entrepreneurial employee, or a model team of a company that helps their company position itself for embracing change?

BLACK WINNER: Scripps Networks, http://www.scripps.com & Chad Parizman (to receive the award on behalf of the team at Scripps)

ORANGE Inspiring Website Startup Award
It’s never been a better time to startup a website business now that after the dot com boom we have plethora of case studies regarding what works and what doesn’t. What’s a Web site startup in town, either established or in development, that inspires us with its design, marketing, and the value it provides us?

ORANGE WINNER: Will Overstreet, Founder & CEO of Voices Heard Media; http://www.voicesheardmedia.com/

BROWN Minority in Entrepreneurship Award
Nominate a minority that you know of that our community regards as a recent and successful entrepreneur.

BROWN WINNER: Santiago Ramirez and Stephanie Ramirez, founders of Copal Creative Communications; http://www.copacreative.com.

YELLOW Community Organizer for Innovative Collaboration Award
Which organization or individual in the community is one of the highest regarded for bringing together entrepreneurs, investors, and visionaries together to discuss emerging markets, business, and entrepreneurship?

YELLOW WINNER: Leonoard Knight, Founder of Entrepreneurs of Knoxville (EOK); http://www.eokhq.com

SILVER Overground Platinum Award
Which tech company / person has done more to help put Knoxville on the map as a “up and coming” entrepreneurial hub for tech startups and small business do to national and possibly international media recognition?

SILVER WINNER: Patrick Hunt, CEO of Tingz; http://www.tingz.net

GOLD Overground Gold Award
Like King Midas, as if they all touch turns into gold, this award is given to a startup in the Knoxville / Oak Ridge region that started with relatively little to no capital investment upfront at their birth and yet is now earning a substantial return.

GOLD WINNER: Spruz; http://www.spruz.com

PURPLE Best in Biotech Award
What’s the biotech company that seemed to hit the ground running and provides an innovative solution in the market with room for rampant scalability?

PURPLE WINNER: Dr. Edward Sobek & Assured Biotechnology Corporation; http://www.assuredbio.com

TEAL Medical Device Startup Award
What’s the top startup in 2008 that demonstrated creativity, caring, and business savvy with a technological development in the medical industry?

TEAL WINNER: Joseph L. Ortiz & 4D Medical Systems Inc.

Find out more at KnoxvilleOverground.com

Will This Float?

Next Thursday the 1st ever Will This Float? business idea pitch competition will be happening at the Carnegie in Johnson City.  Come on out and have your vote counted!  There will be food, a cash bar, and plenty of time to mingle and brainstorm with other idea people from all around the region.

The first two people to direct message @geeksouth on Twitter get a free ticket to the event.  Congrats to @carrie37601 and @stephenhendrix for picking up the free tickets!

Be sure to check out www.willthisfloat.com for all the details.

What is the importance of AI today?

Bruce Klein, someone involved in the business and theory of modern Artificial General Intelligence, recently forwarded me (and everyone else he could think of) a rough draft of a statement on the importance of AI and accelerating change and requested feedback.  I think this summarizes things pretty well but I think statements like this can always use clarification and lean towards (ironically) generalizations.

“Throughout the past half-century, the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been progressing steadily. As progress continues, it is likely that the problem-solving abilities of AI systems will approach and then surpass the brightest human minds. If so, it is also likely these systems will acquire the ability to improve their own programming without human assistance. The development of such systems should be approached with considerable forethought.

The prospects and implications of powerful machine intelligence has been called “singularity” by analogy to singularities in mathematical physics, particularly black holes. This analogy invokes the concept of the “event horizon” that shields the singularity from outside observation. This point of view is informed by the notion that it is difficult for us to predict what will be done by intellects that exceed our own mental ability.

We consider it plausible that advanced AI systems may arrive in the next few decades, and the policies and precedents we set in the present will have significant influence over what will happen in the future. We think it is time for AI researchers and engineers to work together with society at large to craft a roadmap for the development of this technology to bring about a desirable and beneficial future.”

The myths and realities of AI.

The mythos of Artificial Intelligence has been around for a long time.  For example, Wikipedia’s list of ficional robots and andriods throughout history and the Times Online “Top 50 Movie Robots.”

Generally there is a theme that revolves around our AI creations not having something importantly human or being distinctly different from humans.  For example, the tin man in the Wizard of Oz doesn’t have a heart.  Data from Star Trek: TNG is missing emotions entirely.  The Terminator, depending on it’s programming, is equally emotionless and generally sociopathically bloodthirsty. In a recent modern twist, WALL-E is a friendly robot that while hyperactively politically correct also discovers love and redemption. The most famous exception may be the love affair between androids Deckard and Rachael from Blade Runner. What, you didn’t know Deckard was a replicant?

Why do we paint our visions of Artificial Intelligence this way?  Humans have long felt that we were in fact made in God’s image. At the very least, our consciousness, our feelings, our soul is somewhat untouchable by anything other than God.  Our belief is that it’s impossible to create something equal to or greater than human intelligence beyond having a child. As it’s turned out, it’s been incredibly hard to do just that.  Sure, we can have “narrow” intelligence creations (such as chess games) that are superior to humans in every way.  But as far as “general” intelligence, common sense, and emotions, it’s widely believed that it’s impossible to create a machine with these qualities.

These questions, these myths, and the realities of surrounding Artificial Intelligence today may be some of the most important ones ever asked of our species.  There’s a lot of wonderful philosophy about what it means to be human, the definition of intelligence, and the nature of creation and evolution. Also, there is a lot of danger and risk associated with our tampering with these concepts that merit careful observation and research.  This is the primary focus of many modern scientists in the related fields of AI.  How do we control our future in regards to technology?  How do we ensure a safe happy world for humans?  What if we can create something more intelligent than us?  Are humans really the last step in evolution or… just one step?  Is that a good or bad thing?

Fortunately, smart (geeky) people all over the planet are working on it. Many of them have a lot of hope.  Many have trepidation. There are extremes and there are nutcases. At the very least, the quest for Artificial Intelligence has never been more interesting or dramatic.

Important events and interesting links:

In San Jose, California on October 25th the Singularity Summit 2008 is being held.
This is one of the most modern examples of AI researchers gathering to discuss the future.

March 6-9 in Arlington, VA will feature The Second Conference on Artificial General Intelligence

Interesting people:

Francis Heylighen (papers)
Douglas Hoftsadter
Kevin Kelley
Kwabena Boahen
People M.I.T. AI labs

Modern examples of AI

Gaming. Programming “agents” in games to be more and more unpredictable and “intelligent” is big business.
Searching Software. Google seems to get “smarter” every day.
Linguistics, Facial Recognition, Handwriting Recognition. Machines are getting better and better at “understanding” more and more complex things.
Customer Service.  Businesses value automated Customer Service and pour millions into systems for this and it’s way beyond “press 1 or press 2″ now.
Problem Solving.  Most recently, a massive distributed network was established to process data from the LHC.

Sort of late notice (my fault) but the IT Gathering group in Lebanon, VA will have having their meeting tomorrow night! October 15th at 6pm at the Southwest Virginia Technology Development Center.

The topic will be Ruby on Rails.  I’ll (Austin) be giving a quick intro to Rails.

Free Food - But you need to RSVP by 5pm TODAY by calling Adam Tolbert at 276-889-8186 or email at alt2q@uvawise.edu.

The SVTDC is located at 141 Highland Drive in Lebanon, VA.  Click here for a Google Map.

Join us on Thursday, October 23rd for the next GeekSouth meetup.  Ben Collins of The Bliss Agency will be leading us in a hands on exploration of Artificial General Intelligence.

The format will be a dialogue / discussion based on an outline of themes.  Everyone is encouraged to bring their skepticism and their questions.  The main topics will be:

1. What is the status of Artificial Intelligence today?  What is intelligence anyway?

2. What are the potential benefits and harm of AI?

3. What are the philosophical implications of AI and the evolution of intelligence?

4. What is technological acceleration? Where do we see this taking place?

5. Other!

We will be congregating at Machiavelli’s in Bristol, TN (google map) at 7:00pm. Surf over to this site if you will and RSVP so we’ll know how many to expect: www.mobaganda.com/geeksouthoctober2008

Please come out to check in with all your geeky friends, make new geeky friends, and see what Ben has in store for us.

Also… if you have a Robot please bring it along

Recently I setup a shared Google Calendar as a way to track upcoming events that might be of interest to members of GeekSouth and potentially geeks everywhere.  You will always be able to access the calendar at the following address:  www.geeksouth.com/calendar/

This calendar will be used, of course, to list out upcoming GeekSouth meetups, but we can also list any other regional events that might be of interest.

Internet Entrepreneur Shares the Story of a Start-Up  Sept. 17, 2008 @ 6:30pm.

Check out who is speaking.  Fellow Geek South Member!!

FellowTip.com founder Eric McCarty will present the story of his Internet start-up. FellowTip officially launched in June, though the start-up process began over 2 years earlier. Come hear Eric describe the idea germ, pat-ent application, business formation, sleepless nights, de-pleted bank account, and the famed “Garage Lock-In” which took 11 pounds off the founder in 9 days! Learn what to expect, what to do, and what not to do when that new earth-shaking idea hits you in the middle of the night!

Meeting location:

Southwest VA Technology Development Center

141 Highland Drive, Lebanon VA, 24266

For any questions shoot an e-mail to lebanonitcommunity@gmail.com.