Rich Bailey
A High-Tech Rorschach Test
I’m always on the lookout for patterns in the books that appeal to me. Here are three recent technology books that jumped out and made me read them. Douglas Rushkoff was one of the first writers to try to understand digital culture, starting with ... more
Jan 11, 2017 11:08 AM Tech Talk
Betting On Female Founders
During the first years of GigTank, a handful of female business leaders saw a deficit of women founding companies in Chattanooga’s start-up scene. So, naturally they formed a startup themselves to change that. more
Dec 21, 2016 11:19 AM Tech Talk
What If You Could Build Like Nature?
Thinking about innovation in Chattanooga, it’s easy for me to get lost in context. How does being in this place nurture this company? How does it work, this set of concrete relationships and abstract power dynamics that we call an entrepreneurial ... more
Nov 9, 2016 12:49 PM Tech Talk
Teaching Tech, Making Beats
Inside a quirky little stone building on South Broad Street, with a door framed by Steve Terlizzese’s mosaic art, a young web developer is hatching a project to teach kids in Chattanooga how to use professional grade ... more
Oct 19, 2016 1:52 PM Tech Talk
Future’s So Bright, Got to Wear VR
A few months ago, I wrote about a pair of MIT grad students in Gig Tank developing a company to make virtual reality experiences available to elderly people living in long-term care communities. This column is an unplanned sequel: the winner ... more
Sep 28, 2016 1:29 PM Tech Talk
Shaping the Urban Design Ecosystem
One of our newest startups is actually a reboot of one of the oldest players in the urban design ecosystem. The Chattanooga Design Studio was re-established in 2015 after an eight-year absence and moved into a storefront office on Cherry Street ... more
Sep 7, 2016 1:01 PM Tech Talk
The Future of Gig-Enabled Telemedicine
Two of the Gig Tank teams that presented last night are working in slightly different corners of telemedicine. I interviewed founders of Docity and One-to-One Telehealth a few days before Pitch Night. Telemedicine itself is far from new ... more
Jul 28, 2016 10:23 AM Tech Talk
Tech Dreams Are Made of This
More than other Gig Tank startups, Collider is the product of a collective dream. Several dreams, really. Unless you’ve just emerged from a Rip Van Winkle nap of a decade or two, you know the outlines of the 3-D printing dream ... more
Jul 6, 2016 11:39 AM Tech Talk 1 Comments
Someone Fetch Me a Job
What if finding a job was as easy as finding a date online? You enter your criteria, let the algorithm do the heavy lifting, then check out potential suitors. The cute companies get your application, and the others ... more
Jun 15, 2016 11:55 AM Tech Talk
Is This Your Grandma’s Virtual Reality?
The buzz around virtual reality has been changing. The potential and the prototypes have been around for decades, but the chatter has evolved from the technology itself—how the experience can be made ... more
May 25, 2016 2:17 PM Tech Talk 1 Comments
Chattanooga’s Gig Tank Continues to Grow
What’s in a name? CoLab’s Gig Tank has been rechristened Gig Tank 365 and is migrating from a summer-only accelerator to a year-round program with two additional cohorts of technology startups in the spring and fall. more
May 4, 2016 12:31 PM Tech Talk
All About Entrepreneurial Ecosystems
Recently I started a conversation with Mike Bradshaw of CoLab about GigTank 365, the new year-round version of what used to be a summer business accelerator for companies that capitalize on Chattanooga’s ... more
Apr 13, 2016 2:02 PM Tech Talk
Whose Gig Is It, Anyway?
“We, like all cities and counties, have an issue of a digital divide,” says Kelly McCarthy. “People throw the term around all the time, but I’m not a huge fan of the term.” And while some people dismiss the idea of a digital divide ... more
Mar 23, 2016 10:45 AM Tech Talk
Are Nooga and New York Merging?
Matthew Dutton’s newest artistic report from his personal Bizarro World may be the next step in the mystical merger of Chattanooga and New York City. Wait! Don’t turn the page. Hear me out. I have evidence. more
Mar 2, 2016 9:43 AM City Life 1 Comments
The Speaker Is the Message
TEDx Chattanooga made its debut this past weekend, although it was actually the city’s second TEDx event. TED stands for “technology, entertainment, design.” The first one in 2014—known as TEDx UTChattanooga ... more
Mar 2, 2016 9:43 AM Tech Talk
The Better to See You With (I Hope)
I need some help. I’ve got an idea for a new technology, and I need the right engineer to build a prototype. Pulse readers, you’re getting the first crack at it. Here’s the pitch. You know the gear an optometrist puts in front ... more
Feb 10, 2016 12:50 PM Tech Talk
Local 'Net Radio Gets Ready
Chattanooga is just about to get a new radio station. Right after winning last December’s Will This Float? pitch competition, Undaground cofounders Dave Castaneda (technical director), Cole Sweeton (creative director) ... more
Jan 20, 2016 12:03 PM Tech Talk
Combining Startups and Urban Design
Say you run a venture incubator: you grow companies for a living. You’ve been doing it long enough to have a diverse portfolio of growing startups. So your next move is obviously...real estate? more
Dec 30, 2015 12:14 PM Tech Talk
Disrupting 16th-Century Tech
It’s both a bit strange and a perfectly sensible way to nurture a startup community: Throw a contest for best startup pitch, then give the winners some recognition—from both their soon-to-be peers and the broader community ... more
Dec 16, 2015 1:21 PM Tech Talk
Op-Ed: Stop the Stationary Tsunami
A developer has proposed a seven-story, 140-unit residential building on Cowart Street, behind the row of older buildings anchored by Porker’s. The Planning Commission and the Regional Planning agency ... more
Dec 9, 2015 11:44 AM News & Notes 3 Comments
