Monday, October 5, 2015

This week, a handy guide to building a unicorn

This article was originally published on the Velocity news site.

Are you interested in entrepreneurship? So is Ted Livingston. Who is Ted Livingston you ask? Ted Livingston is the founder of the Waterloo-based company now valued at one billion dollars (also known as a “unicorn”) Kik. He is coming to the University of Waterloo this Wednesday, October 7 from 8:00 to 9:00 p.m.! Don’t miss this awesome talk and reserve your free ticket.

Ted Livingston was an undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo from 2005 to 2009, studying mechatronics. In October 2010 he launched Kik, a cross platform messaging service that doesn’t require a phone number for registration, but a username instead. It is very popular for users aged 25 and under, as it can be used on any device, not simply on a cell phone. This isn’t to say that Kik doesn’t have users of all ages though. Kik is so simple that your grandma can use it, literally. It’s not uncommon to have users aged 70 and 80 signing up to use the app as well. Kik allows users to have numerous conversations at once and makes it as simplistic as kicking a ball back and forth, which is where the name originally came from.

Ted Livingston joined Velocity residence originally to create a music app by the name of “Unsynched,” but while waiting for licensing to pass on the music he incorporated a messaging app for his users. Ted soon decided to drop the music element of the app, after seeing the great success the messaging portion had, and made a second version that didn’t require a phone number for registration. Ted added a million users within 15 days of launching “Kik Messaging”, or Kik 2.0, a revamped version of their initial product “Kik Chat.” Kik added their second million users a week after that. Despite the hardships Kik went through when RIM decided to sue Kik for patent infringement, and remove the app from the BlackBerry store, Kik pushed on and is now one of the most popular chat apps in the world, having received a recent investment of $50 million from Chinese giant Tencent. Quite an inspirational journey!

Kik now works out of an office in Waterloo, sharing space with several other companies; a modest location for a company that has a massive footprint. They also have grown to have locations in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles.

With chat apps appearing anywhere and everywhere, competition is fiercer than ever before. How does Ted do it at just 28 years old? Now is your chance to find out! Don’t miss this valuable learning opportunity to hear from an innovative, local start-up legend. Reserve your free ticket now!

Missing and Marginalized conference calls for papers

The University of Waterloo, in partnership with The Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), will be presenting Missing and Marginalized: On Ending the Erasure of Women’s Lives and Experiences" in June 2016 at Federation Hall.

In collaboration with the ACU, this international, interdisciplinary conference focuses on the role that the post secondary education (PSE) sector can play in ending the erasure of women’s lives and experiences. The conference brings together scholars from all disciplines and Commonwealth nations, as well as administrators, industry leaders, and policy-makers.

The conference is organized around three pillars: Global and Aboriginal justice issues; leadership; and industry and the STEM disciplines. The conference will include submitted papers organized into concurrent sessions, discussion panels and workshops, and a poster session.

"Women are missing," says a statement by event organizers. "From the missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada, to the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria, to the women who are missing from the Chinese population due to the One Child policy, the vulnerability and expendability of women is an international scandal."

"Less tragic but just as ubiquitous is the absence of women internationally from political leadership and from full participation in economic life. Within academe too, women are starkly underrepresented in the STEM disciplines and in senior academic administration. Put simply, wherever you look, and at almost every level of analysis, in circumstances that range from quotidian to horrifying, women are missing out on the opportunity to flourish, and to support the flourishing of their communities."

The conference organizers have issued a call for submissions for 25 minute talks, 40 minute workshops, 40 minute panels, and poster presentations on the topic of missing and marginalized, broadly construed.

Submissions that focus on one or more of the conference's three pillars are especially encouraged.

Interested parties can upload a 500-word abstract of their proposed presentation in .doc, .docx, .rtf, or .pdf format by 12:00 p.m. on December 1, 2015. Authors can expect to receive a decision by March 30, 2016.

Visionary lecture on tackling grand challenges

The Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology (CBB) is hosting the latest entry in the Visionary Lecture Series today. 

Peter A. Singer, chief executive officer of Grand Challenges Canada, will deliver remarks entitled "Tackling Grand Challenges in Global Health and Development" at 2:00 p.m. today in DC 1302.

In 1997, Dr. Singer and colleague Dr. Abdallah Daar did a study asking the scientific community to determine the top 10 biotechnological priorities for improving health in the developing world. The list, published in 2002 in the scientific journal Nature Genetics, led to the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation providing $450M to help the foundation design a "grand challenge" to the scientific community. Funds were awarded to 44 research teams to improve global health working on everything from genetically modifying mosquitoes to wipe out malaria, to creating a human immune system in mice for the testing of HIV vaccines.

In 2010, Grand Challenges Canada was established, with funding from the Canadian government, to help Canadian innovators develop and market new technologies to improve health. In CBB’s 2015 Visionary Lecture, Dr. Singer will speak about the experience of Grand Challenges Canada to support bold ideas with big impact in global health, how innovation might be pursued to help reach sustainable development goals, and the leadership role Canada could have to do so. 

Seating is limited, so please register. The event will be recorded.

2,345 Quantum Cats were herded on Saturday

The new Quantum Cats game was a huge success at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) as part of the Open House at Reunion 2015. Players of all ages lined up to experience the game and learn a little something about quantum mechanics at the same time.

The goal of the game: save the world’s kittens using phenomena that even Einstein called “spooky”. Similar to the game style of Angry Birds, players launch a cat – it may be Classy, Schrö, Digger or Fuzzy. Now Classy acts like you would expect a cat to act, while you’re not sure which of Schrö’s states will hit, if Digger will or will not suddenly appear on the other side of a barrier, and who knows where Fuzzy may end up.

IQC worked in partnership with the University of Waterloo Games Institute. Students and faculty members from across campus collaborated in the ideation, the science and development of the game. 

“This game is a great way for people to become familiar with concepts of quantum science,” said Tobi Day-Hamilton, associate director, communications at IQC. “We wanted to take science that people think is hard and make it fun.”

IQC took it even further: the Quantum Cats were included in an experiment booklet in a take-home science kit for children, on t-shirts available for sale, and we produced stickers of the four cats to hand out. If you want to join in the fun, go to quantumcats.ca and download the game from the Google Play app store now. It will also be available soon in iTunes and BlackBerry World. 

Photograph by Jim Wallace, assistant professor, School of Public Health and Health Systems.