Startup Houston

Thursday morning I had the pleasure of being a part of a morning long panel discussion regarding technology and economic development with the West Houston Leadership Institute, a ten month program sponsored by the West Houston Chamber of Commerce whose purpose is to train and develop leadership in the West Houston community. Cliff Simpson of Phillips & Reiter, a local law firm and an advocate for the technology startup community in Houston, led the event which was held at Phonoscope’s offices on the west-side of town. You may have seen Cliff at our last Houston Startup Happy Hour as he represented our sponsor for the event.

The event was kicked off by the always dazzling Walter Ulrich of the Houston Technology Center who led off the discussion talking about the strides that Houston has made over the past years in improving its perception as a technology hub. Right after Walter’s talk, the first panel, which I was a part of, started around. The panelists were (myself included):

• Richard Lewis, Chief Information Officer for the City of Houston
• Bart Sheinberg, HCC/West Houston Center for Science & Engineering
• Leo Womack, Chairman of the Houston Angel Network

I particularly found Mr. Lewis’ presentation quite interesting. Key takeaways from his talk were:

• The continued focus by the city to make WiFi a reality after Earthlink’s bailout…it seems that there is excess capacity available from the wireless network used by the downtown parking meters that will be carved off and used as a WiFi net in and around the downtown area;
• Apparently, the Houston Police Department’s record management system is still in use from its original implementation in the early 1980’s; this is one of the city’s top initiatives to replace with some COTS system;
• The biggest project seems to be the radio replacement project which will attempt to upgrade the entire radio network for all citywide communications and better interoperability with other government operations and departments;

The second panelist group included some great speakers:

• Dr. Wade Adams, Director of the Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice University
• Jacqueline Northcut, CEO of BioHouston
• Irene Kosturakis, Chief Intellectual Property Counsel at BMC Software
• Dale Steffes, Planning & Forecasting Consultants

Overall, this was a great event as it further demonstrated the passion that Houstonians feel about the future of this city. I hope to see more events like this in the future.