Startup, Technology, and Innovation in South Florida

There is a growing startup community and ecosystem in South Florida. Developers, entrepreneurs, investors, incubators are all present, trying to get organized and kickstart the local innovation culture. There’s also the added benefit of the tropical lifestyle and international culture that defines South Florida. Below are some resources to get you started and get you connected to the tech vibe and professional networks in the tropics.

Tech & Professional Groups/Meetings

• Miami Tech Events (http://miamitechevents.com/ )
• MiamiTech.org (http://www.miamitech.org/ )
• Tech Meetups (http://www.meetup.com/ )
• RefreshMiami (http://refreshmiami.com/ )
• Orange Events Calendar (http://agustinaprigoshin.com/oec )
• South Florida Technology Alliance (http://www.southfloridatech.org/ )
• TEDxMIA (http://tedxmia.com/ )
• New Tech Community (http://newtechcommunity.com/ )

Events

• Miami Innovation Week / InnovateMIA (http://www.innovatemia.com/ )
• TekFight (http://www.tekfight.com/ )
• HackDay (http://hackday.co/ )
• The Americas Venture Capital Conference / AVCC (http://avcc.fiu.edu/ )
• Endeavor (http://www.endeavor.org/ )
• Wayra Demo Day (http://wayra.org/globaldemoday2012/ )
• Incubate Miami Demo Day (http://www.incubatemiami.com/2012/03/demo-day-2/ )

7 startup trends for 2013

Lately I’ve been following heavily the start-up community, getting involved in the Miami startup movement , advising and mentoring - but ultimately, it’s a lean/mean innovation machine, indicator of future experiences, and there are great opportunities to marry the start-up and agency world :: innovation + story telling + brands.

Here’s a shortlist of trends to follow in 2013.

1- Cloud infrastructure SaaS & Security

This trend is not new, but I think it is cyclical, and the first wave has faded out in 2011. Cloud services is the fastest growing web hosting product at the moment, cloud services is said to reach a market value of $48bn, some say 10% of all IT spendings will be made in cloud services; the trend is clearly going up and not planning on decelerating in the next 5-10 years.

Why a trend in 2013?, Github still growing, Google Cloud introduced earlier this year to compete with Amazon Web Services, Amazon lowering prices, introducing big-data services, more companies have a foot in the cloud and services are getting cheaper and easier to scale than dedicated or VPS hosting. And with a new generation of companies in this sector, 2013 will make it hot again.

Cloud is becoming ubiquitous, now having storage, computing, backups, big data analysis and processing, data collection and aggregation, communications - you name it. It’s making it easier and easier for startups and connect the dots, wire core services together, and form a new innovative service. Cloud is making it easier than ever to fulfill the tech stack of any startup, allowing [the few who can] to focus on the business.