Knocking on the door of innovation

This week on Federal Tech Talk, John Gilroy hosts a round table discussion of innovation in the federal government with representatives from three start-up comp...

For today’s show, we tapped on the door of a local innovation hub called 1776.  We asked it to give us three companies that had creative solutions to federal information technology problems.  We ended up with Drone Aerospace Management, 540, and Emergent.

Group photo of Avery Brown, Chris Bock and Joel Benge
(L-R) Avery Brown, Chris Bock, Joel Benge

Avery Brown is the director of Business Development for a company called Drone Aerospace Management. The FAA estimates that there will be 30,000 drones in use by 2020. Who will train those pilots?  Federal agencies as diverse as FEMA and the DoD will be looking for individuals who have the skill set to take advantage of the unique capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles.

If you sum up the angles of the Pentagon you get 540.  If you look for a company that has creative ways to help with Application Integration Interfaces, then the company named 540 is the answer.  The chief operating officer, Chris Bock, was in the studio to talk about API design and development. His company’s goal is to inject a little of Silicon Valley in the federal government.

Rounding out the guest list is Joel Benge, a risk evangelist from Emergent. Rather than a focus on finance, the “risk” that Emergent deals with is cybersecurity.  His company was recently named one of the top university startups.  They use swarm intelligence and apply it to cybersecurity to help with predicting events.

All three startups were brought together by 1776, one of the premiere incubators in the Washington, D.C. area.

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