It all goes back to the George Bush vs Al Gore Election of 2000, which was an extremely controversial election. Ernest’s father was a government contractor and his family was living overseas at the time. His only option was to cast his ballot via the postal mail. On Election Night, as reports of election results came rolling in, the outcome became highly contested and litigation ensued. When the supreme court ultimately ruled to stop a recount taking place in Florida, it made Ernest question what really happened behind the scenes, starting with whether or not his ballot was even counted, and everything about the United States government thereafter. At the age of 18, this was the first election he was allowed to participate in, and his faith in the democratic process was shaken to the core. It was at this moment he identified the problem (the need for a secure end-to-end verifiable voting system to make elections honest/transparent); however, he had no clue how to go about solving it at the time.

Fast forward to 2014, when Ernest learned about the advantages of blockchain technology and how it could be leveraged to develop a secure end-to-end verifiable voting system, we pivoted and this initiative became the sole focus of Follow My Vote’s business operations.

Upon making our plans public, the Pirate Party of Norway took notice, among many others.

The video was recorded in 2015 when Ernest was invited overseas to attend a national summit meeting for the Pirate Party of Norway, where he introduced Follow My Vote’s designs for a secure end-to-end verifiable blockchain-based voting system to Pirate Party members and citizens of Norway. And, the presentation couldn’t have been more well received.

20 years later and the story of US elections has not changed. The 2020 presidential election was just as controversial as the Bush vs Gore election. Donald Trump and Joseph Biden found themselves in an eerily similar position. While the reported results were not as close as the 2000 election, the contest was questioned just as much. Many people simply refused to acknowledge and believe the outcome was true. Even the Trump campaign would not concede to the loss and filed a total of 63 lawsuits in an attempt to overturn the results. Many people are still outraged over the conclusion and accusations have come from both sides. 

“The time has come to solve this problem, once and for all. The technology needed to bring forth this type of solution is within reach. And, the world needs it now more than ever.”

Adam Ernest – Co-Founder and CEO at Follow My Vote

When will we see honest and fair elections? Follow My Vote intends to make secure verifiable mobile blockchain-based voting a reality, so there will be nothing to contest. By using a distributed ledger, all participants will be able to verify the election results themselves and faith will be restored.

If you feel elections can be hosted in a modern and secure way like we do, please join our movement! You can sign up for our supporters list and stay updated on our efforts and progress. We also accept donations (Follow My Vote is a registered public benefit corporation) and we are currently recruiting development help through our Dev Challenge. 

Questions about our technology and software can be answered on our FAQ page and via our contact form. 

The post Follow My Vote CEO’s Raison D’être appeared first on Follow My Vote.

We’ve come to a point in human history where faith in the democratic process has reached all-time lows, especially here in the United States. At Follow My Vote, we believe there is still hope for humanity in this regard.

Ever since we inked our patent pending designs back in 2014, we’ve had aspirations to bring our designs to life, enabling citizen’s throughout the world to cast their votes with integrity on Election Day. However, taking on such a massive endeavor comes with it’s own set of challenges.

We have learned and accomplished a tremendous amount at Follow My Vote over the years, while trying to bring our vision to life. Throughout this time period, we’ve seen various new voting systems come and go, all claiming to be better than the last. However, when analyzing these systems we’ve detected issues that need to be addressed before being implemented on a mass scale. Despite these issues, some of these solutions are actually gaining traction, which is also concerning to us at Follow My Vote.

We’ve seen widespread infighting in the voting space over the years, mainly between those that are all for adopting modern technology where possible to improve the political process for everyone involved vs those that don’t. We have technology providers developing and testing solutions, while university researchers speak out against their efforts and shine light on the vulnerabilities that exist with these solutions. There has been so much back and forth over the years and a lot of misinformation being thrown around that, as a result, it’s almost as if the majority of people have become convinced that technology cannot save us. We simply disagree.

With this in mind, we are releasing this IP today, as a gift to humanity, in hopes to restart the conversation when it comes to question: “Can ‘We the People’ figure out a way to securely conduct verifiable elections online?”

Let’s be real. If you could vote conveniently from your smartphone on Election Day and be reassured by the world-wide technological community at large that your vote was cast as intended and counted as cast, wouldn’t you? That’s what we are really striving for at Follow My Vote.

From Follow My Vote’s perspective we’ve already designed the voting system that, once developed, will have the upmost integrity in existence. Just keep in mind, it’s going to take us some time to bring it to life.

In the meantime, we encourage you to closely review our patent application as published on Google Patents and get involved in the conversation.

Upon review of our patent application, we’d like to immediately draw your attention to the figures or drawings, Figure 1 and Figure 2.

Figure 1, as shown below, is simply a list of key components that exist within our voting system design.

Figure 2, as shown below, showcases our (once patent-pending / now open-source) anonymous voting key registration protocol, which enables someone to have their identity verified for voter eligibility and subsequently be granted access to their eligible election contests in an anonymous way so that, when they cast their votes, they will be able to literally follow their vote(s) into the blockchain-based ballot box and confirm with their own eyes that their vote was cast as intended and counted as cast.

In short, the above figure is the secret sauce with respect to our invention.

Also keep in mind that this powerful protocol could be leveraged outside of the voting space/use case. Another way to interpret the way in which this protocol works is that, based on the identifying information submitted, this person is authorized to do [fill in the blank] anonymously. So, in other words, it could allow someone to submit an identification submission and have a public key anonymously registered to them, which grants them access to something they otherwise wouldn’t have access to, but we digress.

At this point, we’d like to turn your attention to the patent application’s claim language, as it has changed quite a bit over the years, due to shifting from a system and method patent application filing, to simply a method patent application filing. The updated language also more closely reflects the process outlined in Figure 2 above.

AMENDMENTS TO THE CLAIMS – FINAL

The invention claimed is:

1-29. (Cancelled)

While reviewing the patent application, please also take note of and credit the inventor’s of this paradigm shifting innovation that has the real potential to uplift humanity: Adam Ernest (CEO @ Follow My Vote), Nathaniel Hourt (CTO @ Follow My Vote), and Daniel Larimer (CTO @ Block.one).

As a final note with respect to our patent application’s content, we want to be clear that the way in which we’ve described how public key cryptography is leveraged within our system was intentional, although it is a bit atypical of those that have filed for and received cryptography related patents in the past.

To clarify, we specifically refer to signing transactions with a public key throughout our patent application’s content vs a private key. Here’s an explanation from Follow My Vote’s CTO, Nathan Hourt, as to why:

“With regards to the usage of the phraseology “the XYZ transaction is signed with the Voter Public Key,” and similar expressions within the patent application language, this is admittedly an unusual expression of the concept, and this stems in part from the fact that this particular cryptosystem is atypical among asymmetric (or public-key) cryptosystems, and also in part from the way our patent application endeavors to describe the technical processes in high-level, informative language but does not sacrifice accuracy to do so.

First, it is important to examine the unusual properties of the cryptosystem used in our system (and virtually all blockchain systems), namely ECDSA, and distinguish it from most asymmetric cryptosystems (take RSA as an illustrative example). In both ECDSA and RSA, a signature is generated by plugging the message and the private key into a formula, and out of that formula comes the signature. However, the verification process is quite different: in RSA, verification is done by plugging the public key and the signature into a formula, and out of that formula comes the message; however, in ECDSA (our cryptosystem), verification works by plugging in the message and the signature into a formula, and out of that formula comes the public key. This is a critical distinction: RSA and many other asymmetric cryptosystems cannot determine the signer’s identity from the message and signature, they determine the message from the signature and the signer’s identity, but ECDSA determines the signer’s identity from the message and the signature. In light of this, it begins to come clear how the package of the message and the signature could be described as being “signed with the public key” — the public key didn’t do any signing, but the signing embedded it into the message! The message and signature, by nature of the math, come with the public key — it’s just part of the package.

To clarify this meaning, consider a paper contract with a wet-ink signature. We could say “the contract was signed with a pen,” and this would be technically correct, but not particularly informative. We could also say “the contract was signed with the man’s name,” which is also technically correct, but offers a better description of the information conveyed by the signature. In the same way, the patent application says “the transaction signed with the public key,” it is not implied that the public key is the pen that created the signature, but rather that the public key is the information conveyed by the signature. If the patent application said “the transaction signed with the private key,” this would be similar to saying “the contract signed with the pen,” which is technically accurate, but less informative. In the same way as the pen attaches the contractor’s name to the document, the private key attaches the public key to the transaction. It is more informative, then, to say that the message is signed with the public key because this is the useful and relevant information conveyed by the signing, rather than to say that it was signed with the private key, which is not conveyed by the signature but was merely the tool used to make it.

The patent application attempts to clarify how this phrasing is intended in paragraph 0007 by saying “the public key […] signs the transaction, the private key is [used] to authorize the signing” — the public key is the information borne by the signature, but the private key is necessary to authorize one to attach that information to the transaction. It is important to be clear that the public key is the information borne by the signature, as the voter registration process described in FIG. 2 and paragraph 0019 demonstrates that the public key is what is registered to vote, and therefore a transaction with voting decisions must be signed, as per paragraph 0005, with the voter’s public key in order to be recognized as valid. This works because although the private key is necessary to attach the public key to the transaction, the public key is the only information which, like a contractor’s signed name, can be recognized as endorsing the transaction to have effect.

The intended meaning is that the public key is conveyed with the signature, and due to the mechanics of the cryptography, only one who holds the corresponding private key possesses the tool uniquely capable of conveying that particular public key, therefore the message signed with the public key must have come from one who holds the private key, and because the private key is never transmitted, it is extremely difficult for anyone to have the private key except the one who created it, giving the system and its users confidence that the transaction properly signed with a registered public key has the force and effect of the one who registered that public key, even though their specific identity can no longer be recovered.” – Nathaniel Hourt

What does all this mean for Follow My Vote and the voting industry at large?

Follow My Vote has always intended to publish our software as open-source; and, filing a utility patent application for our intellectual property was a strategic move from a defensive perspective.

After speaking with our patent attorney, we’ve come to the conclusion that we’ve done all that we need to do in order to protect ourselves from being sued from practicing our own invention down the line. With this in mind, and in the spirit of the open-source movement, we feel compelled to put our money where our mouth is and abandon our patent application as it exists today.

Moving forward, anyone that wishes to leverage our ideas in their voting system designs can freely do so; and, we hope they do! In other words, what this really means to those competing in the voting space is that these individuals and organizations can now freely innovate on behalf of “We the People” without the impediment of potentially infringing on Follow My Vote’s would-be IP, so that the best ideas can percolate to the top, be tested, and implemented over time.

With our release of this IP, we’re really hoping to spark a new era of innovation in the voting space and foster collaboration between the technology vendors that exist. We also hope to encourage a new wave of potential competitors to enter the voting arena and work toward building secure online voting solutions with true integrity.

For now, we at Follow My Vote have our hands full, as we work to lay the foundation for the development of a secure open-source end-to-end verifiable blockchain-based voting system. But, rest assured that, once we have the opportunity to bring our designs to life, we pledge that we will not attempt to market our solutions for widespread use until they have been battle tested by the brightest tech minds on the planet.

At the end of the day, the world needs to know it’s not about the money for us. Follow My Vote is about solving this global issue for humanity, once and for all, before moving on to the next biggest issue humanity is facing.

We are here to serve the people, plain and simple, and encourage you to follow us on our journey (and perhaps get involved) in the days ahead.

As always, if you are interested in exploring collaboration and/or partnership opportunities, please contact us using the form below:

The post Follow My Vote Releases Patent-Pending IP As A Gift To Humanity appeared first on Follow My Vote.

The lean startup is a method for developing businesses and products created by Eric Ries. Based on his experience on failing and successful startups, Ries claims that startups can shorten their product development cycles by adopting a combo of efficient experimentation, product releases, and validated learning. By pushing out an initial product that is not perfect but is functioning, they can reduce market risks and sidestep the need for large amounts of initial product funding. It has 3 components to it. Eric Ries related them all to driving a car. The first thing you have to do is have a destination. Before you start any journey, you must have the end destination(product) well thought out. Then, you must find the quickest path to the destination. As a startup, you must find/create your minimum viable product as quick as possible before running out of funding. The last component is to accelerate to your destination. You should be trying to hit all your goals in a short time span and gain as much attention as you can. You should be rolling out new versions of your product every week that fixes bugs and slowly adds features. Your customers don’t want all the bells and whistles yet, they want a barebones product that actually works!

How Does Follow My Vote Exemplify the Characteristics of the Lean Startup?

The team at Follow My Vote seeks to minimize the costs of production while showcasing how blockchain based voting can be the future. We don’t want to squander the money we raised from our kickstarter; therefore, we will continue to release new versions of our software as fast as we can. Our initial alpha came out recently (click here for more info) and we don’t want to slow down.

About the Author: David Brock is a marketing intern at Follow My Vote. He hopes to apply his education at Virginia Polytechnic and State Institute to help fix problems around the world.

The post The Lean Startup Method appeared first on Follow My Vote.

All proceeds from the successful kickstarter campaign will go toward our Parallel Presidential Election Experience. In November, we are hosting a mock election in parallel to the 2016 United States Presidential Election to demonstrate our technology.

We would like to say thank you to all our backers and everyone who helped share the Kickstarter and raise awareness for the problems we are trying to address in our elections industry.

Hi Backers!

I want you to know that I LOVE you with ALL of my heart!

When I first started out on this journey, I had no idea how the world would respond. It is Good to know that the world has opened up to being honest.

Today, on the 4th of July, I’m thrilled to announce that we hit our Kickstarter campaign fundraising goal! We couldn’t have done it without you.

I am FOREVER grateful.

It was a wild ride. Thanks for coming along. We will be reaching out to each AND every one of you in the days ahead to ensure you receive your reward(s).

We will ALWAYS prevail!

ONE LOVE,

– Adam Kaleb Ernest, Follow My Vote Co-Founder & CEO

Next Steps

We will be spending the next few weeks sending rewards to all of our backers.

We will also be reaching out to the winners of our Hokie Fan Challenge and our Social Sharing Giveaway.

About the author: Will Long is the Marketing Manager of Follow My Vote.

The post Follow My Vote Achieves Kickstarter Funding Goal appeared first on Follow My Vote.

Team members Will Long and David Brock competed in the tournament, while Olivia Goodwin cheered them on. Learn more about the Follow My Vote team.

The Follow My Vote team did not place in the tournament and will be intensifying work out regimens and practices in preparation for next year.

As a public benefit corporation, Follow My Vote is a big believer in supporting the local community. One way we do this is by sponsoring events like the Bocce Ball Tournament.  One-third of all of the proceeds made throughout the event are put toward the Chamber’s Teacher of the Year fund, Career and Technical Education Sponsorship, and the Mary T. Tutle Scholarship to the Pamplin College of Business.

If you are considering sponsoring an event like this, please do! The tournament is not only a great way to create name recognition for your company, but it is also a great source of informal networking where you can interact with other business professionals.

Other sponsors included: Rockingham Insurance, Robert Gibb | First Citizens Bank Christiansburg | SWVA Moving & Storage | The Prime Factory | Bristol Motor Speedway
About the author: Will Long is the Marketing Manager of Follow My Vote.

The post Sponsoring The Montgomery County Chamber Bocce Ball Tournament appeared first on Follow My Vote.

RBTC: What are some of the regional resources that have contributed to your success?
Adam: NuSpark, a startup space located in Blacksburg dedicated to helping aspiring entrepreneurs turn ideas into businesses, was truly instrumental to our success at Follow My Vote. They gave us dedicated office space and a place to call home when we needed it most.

RBTC: What makes the Roanoke-Blacksburg region such a good fit for your company?
Adam: Upon graduating from Virginia Tech, it had always been my dream to return to Blacksburg and start a business, allowing me to recruit top talent from my alma mater and give back to the surrounding community in any way that I can.

RBTC: If you could give one piece of advice to a fellow entrepreneur, what would it be?
Adam: Be a visionary leader. Be passionate about what you do and surround yourself with people that share your passion and belief in your vision for the future of your business.

RBTC: What is one lesson you have learned over time that has made an impact on your business’ day-to-day operations?
Adam: A good manager should focus on what’s really important. I have found it best to focus less on what time your employees get to work in the morning and more on whether or not they get the job done before they leave the office for the night.

RBTC: How would you like to see the Roanoke-Blacksburg region develop over the next 5 years?
Adam: I think we all should strive to support local businesses, as opposed to large corporations, even if it is not always most cost effective to do so. What I would really like to see is for us to become much more of a self-sustaining community, especially when it comes to energy and food production.

We would like to thank the Roanoke-Blacksburg Technology Council for setting up the interview!

About Follow My Vote: A company focused on providing honest elections, Follow My Vote develops end-2-end verifiable voting through the use of blockchain technology.

About the author: David Brock is a Marketing Intern at Follow My Vote.

The post Roanoke-Blacksburg Technology Council Interviews Adam Ernest, CEO of Follow My Vote appeared first on Follow My Vote.

Ed Asner, the legendary actor who was once black-listed and former President of the Screen Actors Guild met with Free & Equal President Christina Tobin last week searching for solutions to the concerns he has about America’s future. They sat down for an on camera interview where Mr. Asner urged the public to elect and occupy those in positions of authority.

Founder of the the Free and Equal Elections Foundation, Christina Tobin is champion of voting rights. She and the foundation fight to broaden our electoral choices through education in addition to leveling the political playing field and inspiring more independents and alternative party candidates to run for office. Free and Equal is also dedicated to empowering and encouraging more people, especially young people, to get involved in the discussion, participate in the political process and hold their government accountable.

Christina recently endorsed Follow My Vote and to our excitement wore a Follow My Vote shirt in the video above!

“I believe that “more voices, more choices” will help shift the political power back to the people, away from the control of a few corporations and political elites, creating a more balanced system where all are free and equal in their ability to participate. This can only happen with honest voting and Follow My Vote provides the most transparent and verifiable voting process I have seen to date.”

-Christina Tobin, Founder of the Free and Equal Elections Foundation

We encourage all of our fans, especially if you live in the United States to follow the Free and Equal Elections Foundation. They are fighting the good fight and we are happy to be associated.

Source: The Free and Equal Elections Foundation 
About the author: Will Long is the Marketing Manager of Follow My Vote.

The post A Political Call To Arms Via Ed Asner appeared first on Follow My Vote.

The Follow My Vote team is always eager to attend entrepreneurship events in our area. We seek to support local efforts that encourage innovation, especially when it comes to inspiring students. We were quite impressed by the ideas presented by students. Some of the business concepts really grabbed at our heart strings, while others focused on solving specific pain points for consumers.

The grand prize of $15,000 in scholarships was awarded to Park and Diamond, Inc., which included team members Jordan Klein and David Hall. Their prize package included the $5,000 Plastics One Advanced Manufacturing Award for the most outstanding tangible product. In addition, they were awarded another $10,000 in scholarship assistance and summer workspace at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center. Park and Diamond’s mission is simple: to disrupt the cycling industry with revolutionary products to protect both avid cyclists and commuters. Park and Diamond will also advance to the VT KnowledgeWorks Global Student Entrepreneurship Challenge on August 18, 2016, where they will compete on a world stage as teams pitch their business ideas for a $25,000 grand prize.

Other awards given included the Information Technology Award for the most outstanding intangible product or service, and the People’s Choice award. Both awards entitled the winner to $5,000 in scholarships.  The winner of the outstanding intangible product was Haven, presented by Emily Wills, Kirby Emerson, Ruby Kang, and Reed Koser.

Haven’s goal is to provide peace of mind through wearable technology and a distinct understanding of their market combined with human nature. Haven is inconspicuous and fashion-forward, while providing a faster connection to responders.

Yard Mapper walked away with the People’s Choice award. Yard Mapper was presented by team members David Evans and Patrick Acker.

Yard Mapper tracks trailers and shipping containers at distribution centers significantly reducing the time required to locate trailers while also reducing related penalty fees. The system does not require any extensive infrastructure (including Wi-Fi) and can be installed in a matter of hours.

We would like to congratulate the winners of the Global Entrepreneurship Challenge Semifinals and recognize the other participating teams, who also had fantastic business ideas. These teams were Biological Systems and Solids, Glide Robotics, iWaste, and Leva.

Source: Inside VT KnowledgeWorks

About the author: Will Long is the Marketing Manager of Follow My Vote.

The post Innovative Students Win Global Entrepreneurship Challenge Semifinals appeared first on Follow My Vote.

Gary Johnson ended up being the closing speaker for the entire conference. In observing his speech, it became clear that he has a natural ability to reach young minds and connect with millennials on a deeper level. When he was wrapping up and began transitioning to the Q&A portion of his speech, I couldn’t help but wonder… if he ‘gets it’ like we millennials do?

With this in mind, I decided to get in line so that I could pose a question to Gary Johnson, which was to be “Would he, Gary Johnson, be willing to publicly support the push for the United States to adopt Follow My Vote’s voting software, the world’s first open source end-to-end verifiable voting system?”

There were so many Millennials fired up about his speech and the message he was conveying, the Q&A line ended up being so long that they had to cut off the questioning before I had a chance to ask my question. This did not deter me. I saw that he was being escorted out of a side door of the conference room, and I realized that this was my shot.

I ran outside the entrance to the conference room and down the hall only to run right into Gary Johnson, whom greeted me with a smile and a handshake.

I told him that I was very impressed with his speech and how well he connected with his audience and wished him the best of luck in his campaign for the President of the United States. I then shared the news with him about the Follow My Vote project, letting him know that we are a startup based at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center and that we are developing the technology that would ultimately support honest elections worldwide.

I then asked him if he would be willing to publically support our project in the days ahead, and he said “YES… Absolutely!”

He went on to speak to the fact that he recognizes the importance of our project and, as we were posing for a picture, he wished us the best of luck.

With the millennials support from here on out, we should be good to go!

Who is Gary Johnson?

If you are unaware, Gary Johnson is an American businessman and a politician. His most notable achievements have been serving as New Mexico’s Governor from 1995 to 2003 and representing the Libertarian Party as their nominee for President of the United States in 2012.

He is currently a candidate for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination in the 2016 election.

Johnson is also well known for climbing the Seven Peaks, which are the seven highest points on every continent of the world. This includes Mount Everest.

About The Author: Adam Kaleb Ernest is the CoFounder and CEO of Follow My Vote.

*Follow My Vote is an Nonpartisan Public Benefit Corporation.

The post Gary Johnson Says Yes To Follow My Vote @ ISFLC appeared first on Follow My Vote.

Scoble’s theory is that small towns all over America are ready and capable of beating Silicon Valley at their own game. Small towns containing universities are especially capable. When looking at the pros and cons of living in a small town vs. Silicon Valley, the tides are turning.  The cost of living is huge for the Silicon Valley area and entrepreneurs are opting for cheaper locations. Small towns are also improving their night life and infrastructure.

One of the towns Scoble decided to visit happened to be Blacksburg, Virginia, home of Virginia Tech and the Follow My Vote Headquarters. We actually got a chance to meet up with him and talk about our business and the technology we use. Scoble streamed his visit live to Facebook!

To provide evidence for his theory, Scoble visited Urbana, and Champaign Illinois and Blacksburg, Virginia. He stumbled upon some truly remarkable companies building super cool technologies. Here is what Scoble said about innovation in small town America:

Here, let’s take a look at some of the companies and innovators I visited who are doing amazing work.

1. Michael Fleming is running TORC Robotics, where he’s building self-driving tractors and cars (works for a bunch of brands) in Blacksburg, Virginia. Why? He told me it comes back to the talent he finds at Virginia Tech, where his team came in third in the DARPA challenge back in 2007. Heck, just look across the street at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, where Google and others test out their self driving cars on its “smart road.” Video tour here.
2. Frasca is building new kinds of flight simulators for commercial pilots and military in Champaign, Illinois. I got a video tour here.
3. John Deere has its R&D lab in Champaign, Illinois, where it’s developing new technologies for farmers. Here, take a video tour with me. While we are talking about farming, visit Agrible with me, which is growing virtual crops to tell farmers what to do in their fields next to have better crop outcomes.
4. Followmyvote.com is in Blacksburg, Virginia. Here’s my video visit. Why? They are seeing a good community of people who are pushing Blockchain technology (right next door is Bitshares, a new crypto currency).
5. Aeroprobe is building a new kind of additive manufacturing (think huge 3D printer for metals) along with building new kinds of wind speed sensors for drones. Video tour here.
6. Steve Lavalle, VR pioneer (his team built the sensor systems in Oculus Rift) moved back to Illinois and is running a VR lab at the University there.Visit that lab with me.
7. Wolfram Research continues to develop interesting new technologies from software for mathematicians to an engine that lets people do research on the Internet in ways that Google hasn’t yet enabled. Visit their headquarters in Illinois.
8. Visit Yahoo’s R&D lab with me in Champaign Illinois and understand why it kept this sizable lab in Illinois instead of moving it to Silicon Valley.
9. Visit a group of startups housed in Enterprise Works, part of the research park in Champaign, Illinois. You’ll see everything from battery innovators to new kinds of software to run police departments. Come along on this quick paced tour of about 10 companies. Part I. Part II.
10. See where famous video game “Saints Row” is developed, at the headquarters of Volition, come on a video tour with me.

Other influences:

1. Virginia Tech has a crazy $15 million VR building.
2. Pixo builds mobile apps and other technologies for other companies in Illinois and its founders sit down with me and talk to me about why the local community is gaining strength.
3. The world’s biggest/fastest computer is in Champaign, Illinois. Here follow me through the Petascale Computing Facility.

For more, see Robert Scoble’s full blog post on Medium

About the author: Will Long is the Marketing Manager of Follow My Vote.

The post Silicon Valley Has New Competition And It’s Not Who You Think. appeared first on Follow My Vote.