The Miami Microsoft Innovation Center, the first one in the United States and one of more than 120 around the world, has been open seven months at the Venture Hive and has already held more than 50 events and workshops and Microsoft executives and specialists hold regular "office hours" for mentoring, said Susan Amat, founder of Venture Hive. Next week, the Hive and MIC will host teams from four countries -- Chile, Pakistan, Nepal and Armenia -- taking part in a global Pre-Accelerator Venture Hive and the Miami MIC are launching. Amat is considering opening a Pre-Accelerator for Miami as well.
On Tuesday morning, the MIC celebrated its first half year at Venture Hive with a roomful of community and technology leaders. The MIC is a state-of-the-art technology facility open to students, software developers, academic faculty, entrepreneurs and startups for collaboration and skills development. The event hosted many Microsoft representatives and local government leaders including City of Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, CIO of Miami-Dade County Angel Petisco and the Microsoft VP of US Developer Experience Larry Orecklin.
A couple of examples of how the MIC has been used: Miami entrepreneur Antonio Otalvaro, founder and CEO of Raw Shorts, a member of Venture Hive incubator and part of its accelerator's first class, attended workshops at the Miami MIC on the Azure platform, which has allowed him the ability to scale his explainer-video production business for commercial customers. After receiving a grant from BizSpark, Hair Construction, which provides educational content to hair stylists to help them succeed, is working with the MIC to transition everything it does to Microsoft – Azure servers and Office 365 – to it the company scale.
To learn more and attend upcoming events at the Miami Microsoft Innovation Center, which is free and open for the public, click here (www.microsoftinnovationcenters.com/miami). On the agenda for next week: More office hours and an introduction to Imagine Cup, a global student tech competition.
Here are a few pictures of the MIC space.
Posted Dec. 16, 2014