Published in the August 16-22, 2010 edition of the Indianapolis Business Journal.

The event will take place downtown Indianapolis at Bingham McHale (10 W. Market Street, Suite 2700), from 11a.m. to 1 p.m. For more information, go to http://bit.ly/bYKDJk

Launch in external player

With good design, usually “less is more” – unless, of course, the object of the design is “more, more, more!”

Priio is once again showing its support for creativity, skill, teamwork and the art of goofy engineering by supporting the 2010 annual Rube Machine Competition at Purdue University.

Historically sponsored by Theta Tau fraternity, these widely-recognized competitions encourage high school and college student teams to build machines based on the elaborate and complicated contraptions drawn by Pulitizer Prize-winning cartoonist Rube Goldberg.

This year’s task is to distribute a glob of hand sanitizer using a minimum of 20 steps (the more the better).  Priio president Larry O’Cull returns as a veteran judge.

The regional competition is slated for Saturday, February 20^th, and the national contest will be Saturday, March 27th at 10:30 a.m. Both events will be held at the Armory building (next to Elliot Hall of Music) on the Purdue University Campus in West Lafayette.

Both events are free and open to the public. For more information, go to www.rubemachine.com. (ii)

Priio president Larry O’Cull and vice president Sarah Cox take a day each semester to travel to the Purdue University campus in West Lafayette, Ind. and ‘talk turkey’ with electrical and computer engineering technology (ECET) students about their senior projects, which are a required part of the final graduation process.

Giving back to a beloved alma mater is part of the answer – but a bigger part is the joint effort between Purdue ECET professors and industry professionals to keep the Purdue School of Technology’s world class reputation by helping students apply theory in an industrially-relevant way.

A faculty panel reviews each student’s project, as well as a panel of industry coaches. “We work like an accountability partner,” says O’Cull, who spent Dec. 15 talking to student work groups along with Cox.

The two Priio executives first meet with the students at project mid-point and again during the final presentations, asking pointed questions and making suggestions. “We may help them determine whether their projects were compatible with FCC and UL guidelines,” says Cox. “Other times we’re asking pragmatic questions like, ‘Is the project safe? Is my solution practical? Is there enough meat to make it a worthwhile endeavor?’”

O’Cull also serves on a Board of industrial advisors, a job he has relished since his appointment in 2002. “The field of technology moves along so rapidly that many university graduates find themselves 5 to 10 years behind current practices coming out of the gate,” he says. “By merging with the professional community, Purdue educators keep that gap a lot smaller – it helps keep their teaching aligned with the current corporate environment. It’s a fantastic idea!” (ii)

GIIRT (Greater Indy Innovation RoundTable) is an exciting new forum for business leaders to meet and share innovation in business practices – and a Big Event will officially launch this forum on Friday, September 25, from 11-1 p.m. at Suite D in Carmel.

The GIIRT Big Event will feature keynote speakers Candice Kissinger, innovator and owner of multi-million dollar BASi (Bioanalytical Systems, Inc.) in Purdue Research Park, and Dr. Peter Kissinger, co-founder, chairman and CEO of BASi, professor of analytical chemistry at Purdue University and well known entrepreneur. There will also be a personal message from Indiana Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman.

The motto of the group is “Connect. Learn. Do.” All three areas are covered through regular group meetings, and these are set up monthly with a triad format: the first with a case study, the following with a break out group discussion, and the third with presentation of actual implementation. Common themes share best practices, learn from world class methodologies and apply using hands-on experiential sessions.

GIIRT was formed more than a year ago, the brainchild of Priio president Larry O’Cull, Jerry McColgin of Insight2 and Dr. Thomas Foust of SDG International. It initially served as a platform for “big picture innovators” – providing a point of connection for company execs to discuss problem issues and find creative solutions. Recently the group’s organizers saw the benefit of increasing its scope, and GIIRT now welcomes leaders from academia and companies large and small, both service and product providers.

The ultimate goal of GIIRT is to raise awareness of innovation to the business community within Indiana by providing an outlet for the ‘best and brightest’ to connect with one another. O’Cull adds it is not so much a networking group as an idea lab. “It’s really about finding creative solutions to the (business) pain in our lives,” he says.

For more information, go to www.GIIRT.com. For quick updates, check out GIIRT_Indy on Twitter. (ii)

The sound monitoring equipment was recently in the news as part of a NICU at Aspirus hospital in Wausau, Wis. that is LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified – one of only three in the country. The device is part of a state-of-the-art-system which has been designed to provide better outcomes for infants.

“Thank you for providing a wonderful product,” writes David Bosio, LEED-AD construction project manager in a note to Sonicu. “Thanks also to the entire team who worked through the technical integration and rollout of the Sonicu system.”

Priio vice president Sarah Cox was lead engineer on the project. “We were quite involved with this project from the beginning, creating the product hardware, doing mechanical and firmware and server software,” she says. “It’s great to see such a positive outcome of our joint efforts. This is a good product, and I’m sure this is just the beginning.”

To see the news video, link to Aspirus News Video.

How many engineers does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is: zero. 

This year’s winner in the Rube Goldberg Machine contest nationals was a team from St. Olaf, a small liberal arts college in Northfield, Minn. The first time team was comprised of majors in physics, math, music, Russian, statistics, religion and education – but not engineering.

“Well, to be fair, the school doesn’t have an engineering program,” says Larry O’Cull, president of Priio and veteran judge of the national competition. “It was a different style machine, surely – but it worked well, had great ‘Rube’ spirit and great entertainment value.” 

The task was to replace an incandescent light bulb with something more energy efficient. The St. Olaf machine completed that task using 239 steps, which included features such as mousetraps, magnets, billiard balls, lasers and photo sensors. The second place team hailed from University of Illinois with their “Clue” themed contraption, while Ferris State University of Big Rapids, Mich. took third place. 

“The bar was really raised this year,” says O’Cull. “It’s exciting to see how much more resourceful the students get with each year, and I’m honored Priio gets to be part of all this.”

The machine contest is named for the late Pulitizer-Prize winning cartoonist Rube Goldberg, known for his drawings of complicated devices performing simple tasks.