Entrepreneurial Class at The City University of New York

I was thrilled to be able to judge the final presentations at the Entrepreneurial Journalism class at CUNY that is headed up by the one and only Jeff Jarvis.� Not only was it an impressive group of people but I got to do it with my husband, Fred.� First time we got to do something like this together.� Of course, we had to agree on everything....only kidding.�

Six of the presentations were entrepreneurial platforms and hopefully disruptive businesses and the other three were more journalistic content using the web as a platform.� I will give a quick run down of what we saw.�

Pique.� This was a site geared towards the celebrities and their fashion.�

Think if you were sitting on your couch with some friends watching the Oscars and you could start to comment on the clothes, bring in feeds, talk to friends elsewhere, pull items you liked and put them in a box to find out later where to get them.�

I liked this business.�� A little bit like Pinterest meets People magazine.

Silly Parents.� There are local communities for parents to share information.� Silly Parents would duplicate that in other areas giving information from what to do, where school is good, etc.� Didn't love this business and felt alot of what he was trying to provide was already been done on a variety of other sites.

Instablatt�� Live photos of breaking news by eyewitnesses that is curated from journalists on the ground.� Think of live twitter feeds, on your computer or handheld with photos as they are happening by an elite group of journalists who are crowd sourcing.� It wasn't that flushed out but I thought there was something there.

Gelotone� Personalized music news about your favorites bands including a discovery platform.� Think of Spin magazine but better on line.� Opportunities down the line to follow your favorite theater actor, etc.

Gourmeet�� Love the name.� A place where you can offer to share a home cooked meal at home and people would sign up to attend and pay a small fee.�

Think Meetup for home cooked diners.� I could see this working with young chefs or pop-ups.�

Linktamer� Personal curation of your news feed.� This is being done in many places so they would really have to come up with something so special that they would beat out the rest in this race.

Beyond Brussels� Writing and aggregating information for the European community about what is happening in Brussels in regards to the EU as much of that coverage has been cut out of the newsworlds budget.�

Cimmaron� A media site that highlights innovative alternative positive news in the third world.� I really like the concept.� One of the reasons I read Monocle is that I want to know what is happening in areas around the globe that I might not get a newsfeed about on a daily basis.�

We rarely see the bright spots coming out of third world countries and perhaps if we saw more of that we would find more people investing in these areas.�

Talk Cameroon�� Internet news for Cameroon on the political landscape and economy.� A country of people who need to get out from underneath a dictator as journalists are being beaten and living under death threats.� How to change that from outside the country and make that information available to the world.�

Some of these businesses might have very long legs others may not.� Regardless, each presentation was well done and thought out.� Impressive group and glad to know they have Jeff Jarvis looking out for them. The added bonus is that they are all trying to make their dreams come true in NYC.� BTW, they all used Prezi for their presentations.�

This is an article by Joanne Wilson, a The NextWomen contributor.� Joanne's blog can be found here.

Source: http://www.thenextwomen.com/2011/05/31/entrepreneurial-class-city-university-new-york

Diora Baird Dido Shakira Rihanna Shanna Moakler