The April 25th 5 Across event was a great success! The 5 pitches were:

• Eric Gaines presented Party Tutor which will provide college students with an easy to use smartphone app/website to access everything they need to allow them to have an awesome college experience as well as saving money at the same time!
• Grant Weherley and his team pitched SmartLit which is a bluetooth controllable outlet which can be set to automatically turn on or off when you leave your house (by detecting that your phone is out of range)
• Cameron Lippert pitched Last Call Beverages, which is a Beverage for hangover pre-treatment. This beverage, when taken during alcohol consumption, will scavenge the toxins produced from alcohol metabolism therefore reducing hangover sympton or even preventing them all together.
• David Nelson pitched EHW, LLC which will create an improved walker for the elderly. Many current medical devices are "sterile," lack emotionally supportive design, and convey a sense of morbid responsibility. This causes people to not use home-health products when they should. This problem is solved by designing a walker that people simply want to use. A device that has an organic feel, friendly features, and enticing curves.
• Tom Dugan pitched Bluestone Geologic, which provides Geologic Mapping Services – Aquifers & groundwater development; sinkholes & build site evaluation (pre & post build) using geophysical equipment & techniques applied to detailed underground mapping.

The winner decided by the judges was David Nelson who pitched EHW, LLC. The winner decided by the audience text-vote was Cameron Lippert with Last Call Beverages.

All the pitches were great! We're sure the judges had a hard time making their decision. Thanks to everyone who came out in support of this event. We were happy to see you and hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. If you missed the event, you can see videos of the pitches at 5across.org. We hope to see you at the next event!

For those of you who haven't heard of 5 Across, here's the scoop. 5 Across is an informal gathering of entrepreneurs, investors and service providers from Lexington, KY. Each 5 Across meeting features presentations from local entrepreneurs who pitch their ideas to a panel of judges. There are 5 pitches, 5 minutes per pitch, a 5pm start time, and a $500 prize to the winning pitch. The panel of judges decides the final winner but the audience will be able to participate by submitting their votes through their mobile device.

This event will be on Wednesday, April 25th, starting at 5pm, at Awesome Inc.

As always there will be food and drinks provided. The cost is $5.

Please RSVP at http://5across.eventbrite.com

This upcoming Five Across meeting will feature the following entrepreneurs/businesses:
• Eric Gaines will be presenting Party Tutor which will provide college students with an easy to use smartphone app/website to access everything they need to allow them to have an awesome college experience as well as saving money at the same time!
• Grant Weherley and his team will be pitching SmartLit which is a bluetooth controllable outlet which can be set to automatically turn on or off when you leave your house (by detecting that your phone is out of range)
• Cameron Lippert will be pitching Last Call Beverages, which is a Beverage for hangover pre-treatment. This beverage, when taken during alcohol consumption, will scavenge the toxins produced from alcohol metabolism therefore reducing hangover sympton or even preventing them all together.
• Edward Wood will be presenting EHW, LLC which will create an improved walker for the elderly. Many current medical devices are "sterile," lack emotionally supportive design, and convey a sense of morbid responsibility. This causes people to not use home-health products when they should. This problem is solved by designing a walker that people simply want to use. A device that has an organic feel, friendly features, and enticing curves.
• Tom Dugan will be pitching Bluestone Geologic, which provides Geologic Mapping Services – Aquifers & groundwater development; sinkholes & build site evaluation (pre & post build) using geophysical equipment & techniques applied to detailed underground mapping.

Be sure to come out to the second event of 2012, enjoy the food and drinks, socialize with investors, entrepreneurs and other like-minded people, and hear these entrepreneurs pitch their exciting new business ideas and take home a prize of $500.

At the close of MobileX will be a pitch contest with five startup companies/ ideas competing for $500. The participants will have 3 minutes each to pitch to a panel of judges and the audience will be able to vote for their favorite via text message voting. This year's participants are:

• Arial Boulware with Where R U?, a new safety app for smart phone users.

• Eric Gaines with Party Tutor, a website/ smartphone app that combines everything a college student needs in one place. It will supply the daily bar drink specials, daily food specials (some specifically through Party Tutor), Midnight Munchies (food joints open after 12am), special College Deals, events, and more.

• Wes Brooks with TailoredMessage, a messaging platform for healthcare organizations that generates patient communication profiles to assist doctors in effective patient communication and improve patient self-care to reduce readmission rates.

• Zach Jacobs with SmartLit, a Bluetooth-controllable device which plugs into an outlet in a customer's home which would allow them to cut or enable power to the outlet if a Bluetooth device (iPhone or Android phone) is in range.

• Michael Loffredo with ConnectIntoClass.com, a social utility that allows students to collaborate with other students that would otherwise be outside their network. ConnectIntoClass.com creates a learning community comprised of students in the same class to form study groups, answer questions about lectures and the course material, solve problems, etc.

Good luck to everyone who's pitching!

The breakout sessions have been going on all morning. There are several tracks attendees can choose from: entrepreneur, technical, marketing & social media, and a mobile development workshop. Here are a few highlights from the morning sessions:

Anthony Hand (@anthonyhand) presented "Opportunities for Mobile Innovation: A Designer's Perspective". Hand is a user experience designer at Samsung Research. According to Hand, "Facebook's already won. But there are a lot of niches that Facebook doesn't fill."

One of these niches is filled by Instagram. The app allows users to photoshop and share photos from their phone to Facebook. Draw Something is another app that fills a niche. It debuted in February and already has over 35 million downloads. The key to success for both is the social component. To have a successful app, you must "build social from the ground up; don't bolt it on at the end. [...] User experience makes or breaks an app."

Kerry Carter (@kerrycarter8) presented the "Intersection of Sports and Technology: Mobile Trends for One Person Brands". Carter is a former NFL player turned mobile entrepreneur; he owns Viva Vision, a mobile software company.

According to Carter, the average NFL career is 3.2 years and 80% of NFL players are divorced or in financial trouble 2 years after their careers end. He was looking for a way to successfully transition out of football. Since he studied anthropology in college, Carter now considers himself a "digital anthropologist" the six months out of the year he's not playing for the Canada Football League.

His strategy is taking his sports fan following and leveraging that in business, like Shaquille O'Neal did. However, investors are wary of athletes so he has to bring a strong business to the table. He says, "It's not the number of followers, it's how engaged they are."

 Carter's best advice is, "If you're going to take a risk, take a risk on you."

Josh Silverman, founder of StudyEgg, said during a panel session that it is important to decide if you are mobile first or web first. His company originally tried to be both, but you have to pick one and make that your focus until it works.