Archive for 2009
December 9th, 2009 | Tags: CentsCity, Demo, Financial Education, Investment, SIIA
Last week, Skill-Life attended the Software & Information Industry Association’s annual Educational Technology Business Forum. Our CentsCity product was one of 10 innovations featured in the event’s Innovation Incubator.
The program highlights new companies and products poised to change the market. All applicants are reviewed by SIIA’s Innovation Working Group, the Forum’s Steering Committee, and SIIA’s Education Board, then selected to participate in the Ed Tech Business Forum.
“The Software & Information Industry Association is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry. SIIA provides global services in government relations, business development, corporate education and intellectual property protection to the leading companies that are setting the pace for the digital age.”
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December 4th, 2009 | Tags: CentsCity, Demo, Finovate
The video of our 7-minute demo a Finovate has been posted here. Check it out!
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October 13th, 2009
As a dynamic platform, CentsCity has five key features (there’s actually a few others that we’re stealthily planning for the full versions 1.0 and 2.0) on which content can be built, customized, and scaled. The first four features — educational videos linked to interactive quizzes, a system for earning and issuing real-world rewards, progress reports for adults, and a persistent virtual experience (i.e. the ability to save your place in the “world” and return at any point) — are represented in our present Beta launched quietly in August.
The fifth feature — and perhaps the most important to the tween end-user — involves incorporating mini-games (i.e. casual games) into the virtual setting. These mini-games will most-often be linked to the player’s “Health Wealth,” which s/he has to regularly monitor and maintain. Health Wealth is connected to how much food and fun a player can gain for his/her virtual persona. The way we do it in CentsCity is all about fun, taking some of the most successful and exciting game mechanics and tying them directly to the Centizen’s quests to gain Steady Loot!
The first mini-game will be introduced to the world over the next month with private testing beginning in about two weeks. If you’re interested in being part of our Alpha and Beta tests, please contact us. Otherwise, look for the first Food & Fun Mini-Game to make its debut inside of CentsCity, along with a few more exciting features and much more content in the weeks ahead.
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October 4th, 2009 | Tags: Beta, CentsCity, Demo, Felix Lloyd, Finovate, Investment, Media, Press, Todd Waits
It’s been a whirlwind. And the days have blown right on by. So, we missed giving the updates on NYC Days 3 & 4, but in the words of Luther Vandross — “Never Too Late” (bet you don’t hear about Luther on too many tech company blogs!).
Day 3
We demoed. We showed the crowd CentsCity!
The full day was Finovate. From 8:30 am until 6 pm, 32 companies gave 7-minute demos of their financial and banking innovations. It was one after another — some of our favorites being the folks from SmartyPig, TILE Financial, SimpliFi, and BrightScope. Also really digging Credit.com and Home Account.
Skill-Life wasn’t scheduled until the bottom half of the final group, so we took stage at around 3:15 pm. This was a new setting for us and CentsCity, so we spent a good portion of the day taking it in and making connections where we could. The morning and afternoon sessions of demos were followed by 2 hour networking sessions. Since we had not yet demoed, we spent the morning networking session meeting folks including contacts at FastCompany and Fidelity Investments.
The demo itself went wonderfully well. By the time we got on stage, we had rehearsed it a number of times. Both the pitching (Felix Lloyd) and the driving (Todd Waits) went as planned. We finished with 40 seconds to spare and even gave a moment for the CentsCity soundbed to groove for the audience.
And how did the audience respond? All signs were up! The product is so different in look and function than anything that’s out there. You could tell it caught everyone’s attention.
During the afternoon networking session, we had a table set up and got a constant flow of traffic. Without getting into great detail here, we had significant conversations with a few venture capitalist, two very likely pilot customers, and a number of potential strategic partners. Hopefully, more detail to come in future postings as these things take shape.
The “Best in Show” award somehow slipped us by, though the event organizers told us we lost out by hundredths of a point. Hats off to the guys from BancVue and FirstROI — they guaranteed victory and they delivered. Helluva demo from those guys with their Kasasa product.
And where did Wednesday leave us off? Well, the night ended at a bar by the hotel with a few of the other demoing company execs and the good folks from Atomic PR. More than that, it left us with lots to do in the days ahead and some important conversations to continue.
Day 4
Our final day in NYC was all about making the most of the time we still had in the city. We met with a few people from the William J. Clinton Foundation, having originally come into contact with them at a meeting on Financial Education & Games at the Casey Foundation in Baltimore. They had the opportunity to see CentsCity up close as we dug deep into the demo and our expected road ahead. We’re now working to partner with the Clinton Foundation to have youth in Harlem learn financial skills through CentsCity during the next Financial Literacy Month (April 2010).
Otherwise, I had a great lunch with a potential investor and advisor at the Core Club, before we rushed off to the airport.
From what we’ve been able to track, CentsCity has attracted some coverage from the Wall Street Journal , Spend on Life, PaymentsViews, Student Lending Analytics, and Keeping Nickels. We also had a recent interview with the Baltimore Sun, which has been looking closely at Financial Education and Video Games.
More to come.
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September 28th, 2009 | Tags: Beta, CentsCity, Customers, Demo, Felix Lloyd, Financial Education, Financial Literacy, Finovate, Game Development, Investment, Media, Press, Todd Waits
We’re winding down our first full day in NYC for the Finovate Conference. It’s been an action-packed one and our 7-minutes on stage are less than 24 hours away (actually less than 18 hours — we’re scheduled to demo at around 3 pm EST).
The highlight of the afternoon was actually getting to check out the venue and take the stage for a rehearsal. It’s a phenomenal looking space with big screens and all the work s everywhere. A lot of time and effort has clearly been put into the planning of this event. The list of companies with which we’ll be presenting includes some heavy hitters including Mint, which was recently acquired by Intuit. And the audience is comprised of execs from Citibank, ING Direct, Wells Fargo, and other banks as well as a number of venture capitalists and influential press. This will certainly be our biggest stage to date — an opportunity that we’ve worked hard to gain and intend to make the most of.
The rehearsal went off without a hitch, which we can only suppose is a good thing (we’re actually assuming that the rehearsal was a minor disaster so as to keep us honest for tomorrow). We’re well prepared on this end and, more importantly, our innovation stands out on its own. CentsCity has a look and feel that’s distinct and our potential value to financial service institutions is tremendous.
After rehearsal, we had the opportunity to have crepes with Heather Marold Thomason of Bad Feather and Andy Hieb of Dtek Digital Media. These two companies have played major roles in the design and execution of the Skill-Life.com and CentsCity.com sites. It was a rare opportunity to sit down with them face to face. We got to talk shop (we’ve just put to print another round of 2,000 CentsCity Passports and are initiating another phase of development on the CentsCity beta that will include the introduction of our first in-world mini-game — the Ducket Dash!). And, as it turns out, all of us have dogs that we love immensely. Go Wendell!
For much of the evening, we met up with folks at a Finovate happy hour. Among the most notables were John Waupsh and Gabriel Krajicek of BancVue and FirstRoi. These guys were full of energy and personality. They had some very interesting and insightful perspectives on the industry and CentsCity’s value to financial service institutions. They also insisted that they would be hands-down the best demo tomorrow (turns out they lobbied to bring a lion on stage with them and/or a choir to hum the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”). Of course, we then let them know that they were up against a giant in CentsCity and the Skill-Life team this year — they’d have to settle on being a great opening act!
Otherwise, it was a southern-cooking dinner for the Skill-Life team. No need for details there aside from saying we tried to keep it light as much as is possible when choosing from a menu on which mac & cheese is a vegetable.
Now, it’s getting in game mode. More to come.
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September 27th, 2009 | Tags: CentsCity, Felix Lloyd, Financial Education, Financial Literacy, Finovate, Investment, Press, Todd Waits
It’s Day One of our trip to New York City to demo at Finovate 2009 and to meet with a few potential partners and investors. Actually, more like Night One and not quite New York City (we’re on a plane making its way to LaGuardia Airport and by the time we land it will be 10:30 pm).
Tomorrow kicks it all off as we head to a demo rehearsal at the Metropolitan Pavillion and later to a happy hour event in Manhattan. At this point, we’ve got the demo all planned. I’ll be doing the pitching while Todd Waits, Skill-Life’s VP of Product Development, does the driving.
It’s 7-minutes on stage and not a second more, so we’re going straight to the essence of CentsCity — a dynamic platform that uses online games and rewards to teach tweens financial skills — and the essence is good. The folks over at Netbanker who are organizing the event have already told us that we’re one-of-a-kind when it comes to financial innovations that will be demoing this yeaar or that have demoed in the past. They believe — and we wholeheartedly agree — that CentsCity exists at the nexus of an emerging opportunity as the need for financial education becomes increasingly clear and online games become increasingly central to how consumers experience everything.
Our value proposition is clear (and here you’ll get a snippet of the pitch we’ll be giving at Finovate) — CentsCity is a unique innovation that will help financial service institutions build deeper relationships with present and future customers at a time when faith in our banking system is especially low. It will be a forward-thinking marketing tool that makes an impact while making great business sense.
We’re hoping that this trip will lead to significant strategic partnerships as we continue to pilot and build upon our CentsCity beta version. On Tuesday, we’ll be on stage at around 3:15 pm as one of 32 companies chosen out of hundreds. Our demo will be followed by a two-hour networking session during which we’ll have the opportunity to speak futher with senior banking executives, venture capitalists, and influential press.
Check us out online at Finovate’s live feed. More to come. Always — more to come.
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September 13th, 2009
Skill-Life CEO Felix Brandon Lloyd recently wrote an article for high-school students to appear in a magazine distributed by the Pittsburgh Promise. The text of the article appears below:
The 70-10-10-10 Principle
by Felix Brandon Lloyd for the Pittsburgh Promise
What if your money was a pie? All of it. One, lovely money pie.
Now, think of how you would slice that pie. Would you slice the pie at all?
A lot of high school students (and far too many grownups!) seldom divide their money into deliberate pieces and almost always eat up all of it too soon. There are four basic things you can do with your money – spend it, save it, invest it, and share it. Most of us spend, spend, spend, but, really, we should only use about 70% of our money on wants and needs like food, fun, and cell phone bills.
So, what about the other $30 out of every $100? That’s where we get into slicing the pie into smaller pieces, each around 10%:
- SAVE some of your money for emergencies or for more expensive things you want down the road like those new kicks.
- INVEST some of your money today so that there’s more of it tomorrow. That’s a big, hairy word – “invest” – but it can be as simple as regularly putting $10 into a student savings account so that next year that money is worth much more because it has collected interest.
- SHARE some of your money for the common good. Your money and time can make a difference to people in need, the environment, or other important causes.
Call it the 70-10-10-10 Principle! It’s a simple enough concept to start with, but one that so many teenagers get wrong as they head into college and adulthood. Spend less money than you make and then save for rainy days, invest so that it multiplies into more when you are older, and share because the world is bigger than us alone.
Now, it’s time to get cooking. Make that pie just right.
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September 4th, 2009
Games can be described as a series of interesting decisions. In a card game, a player chooses what cards to play, what cards to hold, and forms a strategy for how he or she will play her hand. While watching the Price is Right, contestants can choose what is behind Door One or Door Two. Consequences exist in a game world to give a player repercussions for their decisions. In CentsCity, a player earns money and can choose how to spend it. While some choices may be more exciting than others, no choice is no fun. Giving players choice is inviting them to analyze a situation and deduce what the best course of action is. Providing interesting decisions provides interesting consequences.
How a player decides what to do in a game will show their style in play. In some games, players can move through obstacles with brute force, while others may choose to find ways to get to the other side without going head to head with the obstacle. In CentsCity, as players accumulate their Duckets with the goal of building wealth, they decide how they want to allocate their money in different areas. Some players will spend more time saving money to purchase vehicles of greater passive income. They may not progress through the early stages as quickly, but will establish an excellent foundation for their future Steady Loot. Other players will invest quickly in smaller gains and build up other assets more quickly to achieve initial goals quickly. The decisions within games allow different people to play to their strengths.
I recently did an exercise where I played Tic-Tac-Toe with a group of children but got rid of the rules governing the game. You could put circles in spaces that were already taken, outside the box, draw curves to connect any three or two or five spaces. The game quickly degenerated every time. The rules and structure of the system provid a clear set of boundaries in which the players can operate. The fun for the kids came when they could work within the system to achieve the desired outcomes. Everyone was on the same level, and no one had an unfair advantage. In a similar fashion we are taking the complicated rules of a financial industry and putting in a form that is easy for kids to understand: Games. We give them a system of rules they understand and can make informed decisions to achieve their goals in the game.
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August 21st, 2009
PITTSBURGH MAGAZINE AND PUMP CELEBRATE ELEVENTH ANNUAL “40 UNDER 40”
PITTSBURGH – PITTSBURGH MAGAZINE and Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Project (PUMP) celebrate the eleventh annual “40 Under 40” with a special event at the August Wilson Center on November 6.
“40 Under 40” recognizes 40 talented individuals under the age of 40 who are making a positive impact on the region’s development.
Developed in 1999, “40 Under 40” helps highlight Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania as a place where young people can make a difference.
“Each year it is exciting to read the nominations and realize the impact that the nominees have on our community.” said Erin Molchany, executive director of PUMP. “Honoring young people for their personal and professional contributions to improving our region is something we at PUMP look forward to every year.”
Selected from a nomination pool of nearly 300 candidates, this year’s honorees were chosen by an independent panel of twelve judges, comprised of former winners, business professionals and civic leaders. Winners were chosen based on their passion, commitment, visibility, diversity and overall impact on the region.
“The judges were challenged this year with scrutinizing a record-breaking number of nominations,” said Betsy Benson, publisher of PITTSBURGH MAGAZINE. “The 40 people who rose to the top are community leaders noted for their intelligence, caring and drive.”
The 40 winners will be guests of honor at a celebration on Friday, November 6 from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. at the August Wilson Center. The event, sponsored by Carlow University and First National Bank, includes a tribute to this year’s “40 Under 40” honorees, music, entertainment, and food and drink from local restaurants. The winners will also be featured in the November issue of PITTSBURGH MAGAZINE. Tickets are $50 in advance and $60 at the door. Group rates available. To reserve tickets, visit 40Under40Pittsburgh.org or call 412-338-2133.
The 2009 “40 Under 40” Honorees are:
Khalif Ali- Community Organizer, Operation Better Block
Regina Anderson- Director of the Regional Internship Center, Coro Pittsburgh
Armen Arevian- MD/PhD Student, University of Pittsburgh; Founder, Open Science Initiative
Danielle Bacco- Owner/Practicing Attorney, Bacco Law, LLC
Erin Baker- College Recruiter, PNC Financial Services
Kelly A. Barcic- Executive Director, Pittsburgh Regional Business Coalition for Homeland Security
Charlie Batch- Quarterback, Pittsburgh Steelers
Dr. Mary C. Burke- Director of Doctoral Program in Psychology, Carlow University; Executive Founding Director, End Human Trafficking
Carlos Carter- VP and Senior Portfolio Manager, Fifth Third Bank
Robert Chambers, III- Business Development, Massaro Corporation
Dana Davis- Founder/President, The Open Door
Jennifer DeFazio- Founder, Stacking the Odds; Shareholder Relations Coordinator, First National Bank
Victor Dozzi- Partner, Crawford Ellenbogen
Matthew Erb- Director, Urban Forestry for Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest
Cara Erskine- Artist
Heather Fiedler- Professor, Point Park University; Founder, Pittsburghmom.com
Rachel Filippini- Executive Director, Group Against Smog and Pollution
Marissa Gallagher- Special Education Teacher, Manchester Academic Charter School
Dennis Geary- Founder/President, Focus Pittsburgh Consulting Group; CEO, Pittsburgh Business Center
Deborah Gilboa, M.D.- Family Medicine Doctor, The Squirrel Hill Health Center; Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh
Tyra Good- Director of Education, Youth Places; Founder/CEO, Good Knowledge Connections
Bob Grayson- Founder, Cancer Corner; Manager, Pittsburgh Business Center; Manager, Focus Pittsburgh Consulting Group
Justin Gunther- Curator of Buildings and Collections, Fallingwater/Western Pennsylvania Conservancy
Daisy Klaber- Founder/Director, Household Harmony; Manager of Communications, The Simplex Group, Inc.
Robert Daniel Lavelle- Chief of Staff, State Rep. Jake Wheatley
Felix Brandon Lloyd- CEO/Founder, Skill-Life, Inc.
Allyson Lowe- Chair, Department of Political Science, Carlow University; Assistant Professor of Political Science, Carlow University
Mayada Mansour- Program Director, A+ Schools
Sylvia McCoy- Founder, Burgh Bits and Bites Food Tour
Piyush Seth- Shareholder/Immigration Attorney, Tucker Arensberg, P.C.
Jason Ross- Senior Vice President, Allegheny Valley Bank of Pittsburgh
Natalia Rudiak- Consultant, Civic Capital Consulting Collaborative; Democratic Nominee, Pittsburgh City Council District 4
Luke Skurman- Founder/CEO, College Prowler
Janera Solomon- Executive Director, Kelly-Strayhorn Theater
Melissa Swauger- Assistant Professor of Sociology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Steven M. Toprani- District Attorney, Washington County
Kristy Trautmann- Program Officer, FISA Foundation
Stephanie P. Walker- Vice President and Director of Talent Acquisition Programs, The Bank of New York Mellon
Robert Wilson- Financial Advisor, Blazer Capital Management
Dr. Barrett Ivory Woods- Orthopedic Surgeon, UPMC
Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Project (PUMP) makes Pittsburgh a more dynamic and diverse place to live by giving young and young-thinking people a voice and inspiring them to affect change in our community through civic engagement, professional development, recreation and social networking.
PITTSBURGH MAGAZINE is the leading, most-read publication in the region celebrating the people and places that make Pittsburgh the nation’s most livable city. Launched in 1969, PITTSBURGH MAGAZINE covers the best the city has to offer in the worlds of art and culture, business, dining and entertainment, nightlife, politics, sports, travel and style. To subscribe, call 
800-495-7323
or visit pittsburghmagazine.com.
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August 19th, 2009
Skill-Life’s partnership with WYEP 91.3 FM has begun. 600 youth in the Pittsburgh region now have an opportunity to pilot CentsCity and receive a CentsCity passport compliments of WYEP! More info below:
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You know that WYEP is the station where the music matters.
But did you also know we do a lot of great stuff for kids off the air, too?
WYEP FreeZone is our radio journalism program for students. This summer, we’re focusing on something a little different–helping teens become more finacially literate. That means we’ve compiled a list of resources to help students learn how to save money, prepare for college, apply for financial aid, and more. We’re calling this project “Your Money, Your Future.”
Check us out online! We have video interviews with financial services experts, audio clips, downloadable one-sheets of information about different types of student loans, and much more.
PLUS: As part of our “Your Money, Your Future” project, we’re proud to introduce students age 8-14 to CentsCity. This fun online game offers kids the chance to explore a virtual world, solve puzzles and quizzes, and win great prizes and rewards. Along the way they’ll learn principles of financial literacy, such as how to manage their money and save for college.
 
For a limited time, WYEP is giving free access to CentsCity to 600 Western Pennsylvania students. If you are the parent or guardian of a child who would like to play, visit our WYEP CentsCity website to find out more about the game and how you can receive an access passport to experience this exciting game!
Support for WYEP’s “Engaging Communities on the Economy” project provided by:
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