For the fifth year in a row, Cucalorus Film Foundation has received an Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Cucalorus hosts a film festival and business conference in Wilmington in November.
Read MoreEditor’s note: Wilmington’s Tom Looney, a longtime software and technology executive, is president of the Cucalorus Connect Executive Board. He wrote the following column for the Wilmington StarNews. It is reprinted with permission. WILMINGTON – The annual Cucalorus Festival: Film-Stage-Connect takes over Wilmington Nov. 8-12, filling downtown with several thousand people from our region, the nation and the world. Cucalorus Festival leaders forecast another strong revenue haul this year for the area’s tourism sector. Yet tourism merely scratches the surface of the event’s overall economic impact to the region and the state. Wilmington’s pivot to an innovation-economy identity —...
Read MoreFor years the nickname “Silicon Beach” has been mentioned as a possible nickname for Wilimgton as it began to emerge as a startup hub for tech and life science companies. “I don’t love the Silicon Beach moniker,’ says longtime tech entrepreneur Tom Looney. But in the second part of our in-depth interview about Wilmington’s continuing growth ahead of this week’s Cucalorus festival, he points out that reminders about ocean access “and so much more” can be helpful, especially in recruiting. (Part one is available online. What’s your reaction to the nickname Silicon Beach? When visitors to Wilmington head back...
Read MoreWilmington’s entrepreneurial ecosystem will be getting plenty of attention during the Cucalorus Connect conference, which is running in conjunction with the city’s well-known film festival next week. Tech veteran Tom Looney, who has worked at Microsoft, Oracle and beside Steve Jobs at NeXT and is among the leaders for the Cucalorus event, talked about the conference and the bustling startup scene with The Skinny. Cucalorus comes from the Greek word kukaloris [“the dance of the shadows”} and refers to a film set apparatus placed in front of a light source to create a dappled lighting effect on a subject...
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