If you happen to find yourself in Wovenware’s lobby anytime soon, you’ll see a bright new addition sitting proudly for your reading pleasure on our coffee table; it’s the Innovation in Puerto Rico book, hot off the press.
We’re thrilled to be featured in this new book, along with other leading local businesses. Published by Innovations of the World, it showcases the entrepreneurs of Puerto Rico, it shares their stories, struggles and successes that have helped the island become a hot bed for technology and business innovation.
In the book we share the chronology of Wovenware’s growth, from our founding in 2003. At that time, the Internet was just starting to take off and if you wanted to develop web projects, you needed to go off-island – but we thought differently. We brought on-board world-class software engineers and programmers and from a few projects – a spark of tech innovation was ignited in Puerto Rico. And, by 2012 we were servicing customers beyond the borders of Puerto Rico, with a staff far exceeding our six team members of the early days.
By 2016, AI was entering the scene in a big way and we wanted a part of it. We assembled a team of data scientists, built the infrastructure and became proficient in the cutting-edge tools and technologies driving this new AI era. We then got our first big AI break with Maxar Technologies, ironically now our parent company, to develop labeled datasets from satellite imagery using computer vision to count and classify objects. From there, we developed chatbots for universities, deep learning tools for governments and predictive machine-learning tools for insurance firms, to name a few.
In the book, we also share how by 2017, we reached a milestone of 100 employees and then Hurricane Maria hit. We describe the challenges we encountered and how we came out on the other side stronger. By 2019 Wovenware embarked on its next new frontier: Design experience, which today provides the third pillar to our services, joining software engineering and AI.
The book leaves off in 2021, but we now know what the next chapter holds for Wovenware, new opportunities as part of Maxar.
In addition to the chronology and lessons learned from Wovenware, another article I wrote in the book offers insights into the role of diversity in building ethical AI and how it is empowered in Puerto Rico. “With Wovenware leading the charge, Puerto Rico is fast becoming one of the new destinations for AI innovation. We have the expertise and innovation, the backing of industry powerhouses, along with government support, and most importantly – the resilience and drive to make it happen.”
There will be so many new exciting chapters as our future rolls out, but one thing will remain constant: we’ll always be committed to doing thing differently – to blazing new trails in tech innovation.
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