Tanda Hackathon 2018

Last Friday I attended the opening night of the Tanda Hackathon 2018 with the theme of employee experience. I did want to take part when I signed up for the event. But, unfortunately, since then I had other commitments come up that meant that I didn't want to devote my entire Saturday to this event. Also, the friend I wanted to do the event with is now busy with an application for the RCL accelerator, that too played a part in deciding not to participate in the full hackathon. So I decided just to go along, listen to the pitches, see what ideas people had for products to improve employee experience and enjoy the evening. I also ended up pitching two ideas because why not!

The ideas on the pitch night were interesting. There were two ideas that caught my attention. 1) an app for tracking and rewarding good behaviour when not at work. I don't think this was going to be practical because of privacy concerns. But when one bad tweet can get you fired, there is merit in considering rewarding employees for being good netizens. Also, there is merit in the idea of rewarding employees for taking care of their body and mind.

2) An offboarding app and process that follows up with employees who were fired. Again, not sure about the practicality of this because I imagine a lot of fired employees would be angry and not keen to hear from the employer. But then again, I think a lot of employees would appreciate the attention. Especially if its meaningful in that the offboarding involves pointing the former employee towards programs and services that could help them land their next job. 

The two ideas I put forward were 1) Core Skills - which was about benchmarking your skills today and tracking how they develop over time. Crucially, the app would also keep track of market trends, giving employees active feedback about how the most valuable product they will ever work on, themselves, is coming along.

My other idea, which I came up with then and there, was 2) Emotion Tracker. The emotion tracker idea came about because at least three of the pitches was about rating other employees, managers etc. Unfortunately, studies show that our current form of active reviews, rating and feedback don't work. But given that emotion tracking wearables are already a thing, why not use them to track how employees feel during a shift. Properly analysed, the trackers could expose bad managers who demoralise employees, or co-workers who sap the energy out of the room. Conversely, it could also help identify good managers and co-workers.

Obviously, since I wasn't planning on sticking around, I didn't try to form a group around my ideas. I probably should have informally polled the audience to see what they thought. But I didn't think of that on the night. So the night ended with pizza and a pleasant walk back to King George Square bus station. Not a bad way to spend a Friday night, I think!

Arc Hardware Incubator

This week, I finally got to visit the Arc Hardware Incubator in Fortitude Valley. I first heard about the incubator during the Creative Tech Start-up Weekend as the equipment available at the incubator was offered to teams to develop their prototype. Given how badly the weekend went for me, I didn't get a chance to visit. So it was a nice surprise to be able to see inside while attending the Brisbane IoT Meetup. It's a very nice space.

They have made very clever use of a very narrow building that's also fairly historic. So there was a lot of things they couldn't knock down or take out. But they have still managed to put in an impressive array of equipment, labs and studios. They have,

• Multiple types of 3D Printers
• Desktop Vacuum Forming Facilities
• Desktop Laser Cutting Facilities
• Vinyl Cutting Facilities
• PCB Engraving Facilities
• Soldering Stations
• Post Processing Tools
• Assembly Equipment etc.

They also have a pretty neat event space too. I kind of wish I had hardware start-up ideas so that I would have an excuse to book some time into Arc. But alas, I don't have any hardware ideas that will let me play with the toys in Arc Incubator. What a pity!

My Kickstarter arrived - After four years and eight months

I was late to the Kickstarter party. In fact, I was late to the whole crowdfunding party and did not hear about Kickstarter until 2013. Considering that the site started in 2008, that’s pretty late. I became aware of the site when the claimed video game composer Jeremy Soule decided to crowdfund the first solo project.

I enjoy the work of Jeremy Soule and so in April 2013, I backed his project. On December 23, 2017, I finally received the album I played a small part to kick start. Obviously, this seemed like the perfect time to me to think back on all the projects I backed through Kickstarter!

If you are interested in reading about the lessons I have learnt backing campaigns on Kickstarter, you can read the article on Medium right now!

Startup Weekend Brisbane | Creative Tech

Last weekend, I took part in the QUT organised Startup Weekend for Creative Tech. Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has a large stake in the creative industries space. They host the Coterie, a co-working space geared towards creatives. QUT also has a Creative Enterprise department that runs accelerators for creative people. So I had high expectations going into the weekend. But it did not go well. My team slowly disintegrated, I got food poisoning and missed all of Sunday. But I did manage to make one contact at the event that might lead to something. So that's something!

Reflecting on the weekend, the first red flag was when the organisers couldn't quite define what they meant by "creative startups" and fell back on the old gem "no banking".  To be fair, no one looks at banking and thinks "creative", and if they do, it usually starts and stops with "creative accounting" which is illegal and has tanked the world economy enough times - thank you very much! But I still expected a bit of a better definition from the organisers of the creative tech startup weekend.

The next thing that didn't quite work as intended was that in their zeal, the organisers got everybody present to pitch. So there were 90 participants. About 40 to 50 were already pitching, but the organiser encouraged everyone to pitch. It was a great idea on paper, but a terrible idea when the dinner and free networking finished at 7 PM and the venue was going to close at 10 PM. We didn't start voting on the pitches until 9:30 PM and that wasn't a lot of time to mingle and form groups.

Despite this, I left Friday night thinking I was in a good group with a clear idea to spend the weekend working on a startup for a medical IoT device. I came back on Saturday to find that no, apparently the team wasn't on the same page and we were going to build a fashion IoT device. That wouldn't be too bad except that fashion IoT device was something that sounds cool, but no one would buy. I demonstrated clearly to my group that the idea wasn't viable, but I fell into a circular argument because one of my teammates was completely married to his idea and just wouldn't accept reality. I should have heeded the red flag and left the team. But I perversely tried to make the best of the situation. But, there is a reason why the wisdom in the startup space is to bail when you think you should bail.

Anyway, I didn't get a lot of out of the weekend, and after I got food poisoning, I pretty much left what remained of my team in the lurch on Sunday. All and all, I think I'll sit out for the other weekend-long commitments for awhile.

Techstars Startup Weekend Brisbane 2018

This weekend, around the world, TechStars Startup Weekend is back on. This weekend was targeted towards women, although it is not exclusive to women. Men could come along and join if they wanted. I am not taking part, but I did turn up for Friday night initial pitches. I also gave a pitch, but I didn't do any recruiting for canvased for votes obviously. I mostly enjoyed listening to the pitches.

So where the pitches different from the Startup Weekend in November? Not as much as I thought they would be. There were three extremely similar pitches for fashion related startups that centered around customisation and ethical fashion. There were a few start-up ideas around caregiving, including ideas about making elderly parents more comfortable with technology. However, what surprised me were how many startup ideas centred around financial education and financial freedom. There were, however, no obvious winning ideas among the pitches.

What I mean is that during the November Startup Weekend, it was pretty obvious that the Pegasus Equine Management was a slam dunk unless something went wrong. The idea got the most votes, was the biggest team and it was obvious the lady who pitched already knew going in that there was a market for it. Most importantly, she already had the contacts to break into the market if she could just get a product together. The only idea that approached Pegasus, in terms of known gap in the market and industry connection, this time around was "Florist Connect", but it just didn't have the traction among those who were attending.

Anyway, I handed my card to a few people who I thought I could collaborate with in the future but I am not sure if anything will come of it. It probably would have been better if I could stick around and taken part but between travelling for much of January and a recent bout of illness, I didn't feel I would have the energy to contribute effectively. But I have already signed up for the March Startup Weekend, which has a focus on creativity, including IoT. So I think it might be a good venue to pitch some of my wearable ideas.