Mass Innovation Nights started the year off right showcasing a variety of local innovation at MIN82 hosted by
Endurance International Group in Burlington. Endurance provided a great space, food, and beverages as well as decor that evoked Antarctic expeditions of bygone days.
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| Endurance |
The products on display were diverse as usual. The four products chosen to present by the pre-event voting were: Sonzia, TripBuddy, WeGush, and Pavlok.
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| Presenters Waiting to Be Introduced |
Sonzia brings affordable large scale touch screen technology to classrooms and workplaces for people of all abilities with TouchEasel and Ualli. The demo presentation was impressive with good contrast, responsiveness, and sheer size. Very cool. I can imagine big touchscreens in all sorts of applications.
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| The TouchEasel Screen |
Pavlok's demo table was drawing big crowds well before the presentations began. It's a wearable device that helps reduce cravings and break bad habits with mild electrical zaps (and/or buzzes, beeps, vibrations) that are supposed to retrain your brain to stop liking the habit.
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| Crowd Around Pavlok's Table |
Gratitude feels awesome! The
WeGush Gratitude App for
iOS and Android makes it really easy to express your gratitude to others anytime, anywhere right from your smart phone (or as my friend Douglas calls it, your digital extension of consciousness). It's integrated with your social media and messaging apps and provides fun messages of appreciation for you. It couldn't be easier to thank someone. The app is an even better and more convenient way to spread gratitude around than
the web site that WeGush presented at MIN67.
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| Martha Huntley - WeGush Founder |
Does the world need another "ride sharing" app what with Uber and Lyft and all?
You bet it does! tripBuddy is a ride
sharing platform that connect students without cars with students who have
cars on campus who happen to be heading to the same destination. That's right, it's real ride sharing, not a glorified taxi service. The tripBuddy team was very enthusiastic and showed off their matching T-shirts, so I hereby award them Best Costume of MIN82.
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| TripBuddy Team in Matching T-shirts |
VQL is data analysis made simple. With VQL, even non-techies can query the database and get answers simply and quickly. Everybody on your team can get answers, not just those who know how to write complicated SQL queries. There's no coding involved.
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| Answering Questions about VQL |
College admissions website
Admitster attracted a lot of attention. Billing themselves as "the world's most
useful college admissions website" is not much of an exaggeration. They've figured out how to use data analytics to predict your chances of being accepted
by any of the colleges or universities in the United States, and
they offer solutions for improving your chances.
Needless to say, Admitster ended up being the grand winner in the favorites voting. The other three winners (who got cool Endurance gym bags) were VQL, Sonzia, and WeGush. All well-deserved.
I didn't get a chance to talk with or photograph
Impress.ly,
metacog,
GemShelf,, or
SnapScreen, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't check them out online.
There were plenty of experts in the house. In addition to the traditional Expert Corner, our hosts offered some experts as well.
Business On Tapp
was one of the featured experts/companies from Endurance International
Group.
Got questions about your entrepreneurial ideas? Need answers, solutions,
connections? No matter who you are Business On Tapp provides real
business guidance for you. It's like having the Expert Corner in your
pocket all the time.
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| Business On Tapp Team |
In the Expert Corner. besides dispensing HR expertise, Mark DeMello of TriNet struck a humorous pose for the traditional Expert Looking Expert photo.
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| Expert Looking Expert |
