Mass Innovation Night Recap #MIN62

The late afternoon sun put the spotlight on Mass Innovation Night at Progress Software in Bedford yesterday.  Progress provided a wonderful space, great food (including cannoli!), and beverages. Thanks, Progress.

 

Big Welcome From Progress Software

It's always amazing to see the diversity of the innovations showcased at these MIN events.  This diversity was definitely on display at #MIN62 with the Wentworth student startup spotlight. From neat storage for nail polish containers to a discreet vest for carrying around outpatient infusion equipment, I enjoyed talking with the student entrepreneurs from Simply Stored and Gentoo about their products.  Greg from Gentoo did a great job of explaining to me what some of the problems are with the current packs for carrying around chemo infusion equipment,  including how dangling plastic tubing can catch the attention of a cat and with cats' well known propensity to lick plastic this could cause leaking. That was only one of the many issues, but it got my attention.

Gentoo

Dan from CLVboost had the most energy of all the presenters. CLVboost takes email marketing to a whole new level. CLV's aim is to help customers increase return on email marketing by segmenting their audience and engaging the audience with the right material at the right pace.  Based on the speed and energy level of Dan's presentation, I'd say he definitely boosted his Customer Lifetime Value in 5 minutes!

CLVboost

It's good news that theThings.biz is focusing on getting young people started in careers through transferable skills and attitude.  Focusing on recession grads, Veterans transitioning into civilian careers, and people with non-traditional backgrounds, theThings.biz  provides searchable professional profiles built around candidates' transferable skills and leadership qualities, and an entry-level job search engine that matches people with companies looking for driven, long-term hires. The job board space is pretty crowded out there, but this looks like a good niche.

For the young folks just starting out: "It's not about what you've done, it's about what you'll do!"

theThings.biz

Not only did Vocoli have the coolest video demonstrating the need for their product, but they also had matching shirts. They are onto an excellent way to help your organization actually act on employee ideas.  Forget the old fashioned suggestion box where employee suggestions go to die!

Best Costume of #MIN62 - Vocoli

A surprising number of #MIN62 attendees raised their hands when asked if they had tried archery. It must be the popularity of Hunger Games. Everybody wants to be the next Katniss Everdeen. :-) So I guess it's not surprising that one of the coolest and most popular innovations was the UNO archery bow sight iPhone app. The app takes the aggravation out of setting up a bow sight for both expert and beginning archers. And the compound bow definitely took the prize for Best Prop.

UNO - Compound Bow - Best Prop

Gradeable  makes grading faster with a web and mobile platform that enables teachers to give students test results before they even leave the classroom. That lets teachers spend more time teaching and less time grading.

Gradeable

My camera started misbehaving, so I didn't get photos of all the products this time, but that doesn't mean the event was any less exciting than usual :-) Some of the ones I didn't photograph but did check out at their tables were: ADM-Live, Coastal Dog Apparel, and FITRAX.

ADM-Live addresses a problem I've been encountering more and more frequently. Why can't I easily  submit a PDF form on line? ADM-Live  makes it possible to enter data, e-sign, and submit any PDF form on line.

Coastal Dog Apparel is not beach wear for dogs (I was not the only person to make that joke), it's clever, comfortable beach wear for guys.  Those who don't have loads of brothers or other men in their lives may not be aware of an uncomfortable phenomenon that men often experience: chafing from spending time in the surf and on the beach in conventional bathing trunks.  Coastal Dog Apparel designed a unique, comfortable anti-chafing bathing suit to solve that problem. It's basically a traditional swim trunk with a soft seamless inner short that keeps out the sand.

FITRAX  table was getting a lot of attention and they ended up winning the first prize in the American Airlines Business Extra Points voting.  FITRAX uses sensors, mobile, and cloud technology to integrate fitness facilities into the overall health care conversation by syncing health and fitness data among personal trainers/coach, physicians and healthcare providers.

And for the closing Experts Looking Expert shot, who better than the folks who are expert at making Mass Innovation Nights happen?!?!

Experts Looking Expert

Merrimack Valley Sandbox All Ideas Pitch Contest Recap

Lawrence City Hall

Lawrence's Christ United Methodist Church hosted the Merrimack Valley Sandbox All Ideas Pitch Contest on March 27. I love having these events in Lawrence, not just because it's easy for me to get to but also because it brings positive attention to an under-appreciated city.

Bhlue

I enjoyed chatting with Michele from Bhlue about resources for students who aren't planning on attending a 4-year college, but are aiming for a skilled professional career. This group is under-served by career guidance resources in the schools these days, yet there are important jobs to be had and money to be made in the skilled trades. Also, I liked her innovative spelling of "blue", playing on "blue collar".

Crowd

The event drew a pretty good crowd.  I'm told there were around 70 people there. It seemed like slightly more than that. Oh, and  there's nothing like a camera to camera duel with Emil to liven up my crowd shots :-)

Belinda Orta of My Creative Learning  Center

The My Creative Learning Center early education program takes a hands on approach to learning.  Preparing children for kindergarten with creative experiences and individualized learning sounds like a great approach to early learning. Their pitch won 3rd place, so the judges must agree with me.

Donna of Seacoast Gift of Literacy

Donna Forcier came down from Hampton, NH to pitch her plan to provide free literacy tutoring for illiterate adults on an individual or small-group basis. Seacoast Gift of Literacy grew out of Donna's own experience with dyslexia and her strong belief in literacy as the key to employment. A recent issue of Seacoast Online has a great article about what Donna learned from her experience at the pitch contest.

Connecting with Gem Decorations

I remembered Gloria and Gem Decorations from a previous Sandbox event and was pleased to see lots of people connecting with her at her artfully decorated table. You can find Gloria on Twitter.

These Guys Are All Business

Had a great chat with Rob Busch from Moody, Familigietti & Andronico and Arturo Sedo from Experilance about how new grads can get the experience they need to get hired these days.
Rob was one of the judges.

David and Lianna Instructing the Judges

Leaf Canoe

Being in the travel app business, I enjoyed talking with Daijie Huang about Leaf Canoe, her idea for a social travel platform. I'm interested to see how her Beta goes.

Pesto Entrepreneur

Swiss Chard Pesto - Yum!

Evan Cotreau of Pure Pestos let us sample his innovative pesto recipes.  Swiss chard pesto is an idea whose time has come!

My Recovers - Official Cast Cover of BobbieC!

My Recovers had a table with cool walking boot and cast covers - also cookies. I like cookies. I remembered Kelly from Mass Innovation Nights and joked with her about how My Recovers provided the official cast cover of Bobbie Carlton.

Playing with Increment's ORings

It was great to see the team from Increment again and to get to see the ORings in action! The kids were instantly attracted to them and played freely and happily. I first met them a few weeks ago at the Sandbox Consumer Ideas Pitch Contest.

Mai of Savione

My personal favorite of the evening was Savione, a way to make shopping local easy. It wasn't only my favorite either. Savione won both Fan Favorite and 2nd prize.

UCB

UCB

Union Capital Boston (UCB) is onto something with their mobile-based loyalty program for low-income families. Basically, it provides social and financial service rewards in exchange for community involvement in schools, businesses, health centers, and civic programs.

Virtual Run

Virtual Run is a great new way to run or walk for charity. Can't make a specific real world event? Participate in a virtual event. Run anytime and anywhere as long as you run the set distance within the event timeline.

Yoga by Numbers

Of course I remembered Yoga by Numbers from #MIN60. They are making it easier for anybody to learn yoga and getting noticed for it. Elizabeth Morrow nailed the pitch and won the well-deserved 1st prize.

Great products, great people, great event. Can't wait for the next one.

#MIN61 - Mass Innovation Nights Meets Merrimack Valley Sandbox

Canal Looking Great Today

On April 9, the Merrimack Valley Sandbox hosted Mass Innovation Nights #MIN61 at their wonderful space in the Wannalancit Mill in Lowell. A sunny spring evening brought out the beauty of the mills and canals brilliantly. Having two such great entrepreneurship-boosting organizations together in a city symbolic of American entrepreneurship gave the event a special feeling. To make it even more special,  Mass Innovation Nights was celebrating their 5th anniversary.

Wannalancit Mill - Home of Merrimack Valley Sandbox

A walk along the North Canal proved a great way to loosen up for the evening. There was plenty of urban beauty to photograph.

Megaphone Meets Sandbox

People began arriving early, while people were still setting up their demo tables. Our hosts provided snacks, which included wonderful (and wildly popular) egg rolls. Much networking took place over the egg rolls. :-)

Early Arrivals

The diversity of products at both MIN and Sandbox events always amazes me. This one was no exception. There were all kinds of products from games, songs, and stories to knives, grilling supplies, and apps.

Pleasant Dreams

One of the more intriguing products was Pleasant Dreams: A Card Game of Nightmares,  a 1 or 2 player card game in which the players are in a dreamworld where they try to prevent their dreams from becoming nightmares.

ShopRagHouse

Anyone can be a designer at ShopRagHouse. Members vote for their favorite designs and ShopRagHouse makes the winning designs into samples for crowd funding. When the crowd funding goal is met, they produce the designs.

Parker River Knife

Parker River Knife produces personalized pocket knives.Their first model is the Parker River "Classic", inspired by the knives our grandfathers carried years ago. With the classic styling and the personalization options, this is the perfect gift for outdoors people. The shop is located in Newbury along the banks of the Parker River.

Best Costume and Cool Product

The product that really had everybody talking was Grill Easy™ Natural Lump Charcoal. Imagine firing up your grill without all the mess and the charcoal lighter fluid. The solution is simple. It's a single use, recycled cardboard container with an internal vent system. Just place the container into the grill and light the wick. The container burns off while igniting the charcoal and it's ready to use in under 15 minutes.

Tomo360

It was great to see Susu Wong of Tomo360 again. Tomo360 provides customized marketing campaigns and online strategies to help companies generate new business, specializing in meeting the marketing needs of the health care industry.

Story to Song

I had a great time talking with Marieke Slovin about stories. Story to Song is another one of those perfect gifts. How about turning a great family story into a song? Marieke works with individuals to compose songs from the stories of their lives. She also leads songwriting workshops for youth and adults.

HubEngage

HubEngage is the latest product from Mobinett. HubEngage helps brands increase sales and  loyalty through gamification and customized rewards. The cool thing is that it rewards both your customers and your employees for increasing engagement.

Inigo

Who hasn't longed for a simple alternative to exchanging printed business cards? Inigo is a product that is definitely overdue, an interactive business card that completely replaces paper.  It's a free app that allows users to create online "cards"  linking new acquaintances to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, websites, resumes, videos, or anything the user can find online. Not only that, the people you meet don't have to download anything. The cards you send are web based URLs and can be opened from anywhere. The only thing that stopped me from using this app immediately is that it's currently Android-only. The iPhone version is still in development.

Mill City Glass

It's always great to run into Peter Zimmerman of Mill City Glass Works, whether it's at Mass Innovation Night, a Sandbox event, or an arts event. Peter and Aaron had some beautiful work on display. That purple fish really caught my eye.

Packed House

By the time presentations were ready to start, quite a crowd had assembled. It was great to see people who had never been to a Mass Innovation Nights event or a Sandbox event. I even met some people who hadn't been to Lowell before.

David Parker Welcomes Us to the Sandbox

Indigo Pixies Tells Us about the Paci Pixie

The presentations were excellent as usual. The Indigo Pixies customer story about a child's experience with the Paci Pixie was quite moving.

Sierra Look-alikes

There were attendees of all ages. It's great when young people come to these events. It was fun to meet Christine's daughter, Abby, who looks exactly like Christine.

MIN 5 Years!

BobbieC with Cake!

No 5 year anniversary celebration is complete without cake, so of course there was cake. BobbieC did the ceremonial cake cutting and attendees enjoyed the cake at least as much as the egg rolls.

And no MIN blog post is complete without an "Expert Looking Expert" and Jeremy fit the bill. If you need to add video to your social media presence, Jeremy is your go to guy. Nobody knows how to make the most of Vine better than Jeremy.

Expert Looking Expert - Jeremy

So Many Clever Ideas at Mass Innovation Night -- #MIN60

Wednesday night was Mass Innovation Night number 60 at Microsoft NERD. Boston looks great from Cambridge, especially from NERD, even with a winter storm coming in. Microsoft is a gracious host.

NERD Shadows Over Boston

Cambridge Trust provided pizza for those who got there early enough. There was a huge crowd of regulars and newcomers and lots of opportunity for networking. There was even a live sighting of Joselin Mane.

Social Media Expert and Well-Dressed Man About Town Joselin Mane

I managed to visit most of the tables and hear about most of the products and take a lot of pictures, all things I love to do.

Tony from KonectIDY

KonectIDY has developed a customizable language of colors that lets you design a color-coded bracelet unique to each individual or cause, so you can share a "Konection" with the world and help support a cause important to you. They're already working with non-profits large and small from national/international organizations like Children's Hospital National Foundation and Pandas International to local organizations like Newburyport's Boat Camp (familiar to me because they're in the same building as Plum Island Coffee
Roasters).

Sprintboards Team - Mike and Chris

Sprintboards has a tool that makes sharing and communicating project status to clients, executives, and teams simple. It currently works with the Asana project management tool. I asked about Basecamp and they do want to support that too. They're in Beta, so now's your chance to take it for a spin (or a sprint). Oh, and they had customized cookies with their logo.

Test My Pitch

Test My Pitch set up a way for us to rate the pitches given by the four chosen presenters.

GammaPix

GammaPix turns your smartphone camera into a radiation detector. How cool is that? You can detect and measure radioactivity wherever you are - with a mobile app.Their table attracted quite a crowd asking good questions.

Artistic Impression of Huge MIN Crowd

The crowd just got bigger and bigger. People crowded around all the tables. I considered hoisting the camera up to the ceiling to get good crowd shots ... hmm, there's an innovation waiting to happen - a way for short people to take crowd photos -- maybe a mini drone?

Daily GC

DailyGC™ specializes in providing experienced General Counsel services to small businesses and startups in Massachusetts. They come to your  business for a full day and help you to solve your most pressing legal-related business problems right there with you. Because it's "One Day and Done™"  you know the full cost in advance and that price is affordable for  small companies and startups.

FitYap

FitYap is a way for you to find local fitness classes and get trusted recommendations in your area.  For  fitness professionals, it's a great way to schedule clients and grow your business online. And, yeah, it can help you find a snowshoeing meetup or an ice climbing club in your area too.

Yoga by Numbers

Can you innovate in something as ancient and traditional as yoga? Yup. Yoga by Numbers believes yoga should be simple to learn and practice for everyone. They have developed a yoga mat that uses numbered targets so you know where to move, and they have videos  for various levels of ability and that fit your schedule.

Year of Action Books and Some Delicious Looking Fruit

Girlfriend MBA from Year of Action is a new kind of interactive, online business program for women who want to kick their business up a notch and want a new way to learn that makes them feel good, supported and inspired to take action and get results. It combines action-based learning and a supportive motivational network.

Best Costume of #MIN60

Maxwell Health  wants to fix health care in America. What they've built is a paperless, mobile-enabled platform for employee benefits complete with a wellness program, a personal health advocate, and a mobile app so that all benefits info is available at the employee’s fingertips. They also had beautifully designed team T-shirts, not exactly what you'd expect from the health insurance biz, so I declared them winners of Best Costume for #MIN60.

Expert Looking Expert

Basil Dixon of HitBliss agreed to pose for the traditional "Expert Looking Expert" shot.