#MIN37 in Lowell

The Fashion Truck on Jackson Street

Mass Innovation Nights celebrated its third birthday in Lowell at Appleton Mills. #MIN37 showcased local innovation out here in the Merrimack Valley, the edge of the universe to many Bostonians and Cantabrigians but home to many of us. It was great to have only a 10 minute drive to the event!

One of the four chosen presenters was parked outside on Jackson Street next to the Hamilton Canal, the Fashion Truck. Emily Benson was just opening up her boutique on wheels and was already attracting fashion lovers.

The Fashion Truck Ready for Business

Fashionistas Inside the Truck

I managed to tear myself away from the Fashion Truck and head on into the Appleton Mills to check out the other products.

The space looked great with lots of light and art on the walls. Last time I was at Appleton Mills was for the book launch of Young Angel Midnight. This was a different but equally creative and enthusiastic crowd.

Christine Sierra was ably handling the sign-in table while Bobbie and Tim rounded up the innovators.

Christine Sierra

The sponsors for the evening were:

• The City of Lowell -- great hosts
• The Deshpande Foundation -- awesome support for innovation
• The Merrimack Valley Sandbox -- who also provided business development, marketing, and strategy expertise in the Experts Corner
• The Appleton Mills -- a great space
• Comcast -- who generously provided free Wi-Fi and expertise in the Experts Corner

I was thrilled to meet Desh Deshpande, a force for good in the Merrimack Valley and an inspiring entrepreneur.

Our Sponsors from the Deshpande Foundation and the City of Lowell

The crowd started to build shortly after 6:00PM with a mix of people from the local area and Mass Innovation regulars who hadn't visited Lowell before.

The Crowd

I particularly wanted to talk to the guys from TourLawrence.org who were presenting their award-winning interactive tour about Lawrence: The Path. It uses cool beehive shape signs and online videos to tell the tale of two sisters who were caught in the largest industrial disaster in Massachusetts history - the fall of the Pemberton Mill. I've done the tour 3 times now and have added it to the Lawrence attractions in our New England Day Trips At-Hand app. I enjoyed being able to tell Nick how much I enjoyed the tour.

Nick from TourLawrence.org

The team from Bizulu made a big impression with their different take on the online auction and with their matching T-shirts. I awarded them best costume of MIN37. Their Competitive Entertainment Shopping lightning fast auction technology is definitely innovative. I got to chat with them some more at the after party -- great team and cool product.

Team Bizulu

Jenne Rayburn is a Boston based handcrafted jewelry and apparel design company. Her jewelry is gorgeous and her philosophy is inspiring.

Jenne Rayburn

Just Scentsational!  offers innovative organic products designed to rid your yard and garden of unwanted pests the natural way. He assured me this would keep the skunks out of my yard without irritating me. If I'm plagued with skunks again this year, I may well give Just Scentsational! a call.

Just Scentsational!

Encapsulator is a disposable web browser. It's a cool way to protect against malware attacks. Instead of leaving behind a trail of login information and stuff that could be copied from your browser, you visit Encapsulator.com, surf the web the way you do now, and throw away your web browser when you're done. Jay walked us through a demo that showed what kind of information could be snarfed up by malware when we're browsing unprotected. He showed the same session using Encapsulator and none of the information was stored. Cool techie stuff is always my favorite part of MIN and this was definitely cool and techie.

Jay Demoing Encapsulator for Fiona

Akken showed off their web-based business software suite for staffing and recruiting companies.

Akken

The student entrepreneurs from Five Senses have an intriguing concept and loads of enthusiasm. Their electronic system simulates relaxing environments that appeal to all five senses. Imagine being able to bring a full sensory experience of the beach or the forest to folks in nursing homes who need the stimulation but can't necessarily get out into their desired environment. It was a pleasure to talk with these guys.

Five Senses Team

Turkey Shore Distilleries introduced their Old Ipswich Tavern Rum aged in oak barrels. They get the best prop award for the oak barrel and the cool copper tubing. The after party at Garcia Brogan's featured a rum tasting with small shots of straight rum and rumenade, which is rum mixed with lemonade.

Rum

Rum Tasting at Garcia Brogan's

I had a lot of fun with the experts from the Merrimack Valley Sandbox, trying for just the right "Experts Looking Expert" shot. I also got to meet Sovanna Pouv, whose name I see all the time and who seems to have his hand in all things Lowell. Oh, and there was indeed birthday cake for MIN's 3rd birthday. What a great night for innovation and for Lowell. I look forward to more involvement with the local innovation scene.

Merrimack Valley Sandbox Experts Looking Expert

Looking Expert and Entrepreneurial and Having Fun!

#MIN36 Was Wonderful

Our Host for #MIN36
Space with a Soul

Waiting for the Presentations

Ready to Tweet

The lights were on in the Innovation District for Mass Innovation Night at Space With A Soul. The space was fantastic -- one of those wonderful old buildings in the former Leather District with a great view of Fort Point Channel and environs. The place was buzzing early and still buzzing after the presentations. The four presenters you all picked were SMAK (@onsmak), Me Two You Gifts (@MeTwoYouGifts), mosaicHUB (@mosaicHUB), and Splashscore (@splashscore). All were impressive.




Ever notice that too much information can be just as bad as none? Want to turn your social media clutter into real conversations? SMAK gives you one place to view, sort, group and manage your relationships across all your networks. That's right, no more Alt-Tab. SMAK lets you put all your social media in one place and sort it so you can prioritize your day.

SMAK

Gamification is hot these days and it made a splash at MIN36.  Splashscore (@splashscore) gamifies your Facebook activity.  It identifies social influencers by measuring the Likes and Comments ripple effect and  gives them rewards.

Splashscore Had the Best Stickers

Imagine the Mass Innovation Nights Experts Corner but online and with even more excellent experts. That's the idea behind mosaicHUB (@mosaicHub): supporting entrepreneurs. An online community built on trust connects you with service providers and mentors as well as other entrepreneurs. Community members share recommendations, advice and experience and find expert help, answers and resources, all in one place. It's like having the Experts Corner at your fingertips all the time! And they were giving away free t-shirts if you signed up that night. The team looked good in their matching t-shirts and the funky lighting.

mosaicHUB

Me Two You (@metwoyougifts) makes the softest baby blankets ever! They're made in Massachusetts. Who says we don't still have a textile industry? Best of all with each baby blanket purchased, Me Two You gives a baby blanket to an orphaned child. I know what baby gift I'm getting for my cousin's expected baby :-) (Stephan and Lisa, you are not reading this :-))

Me Two You

Tote Bag from
Upcycled T-shirts
by Project Repat

Ben's Bicycle Bling from LifeCycle

Upcycling emerged as an important theme at #MIN36 too, with Project Repat and LifeCycle featuring creative reuse. Time to upcycle my T-shirt collection with @ProjectRepat and upgrade my wardrobe with some bicycle chain bling from @thinklifecycle.  Oh, and it was a tough choice but LifeCycle totally wins best costume with Ben's bracelet and ring. LifeCycle reminded me of how my Dad used to recycle broken bikes -- assembling working bikes from pieces of junk bikes. He'd have figured out how to make an entire bike out of the chains!

cuppow!

Checking out Schedit

Speaking of reuse and creativity, I've always wanted something like cuppow for spill-free sipping from a canning jar.  Think about it, travel mug from a canning jar is the perfect reuse. All you need is a lid. Now you've got one. Can't wait to use mine.

 Lots of folks were checking out  Sched.it (@SCHEDITBoston), a hyper social event listings calendar. Which events are trending? Male/female ratio? Who's going? All things you want to know about an event. It adds a social layer to the Boston.com events listings.

Nexly in Action

Strides Against Stigma

Nexly has a cool tool to add a review bar to your website so your customers can add reviews and share with their networks.

Families for Depression Awareness was there to launch its inaugural event, Strides Against Stigma, a walk-a-thon dedicated to building a community to erase the stigma of depression.

Experts Couches

Disco Ball in Action

The Crowd Building

 I successfully talked to each of the 10 participating companies and had a blast trying to figure out how to expose for the interesting light. The crowd was lively and awesome and really enjoying the space. The buzz was incredible. The disco ball and the colored lighting added to the fun atmosphere.  The Experts Corner had couches for cozier consultations and Space with a Soul provided free WiFi for attendees. I saw lots of tweeting going on with all kinds of devices from tablets to smart phones to ordinary cellphones and laptops.


As always, the experts looked very expert.  Eileen and Julia from KCSA Strategic Communications posed for the traditional Experts Looking Expert photo.

Experts Looking Expert

innovative cities = uncharted territory

Lately we keep hearing that innovation is the big driver of economic growth and that innovation takes place in cities. What makes a city innovative? Among the factors often mentioned are arts clusters and place-making. (For an in depth analysis of what makes cities innovative, check out the Streets Ahead report from the Work Foundation in the UK.) It isn't just because I love art that I spent some time checking out the arts component of Winterfest 2012 in Lowell. Filling up empty store fronts with pop-up art galleries and installations is a great way to bring art into the foreground and to create public places. Innovative cities are uncharted territory to some, and Uncharted Studios brought some major creativity to Merrimack Street in downtown Lowell during Thursday night's gallery walk.

The intriguing video image in the window draws you in to a space filled with painting, video, music, and spoken word.  Inside, the  installation makes a place and delights the eyes and ears.

Video in the Window at 66 Merrimack Street

As video images flowed over the paintings and Mike Dailey banged on his drums, I got totally immersed in the colors and patterns around me.

Video Projected on Painting

Constantly Changing

Mike Dailey on Drums
He paints and drums too!

Folks discovered that they could play with the images too.

Watching How the Video Alters the Paintings

People were positioning themselves so the  video enlivened their sweatshirts and hipster sweaters.

Playing with the Shadows

People started doing shadow puppet things with their hands and their bodies, which looked really cool from outside the window too.

The Gallery

Visitors filtered in and out of the gallery. Many of them just happened to be passing by on the street. They weren't even aware of the gallery walk.

More Changes -- More Color

Every time I looked up, the paintings looked different.

This One's Getting Hypnotic

Once I tore myself away from the hypnotic images and went back outside, I still couldn't manage to leave the space right away. A group of young men were doing some kind of spoken word thing on the sidewalk and I was really enjoying it. They told me what the name of the style was, but I didn't quite catch it. Anyway, when I asked if they were getting a kick out of an "old lady" hanging around to listen to them, they invited me to join them. I didn't, but I got into a great conversation with Lindsey Parker, another of the great visual artists at unchARTed, as they spell it. :-)

I'd arrived knowing only that Mike (whom I know from Brew'd Awakening) was doing something with video and music on Merrimack Street and left knowing there's a great group of artists exploring uncharted territory in an innovative city. As the city seal of Lowell proclaims: Art is the Handmaid of Human Good.

#MIN35 at NERD

The View from NERD

Mass Innovation Night is always fun and Microsoft NERD is always a great event venue so #MIN35 was sure to be a winner from the get go. Sure enough, it was! The crowd took awhile to filter in, so I had a bit of time to check out the presenters before the tables got really busy.

Team OfferBeam

OfferBeam is a mobile app that provides location specific targeted marketing. No more searching for special offers and promotions near you. OfferBeam pops up nearby offers on your smartphone when you're passing by. They did reassure us that offers won't pop up when we're driving 100 mph on 128 :-) OfferBeam is such a great idea that I downloaded it during the presentation and it beamed me a welcome to Mass Innovation Night. The OfferBeam team had a great time striking poses for my photos and they had matching T-shirts so they get "best costume" for #MIN35 too!

CampusEmployer

Mass Innovation Nights Experts Corner regular, Corey Turner of Turner Business Services, founded CampusEmployer out of frustration in trying to hire college students. He found that he had to contact the career services department at each campus to get an account and post a job. There had to be a simpler, more efficient way to connect employers with college students. CampusEmployer makes it easy for employers to target college students with the skills they're looking for. No more campus by campus search and no more flyers in laundromats! Oh, and I am awarding Corey the "best hat" award because he was the only one wearing a hat. :-)

SnapHop

SnapHop is a platform that brings together lead generation, audience engagement, and analytics -- the basics of mobile marketing. All the social media marketing services you already use work neatly with the SnapHop platform. They make it easy to create and deliver a mobile marketing campaign. When was the last time you saw "easy" and "marketing campaign" in the same sentence? That's how innovative these guys are. Those cool QR codes that let you tweet from each table at MIN? SnapHop!

LiveCirrus

Live Cirrus takes advantage of the cloud to deliver the full desktop experience to mobile devices.  We all know how developing mobile applications from scratch can be time consuming and expensive. After all, we  already have so much invested in our existing web solutions. With LiveCirrus you don't have to start over. They take the pain and expense out of going mobile by deploying your existing desktop apps using their cloud platform. Their table and SnapHop's table were both very busy after the presentations. Definitely a hit.

Besides the chosen presenters, I had a chance to talk with these great folks with cool products:

• FreightFarms - hydroponics, networking, recycled materials, grow food anywhere!
• InsightSquared
- data intelligence for small and medium businesses made easy and smart
• Socialete- bringing young, urban professionals together in real life with handpicked events and unique nightlife experiences
• CoPatient Audit and Appeal Services
- an online community where consumers can upload their insurance benefits and medical bills and be paired with a billing expert who will provide a free audit of those bills
• ArtVenue - making it simple for artists and business to organize art shows

FreightFarms

InsightSquared

Socialete

CoPatient

ArtVenue

We had a great crew of experts in the Experts Corner this time too. For my featured "expert looking expert" this month: Michael Potts of EZOG. What's your Entrepreneurial Zone of Genius? Visionary? Architect? Builder? Cultivator? I guessed that I'm a Builder, then took the test and discovered I'm an Architect. Great insight.

Expert Looking Expert