Afterword

A few days after a Future Business Weekend: that’s when you can start to feel what kind of event it really was.

Why does it take such a long time? Because while it’s tempting to say, “here are the winners: that’s the kind of Future Business Weekend this was,” that’s not why we do this (though the winners we had were very special projects!). Future Business as a whole believes that “every business – whether run for commercial profit or for a social or environmental outcome – can achieve a greater social impact.” And the Future Business Weekend people help stimulate and support emerging people, teams and projects pushing deeper into science and technology.

So in fact, when we look to understand what 19-20 October, 2013 really was, it could be months, even years, before we know the true impact. We hope we did no harm (except to that room full of food and drink, which was obliterated!), and I for one hope that the enthusiastic “yes!” that came back when I asked who would love to see more events like this is a sign that we’ve helped spread the (commercial, technical, and social) entrepreneurship bug a little wider.

For the record, the teams who presented were:

Blood – exploring how drones might be used to deliver life-saving blood packets

Urban Tapestry – using satellites to improve farm water use and save farmers money

Satsec – closing the door on freeloaders interfering with satellite applications users

Alibi – using enhanced satellite location data to improve financial transaction security

Idea Flow – connecting people through shared ideas to accelerate innovation

Road Sage – giving parents of new drivers peace of mind and supporting safer driving

Beep – analysing satellite data to solve traffic problems

Game of Crops – solving global farming challenges by translating them into social games

H2GO – bringing cubesats (tiny, low-cost satellites) into the new age of steam

Jelly Spot – Reducing power and water facility outages caused by rafts of jellyfish

DroneID – Using drones to identify fishing vessels that have gone ‘dark’

All awesome, showing lots of learning and mapping out potential for further work; and the winners (after, I understand, a seriously tough job for the judges) were:

Most entrepreneurial solution – Jelly Spot

Best pitch – Alibi (this was a bonus category!)

Most innovative solution – Game of Crops

Looking at the three winning teams, they each had a  strong, but highly distinct, connection to satellite applications. Jelly Spot are hitting a live problem that needs both innovative analysis of multi-layered historic data and current data, in order to try and give power stations and the like valuable advance notice of probable jellyfish incidents that could put the facility out of action. Alibi are using satellite functionality in novel ways. And Game of Crops are seeking novel crowdsourced solutions to terrestrial problems indicated in satellite data.

This certainly doesn’t exhaust, but does a great job of illustrating the kinds of project that the Satellite Application Catapult can help take forward. And I think it’s fair to say that any one of the projects could have been a winner, and has potential to go forward in some form.

So congratulations for pulling off an incredible feat: going from ideas to exciting projects in a matter of hours, powered by enthusiasm, goodwill and a lot of caffeine!

If you would like to stay in touch (and although we facilitated the event, we weren’t responsible for sign-up and we don’t have your email address), then please complete this form. For anything else, I’m easy to find – particularly via my twitter account.