Newsletter #03 - 24th June 2016

Welcome back to our newsletter! It's June already and we are fast approaching the pilot launch of our platform with our chosen organisations and partners. Our team is working on the final tweaks as well as ensuring that the users get the best experience from the system.

Andy & Toby have been out and about meeting with potential clients as well as showcasing what the PlayTank platform is all about at industry events and conferences!

PlayTank at Digital DNA Belfast

On the 8th of May we had the opportunity to pitch to 10 industry leaders, investors, innovation experts and even a dragon at the Startacus UpStart event at Digital DNA in Belfast. Against around 25 other startups of varying levels we battled it out in a boxing ring themed speed pitch event.

Andy presented a 3 minute pitch to the judges and feedback was really enthusiastic and encouraging, but ultimately we were not to be the winner on the day as that honour went to Modlist. We were delighted also to see Effy, who we had spotlighted previously get into the top 5 of the competition!

In Focus: The Innovation Sandbox

The ‘Innovation Sandbox’ is a relatively new principle, attempting to combine the best of both internal crowdsourcing and open innovation, add further value for organisations, and avoid some of the pitfalls associated with applying those methods in isolation. Furthermore it borrows on philosophies and design principles seen in technologies like blockchain (such as distributed input and decision making), has a strong focus on transparency and mass-collaboration, and operates through extremely visual user experiences, carrying over some of the benefits seen in design thinking.

Read more on Toby's take on the sandbox on our website here.

Innochat

On June 16th, Ken Gordan and Toby Bottorf from Continuum were kind enough to facilitate the latest in an ongoing series of #innochat conversations – a twitter based one hour sprint aimed at bringing together thought leaders from across the innovation ecosystem with the goal of sharing knowledge and challenging assumptions. This chat's topic was extremely relevant to PlayTank, and so we thought we’d share some of the details of what went down. Check it out here.

Work In Progress

Toby will be flying to Luxembourg in the next couple of weeks to meet with Finnolux, our strategic partner there, and to touch base with some potential innovation centers and organisations interested in the platform. We're looking into a stand at this years WebSummit in Lisbon with a view to showcasing PlayTank at one of their start-up Alpha stands. More to follow!

Until next time,

Andy!