Tag: SynctheCity

Today me and Fergus went to a meet the mentors event at Sync the City!

We began by finding the building where the event was held, which was ‘Fuel studios,’ a lovely breakout room that was really open, with fun seating like swings and noise cancelling seating areas, which we thought were perfect for socialising and networking – which is exactly what we did!

Whilst it was a little bit scary at first, because everyone there seemed to be a little bit older than us, and members of the industry we hoped to break out into, we were offered some drinks by one of the mentors, a developer named (I forgot name). We sat on the swing seats whilst he told us about the minute long pitches and some of the parts we weren’t sure on, and let us ask him questions about the event, which later on, the event runner (also forgot name) spoke about in more depth, pictured below.

We were told that whilst the one minute pitches were not needed by all members, you would lose nothing by giving it a go, which got me and Fergus thinking of start up companies that we could pitch. After talking it over with one of the mentors, we were offered the chance to present a rough draft to the rest of the group. My idea (please bare in mind I came up with it on the spot,’ was regarding student chat rooms, a source of communication for students linking to societies, accommodation, courses, and anything else, all in one place, as opposed to the 15 group chats on 5 different platforms that a normal user would need to join and manage, something I pointed out in my pitch. I ended the pitch noting that it would be for profit, as an app for student could easily advertise student based events, working with societies and clubs to create revenue for all partners, and stated that whilst not everyone was a uni student once, every uni student was lonely once, and it was important for such communication to be accessible and viable.

Fergus pitched an idea regarding a ticketing app for travel, which I thought was really good! We had a really nice time overall and after meeting a lot of the other attendees, made friends of other arts students, industry professionals, coffee shop owners, gamers, and self proclaimed ‘nerds.’

We ended our night with a celebratory spoons trip, which Fergus would like to comment was ‘a well deserved bevvy,’ after our terrifying pitches, in which I actually enjoyed a lot, and helped me move out of my comfort zone.

We began at 4:30 and, having had no prior plan, I decided to pitch an idea that I made up on the spot. It was really scary, I can’t lie, and whilst I did really enjoy being up on a stage and telling everyone about an idea that had very little standing, I tried to use what I had to make it count. I was number 18, and based on an idea I had when at the meet the mentors event, I chose to pitch regarding the current communication system that universities had with their students. I used the number of my pitch to make a point regarding 18 year olds terrified of feeling lonely, and provided a solution to a problem I wasn’t much sure on. This was really fun – attempting to pitch, in 60 seconds, an idea that you probably came up with on the spot, and then listening to other pitches (an incredible 47) from people who had done the same.

20 final pitches were eventually chosen by the judges, which were then whittled down to just 10 by the peoples vote, including Mara’s pitch based on medical care abroad, Lila’s pitch based on decorating offices spaces with local art, and pitches regarding back problems, snakes, language barriers and fun times! There were clearly some incredible ideas ready to be designed, so it was hard for me to choose what team to join. Me and Fergus however, had really tried hard to network throughout this event, and whilst stood around deciding which teams we would split off to go onto, our (eventually mentor) Adam asked us if we would join his team, having met us at the Meet the Mentors event. With this, we had the pair of us designing, Adam and Daisy (the creator of the idea) leading the team, Dan, Pawel, and Henry developing the product, and Tanesha and Maggie building a business strategy for us. What we didn’t have was a marketing lead, which is where Fergus’ excellent networking skills came in clutch, being able to source Che, a marketing associate at a local firm within a matter of two minutes.

By the end of the evening, me and Fergus had a really strong team, and with the initial pitch that Daisy made being a product/service regarding a young persons finance, and teaching them financial education that they never received, we also believed that we had a strong idea, belief being a fundamental step of the process as outlined by one of the key speakers – AskStephen.

It took us a few hours to iron out the details, but by 11:00pm that evening, we had a strong idea as to what it was we were going to do and how we were going to achieve it.

Day two arrived faster than I thought it would and on 5 hours of sleep after planning out some of the design sprint, me and Fergus got to work on the idea of a gamified version of personal finance, bringing together the concept of Idle games, meaning a game you play in purpose of something else, and the modules that Maggie and Patel researched too create a home page.

Day two was definitely the hardest day, because we began it by thinking that we knew what we were doing, and this proved to be the first mistake of many that we made. We thought we had a colour scheme nailed down, we thought we had a character we could use (inspired by the research of duo lingo) to provide a fun entertaining method of flow. We had all of these ‘we thoughts,’ and not a lot of ‘we know,’ which is why I’m kicking myself writing this knowing that we had absolutely no research to stand on, and believing we, as product users, knew what we were doing.

By 4pm, we had settled on the mascot of an BudgetBeaver, having jargon such as ‘flow through finances,’ and even a name! DamSavvy, inspired by the literal dam’s that beavers build, was the plan we had. By 8pm however, our plan was thrown against a wall as Adam asked the room, and realised the vastly obvious sexual connotations of the word ‘beaver,’ (which I had never heard of) that everyone was in agreement about. We had to lose the Beaver. Do you know how many tines I drew a beaver?

We had all of 20 hours left, no leg to stand on and two stressed out designers, myself nearly in tears and Fergus still trying to convincer everyone that we need to use a Beaver, 3 confused developers who had no idea what to create due to our own lack of knowledge, and a team of business minded people looking to create something for the MVP showcase that we didn’t even have a basis for. When I look back at what we achieved, everything we put together, and watching Daisy give that final 5 minute pitch – it amazes me that in all of 16 hours, we managed to put it all together. Below is a photo of me, Fergus, and Adam, that Fergus appropriately captioned for me.