We’ve moved into the Centre for Innovation down here at the University of Otago, and as a part of our work with The Distiller we’re paving the way for our startups and uni faculties to work together. This is something I’m particularly passionate about, and we have a clear opportunity to bridge some amazing talent and research on a very practical level through this venture of ours.
Last week, Francois and I were invited by Andrew Long to be a part of a Dragons’ Den session for his Comp 113 summer school class, alongside Phil Osborne from Marketing. For those unfamiliar with the show’s format (I believe the US equivalent is American Inventor), keen entrepreneurs present their ideas to a panel of ‘dragons’ – investor-entrepreneurs who grill the poor candidates and either shoot their ideas down, or negotiate for a chunk of equity in exchange for a bag of money. I haven’t seen too many episodes myself, but I faintly remember stacks of cash sitting on the table for the poor entrepreneurs to salivate over. Very tastefully done.
The Dragons
Comp 113 (check out the wiki) is a paper that focuses on Web 2.0 and online communities. It looks like a heck of a lot of fun for the students, and through the Den we were privy to the guidance and work that Stephen and Andrew have put into the class. We were advised that the session was going to be filmed, but little did we know that they’d gone all out and staged it in a studio, at the AV Development Unit!
So, for around three hours, slowly wilting under those burning lights, we listened to and provided feedback for some fascinating projects presented by a number of teams.
Overall we felt that there was a high level of creativity, and that those who presented put a lot of time and effort into their projects. It’s good to see a 100-level paper engaging students so well.
We ended up picking a top three, and the verdict can also be found on the wiki.
This is the second year for this class, and we think the format rocks.
Tags: Community, dragons, students, university
Thank you for participating and thanks for the positive comments also. It was a pleasure having you and Francois involved as both presenters and dragons. We like the course format too and with a little tweaking we think it can get even better.
No worries Andrew!
It is so great to see so many motivated people working together around this kind of project. It think everybody benefits from participating to this Dragon’s Den
Also wonderful to witness practical application of academic teaching! Great mix of theory and practice you got here! Keep up the good work and feel free to invit us for an other session ;p