Bliksem en Donderdag #3

Van boterhamsessie naar pitchpodium

Inspiratie, interactie, connectie en acceleratie; de vonken springen er van af bij Bliksem en Donderdag - A Thursday Enlightening Event -

VPRO Medialab, Baltan, High Tech Campus en TU/e hebben onlangs een nieuw platform gelanceerd, waarop makers, creatieven, tech-pioniers en denkers hun idee testen voor een breed publiek.

De eerste twee edities van B&D waren zeer succesvol. Per editie waren er acht boeiende pitches, beide avonden waren uitverkocht (negentig personen) en er werden diverse mooie matches gemaakt tussen pitchers en publiek. 

De Muppets

Elke editie zijn er twee ‘muppets’ aanwezig. Twee deskundigen uit een bepaald vakgebied als technologie, design, media, etc, luisteren vanaf de zijlijn, zoals Statler en Waldorf van The Muppet Show, en geven elke pitcher feedback of stellen een kritische vraag. Daarna is het publiek aan de beurt. De Muppets voor komende editie worden binnenkort bekend gemaakt.

© E52

© Jonathan Marks

SUR+, The Roots and The Loop

SUR+

Philippe Roll was the first to take the microphone and explained his SUR+ project. SUR+ wants to reduce food waste in the agricultural sector. They do so by connecting supply and demand of the fruit- and vegetable surplus through an app. This communication channel promotes awareness and collects data about food waste within the agricultural business. Through SUR+ they want move the priority from efficiency and price to inclusiveness.

SUR+ pitched about their biggest concern, namely offering an adequate logistic solution. In most cases neither the restaurants or the farmers seemed to be the designated partaker to ship the products. The audience replied on how to get in contact with some regular distributors, same saw a solution in social networks like BlaBlaCar.
Meanwhile SUR+ has been named Radical Innovator 2016 (Vrij Nederland, Kennisland & VandeJong) and they won the Ambitie2020 challenge of MVO Nederland.

The Roots – Breakdance Competition

Second in line was Christian Boscheri of wedoHIPHOP. The Roots is a Breakdance competition where crews are assembled according to their cultural background and battle against each other. The idea is to gather dancers from all over Europe to represent their parents’ countries (e.g. Suriname to Indonesia, Curacao, Somalia). Through video’s that are shot over the weekend, they also create an online connection with the dancers in the respective countries. The Roots also connects with the multi-cultural environment of Eindhoven. Christian had several questions for the public which led to a discussion focused on how to connect all the different cultural groups in Eindhoven.

The Loop

Mark Stoetzer and Daphne Rieken of The Loop gave a demonstration. Their project is about how art experiences can be shared. They use sense technology that reads personal data like a heartbeat and subsequently transform that information into the pulsation of colours in a lamp. Their aim is to design an interface between viewer and technology that enriches this experience, allowing meaningful and/or creative follow-up to emerge. A dilemma that follows is how to devise such technologies that allow human and machine interfaces to explain, give meaning and accommodate the interaction between art and the observer. The public connected The Loop to several other companies and artists – so new connections were undoubtedly made.

Pictures by Sas Schilten

Two open pitches from the audience

We like the audience to fully participate so we also invite people to pitch their idea spontaneously on the evening itself.

Open Pitch by SensUs

SensUs is a team of 17 students organizing the first international student competition for molecular biosensors for healthcare applications, all under the supervision of professor Menno Prins at the TU/e. Their main mission is to stimulate the development of molecular health sensing technologies by organizing an international competition between teams of students. In a friendly, yet competitive manner SensUs will challenge multidisciplinary teams of students to conceive and build innovative molecular biosensing systems. The competition will give students a unique opportunity to gain experience in goal-oriented multidisciplinary teamwork and in innovative technological design.

They were looking for better ways to promote and explain a complex technology to the general public. To generate as much exposure as possible they were asking for ways to make a promo video to excite people about biosensor technology and inform them about the SensUs event. 

HackEindhoven

During the open pitch two TU/e students took the stage. [name] and [name] are planning a hackathon event for the TU/e and they were looking for people with experience in organizing hackathons. More importantly, they needed cases that could be used for the hackathon. Direct connections were made with Samantha Castano, producer of VPRO Medialab hackathons and critic Mirjam Wouters, whose job is to organize hackathons for Philips. The audience added to that by referring to Rene Pare of MAD Emergency Art Centre and made the suggestion to connect with the municipality of Eindhoven for interesting cases.