DUBLIN, IRELAND - I’m back in London next Wednesday to speak about Decisions For Heroes at a Social Innovation Camp meetup.
Social Innovation Camp is an experiment in solving big problems by starting small and supporting the individuals with the ideas, skills and tools to create change by leveraging the power of the web.
[We] wanted to help get the conversation started. So each month we’ll be hearing two or three people who are already working on a web-based tool to create social change Show and Tell what they’re up to and either ask for a hand to get their idea off the ground or bring a little wisdom to share with others.
Very fitting that today Google launched Project 10 to the 100. I think we’re going to have to drop D4H in there as a submission.
I’d also like to put together a ‘Social Innovation’ / ‘Hero Camp’ for Ireland (this is where we all get together to plan, design & implement something non-profit in 24hrs).
-Robin.
6 Comments
DUBLIN, IRELAND - When I worked for Thomson Reuters I was invited to a BT Hothouse as a client. The hothouses are incredible fun… 3 days, 100 developers, 200 pizzas, 300 KFC buckets, unlimited Coke, you get the picture! Oh and an end-goal to have working software that the client (Alan & me) are happy with. I actually reconnected with someone at the Seedcamp interviews who I met there.
I wrote about it here at the time.
Image via Wikipedia
BT has adopted a rapid-prototyping scheme in which new projects are adopted or rejected during three-day “hothouse” sessions, working with early-adopter customers. Thereafter projects must deliver results on a 90-day cycle, inspected by an external examiner, or face the chop.
I just got sent the video (they’ve just password protected it, boo!), I do a short talking part in it where yet again, I try to sound all important.
Watch here (est. 4min clip - flash required). (they’ve just password protected it, boo!)
-Robin.
2 Comments
DUBLIN, IRELAND - We’re on ENN.ie today too.
After a hectic few days at the Seedcamp venture funding competition in London, Irish start-up Decisions for Heroes is preparing to turn its emergency services technology into a fully paid-for service. The young Irish firm — set up by technical expert David Doran and Robin Blandford, a volunteer cliff rescue climber with the Irish Coast Guard — was the only Irish company to make it to the finals of the UK seed funding event, which attracted around 400 initial applications. Their technology, which “help[s] emergency services save more lives by making better decisions”, is currently up and running in a pilot phase with teams in five countries around the world, and Decisions for Heroes is now planning to start charging for its services. At the Seedcamp event, Blandford said his company envisages it can earn EUR160,000 in re-occurring revenues per year, within 12 months. He estimated the worldwide market for such services to be worth around EUR5 million to EUR7 million, and said the company plans to expand into 42 countries. Although the company failed to secure any of the prize funding, it has been invited back to the next Seedcamp event in December.
Don’t I sound official!
(Image Credit: David’s Flickr Stream)
DUBLIN, IRELAND - Jemima Kiss from the Guardian interviewed us on the final day of Seedcamp. You should read the entire article on the Guardian site. Below is an excerpt about D4H…
Decisions for Heroes wasn’t selected for funding at the end of the week, but ByteSurgery founder Robin Blandford made it clear that the project is not dependent on that funding to go ahead. It’s a unique idea and one that polarised the Seedcamp crowd, said Blandford. “We save lives. We run a rescue team management application that helps rescue teams reduce their response times and help them make better decisions while they are on a rescue,” he explained.
The mountain rescue, coastguard and lifeboat teas around the british Isles organise their rescues through an ad hoc system of texts and phone calls. Decisions for Heroes coordinates that, so that if both the doctors on call register that they are offline for the next six hours, a warning message will be sent to the team leader. “We’ve gained a huge amount of confidence from meeting these guys,” said Blandford - himself a volunteer for the Irish Coast Guard. “We had an hour with Marten Mickos of MySQL and Andy McLoughlin from Huddle - to have people that senior say that they love your idea is a huge confidence builder.”
“The application has the element that the end user could be a charity or a publicly funded body, and that has polarised a lot of people about how big the potential market is. Some people saw the ision as much bigger, like Umair Haque - he said we should work with the Red Cross over in Asia so they can bring tranparency to disaster relief.”
It was noticeable that there didn’t seem to be anyone from UK Trade & Investment at the Seedcamp wrap-up session. Blandford said that if this had been in Ireland, he would have expected to see the equivalent people there. And he has a meeting today with Dublin’s Hothouse programme, which could offer Decisions office space, salary subsidies and more funding.
“I think there were some teams at Seedcamp who were reliant on winning to get funding, especially the ones that are a consumer play who needed who needed the promotion. But we’ve got revenue starting to come in the next six to eight weeks - we’re hoping to convert 30% of our trail users to pay accounts.’
Is Robin back in the office today? He’s on call. He might even be dangling down a cliff face on rope right now.
Please click through to see the article in its original context.
(Image Credit: Jemima Kiss, Guardian)
DUBLIN, IRELAND - I have posted our pitch as a slidecast here for a number of reasons…
- I want our advisor’s from the week who didn’t get to see our pitch to get to see it. We can’t think you guys enough.
-
I’m forwarding this URL on to some angel investors and companies who were interested in talking further.
- Web 2 Ireland & co. it’s important to me that we work on more Irish entries next year. I hope that this is motivation.
You can contact me directly on robin@bytesurgery.com / +353 86 328 7563.
Dublin out.
-Robin.
Please note: This is a re-recording! Not live.
6 Comments
![Robin Blandford [ ByteSurgery.com ]](http://www.bytesurgery.com/blog/wp-content/themes/starkers/images/blank.gif)
Subscribe to my blog.
Twitter
Dopplr
Linked-In
Skype
