Climate of Awesomeness
By Nick Such
Inventors, idea people, and entrepreneurs converged in Lexington this evening for the 5th annual Inventors Conference hosted by the Central Kentucky Inventors Council (CKIC.org). The team from Awesome Labs stopped by to talk to gather feedback on the Interactive Touch Screen and our upcoming Engineering Entrepreneurship program. The folks from the CKIC did an excellent job of bringing together a host of local innovators. They showcased products ranging from innovative pet housing, to solar powered jackets, our friend Ken’s novel air purification system, Bill Cloyd’s increasingly popular Newton’s Attic program, and even the pre-collegiate stars of PLD Robotics.
The day began with an early morning at the Lexington Central Library. At 5:15am, about 15 exhibitors and CKIC members talked with Lee Cruse from LEX18 to promote the evening’s event. Everyone reconvened at 6pm, when Don Skaggs, President of the CKIC, kicked off the evening’s festivities with a video showcasing inventors and an introduction to the theme “Climate of Innovation”. This led into presentations from Nick with the Lexington Public Library and Gordon Garrett from the Small Business Development Center, culminating in the keynote address from Louis Foreman, renowned inventor and entrepreneur.
The conference’s common thread, as eluded to by “Climate of Innovation”, is that the recession environment is a great time to start a technology-based business. While this bodes well for Awesome Labs on the surface level, this assertion comes with a few cautionary notes:
1. Problem before solution. If there is no need for your product, you won’t succeed. Utilize free resources (like libraries, biz dev centers) for this research.
2. Revenue must exceed expenses. You will not survive if this fails.
3. Tailor your product to your customers. This means you must take the time to get to know your customers, and that you need to find a way for your customers to get to know your product.
While these are undoubtedly not original thoughts on the innovation commercialization process, it was helpful to have them laid out again. We inventors tend to fall in love with our ideas, while ignoring all the free resources we have available. The best (read: my favorite) advice of the night came via a video featuring the innovation manager from WD-40: failure is good. Accepting that one idea has failed means that you have gotten one step closer to success. It is far worse to deny failure, and attempt to follow through with a lousy idea.
So, here’s to failure, early and often, in the pursuit of Awesomeness.
Nashville Barcamp ‘09
By Luke Murray
Awesome Inc. is headed down to Nashville’s Barcamp. “BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants who are the main actors of the event.” I’m pumped to see this 600+ person event in action and specifically the following sessions:
- Emerging Market: Vanity iPhone Apps for Small Businesses - Jackson Miller - #bcn09ivanity
APAX Software, a company that works out of Awesome Inc. has been focusing on iPhone apps recently and has found many of their customers to be in this market of Vanity Apps. The trends Jackson sees on in this market will be beneficial to hear about.
- I AM MUSIC CITY: Entrepreneurship in Nashville - J. Tod Fetherling - #bcn09nashec
As one of the people with his finger on the pulse of the entrepreneurial community in Nashville, we are really interested in learning from and taking advantage of the trends and ideas that Tod sees in building entrepreneurial communities and opportunities.
- State of the Community: The ‘Venn Diagram’ of Nashville’s Tech Organizations - David Ledgerwood - #bcn09venn
Like Tod’s talk, this is something that will give us a good ‘lay of the land’. I’ve ended up explaining this so many times that I’ve ended up making a chart along these exact lines for Lexington. Interested to see how they differ.
- Enterprise Lamp: The Next Frontier of Technical Depth In Nashville - Marcus Whitney - #bcn09elamp
I heard about Marcus and what he’s doing with Enterprise Lamp from Chuck Bryant, this year’s Nashville Barcamp organizer, COO of Borderjump.us and Nashville Geeks.
- iPhone Development or “Welcome to Crazyville, Population YOU” - Nicholas Holland - #bcn09crazyville
Nick came to Awesome Inc’s Mobile miniConference this summer and we hung out again during Nashville Startup Weekend. His iPhone app Mobile Assassins was a year in the making so I’m interested to hear all the ups and downs he’s experienced in the past twelve months. If it took that long to get this app in the store, he’s probably faced every hurdle there is.
A Day at Cincy Coworks
By Luke Murray
On Tuesday I went up to Cincinnati for one of the first Cincy Coworks day of coworking. I realized the strength and vibrancy of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky entrepreneurial culture a few weeks ago at In One Weekend, but I hadn’t seen a semi-permanent gathering of people getting together to do their own thing…until now. I ended up at Venue 222 around noon, not knowing at all what I’d find.
I was quickly and pleasantly surprised to see art on the walls, a ping pong table upstairs, and a bunch of cool people doing awesome stuff. Here are just a few of them:
Gerard Sychay & Bill Barnett - These guys are the founders of Cincy Coworks - which right now is an occasional gathering of freelancers doing their own thing. Their “mission as a professional community hub is to transform how people in Cincinnati with ideas get together and make the region a better place to live.” I got to sit on some bean bags with them for awhile and talk about…you guessed it….Awesome stuff! In this case that ended up being the visions we had for the things we were doing and why we were doing them. These guys are both trying to do something that will really benefit their community and they’re doing it for the ‘right’ reasons. Hats off fellas!
Chris - After mentioning some of the things we’re doing at Awesome Labs, Chris insisted that I check out a hackerspace close by called Hive13. Really cool looking place with some neat toys. Thanks for taking the time to drive me over there Chris!
Everyone that ever worked at zipscene.com - Actually I just met Colin. Gerard works there too, but I already told you about him 
Krista from Bootcamp Mobile (among other things) - Krista and I had already met a few times before, so it was a pleasant surprise to get to see her again. We connected first while I was reaching out to local mobile experts for the Mobile miniConference we had this summer, and then I got to hang out with her again at InOneWeekend.
There were plenty more people there, and overall the event was a huge success and a great time. Thanks Gerard and Bill and keep up the good work. Just don’t forget Rule #4 - Always do something awesome over something not awesome!
