Business Creation Competition

Last Friday I participated in the Business Creation Competition which consisted of 17 different business models including 7 from the Technology Ventures class.  I was extremely nervous to present but thought that overall I did reasonably well.  I was able to explain my product, give my pitch, and ask for investment in my product from the three judges present.  I was mostly nervous for the Q&A portion because I was not sure what they would ask, but I think I answered most of the questions sufficiently.  I was also calmed slightly to have some familiar faces in the audience, which made presenting less nerve-wracking!  If I had to go back and participate in the BCC all over again, I think I would go into further details about the financials of the BurntPi and would have done some more communicating with my customer segments to have evidence that this product is wanted/necessary.  Although presenting in situations like this are way out of my comfort zone, the BCC was a great learning experience!

From this point on, I would like to see the BurntPi become a working prototype that can then be tested in the correct environement.  Also, I would like to actually speak with some of my customer segments to see where and how this product would thrive.  Whether it will actually be pursued after this course or not is most likely a negative, but it would be nice to say I have a finished business model and product at the end of the semester.  I will be working on completing these goals in the next week or so!  

Graduation = 18 days away!

Python Project

• For the Python programming project, I wanted to trigger my webcam with my temperature sensor when it reached above a certain degree. Unfortunately, I struggled enough to even get the sensor functioning (due to hardware issues) that I moved on to plan B. My final project was actually pretty simple. It was a program that gave the output of the temperature from the sensor and then provided the ability to convert the output to Celsius or Fahrenheit. This will be entered into my final project code as well, but hopefully with a functioning webcam. Fingers crossed! 
• Although I hate programming in general and have very little experience, I think that Python was an easier language to program in than others I have used, such as C#. Python is easy to read because of the uncluttered visual layout and I thought it flowed relatively smoothly based on the necessary organizational structure. I think the biggest opportunity for using Python would be to educate programming beginners due to the fact that the obviousness in syntax makes the language more understandable than some other languages. 
• Given more time to develop my Python skills, I would like to explore what other capabilities of my specific project I can get to work and how. I found Python to be much less frustrating than I find other languages, so I am excited to move forward in developing more aspects of the BurntPi! Overall, programming is just not my thing. It never has been and never will be, but thanks to Python, I got through the project without pulling all of my hair out. ☺

Status Update

Customer Personas  ✔

Financial Model (tweaks will be made) ✔

Currently:

•          Working on temperature sensor
•      Continuing to develop business model
•      Working on my code for our python project 

Overall, my main task right now is to get my temperature sensor working and then I can move on to having the motion sensing work WITH the temperature sensing.  Then, I will have a more finished, functional product.  Besides the technical issues I am facing, I am still working on my business model and trying to get rid of the “I don’t knows” by making specific decisions.  Creating the financial model helped a lot with setting specifics, but that still needs some tweaking as well.  The BurntPi is moving right along and fingers crossed that we have a working product in the near, near future!