Edupreneurs 3rd meet up : EdTech Hackathon coming soon

This piece originally by @SimonCocking at .

This was the third Edupreneurs meetup event   . Held at the Bank of Ireland Enterprise Lounge, #2 Grafton Street

It was mc’d by Niall Kearney and was a great way to meet and listen to other people involved and interested in the edtech (Education Technology) sector.

Kearney also outlined the plans for an educational hackathon to take place in the new year, 2015. After the success of the recent hardware hackathon  it’s clear that there is a growing interest in more events, especially one with an edtech theme.

The speakers at this event provided an interesting balance of low tech and high tech solutions to problems and challenges faced in the educational sector.

First up was Margo Fleming and her business idea booksplits  . Aimed at dealing with the problem of children having school bags too heavy to carry. Her solution is to cut the books in half and laminate each section.

As a low tech solution to a clear problem the audience were very interested in her ideas on how she planned to scale and commercialise the idea. Fleming has already gained customers from both parents and schools, so it’s clear that there is an interest in dealing with the issue. The session took on the flavour of a Dragon’s Den grilling as the audience encouraged her to elaborate her strategy for growth and development of this idea. Still in the early phases of her idea Fleming was happy to take on board the constructive criticism.

It will be interesting to see how the business develops over the next 12 to 24 months.

At the other end of the technology scale was Christina Luminea from thoughtbox  . Although tonight she was there to talk about the European Pioneers initiative 

This is an interesting European funded initiative, with up to €250, 000 available to develop a possible edtech idea over an eight month period. The next deadline is at the end of October, for the first 5 teams to be funded. However if that deadline is too soon, then the next one, for 10 more teams, will be at the end of February. This might be an ideal opportunity for some successful teams that emerge from the planned educational hackathon?

It was a useful event, with the next one due to take place in December.