Travelling to the Wonderland

This installation at V&A is one of the best I have seen in a while, the more you look the more details you find. It's by Xu Bing who was inspired by a Chinese fable called Peach Spring Blossom where a lost fisherman discovers a wonderland behind a mountain where the inhabitants live in harmony with nature.

Blogging for Imperial CreateLab

I initially heard about Imperial CreateLab from a friend I made when I was making the Imperial Hackspace Podcast. Suffice to say he's pretty clued up about social enterprise and innovative design happenings at Imperial College. So when they started looking for a blogger for the Createlab website he suggested I might want to do it. It just so happens that I had come up with an idea for an app, and Createlab's blog would be the perfect place to document my journey of taking an idea to a fully fledged start up.

Find my first blog post here or read it below. When it was published @ICreatelab tweeted about it, followed by 9 retweets, potentially reaching 12.8K people. Now that is exciting! In a social media kind of way.  

So you've got an idea for a startup, now what?

It used to be that everyone has a book in them, now everyone has an app in them. And I reckon I have a pretty good idea for an app. But as someone with no business or coding skills it could easily remain just that. You always hear about people who are sitting on their million dollar idea or invention that they will make happen “at some point” or “when I have the time/finances”, but you just know it’s not going to happen. And there’s a good reason for that: it’s hard!

Making an idea into a prototype, doing thorough market research and getting people to invest in your business is the long and winding road to a successful business. I have been told, and I have found out quite quickly, that it requires hard-work, patience and lots of determination. Determination can be the first thing separates the wheat from the chaff and the business leaders of tomorrow from the sitting-on-an-idea wannabe’s.

"It requires hard-work, patience and lots of determination"

If you are someone who has an idea for a start-up business know this: if there is money to be made by fulfilling a particular need there will be other people working on it. So moving the idea forwards quickly can be key.

Dealing with Intellectual Property

My very first issue is that I do not have the expertise to know what my next step should be. Of course there are many others who are literate in all things startup but surely it would be unwise to share my idea with them?

Wrong! Of course you want to protect your Intellectual Property but as we mentioned it’s a long road to make something out of an idea, not many people are going to put that level of work in. Sharing your idea with someone who can help you think about how to move it forwards can be a very valuable thing. As Millie at Createlab told me knowing when it will be useful to share your idea is probably the second thing that separates those that make it to those that do not. That’s not to say you should not be careful about it, I would not share my idea with an employee of Google. And I also will not share the full idea with you. As lovely as you are, you could be anyone. All I will say is that I’m developing an app that encourages a balanced life.

Criticism

"Embrace criticism and in the end you have something that you know your customer wants"

The other useful thing about telling someone your idea is getting critical honest feedback. So far I have told three people who work in start ups my idea and they all think there is something in it, but first I need to do thorough customer research to find out what the exact needs are and get a clear idea of who my customer is. One of the people I spoke to was Mark who I met at a Createlab Drop-in mentoring session. He said that people are already solving the problem my app would address in their own way with what is available to them, so perhaps there is not as much of a need as I thought. At a point like this anyone who believes in their idea would defend it through reflex. But actually he has a valid point and all criticism is incredibly useful. From this conversation Mark helped me to realise that finding out what people already do to solve the problem should be part of my market research and through this I can figure out a way to make my solution better. 

Allowing your business idea to be your baby that is perfect in every way is another quick route to failure. Lean start-ups work on the principle that you make a prototype, test it with the customer, improve the prototype, test again and repeat. You go through this cycle again and again until it is the product is right. This method embraces criticism and in the end you have something that you know your customer wants.

Next steps: Market research

My next step will be a substantial amount of market research to answer some key questions about my customers. To get good answers you have to ask good, non-leading questions; so I shall be investing in a book that has been recommended to me “The Mom Test” by Rob Fitzpatrick. See details below.

Reading list:

·         Website: Custdevcards Ideas on how to have more useful conversations with your customers http://custdevcards.com/

·         Book: The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick “How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you” http://momtestbook.com/

While on placement at BBC Science Radio

In October 2013 I did a placement at BBC Science Radio. I got to work on lots of amazing science stories for programmes like Science in Action and Frontiers (in particular the episode on Self-Healing Materials). 

It involved finding, researching and sometimes pitching stories, contacting contributors and pre-interviewing them. This last bit is incredibly exciting and slightly nerve-racking because you are probably talking to a world class professor and asking her "silly" questions to make sure they can explain the science well and that you've got the science right. Needless to say starting a conversation with "I'm calling from the BBC.." really opens doors. 

I pitched and wrote a story I was researching for Science in Action to the News Online team. Read it below or follow link http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24750897

Bat virus clues to origins of Sars

By Keeren Flora, BBC Radio Science Unit

Researchers have found strong evidence that the Sars virus originated in bats.

Two novel Sars-like coronaviruses were found in Chinese horseshoe bats which are closely related to the pathogen that infects humans.

Critically, the viruses infect human cells in the same way, binding to a receptor called ACE2.

This suggests coronaviruses could transfer directly from bats to humans, rather than via an intermediate species like civets as was previously thought.

The results are reported in the journal Nature.

According to Gary Crameri, virologist at CSIRO and an author on the paper, this research "is the key to resolving the continued speculation around bats as the origin of the Sars outbreaks".

This Sars-like coronavirus is around 95% genetically similar to the Sars virus in humans, the research shows. And they say it could be used to develop new vaccines and drugs to combat the pathogen.

The Sars outbreak between November 2002 and July 2003 resulted in more than 8,000 worldwide cases and more than 770 deaths. This, along with the ongoing endemic of the Mers-coronavirus demonstrates the threat to humans from novel coronaviruses.

Dr Peter Daszak is the president of the EcoHealth Alliance and an author on the paper published in Nature. He said: "Coronaviruses evolve very rapidly. The ones we are seeing are exquisitely evolved to jump from one species to another, which is quite unusual for a virus. So the big question is why are they emerging now?"

At wildlife markets in China other animals and humans come into close proximity with bats, creating an ideal environment for the virus to jump between species. Also, those hunting in or living near bat caves have a significant risk of infection from such viruses, which are excreted in bat faeces.

Understanding the origins of infectious diseases like Sars could help scientists tackle future infectious viruses before they emerge, through knowing where they are likely to arise and which families of virus we are most vulnerable to, and taking action to prevent initial infection.

Dr Daszak said it would cost "about $1.5bn to discover all the viruses in mammals. I think that would be a great investment because once you have done it, you can develop vaccines and get ready with test kits to find the first stage of emergence and stop it."

A Pair of Human Hands

A film Chrissie Clark, Simon Roach and I made for our Masters course.

The Jam Jar

 

Jam Jar Florists found in Peacock Yard. http://jamjarflowers.co.uk 

The Yards are full of studio spaces that house crafts people and artists, like Jam Jar Florists and Lute-makers Sandi and Stephen who we made a film about. See it here   

Kew

Old Weather

It’s not very often that history and science come together, but that is specifically what the Old Weather project is all about. Old Weather is a citizen science project where online users transcribe old ship logs to find weather data that can be used by climate scientists. In so doing the citizen excavates forgotten stories of the 19th and 20th century ships straight from the logs.

Many thanks to: Joan Arthur, Alexandra Eveleigh, Fredi Otto and the makers of Old Weather.

Go to Old Weather

Neighbourhood Watch

Long Live Southbank

Pretty bits from Edinburgh

My first podcast: Imperial Hackspace

For the most recent I, Science magazine on DIY Science, Josh Howgego and I went to London Hackspace for an evening of Biohacking. It was an eye opening experience, mainly because of diverse and interesting people who wanted to have a go at some molecular biology. We wrote about it for I, Science, see below.

I found out soon after that there were plans for a Hackspaces in my own institution, which in many ways is shocking. Part of the idea of a Hackspace is to get away from constraints of an academic institution with its politics and funding issues, so that people with great ideas can work on individual projects without having to continually justify it. We are talking about a worldwide movement that has been critiqued it as anti-capitalist. So with initial plans at Imperial College London to form a Hackspace that would be integral to the university, I asked could an environment where the student has so much creative free rein have a place at Imperial College? I spoke to Professor Peter Childs and IC Design Collective to find out. Podcast was made for I, Science magazine

Wimbledon 2013, the Philosophers Battle

At the beginning of January our masters class were given our most daunting task yet: make a 'science communication product' about what we have taught you so far. Being an ambitious group we chose to make a product that discussed competing philosophies of science, an idea that could either go amazingly well or epically fail. 

Science has often been described as a game, with many rivalries, influences and champion theories. This is certainly the case for philosophy of science, which talks about what science is, what is scientific truth, if that even exists or is man-made, and how science should progress.  We wanted to explore an idea where competing philosophers knock an idea back and forth in a debate, just as you would a ball in tennis, until one of them won the point. As we developed the idea, our metaphor then became more abstract. The method the philosopher used to play tennis was influenced by the way they thought you should do science, and their ideas and what we knew of their histories influenced their personalities. The question essentially became: how would these philosophers behave if they played tennis as if it were science? So Karl Popper who believed in trying to falsify your own theories, was portrayed as argumentative, trying to falsify the rules of the game and the umpire. In the case of Aristotle, we knew little about his personality, so instead defined him by Francis Bacon's idea of him being the “dogma of the time”, therefore making him slow, thoughtful and consistent.

‘The Philosophers Battle’ was the kind of abstract idea that if executed wrong could be very difficult for the listener to understand. In our case this meant the script needed to be clear and the analogy needed to be portrayed in the correct way. The words used give sound effects meaning and paint an image in the listeners mind. My colleagues Annie and Julie (who also wrote about the project) did an impressive job of bringing the commentary to life by connoting the emotion and drama of a live match. By playing off each others characters and often taking opposing points of view so they were able to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. 

Meeting with Prof Steve Fuller was a highlight of the project. He was very enthusiastic about our concept having made stage productions of a similar kind before. He proved a great asset to the piece appearing in our play as our Philosophy Analyst where he brought the events of the match back to the philosophy and history of the characters.

Another big highlight of the project was being shown around Wimbledon by their Deputy Director of Broadcasting (!) that gave the opportunity to take the photographs featured in this post and later to develop my photoshoping skills to get them ready for our class presentation. 

We made a “live” radio commentary of a philosophy tennis tournament, with commentary on Aristotle versus Francis Bacon in the first match, followed by the events of Thomas Kuhn verus Karl Popper in the second. This is complemented by an expert analysis of each match by Professor Steve Fuller, a social epistemologist from Warwick University.

Frozen

A Feast for the Sciences

As part of my 'extra-curricular' activity, I've been working with Imperial Fringe (as previously mentioned) and for the December event I was in charge of arranging a center piece. The event was all about the science behind food so we wanted something edible, attention grabbing and unexpected. 

In the season of gluttony what better than a Christmas dinner made out of cake! I spoke to the amazing Miss Cakehead, who created the deliciously gory Eat Your Heart Out, and she worked with Conjurers Kitchen to create the cakes. It was a brilliant success and was covered in The Huffington Post and Daily Mail Online.