FOCUS IS THE KEYWORD

This week’s blog is a highlight of two really excellent workshops and some great mentor feedback.  Plus,  for the first time, the whole KnowNow team (that is all 3 of us) spent the day in Canary Wharf, more on that experience later.   Level 24 was busier too due to the second cohort starting, the buzzing vibe is getting louder!
Focus

Focus

Focus, Focus, Focus.   One of the highlights of the week was Stefano Tresca from iSeed.  His workshop on ‘Go to Market Strategies was a really well presented set of stories that were memorable and gave us a clear set of new actions.   In some ways the approach Stefano outlined was a valediction of KnowNow, in that we were doing this  anyhow.  This was more by accident than design though.  Stefano has  now given our go to market strategy a structure, a purpose and a target.   A focus.
In terms of what KnowNow is doing next with regard our go to market strategy… well you will have to wait and see.   But, what I can promise is that it will be planned and measured.    My thanks to Stefano for a superb workshop.

Streets Ahead

Streets Consulting

Streets Consulting

Week 5  uniquely had a second workshop  scheduled.  Julia Street & friends from Streets Consulting led us through a practice pitching session.  I learnt loads.  Not just from the practice & feedback I got directly from Julia and the team but also from watching fellow Cognicters also pitching.  What was really great to see was the huge improvements across the board.   Lesson learnt:  Tell a story,  Rehearse the story, Keep the story Focused.

Recap

Just a short recap here.   The benefits of being part of Cognicity are constantly being re-inforced by each other.   The Lean sessions were all about being agile and responsive but focused.  The MVP was about being agile and focused.   This week was all about focus on the message.   Cognicity is not just bringing the above all together but giving us a target to aim at (Canary Wharf) and a demo date (April 16th).   Now that is what I call a focus!

Mentor Update

KnowNow had two excellent external mentor sessions where Focus was also an attention.   This from two very different mentors that bring different expertise and ingredients into the mix.   The focus for Nicole was on the commercial model for the place.  We have a golden opportunity at Cognicity to ask the customer (Canary Wharf Group) for help in benchmarking the commercial benefits that kn-i will bring a place.  They will help measure the value of kn-i too, from a landlord/estate owner through to their tenant (local business) as well as the kn-i user (local resident/worker/visitor).  We do not want to loose this unique opportunity.
Bill had a slightly different focus point.  He was more along the lines of guys we need to start grabbing the data and building that knowledge base.  Get on with it.  The serendipity is extraordinary however.   No sooner had this task been added to the Trello board, when David took a call from a contact made last week in Brussels who is going to help us with this data collation.   Focus delivered!

Team KnowNow at Cognicity

One of the fun aspects of the week, apart from being videoed for the pitching practice, was
CeBit

CeBit

having all of us at Canary Wharf.   Connor is going to work closely with the SoFWiReD team on creating the material for our Augmented Reality offering.  This is very timely as  Dave is going to be at CeBiT in Hannover in 2 weeks showing this capability off as KnowNow are sharing the spotlight with SoFWiReD courtesy of UKTI.

MVP update

Axial logo

Axial Systems, Thank you!

What is next?   In the background we have been refining the use case and data requirements and feeding this into the design.  This design phase is almost done with our next step of creating that detailed plan for the demo.   We should also have arriving soon courtesy of Axial Systems a wifi access point which we aim to set up on L24.    It will show off the benefits of the free wifi but it will also give us a discreet but important enabler (the NETWORK) to show off as well as an app.  My thanks to Peter at Axial for sorting this for us.

The next few weeks will see us increase the team as we bring on board the developers.   We will also start to deploy updates to our IBM BlueMix environment running in the cloud.   Finally, KnowNow is also excited about the 2nd cohort starting this week too.   Due to kn-i’s great interoperability and enablement capability, KnowNow has already started a conversation with one in particular we hope to really collaborate with – watch this space.   Plus, on a personal note great to see another South based company SEAB (with their Muckbuster), joining us on Level  24.  I wish the 2nd cohort the best of luck @Cognicity.
Finally, the Cognicity Challenge site has been updated with profiles on each participant.   Check out Knownow.
Thanks for reading, Chris.