Waste sorting through gamification, real time water quality checks and emotion based crowd management. These are just three of the seven prototypes being tested this week during Eurosonic, the biggest music showcase festival in Europe.
This is the third year Innofest has hosted pilots during the festival, helping entrepreneurs to test their ideas and prototypes. Innofest is active at eight different festivals in the northern Netherlands. The initiative gives startups, students and companies ample opportunity to extensively test their ideas, which is very necessary, because lack of testing is the main reason why 75% of all innovations fail. If you’ve been to the Glastonbury festival and saw those cardboard tents, that’s one of the Innofest innovations.
Waste sorting and clean water
The quality of drinking water has to meet the highest demands of course, but the old school methodology is pretty limited; with an old fashioned vial and petri dish lab testing. Aquacolor Sensors will be plugged into the city water system directly and uses sensors and color to test and monitor the water quality in real time around the city.
E-waste Arcades is going to combine the power of gamification and comedy to make waste sorting fun. With garbage containers with added ‘glory holes’ and sassy voice commentary whenever you drop something in there.
Alumni and an international guest
A number of Innofest startup alumni will return to test their latest prototypes during Eurosonic. Litti, for example, with their portable ashtrays, but also the Semilla Sanitation Hub, which turned urine into drinking water and mint tea.
Startup Tckl will help connect the industry professionals with a new networking app that is fairly similar to Tinder. Airqon is going to test an electric generator to power a few of the music stages, which are normally powered by diesel generators.
This year’s Eurosonic focus countries are Slovakia and the Czech Republic and that’s why Innofest will also welcome the startup Amena from Bratislava. Amena is going to test info terminals that will also be able to read facial expressions and ‘talk’ to visitors.