Bonnie C. • It is 7:45 pm not am....

Zoe R. • OK!

Here's a market:

- Several hundred thousand professionals in the English speaking world
- Who are in the habit of sharing, and highly motivated to do so
- Whose work is easy to categorise for search
- Yet are still under-served on the internet
- And don't care about their own IP
- But who don't have good technical skills
...or any money.

Here's the market's bosses:

- People concerned with institutional IP and resource curatorship
- Who are under pressure to use technology
- But are underskilled, and have been bitten before
...and have money.

They are: English literature teachers and their Heads of Department.

Here's the idea:

Build an app that lets English teachers upload and share their lesson plans/exam questions/assignments/all-purpose teaching resources. Each teaching resource is tagged with the title of the book being taught, making the collection easy to search.

It's free for individual teachers. All content has an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC license, so everything can be remixed.

Institutions can, if they wish, pay for institutional accounts. These can a) restrict sharing or license type if desired and b) collect/curate work done by all the teachers at the school long-term (technically, their work is the school's IP).

A huge number of industry-specific trade publications and blogs are available for marketing. They're cheap and highly targeted.

If viable, the model can be expanded to other school subject areas.

The most likely exit is trade sale to an educational technology company like Blackboard. They are notoriously voracious for smaller companies.

What do people think?

Darren S. • I would like to design & build a simple social platform that connect people who want to study the same online lecture series. There are a ton of awesome educational lectures and videos on iTunesU, Kahn Academy & Academic Earth etc. but no easy way to find someone else to learn with who lives nearby. I'm a UX designer... looking for a front end & back end dev! Very dooable project in a couple of days... :)

@darrenux
drrn.net

Bonnie C. • Zoe and Darren these are both excellent ideas focused on education needs.

Zoe who do you feel that need on your team?

Lindsay A. • Yes, great idea! #elearning

Zoe R. • Darren I like your idea - have you looked around the Open University? They're doing excellent work in exactly this field.

Bonnie - I need at least a dev, a designer, and more than likely a marketer. I can do the wireframing & functional specs, and some heavy-lifting on the marketing side (set up blog etc), but not the artisan bits!

We could probably make a super-basic version of this pretty fast - the only 100% mandatory functions are upload, tag, search tags, and download.

(Darren? Are you interested?)

James B. • I'd be up for both of these ideas. I think there are already lesson plan services out there - but as far as I can see they are all very web 1.0. Perhaps with an obviously better web app you could get teachers to pay individually as well? For example, the curating of plans and resources I find really interesting; I'd been thinking about something like this for a high profile educational consultant I know (in English also). Perhaps you could be able to buy sets of resources written by well known educators or even schools to add to your own account? The site would take a cut.

Darren; do you see this as a social enterprisey type thing that you might try and fund with grants etc, or a thing that you grow and then get income from advertising? Or something else? .

Justin D. • A draft of my 1min pitch.

On the internet, I unintentionally produce money. A lot simply goes to Google; it's frustrating to have no control over it. I'd feel good if part of this micro-wealth supported my favourite charity, instead.

Imagine a duplicate of Facebook or YouTube that openly shared half of its profit to causes close to the heart of its users. This is my first project. I want to launch alternative websites pledging to sponsor its users' causes. By sacrificing profit-per-user, I hope for significant traffic.

Another idea is to create a platform to encourage this targeted philanthropic attitude on the web. Users would voice their charitable wishes, and measure the impact they make; businesses would advertise their philanthropy and share their profit accordingly.

Such micro-altruism will add a compelling dimension to internet surfing, and hence be a powerful way for businesses to build traffic.

Bonnie C. • My Pitch is Send Help!
I have an idea anyone can run with it.

Purpose behind the app for the you the user to be able to set an alarm that if you do not turn it off in the time you alloted then it will notify the person/authority you designate that you may need help and details they will need to send help.

Scenario is a woman going out for a jog possibly in her home town or while on travel. She chooses to send a text to a friend to check on her if she does not return in time. She gets back in time she turns it off. If she gets lost or hurt she has peace of mind that someone is notified. Chandra Levey went for a run in Washington DC and no one knew for days. Then they did not know that she had gone for a run. Her body was not found for months.

Scenario is a elderly man lives alone. His daughter receives a text that morning that he has not turned it off. She calls his neighbor, who on checking on him finds that he has fallen.

Scenario a pair of cavers plan a trip. (Jo Riches will be very happy about this she is our call out) They set the notifier to contact the local cave rescue saying when and what route they had planned to take.

The concept is a cloud based alarm system to be set either through a desktop or mobile app. Notifiers are user defined. Slim interface for mobile and low bandwidth situations.

Profit potential is in offering a free simple version with ad enhanced.
More features version is sold at a subscription price.

Marketed at first to elderly, single women, travelers and sport enthusiast such as hikers, boaters, and well of course cavers.

Geo tagging can be incorporated also.

Ideas, feed back, and need whole damn team to make it happen

Daniel V. • I had a similar idea in my head as Zoe. However I wanted to use it to solve a problem in Cambodia. In Cambodia education is vital children to break a cycle of poverty. However there is no enforceable copyright laws so publishers will not publish materials in Khmer (the native language) as there is no money in it. This means that to teacher have to prepare their own materials for subjects or teach a language like English first so the students can understand foreign teaching materials. I would really like to provide a platform to allow teachers to share Khmer materials with each other and their students.

Nilay S. • U might want to take a look at talentina.com once it is launched. One of our classmates at Kellogg is working on it...It is a platform for teachers to post their study materials...

Nilay S. • The major issue facing educational institutions in the developing countries is the lack of teachers. India has a median age of 25. With a population of 1 billion and more the current system of education will be stresed to its limit. Thus the need for technology advancements to step in. And the key will be to provide means to teachers to educate a larger population of students in a more efficient way. Not just by rote and exam at the end of the year but rather use creative means of education.
Thus a platform that can help teachers to get creative study material will be highly in demand. Thus a platform that can incentivize teachers to publish good quality study materials(and have a freemium model to monetize it) will be the way to go.
This is in continuation of the platform idea already floated by Zoe Rose.
Key components of the platform:

1> Content (Free and paid versions...?)
2> Q&A section.
3> Blog. (free)
4> Assessment
5> Exam questions/study questions (Paid)

Nilay S. • A cash counter application for ipad and other touch devices. This will have the following benefits
1> replace all need for traditional hardware driven devices... which are lacking standards... so every company comes up with their own stuff.

2> If users logon using their email/facebook/ or other related ids then they are entitled to a discount offer. This information will allow the company who is being paid for their services. to get information of users and thus enable better targeted marketing of their products. Thus a win-win for both parties.

3> allows reduction of manpower at the counters. This is a huge plus as the labour costs are so high...

Allow a freemium versions for several features... for big organizations...to monetize this app.

Matt D. • Great idea Bonnie,
I would call it ICE though, (In Case of Emergency) and the device could hold all the phone numbers and contact details for the emergency services. Geo positioning would be good as my mum uses the popular line "Tell me when you get there" with this the app would allow her to check or automatically let her know.

It would need to be accessed by all sorts of devices though, the primary market being the elderly it needs the ability to phone in to turn on and off and have a simple reminder before alerting.

Just some thoughts. If anyone needs a designer for their team I'm attending and looking to join a great team.

Bonnie C. • Nilay and James excellent feedback for fleshing out the logistics, features and target market. Also the input on sales channels is important too.

Matt ICE is the name of a train... But I like your thinking. Name for the apps have to be on the to do list too.

Darren S. • Zoe,
I haven't seen what Open University have done in this area. Having just spent 5 minutes looking around their site, I was unable to find any inkling of it. That in itself means it's not good enough! :) I'll have another look over the weekend.

James,
Yes, it will be a social enterprise.. but because the barrier for entry is so low, building up a regular base of users shouldn't be too difficult. Once you have the users, opportunities to monetize will present themselves.

There is a lot of money in social enterprise at the moment, especially with the governments big society bank soon available! I've recently won an UnLtd award for another project I'm working on, growington.com :)

This is a great talk about self education in India... this probably inspired me the most. http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html

I'm looking forward to meeting everyone this weekend!

Charmaine L. • Bonnie / Matt - The "In Case of Emergency" or "Send Help" idea potentially it can be explored for the following channels too:

1) For healthcare, this could be good to track patients that require regularly treatments e.g. Dialysis, Chemotherapy to remind them to check in for treatment, this can subsequently be linked into the each hospitals' / tertiary health care facilities appointment booking system

2) For children with mental / physical disabilities / elderly with Alzheimer's / Dementia, that are expected to check in to a specific location, if they are missing / did not turn off the alarm - i.e. use as a signal of response, matching with defined list of iphone IDs at location to build in an "auto-check in" process

3) For corporates /banks, where they operate time sensitive operations e.g. trading in banking. In the event of emergency (e.g. flu epidemic, earthquake), the alarm system kicks off to make sure they still have a remote working team at remote sites and with a broadcasting system

So a combination of Geo Tag / Scheduling / Alarm / Notification can be used.

Bonnie C. • Charmaine wow great feedback...

My husband suggested last night
Teenage checkins where daughter says she's at girlfriends house but phone is coming up somewhere else! He called it dad's little helper chaperon.

Charmaine L. • Hello All! My pitch is called "Travel with Options"

We travel cross continents and inter-continent very often but do we know all the options to get from point A to point B?

Scenario: London -> Paris
There are 5 options to get to London to Paris, which includes
1) Flight
2) Train (e.g. Eurostar)
3) Drive by Car
4) Ferry / Cruise
5) Bus / Coach

Current Pain Points:
1) In nearly all travel websites such as e.g. Opodo, Kayak, Lastminute.com, the websites are heavily flight biased. Searches are frequently based on airports rather than cities. But going on flights may not necessarily be quicker, cheaper, or easiest, there is always the route to the airport before you fly that people tends to forget in their traveling time.

2) To search for other traveling options, either you Google for travel options, read up on traveling sites / books, spend time at travel agencies, go to individual train sites, couch websites to do the booking. It is time consuming! 1 stop shop required!

3) For people that loves to travel and don't have a time constraint. they will actually love to know the options that are available as it is refreshing to know of other options.

4) There are new train connections that will be launched cross Europe e.g. 2013 London -> Germany

5) Family / Group travelers, may not prefer flights but they can see all the options available for comparisons.

As travelers, we should be given information and options to travel to make the decision that fit our travel plans and make the dollar "$" fit the purpose!

Target Market / Customers:
1) Students (Budget travelers, time constraint may not be key, don't mind non-direct routes)
2) Traveling for Leisure (Time constraint may not be key, don't mind non-direct routes)
3) Pensioners (Budget travelers, time constraint may not be key, don't mind non-direct routes)
4) Family / Group travelers

The objectives + benefits for the integrated platform are:
1) Availability of information and travel options of the different travel modes that are on offer
2) Customers have choice given their budget, price tickets on offer, and time constraints
3) Opening options to people who do not like to fly / phobics of flying options to travel on other modes
4) Unbiased on travel mode / decision as a travel portal
5) Integrated platform, so eliminates traveller to log in various systems, websites. Currently to find out all the traveling options the search required is at least 5 different sites to get some of the information
6) Open up travel market - so coach operators, train, car rental operators can all pitch in 1 website

Income Stream:
1) Bookings
2) Advertising e.g. from travel partners, hotels

Looking forward to feedback, meeting and working with you this weekend!

Annkur P A. • 60 secs to pitch an Idea, iLike!

The idea I am looking to get started with this weekend is a Time Machine.

You might have seen Techmeme or services like surphace/outbrain, these bring together related content together. But while I am reading a post about a lawsuit or a product launch that happened a month back, is there a way I can easily chart out what happened before and after this particular event?

A simple timeline that organizes news content for publishers and readers is what I am pitching.

So if the Pulse or Flipboard app on iPad sells for its interface / design... We add some real value in a situation where there is content overload (for both publishers and readers).

I would need web / mobile developers to get started with this, rest being a online media person myself, I am confident to execute.

Thanks
@annkur