Latest updates: our achievements with many more new challenges to come!

The IoT startup area has improve in many hubs thanks to Incubators, Accelerators, and DIY Makers spaces. Credits: Connected Conference. 

As June has started, we're getting prepared for our next activities, in a time of new challenges for Makers Boot Camp. And it's great to realise all steps we've already taken since our foundation announcement last year at TiEcon 2015.

We have been to events that helped us improving our customised program.

TiEcon 2016, Silicon Valley

Drone IoT session @ TiEcon 2016, Silicon Valley.

May was an extremely productive month: during Golden Week break, our CEO Narimasa Makino was invited to join a closed session event in Sao Francisco Bay, as part of TiEcon 2016 investor's session, where he could catch up with latest updates, from both Japanese and non-Japanese entrepreneurs. He also had the chance to make new connections in the hardware business. Some advices and lessons learnt from this trip are already affecting our business plan - that's the main advantage of a startup, as decisions can be done according to the market needs.

 

Slush Asia 2016, Tokyo.

Credits: Slush Asia.

Slush Asia happened in Tokyo from 13th to 14th of May, and for the second consecutive year, it was an amazing arena to meet global players and local volunteers who are supporting entrepreneurship: the ones who are making innovative things everywhere in the world from Finland, Sweden and Scandinavian countries to Taiwan, Singapore and Japan.

Okie Abe, First Lady of Japan, opened Slush Asia event with her motivational speech: ’’The world has already changed and it will continue to do so. I feel that the people here in Slush are the change makers.’’ Credits: Slush Asia.

Startup Fukuoka had a very interesting boot area between Japanese startups, as there is a public incentive for makers to innovate in IoT related fields, as Skydisc

Slush Asia startup pitch contest final winner was SkyREC (Taiwan), an analytics-sensor tool for retail stores.

Giroptic (France), 360-degree motion camera, was a hardware startup selected by Recruit Strategic Partners award, and MeLeap (Japan) won PR Times award for its game device, a smartphone-based HMD with motion sensors.

Paris, France 2016.

In the end of May, Makers Boot Camp had the chance to meet part of the European hardware ecosystem, invited to speak about Japanese case during an outstanding event in Paris.

Paris has been a hotbed of innovation, with many incubators, + 5,000 startups in the Paris region and around +1,500 new startups created each year. The goal of the city’s administration is ambitious: to make Paris a global hub for the innovation economy. Recently, Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris, has given the keys of the City Hall to more than 1,600 actors of Paris innovation ecosystem (startups, investors, corporations, state decision-makers, foreign companies operating in Paris, etc.) through several events - being @Connected Conference one of them.

Le Centquatre venue (104) and Paris City Hall (Hotel de Ville). Credits: Connected Conference

 

Innorobo, Paris 2016

Innorobo was taking place at the same time, so we were introduced by La French Tech Tokyo to connect with the event in order to check robotics.

Pepper（ペッパー）, the humanoid robot developed by a French startup and acquired by SoftBank, was the official host in the event, providing information to attendees about the program.

Pepper's Partner's Village was an exhibitors area with new developed customer's services solutions to customize the robot's role.

Credits: Pepper's Partners Village (Innorobo)

French partners have developed amazing applications to adapt the famous ソフトバンク（SoftBank）robot to local market: Carrefour and SNCF have already improved their customer services thanks to the Japanese kawaii (cute) assistant.

 

Connected Conference, Paris 2016

Hardware Club, Paris based and one of our partners, had a boot area @ConnectedConf and hosted a cocktail Nuba, to welcome all attendees.

Jack Bondson shows relayr products to Benjamin (Hax).

Startups joined an acceleration program from La French Tech, Paris

Connected Conference closing ceremony event at Hotel de Ville (Paris City Hall)

 

Connected Conference, organised by French based Rude Baguette was a unique and well succeed to bring together many key players in the hardware industry, from startups to accelerators, experts and also journalists from all over the world.

Before the event, Sabrina Sasaki, Marketing for Makers Boot Camp, had the chance to give an introduction about the case of Japanese manufacturers, who are supporting a hardware accelerator startup in order to provide qualified mentorship to makers.

Makers Boot Camp joined the panel -"Future of Building Things: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", together with Formlab's CEO Michael Sorkin. This session mediator was  Chris O'Brien, Venture Beat's journalist.

Kate Drane (Indiegogo )who spoke about the way crowdfunding has been changing the way hardware is produced and become a viable solution for empowering makers around the world, met Hardware Club newer member Evan Andrew (ex-Indiegogo) and Sabrina Sasaki (Makers Boot Camp).

Recently,  we were been chosen as a special partner for +Style ( SoftBank), a new platform that connects companies producing IoT (Internet of Things) with consumers interested in these new products. A fusion of planning, crowdfunding and shopping, giving startups more control over operations, from project planning to sales, and at the same time ensuring they can respond to consumer needs, expanding purchasing options by introducing products not previously available.

July will be an amazing experience, as we'll host the 1st FabFoundry NYC Monozukuri Boot Camp startup group.

We're in touch with our HWTrek (Taiwan), who will visit us again this month,  and also with La French, in order to keep improving our services in Kyoto.

More updates (and achievements) to come soon- Cheers!