Rupert Baker and Alex Ross entered the University’s New Enterprise Competition with their business plan for Teamup, a free web application that facilitates sports by allowing consumers to easily join, create and share “micro-events” in their local community.  These events include frequent informal gatherings for sports such as basketball, football, cycling, swimming, tennis, as well as other activities such as yoga, pilates and climbing.  Teamup also allows providers of commercial services to manage and market their resources more effectively.

The application’s core algorithm routes relevant sporting events, classes and venues to consumers based on their previous events, location, searches and their local social graph (who their friends are).  Teamup’s easy to use interface allows users to search and filter information based on activity type, location and time as well as providing a more intelligent way to create new events.  It allows consumers to make the most of their recreational time and allows providers of sports services to be more profitable.

Joint runner-up Lee Arromba, an undergraduate in the Department of Computer Science, was awarded £7,500 plus £3,000 worth of Intellectual Property advice from law firm Withers & Rogers.  His business – Accelormatix – is software that allows a musician or band to create, manipulate and loop music, live, via simple movements or a combination of movements using just five accelerometer sensors connected to a small micro-controller board sewn into the musician’s garments.  This could provide an affordable, transportable, light weight way to create music.  Think of the way a rapper uses his hands to express himself - the Accelormatix technology could allow a simple movement, such as a wave of a hand to generate a drum beat in time with the rap.

University of Bristol New Enterprise Competition Finalists 2010 from George Mills on Vimeo.

Also winning £7,500 plus six months managed office space at the Bristol SETsquared Business Acceleration Centre was Sundio, a social enterprise aimed at utilising innovative and sustainable solar refrigeration technology to improve the efficiency and profitability of farming in rural India.  The brain child of University of Bristol undergraduate James Cornford from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the Sundio integrated cooling system will reduce waste and offer significant financial advantages to those in the agriculture industry, as well as offering employment to construction workers and administrators.

This year’s competition entries were judged by a panel of industry experts from sponsoring organisations including Bristol City Council, Business Link, Deloitte, EADS, IP Group, Motorola, Osborne Clarke, Santander, SETsquared Business Acceleration Centre (Bristol), Withers & Rogers and Wyvern Seed Fund.