The Battles are on!

Only two days to go and the Museum Battle and Media Battle are being kicked off, this time in Enschede. An odd 150 – 160 students from Utrecht’s and Enschede’s Universities of Applied Sciences will pressure cook a concept for their real-time assignors. The briefings will be given in Enschede and our Utrecht students will then work three days in Utrecht to finally pitch in Enschede again on Friday. As I am partially back in the classroom myself as a university student, I wont be able to join ‘my’ guys and girls in Enschede. But I will most certainly help them out during the three days in the creative boot camp at Hal16 in Utrecht.
Although in Dutch, I recommend the Media Battle’s website. The battle has been going on twice a year for a while now and I must say, the results are pretty spectacular. Early September I participated in the previous battle with five groups of students attending the minor Mobile Business Design. The Media Battle was a starter for a half year of intensive mobile business designing of what started as a creative idea during the battle. And I must say, the assignments were really tough.
There was Hoog Caterijne, asking a solution to guide people through the busiest shopping street/complex in Holland during a long-term refurbishment. There was a group of entrepreneurs looking for ways of attracting new commercial settlers in their shopping street, not far fro m the historical center of Utrecht. There was the Harbor Museum of Rotterdam – one of the world’s largest harbors – asking for a solution to guide visitors through their open air and free of charge museum. And there was the City of Utrecht’s Archive asking for a mobile application to help people wandering through Utrecht, taking them back three hundred years ago when the Treaty of Utrecht was negotiated and finally signed; a great diversity of stunningly complex questions that need answers from our students.
SO, as of Monday, my 8 teams in the course eBusiness & Marketing and many other students will crack their brains over new assignments that need to be pressure-cooked. I really am enjoying my livelihood.

Tagged with: saxxion, hu, utrecht, museum battle, media battle,

Museumbattle: more than concepting in a pressure cooker

Concepting, prototyping and field-test as interactive research method. The Museumbattle is a five day pressure-cooking concepting event for students with different backgrounds (economic studies, creative studies, communication studies and technical studies). In total we will organize four Museumbattles during our two-year Museum Compass project (www.museumkompas.nl). 

Tagged with: prototyping, museumkompas, museum battle,

The media Battle has come to an end

In one week time 140 students from The Hogechool Utrecht and Saxion Enschede battled against each other for the coveted title of Media Battle champion 2011. This year was a little different than previous times. In addition to the Media battle there was a Museum Battle. 
First the students showed their concepts at the presentation market. All the participating groups used allot of posters and graphic expressions to show that they have what it takes to take the title. After this event every principal picked one group that they felt had the most potential to win. The remaining groups had 5 minutes each to present their concepts to everyone.
During these presentations I was amazed by the quality of the ideas and the thought and effort the students put into every concept.
Most groups where able to use the feedback they received Wednesday to improve their concepts further and designed with their targeted audience in mind.
In the end Utrecht was the winner of both the museum battle and the media battle. The score is now 3-2. The question is how will Enschede respond to this in February?
Only time will tell….

Tagged with: media battle, museum battle, sven,