What’s New in 2018?
As every new year rolls around, individuals make resolutions usually to undertake a change in one’s life. Luckily, on-campus student-led organizations like IDEA are not exempt from this yearly tradition. At IDEA, our team leaders have been working very hard to set up new goals to make significant changes in our organization for this upcoming year of 2018. Now that the year of “realizing things” is over, it is time to take action and pursue some changes to better our ever-growing organization. On the agenda for 2018 we will launch a remodeled website, execute changes in the coaching process, and continue to support the future successes of our ventures.
New Website
The management team is very excited to bring to you an entirely refreshed website to replace our outdated one. Our website was first created when IDEA was founded — almost 10 years ago — and remodeled in 2015 but now with technology always changing, we needed to too. Our new webpage will be better organized and will provide straight-to-the-point information for a more effective read. Our primary goal with the new website was clarity, and we are hoping to be more concise and clear in our message to everyone, especially towards the different audiences IDEA speaks to. Very special thanks to Drew Pomerleau our Technical Lead, and Camden Phalen our Tech Associate, for helping create the new webpage that we will officially be launching in the next few weeks, so stay tuned!
Ventures & Coach Relationships
The communication and interaction between coaches and ventures is also being re-evaluated. Initially, ventures were assigned a coach to help them through the Set stage process, and office hours were being held every week by any coach with some free time. Quickly, our team noticed that this process wasn’t being utilized as efficiently as we thought it would. Instead, coaches will be split into two categories. Some will continue to be assigned to ventures and will act as mentors, and others will only be holding office hours and will interact with any ventures looking for some extra help. We are hoping that this new system will optimize the coaches’ and ventures precious time.
Venture Accomplishments
Finally, I wanted to share with you a few of our ventures currently in our Set and Go stages that you should be watching in 2018. Some of them include: Mobile Pixels, All in Nutrition LLC, and ReLock.
All In Nutrition wishes to bring innovation to the food industry by providing high quality food products while diverging away from misinformation and poor nutrients. The start-up focuses on providing energy bars that support the entire body, and helps ‘people reach their immediate/long term health goals’.
Mobile Pixels is a start-up that created an external monitor hardware accessory to increase productivity by optimizing screen space for users.
ReLock is a unique security system for your bike that includes push/SMS notifications and a voice alarm to ensure that your bike stays safe in a more effective manner.
These are just a few plans for 2018 and we are looking forward to the execution phase. CEO, Kate Murdock, reflects and provides insightful news for the new year, “IDEA has grown significantly in the last few years and as we start 2018 and I finish out my tenure as CEO, I know that we will see our new programs from this year become part of the IDEA standard, continue to improve our processes, and provide the best experience we can for Northeastern’s Entrepreneurship community.”
