Last week on Oct. 18th, five finalists competed at the IBM SmartCamp Kickstart event in Derry, Ireland. MobileReport Ltd won the IBM SmartCamp Kickstart Derry award with its innovative GoReport mobile report generation cloud-based solution for tablets. The company is now looking to compete at the IBM SmartCamp EMEA finals in Berlin next month.
Winners of the IBM SmartCamp Award were Conor Moran and Jacqui Burns from GoReport. They are pictured here receiving the prize from Rory Caren (IBM). Also included is Edward Friel (Head of Business Liaison & Academic Development, University of Ulster).
IBM SmartCamp Kickstart Derry was held in the beautiful and historic Great Hall in the University of Ulster. Despite the wet and windy weather 14 mentors from the UK, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and 60 guests came to support the event. The University of Ulster’s Magee campus joined a number of exclusive locations around the world including Amsterdam, Singapore, Sydney and Tel Aviv to host the IBM SmartCamp Kickstart event. A range of companies from across Ireland attended the SmartCamp at Magee, with projects ranging from an online dental diagnosis platform to a solution that empowers the home cook to reverse the negative global trend in food-related health.
Mobile Report Limited, a Belfast-based company was the eventual winner on the day. Developed in Northern Ireland, Mobile Report’s innovative GoReport solution uses tablet technology and cloud software to deliver its data capture and report generation solution to many professionals spanning different industries and disciplines. It replaces the antiquated system of using paper notebooks on site and generates reports automatically in the cloud, helping users save time and become more competitive in their specific industry sector.
Each of the 5 companies: Buildingeye, JarStar, FireLogBook, Siansplan.com and Mobile Report presented their solutions in a 5 minute drill to the assembled mentors to start the event. Having completed this part of the agenda the mentors provided over 2 hours of advice, guidance, direction, and quizzed them on every aspect of the business and development plans. “We were delighted to have on board an impressive group of high profile mentors with years of experience in a variety of areas to share with a new generation of young and ambitious entrepreneurs,” said Noel Crawford, IBM Innovation Centre and ISV/Developer Relations Manager.
Having considered all the comments and inputs from the mentors, the companies then presented again in the afternoon session live on stage in front of the mentors and an invited audience. Each company was joined by 3 of the mentors on stage, and having presented their solution the mentors added a little more pressure by asking for further clarifications and challenging some of the points made by the companies.
Conor Moran, Founder and CEO of MobileReport Ltd, said: “This is a great endorsement for our mobile product, but also for the business we have designed around it. I’d like to thank the mentors and IBM for their invaluable support in the SmartCamp process. We are delighted that the judges shared our belief that GoReport can become a success story not only in Ireland, but also worldwide.” The mentors had a real challenge and a tough decision to make. The standard of presentations and the quality of business solutions raised the bar again on last year, and the chairman of the judging panel Trevor Graham of IBM said: “It was a closely fought contest. 5 great ideas and all in different business sectors. In the end GoReport stood out for us, they ticked a lot of boxes for the investor and technology mentors, and have a great solution.”
The event was also enthusiastically supported by our launch partners with guest speakers Mark McGerty from Derry City Council and Mark Nagurski of Digital Derry. Northern Ireland Science Park, Momentum, Invest NI and the University of Ulster were key to making this event a real success.
