The product we are developing is meant to provide a reliable, rapidly-deployable network for use by local authorities and humanitarian organizations seeking to help the victims of natural disaster. We will be using a UAV-deployed wifi-network that first responders can access by smartphone, tablet, and like. We can’t prevent hurricanes, tornadoes, or earthquakes, but we can have emergency communications available when these tragedies do occur.
On October 26, the Augmented Comms team presented to everyone involved in the research effort–including students and professors from JMU, GMU, and ODU. The team failed to properly present their material and the subsequent critique reflected that. The first issue then, was the fact that we were not clearly outlining the problem we were hoping to fix. This goes back to honing an essential skill: storytelling. In order to captivate an audience with our research, there absolutely needs to be clear story–something to contextualize what we’ve created in a way that allows people to see its value. Along the same lines, our presentation lacked any images that would help us to create a story or explain or methodology. Most importantly, our experts challenged the team to make progress with regards to technological deliverables. While the team did have both delivery system and payload prototypes, their functionality was limited and they were essentially only visual aids. To boot, the merits of our prototypes were muddled in the inefficiencies of our presentation. Advisers who we had not consulted before the presentation were confused and unable to pinpoint what our project was seeking to accomplish as well as how we had been achieving our goals.
The most clear issue the team needs to address is laying a solid foundation of ideas (and committing to those ideas) so that we may continue to make progress. Commitment to ideas will lead us to a tangible product sooner. Going forward, the team is also developing a clearer approach to presentation. Storytelling was a huge challenge for us, mainly because we were less than prepared. Augmented Comms is teeming with great storytellers and communicators, we just need to show it. This can be achieved by emphasizing the problem we plan to address. Contextualize the issue in events that people are aware and passionate about. To boot, we plan to make better use of images and diagrams to tell the story for us. Some of what we discuss is unfamiliar to the public, the ability to construct clear images will lessen the need to explain technical concepts. Again, the team has great designers–it’s just a matter of using them. As for technical progress, the team is meeting to work more than ever. At this point, Augmented Comms is six weeks out from public presentation with no working tech and zero field tests. This will be the focus for the coming weeks.
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