Dear CHIC community,
During the second milestone, we discussed and debated a lot about the idea of a portable turbine and decided to expand the range of our investigation while still remaining in the theme of water. As a another approach of the turbine, which was overall quite liked, we decided to contact some hydroelectric companies to ask them if they would be interested in making fixed stations to enable people to charge their electronics on their hike while increasing public exposure. The early answers were full of concerns for regulations and other administrative hassles. However, many expressed great enthusiasm toward the idea. We also conducted interviews to camping sites to ask them about their willingness to have a turbine in a river that could create an completely new mood/atmosphere by adding light and interaction at night with the power generated from the turbine. This turned out to be interesting for the camping sites but we soon realized that the reach of such a product would be very narrow. So, our last trial was to go for safety in water. We contacted the offices in charge of sports in Fribourg, Lausanne, Genève and Jura and asked them if they would be interested in a device that could help them better watch over the young and unsure swimmers. In parallel, we contacted the water parks Aquaparc and Alpamare to try also a more commercial approach while conducting interviews with parents in a effort to reach all the sectors of the market. The interest was on all sides very positive. We even received our first real partnership with the Swimming club of Genève. Tomorrow we will attend the annual meeting of all swiss french pool associations and clubs. We are planning to meet a contact from Jura and seek further partnerships with other pools and cantons there! All and all, it looks very promising and we hope that we can finally get our big heads on an idea and push it to Hong Kong!
Peace and love from the FLUID team!