Plan on arriving a day early to take advantage of our pre-conference seminars on Tuesday, April 17! This year's conference will feature two seminars, "The Next Wave - Entrepreneurs in Fashion Tech" and "Electronic Textile Interface Swatch Book Workshop." Please note that an additional fee is required to attend either seminar.
.Workshop # 1- The Next Wave - Entrepreneurs in Fashion Tech
8:30 am - 12:00 pm
Workshop Instructor:
Raymond Thek, Member of the Firm, Lowenstein Sandler
Cost: $499
The target audience for the seminar consists of (i) those considering or already launching or engaged in start up businesses based on intellectual property in the fashion space, (ii) those interested in investing in such businesses and (iii) those companies who are or will be strategic partners to such businesses.
The discussion will be organized around five broad topics:
- Anatomy of the industry. What is fashiontech and why has it suddenly become popular? Who are the entrepreneurs and how important is "hard" science? Who are the investors and how important is geography?
- Sources of startup ideas and technology. How common are first time entrepreneur versus large company spin outs or university R&D? The large role of ecommerce.
- Sources of Capital. Where do these businesses find initial funding? What is the attitude of the institutional venture community toward the space? How are active are strategic investors?
- Transactional Vocabulary. A review of basic terms and standard practices in seed financing and venture investment transactions. An additional short discussion of key strategic deal terms.
- Common pitfalls for Founders. We will discuss tax traps, employee equity and other similar danger zones for young companies and their investors.
If there is sufficient presence in the audience we can collect questions and real experiences in advance and cover these topics directly in the discussion, using the present founders as real time case studies.
.Workshop # 2- Electronic Textile Interface Swatch Book Workshop
9:00 am - 5:00 pm
Cost: $750
The goal of this workshop is to generate discourse and collect feedback about how textile interfaces, a sub domain of the broader "e-textile" domain, can be integrated into pedagogical practice across variable fields, institutions, and communities. The workshop will include concept ideation and prototyping. Fabrication skills are encouraged and technicians and experts will be on hand to support your activities.
Schedule:
- Introduction to swatch book Recap of physics of soft circuits
- Design session Sketching & Ideation
- Discussion about opportunities
- Meeting with coders
- Making
- Wrap Up Discussion
Workshop participants will be asked to complete a short demographics survey. We will also conduct a brief group discussion that will be video-recorded after having completed the workshop. During the course of this workshop you may be asked to use skills that you feel comfortable using depending on your background. If you feel comfortable sewing you make be asked to sew. If you feel comfortable screen-printing you might be asked to screen print, etc. Along with the opening and closing surveys you complete on the day of the workshop you will be emailed a follow up survey within 4 months of the workshop.
During this workshop you will be asked to work in a group of 4-6 and, using a tool known as the Electronic Textile Interface Swatch Book that was developed at Georgia Tech, to inspire and help design a soft circuit prototype using electronic textiles. More details will be revealed about the Swatch Book at the workshop. At the workshop you will be introduced to the swatch book, how it works, and it's practical use.
Workshop Instructors:
Clint Zeagler, Instructor/Researcher, School of Industrial Design, Georgia Tech
Scott G. Pobiner, DDes, Assistant Professor - School of Design Strategies, Parsons The New School for Design
Thad Starner, Associate Professor, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Tech
Scott Gilliland, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Tech
Halley Profita, Computer Science Doctoral Candidate, University of Colorado - Boulder
Stephen Audym, School of Industrial Design MID Candidate, Georgia Tech