Wednesday 29 Nov was a busy day for the Happy team - meetings about showcasing our work for SWRDA, an interesting discussion with Norris from UKTI and a run in with the sharp minded Mr Parkhouse of Team Rubber. A key objective of this mediasandbox program is to produce a successful case study in the hope that the scheme can continue for other budding entrepeneurs and as the lucky pioneers of mediasandbox 1 it rests on our shoulders to become that case study. It is for this reason that we are now moving into the more business orientated phase of the project - it is all very well twiddling with our iPhones and refining the interaction flow of what is going to be a neat little GPS app, but at the end of the day, if no-one knows about, if it isn't attractve to or effective for advertisers or if it does nothing other than caters to the creative whims of a bunch of tech-geeks then we will have failed.

As such, Wednesday was a wake up call for all of us, starting with some encouraging and, at the time challenging, advice from Norris of UKTI. His experience in the early IT industry and as an international salesman later in his career shed some real light on the new phase we're entering. Full details of our next meetings will be saved until after our next one as we only really scratched the surface - pitching new technology, new applications and new business to clients, investors, advertisers and users is a massive undertaking. Watch this space.

Andy Parkhouse, Director of the successful Team Rubber businesses, kindly offered to dispense some sage words of advice. We invited him to the studio because of his experience in what is essentially modern marketing. His work with international brands and the worldwide distribution of viral products has many parallels with what we'd like to achieve with our new iPhone product; making it appeaing to advertisers is a necessary evil that should be embraced. We discussed what advertisers will expect, what benefits we should hope to provide and what we can realisitically deliver for the current funding we have recieved. All of which was rather sobering, as you'd imagine.

We are now commencing discussions with other business minded Bristol folk as the product itself continues development. Currently we're asking ourselves - what should it look like? It's a prototype, so why spend money making it look sexy? But on the other hand it needs to look sexy to attract interest...Comments appreciated!

Posted by Ben Templeton