No Balls, No Innovation - Thomas Joos (@thomasjoos)

This session was held at the top floor of the Felix Meritis and the free beer was sponsored by Influxis. Even though the session started rather early, some people were already enjoying a beer...those dutchies.

Thomas Joos works for Little Miss Robot, a digital creative studio in the heart of Ghent in Belgium. One of their most recent endeavours was for the VRT, the Belgian public broadcasting network. The task was to revive radio, which is no easy task since radio hasn't really been radio for the last 50 years or so. So, they decided to make it a very visual experience where you are able to choose what YOU want to listen to. Joos told us about the prototype they created (which included a big picture of Rihanna) with a different kind of pullable interface, and it looked incredible! You swipe up and down and get a more visual or more textual interface. All stuff they had no idea about and had never done before - and this was just on the drawing board; they hadn't developed an actual product yet.

To hook the board of directors, they had to go a little overboard. The only problem they had was finding time and securing a budget. “But what if this actually works?”, Joos said. They took a leap of faith, backed by a lot of technical knowhow and went for it. Without ‘grandes cojones’, there is no innovation. Now they have a new client, a new project and have already received a lot of media exposure. End result; an native iOS app, a responsive mobile HTML5 site and app for Smart TV’s.

The lesson to take away from this session? No guts, no glory. Or in their case: “No balls, no innovation”.

---

Written by: Sidney de Koning

This post was written by guest blogger, Sidney de Koning from Mannetje de Koning, who attended and covered four sessions at FITC Amsterdam 2013.