The 2019 Regis Innovation Challenge Finals

By: Kamil Wojciak, Staff Writer

Here at Regis University, students and staff were able to promote their businesses and business ideas, and had the opportunity to receive cash prizes to help their businesses become successful. Hosted by the Innovation Center and the Anderson College of Business, the 2019 Regis Innovation Challenge Finals took place in the Mountain View Room of Claver Hall on April 12th, 7:00 PM to around 9:35 PM. This final competition had nine finalists pitching their business ideas for the prizes of $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000, to help start their business. In the words of Dr. Ken Sagendorf, the director of the Innovation Center, this competition is meant to help “solve our world’s problems, and make it better.”

These nine competitors all presented at the event, in this chronological order:

  1. MyHomeFix: an augmented-reality and educational app with the purpose of helping to do home repairs, using tutorials and step-by-step guides.

  2. Invictus Project: a mental health procedure focused on traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, depression, and more; the Invictus Project also brings a more scientific approach to mental treatment with hormone replacement, ketamine infusion, high oxygen hyperbaric therapy, and more.

  3. Instream Water: a highly convenient and affordable water refill station, helping remove plastic waste by removing the need of plastic water bottles.

  4. Brand$tanding: a card game where you pitch business ideas, also serving the purpose of educating people.

  5. Rock-n-Rides: a transportation service that goes to the Red Rocks Amphitheatre from the Denver area and vice-versa.

  6. The Nest: an empowering spiritual movement by the use of workshops and retreats.

  7. A To Z Logic: a service specializing in enterprise cyber security, intended for mid-size companies to households.

  8. PinQuest Golf: a golf training app meant to improve the short game, while being fun and competitive.

  9. CampCrate: a service that allows people to rent a box of camping equipment, and receive planning details for specific trips/adventures.

For the competition, each team had five minutes to pitch their business idea to the audience and judges. Immediately after pitching their ideas, the judges had five minutes to ask questions on the business idea. Even though the judges contributed to most of the competitors’ scores (80% of the final score), the audience was actually able to vote on the competitors themselves (20% of the final score). For the audience to vote, all they had to do was go onto a specific website, and enter the percent of favorability of each presenter; also, the total percent of favorability had to equal 100%.

With all the voting and scoring provided by the judges and audience, they were able to announce the competitors that will receive the cash prizes. The three competitors announced were MyHomeFix, Invictus, and CampCrate. All three competitors on the stage waited to hear what prize they were going to get. Then, they announced the prizes to each of the competitors. The competitor that received the $1,000 prize was Invictus, the competitor that received the $5,000 prize was MyHomeFix, and last but not least, CampCrate received the $10,000 prize.

While the competitors and some audience members may have seen the event as serious, it was highly educational and entertaining to see the innovative concepts displayed on that stage that night. If you have missed this event, I highly recommend you go to the final event of the 2020 Innovation Challenge on April 17th, 2020!



Dancing at the Silent Disco!

By: Kamil Wojciak, Staff Writer

On April 11th, people were dancing and having great amounts of fun at the silent disco here at Regis. Regarding location and time, this silent disco took place in the Mountain View Room in Claver Hall at 7:00 PM, all the way to roughly 10:00 PM.

As already implied in its name, this disco was silent (other than the people who were singing the lyrics) by having each audience member listen to the music through headphones. These headphones were the key element to this silent disco, as they allowed you to connect to any of the three DJs at the event. To connect to the specific DJ you wanted to, you would move the switch located on the back of the left ear pad; this switch had three options, correlating to the amount of DJs that you could listen to. On the back of the right ear pad, there was a knob that changed the volume of the headset.

Each channel for the DJs had a color associated with it to indicate which DJ is playing on the channel the audience members were listening to. To figure out the channel you were listening to, you just had to look at the your headset’s ear pads. Each headset displayed red, blue, or green, depending on the channel you listened to; the color displayed on your headset correlated to the DJ you were listening to, as the DJ had the same color headset as yours.

As there were three DJs that you could listen to, the audience had different musical preferences to choose from. The red DJ mainly focused on modern pop and hip-hop, using songs like “It’s Tricky” by RUN-D.M.C and “24K Magic” by Bruno Mars. The green DJ had a broad range of EDM and dubstep songs and also some hip-hop songs like “Rockstar” by Post Malone. The blue DJ had music that I would as “chill vibes” like “Africa” by Toto and “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley. Also, while people were jamming to the music provided, there was a machine with a camera and screen that people could use to take pictures. To receive the pictures that were taken, they only had to enter their email address and the photos would be sent to that email.

Overall, the silent disco was a blast of an event, and will be highly cherished by many of the participants. It is of great thanks to RUSGA, for planning the events of Ranger Week, and SoundDown Party, for providing the silent disco service.