The global Spark Tribe meets in 1 geopoint 📍
How are you and your teams doing?
Ours are super excited - the whole Tribe is meeting! Can you guess where we’re going? 🌎 More about this below!
Here’s what we’ve put together for your weekly Spark reads:
Turning footsteps into electricity: Pavegen featured on Behind the Product 🥾⚡️🔋
Mobile-first websites with Web Stories 🎥
Tesla is releasing the Optimus humanoid soon 🤖
The key to recycling? AI-powered smart bins 🗑
For the first time: The global Spark Tribe meets in 1 geopoint 📍
💙 NEWS FROM OUR MATESTurning footsteps into electricity: Pavegen featured on Behind the Product 🥾⚡️🔋
Could you try generating energy from the sun and wind using streetlights? Pavegen’s Founder & CEO Laurence Kemball-Cook tried it, but there isn’t enough sun or wind in cities. So if not through the sun or wind, he asked himself what about people? People could kick or punch bus stops to generate electricity… but he had an even better idea:
People could simply just step on it. Laurence built Pavegen, a tech company that develops floor tiles to convert people’s footsteps into renewable electricity!
You can see why Morgan had to have Laurence on the podcast Behind the Product! They went through how Pavegen came from an idea to an international clean energy solution. (It included [not-so-legally] installing the tiles in front of a renowned bank in London to get his first client!)
🤸 FUN PRODUCT WE LOVEMobile-first websites with Web Stories 🎥
Majority of website visits you’ll get are from phones. And as the “Stories” format become more and more popular, companies are starting to revamp their websites in the “Stories” format (including us - we’re working on it!) - or, you could also just integrate it into your current website.
So if you’d like to join the early bandwagon, here’s how it works:
Decide on your content. Add in whatever you’d think your visitors need to know about your company/products/services - in text, images, videos (even polls and quizzes)
Create using countless tools. Here’s a whole pack of them. You can add links onto each story as well.
Publish and share. Get them up on your website + get unique links (just like blog links, but /stories)
Get found on Google surfaces. Including Search, Google Discover, and Google Images. These web stories are indexed!
Who it’s for: Any startup or business
Price: There’s a bunch of different tools available, check out which one works for you!
💭 TECH FOOD FOR THOUGHTTesla is releasing the Optimus humanoid soon 🤖
In Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting, Elon once again gave a teaser on the Optimus. It’s a humanoid they’ve been working on, and while it’s a prototype, it will make a show on Tesla’s AI Day on September 30 - in 2 weeks!
Elon said it wanted the Optimus to do all the boring, repetitive tasks we don’t really like to do, and could start production as early as next year! "It will be able to do basically anything humans don’t want to do. It’s going to bring an age of abundance. It may be hard to imagine it, but as you see Optimus develop, and we will make sure it’s safe, no Terminator stuff, it will transform the world to a degree even greater than the car."
🌱 TECH FOR SUSTAINABILITYThe key to recycling? AI-powered smart bins 🗑
Only 9% of plastics get recycled. Why? Mostly because of them not being sorted properly. Even with recycling bins around, most still don’t choose to use them (+correctly). So is there a way to automate the way plastics and other garbage are sorted in common bins?
A team of researchers from the Global Big Data Technologies Centre (GBDTC) have developed a “smart bin” that does exactly that! The bin uses a combo of AI, robotics and machine vision to automate the sorting. It’s still a prototype for now, but investors are already thinking of commercialization. Our mates at Clearbot are doing this in waters!
💥 WHAT’S ON @ SPARKMATEFor the first time: The global Spark Tribe meets in 1 geopoint 📍
With the teams growing in Hong Kong, Paris, Bucharest and Sydney, we thought it was about time to have everyone meet! We’ll be off in _________ for the next week - can you guess where we’ll be? 😉 Since we launched in 2020, we’ve had off-site trips to:
✅ Lisboa
✅ Arcachon
✅ Malta
✅ (a bunch of mini trips with the team)
✅ ❓
Let us know your guesses! We’ll post a lot on our Instagram, so follow us if you want to stay up to date (And find out where we’ve gone!).
If you guess it right, you could name our next #UnexpectedBuilds 😉
Exciting things are happening every day ⚡️ Follow us on social media to stay tuned!