Do you know what a purple cow is?
It’s a marketing concept invented by the clever Seth Godin to represent a remarkable product.
Remarkable in the sense that it’s so attractive in its market sector to become a commercial success. We think we have a purple cow and now that we registered the trademark we can reveal what it’s all about: i-muse™ is not only a PDA guide for museums and art exhibitions, an innovative tool for the visitor going much further than traditional audioguides, but most of all is the entrepreneurial project by three young guys from Como who believed to be able to create something remarkable starting from scratch!
The logo is self-explaining, born from a flash of genius by Luca generated by a Guido’s hint, the two friends to whom at the beginning of 2006 I proposed working on what was then an idea without a true form.
I got the idea while I was using an audioguide during my visit to the Joan Mirò’s exhibition in 2004 in Como. Back then I was developing software for PDAs, I did well know their potentialities, and then I asked myself: why don’t make a guide running on PDAs?
In 2005 thanks to the voucher for technology innovation issued by Regione Lombardia I committed a doability study about the guide to the Centro Volta, which is actually located in Villa Olmo where Mirò’s exhibition took place. From that point it took me some time to realize how should I had to go on: I had to find the right people, people with the skills I was missing.
I talked to Guido, a marketing expert, an old friend I didn’t see for a long time, and to Luca, a great graphics artist with an experience in the videogames industry.
Thanks to them since the beginning of 2006 things went on at the right pace. We explored different paths, analyzed all the components of the project and finalized the application design. Slow but well since we were doing something else for a living. After the award at the Startcup 2006 there was the acceleration: the cash prize (it’s better starting with a little but a minimum is absolutely necessary ) and most of all the office inside the incubator at the Politecnico.
We also reached the finals of the ObiettivoICT contest, whose benefits will come the next year.
2007 is the year of the pig as the Chinese friends of Ciren told me.
Does that mean it will bring abundance even for us, in every sense?
We hope so, in the meantime I assembled in the category i-muse™ all the posts related to the project, a category I’ll keep alive and well while the work on the project continues.