Successful introduction of the TMC Vortex Cannon
In October 2014, an enthusiastic group of Employeneurs came up with the idea of developing a so-called “Vortex Cannon” for entertainment purposes. The concept consists of a device that fires doughnut-shaped air vortices, similar to smoke rings only larger and stronger. For almost one year the Employeneurs spend every Thursday evening working on the development of the Vortex Cannon at the TMC Entrepreneurial Lab. And with great success, given the recent introduction of the cannon at the colourful Holi Fusion Festival in Eindhoven!
‘During the development of the Vortex Cannon we came in contact with the organisation of the Holi Fusion Festival,’ Ted van Hoof, Account Manager TMC Nanotechnology and initiator of the Vortex Cannon project states. ‘We believed that the Holi Fusion Festival in Eindhoven would be the perfect venue to present the Vortex Cannon. Given the positive response of the festival public we can definitely conclude that we had a successful first public introduction of the Vortex Cannon. It was really great to see the interaction between the visual effects created by the Vortex Cannon and the festival guests. We have shown that our concept adds an extra dimension to entertainment activities like festivals. This has enhanced our motivation to turn the Vortex Cannon into a product ready to be launched on the market.’
Generating leads
The coming period the Employeneurs will be focussing on the next generation Vortex Cannon by improving the concept, making it faster, smaller and into a sexier design. At the same time, the group is working on a business plan and generating leads to introduce the Vortex Cannon at indoor and outdoor festivals. ‘It’s our goal to make it to the Tomorrowland Festival with our product,’ Ted tells. ‘That is a challenging goal to work towards. In the mean time we are trying to expand our publicity regionally and to come in contact with other festival organisations like Holi Fusion. Therefore, we would like to ask everyone to share our promotion video with their personal and professional network. If you know someone who is active in the entertainment industry please contact us; the contact details you will find below. Also, we would like to invite enthusiastic Employeneurs to join our fun project. There are still a lot of technical challenges to solve for which we can use motivated engineers with different backgrounds and expertise. We believe the multidisciplinary aspect of our project is one of the main reasons our product is already so successful. Besides that, it is great to be part of the invention of a new product, fully made by TMC talents!’