For the third year in a row, Locus Research has partnered with Fieldays Innovations to host the Lab, a hub created to support and mentor Innovations Awards participants. We stepped it up a notch this year, with a centralised, larger format, redesigned space and a larger team. Teams from Crowe Horwath, Tompkins Wake, Origin IP, Vodafone, and Callaghan Innovation came on board to expand the available knowledge base to include IP, commercialisation, finance, business, government  funding, and taxation, in addition to the Locus team's innovation and product development skills. The larger team proved very useful and held multiple workshops with participants across the four days of Fieldays.

The Lab space was also used to host a Capital Event and the Innovation Awards prize giving. The Locus Research Innovation Award was given to Kevin Bain for his Pest Trap Reset Mechanism. His creation modifies existing pest traps to allow them to capture more rodents without a manual reset required, and also won him the Tru-Test Prototype Grassroots Award. Check out the article covering Kevin's awesome innovation on Stuff.co.nz. 

Locus Research's Daniel Faris presented the award to Kevin Bain.

The Enterprise Angels hosted the Capital Event on Thursday evening, networking over drinks and nibbles. All 60 Innovations entrants privately showed their products to over 180 influencers, investors, and agribusinesses in an effort to connect with their targeted market.

Amongst all this activity, we thought we'd have a bit of fun and venture out beyond the Innovation Centre. The team set a goal to complete the A to Z of Fieldays through photos. Check it out on our Tumblog -- we only got to the letter 'U', but it's a pretty good effort for a busy week!

Overall, it was another fantastic year at Fieldays. There was a record attendance of over 130,000 people through the gates over the four days, and we were delighted to see Ubco, who debuted at Fieldays back in 2014, showing on their very own stand and selling a good number of bikes. If you missed it, check out their photos on Flickr.