Drizzly on the outside but bright, sunny and yellow on the inside: Young Innovators Awards 2015 took off this morning at Raft Café in Tauranga. An audience drew a great cross section from Tauranga including business, students, teachers, and council.

Priority One's Greg Simmonds introduced the programme with a reminder on why the 6-year old programme exists:
"To develop a culture of innovation in the Western Bay of Plenty region through inspiring and encouraging young people to become true creative innovators".

Tim reflected on the achievements from 2014 seeing the entries grow, quality step-up, an outstanding Innovation Forum  and a great YiA Internship with the winning Swim Safe team who spent  two weeks with Locus and Woods developing their brilliant smartphone app that detects and alerts people of rips.

See a video of The Making of Ripstr

In the spirit of innovation and inspired by the story of Richard William Pearse, the Kiwi who reportedly flew in a man-made craft in 1903 months before the historic Wright Brothers first flight, the audience were set the creative challenge of building and flying a paper dart from the materials on the tables - paper, Blue-Tack, paper clips and drinking straws. I'm still not sure if the straws were a red-herring or the key to success. The room descended in 10 minutes of chaos as the teams strategised, prototyped and tested their thinking. No enduring injuries to report. A couple of controversial (but also creative entries) saw Blue-Tack balls wrapped in paper thrown across the room. Some flew, some didn't, and some pirouetted. The People's Choice went to a expertly folded craft that hit the back row - no paper-clips, Blue-Tack or straws I believe.

Reuben (Woods) handed over to Dr Evil speaking live from his lair to introduce the YiA 2015 campaign - Join the Legends. Expect to see some heavy hitters including Zuckerberg, Einstein and Dr Nefario supporting YiA in 2015.

See Dr Evil's introduction here.

Details for 2015 YiA include:

• Same A3 template format entry for individuals and groups
• 15-30 second video with all entries - A new requirement for 2015 will see the entries submit a short video to succinctly describe the. The team is working on the technology behind this to make as smooth as possible.
• Young Professionals combine with Rocket to grow this category
• More exciting speakers at the Innovation Forum 
• Submission Date - 3rd July
• Awards Evening - 6th August
• Innovation Forum - 7th August
• See the Launch Presentation below for all key info

The team welcomed new sponsors on board:

• Cucumber - who will be developing the new YiA website due in May
• Beca - new sponsors for Junior category

Longside long-time sponsors:

• Priorty One - Primary programme sponsor
• Locus Research - Primary programme sponsor
• Woods Creative - Primary Programme Sponsor
• Plus Group - Young Professionals Category Sponsor
• Bayfair - People's Choice Sponsor
• Page Macrae Engineering - Overall Winner Category Sponsor

Big thanks to all the sponsors and we look forward to seeing YiA fly in 2015!

Get your innovation thinking caps on for those stellar entries.