Development progress

We have been making product development progress on the solar lamp project; Innogetic Technology has done some good engineeing work refining the details of the product design. So we now have a completed product spec and a conceptual design model. The team is on schedule to finish the initial design by the end of July; after that we will work on sourcing and building the prototype.

End user testing to find the answer

In our conference call this week with our development partner, Innogetic, they pointed out that the lighting power spec might be too high power. I asked them to run some user scenario testing to find out an optimal lighting level. Once we find the optimal lighting level from user scenario testing (basically we qualitatively test to find what level of light is needed to read and study), then we can properly size the battery and the solar panel to match. 
Questions like this should always consider the end-user because that is what is most important in any product development.

Product Specification

I wrote up the Product Specification for the Solar Lamp; this spec has detailed functional description, requirments, and parameters that need to be met during the development and implementation. The spec not only has technical design information but also project management (schedule, budget, resources) and testing requirements. I am having the spec reviewed by some key people before sending to Innogetic so a Statement of Work can be generated.

China trip report

I have just returned from China. The first stop was Zhuhai, Guangdong province where I met with Jun Hua the parent company of Bojay and several other subsidiaries. The majority owner of these companies was very heartfelt in Evergreen’s mission and motivated to participate in the solar lamp project.  He assigned the project to a new subsidiary company, Innogetic Technologies and also assigned a Director and a project manager, whom will lead the team. We are in the process of getting a Non-Disclosure in place; and I am working on an updated development and testing specification. We are in the Conceptual project management phase, which we'll need to have a Statement of Work among other items to do a phase exit and get into the Development phase. I believe Innogetic and Evergreen will make great mutual partners for this project

Next I was in Huaian, Jiangsu province, to make a presentation at the Evergreen Library conference, this was a new experience for me to do a bilingual powerpoint presentation with translation help from Cheng (an engineer who formerly worked for me). With 80 educators from the Evergreen beneficiary schools in attendance, the conference commenced; and I was the first day 11am speaker with Jeffrey translating. I think it turned out well, we received lots of positive comments. Most important is that we were able to meet my objectives in rallying support for the solar lamp project and we have 2-4 schools that will participate in the first run.

In the spirit of my relationship with the Jun Hua companies, I showed the educators their newly developed clean chalk system to replace traditional chalk. The demo was very well received by, and I am connecting the Jun Hua owner with 2 school Principals to try the system.
 

Huai'an Teachers' Conference presentation

I'm preparing for a presentation at the Evergreen Education Foundation Teachers' Conference in Huai'an, Jiangsu Province later this month. My pitch will be to teachers and schools that will potentially participate in the Solar Lamp Project. The information being presented is from a school's prospective, showing them how the program will be adminstered, executed, and accessed. I will prepare a sample lesson plan to give an example of what their students would be learning.  This will be a biligual presentation, I'll be counting on some of my former colleagues (working in China) to help translate the Chinese part of my powerpoint slides.

Finding a win-win partner in China

A key strategy for the Solar Lamp project is to find a development and manufacturing partner in China, who would finish the design per my specification and do the manufacturing. My former job had me working with a Chinese company called Bojay located in Zhuhai, Guangdong, who built our test equipment hardware - lot's of physically large metal boxes filled with electronics that talked via precision mechanical interfaces. The bottom line is to be able to do that, a company has to have a wide range of capability. Over the last 5 years or so, I had them do millions of dollars worth of equipment for my last employer; and have built a good relationship with this hard working and honest company. Bojay is actually a congomerate of several different businesses.
Tonight a couple of their top managers were in the US so I had dinner with them. I presented to them some slides on the Evergreen Education Foundation's mission and history. A few weeks ago, Jeffrey (another Evergreen volunteer) had brought the Request-For-Proposal to them; and I was able to discuss it further with them. As it turns out, Bojay is starting a small development business and believes the solar lamp project would be good to get their new engineers some experience. After our discussion, The managers said they would propose this project to their new company.
This is exactly the type of win-win that I was hoping to achieve - in this case Evergreen will get the solar lamp project manufactured within a charity organization's low budget; and in return our Chinese partner will have a real work project to train their new engineers without the high pressure of the for-profit world.

Writing a one-pager for the teacher's (customer's) introduction

The end use of any project should always be the first concern. The Evergreen Education Foundation (EEF) Program Director asked for a summary (sometimes called a one-pager) to show the prospective school teachers. Then the teachers can decide whether they want to participate or not. This is basic marketing and sales. I have already written an engineering specification which described the project for engineering and manufacturing; but writing for the end-user is different in that they do not care some much about how it is designed or manufactured. The school teachers are more interested what the lesson objectives are and how they will administer the program. Being an engineer, I was a bit challenged at first to write from this prospective; I got some good feedback and advice from the EEF Program Director in China. Teamwork is always better than one person.