PitchHub project takes to the stars

What could Star Wars mastermind George Lucas do next time he needs ideas on how to crush the Rebel Alliance? Thanks to ECS Honours student Michael Winton, he could use PitchHub, an online collaboration platform for innovators.

PitchHub is the result of a year of hard work for Michael on behalf of his client, Callaghan Innovation, a government agency supporting high tech businesses in New Zealand. The aim of Michael's Honours project was to create an online, cloud-based platform for users to share creative ideas and connect them to other people and to resources. The end result was christened 'PitchHub'.

“Gregor Neumayr, Senior Research Engineer at Callaghan Innovation, had the idea for PitchHub a while ago,” says Michael. “This year's ENGR489 project was the ideal opportunity to turn that idea into reality”.

In his end-of-year presentation at the Dean's Sessions event recently, Michael used Star Wars to explain how the platform works in practice.

In his fictional example, Michael used Star Wars characters to contribute ideas to filmmaker George Lucas, who needed help to decide how to crush the uprising Rebel Alliance.

Princess Leia saw that George Lucas had posted a 'pitch card ' to PitchHub detailing his idea to create a Death Star, a galactic super-weapon to help the Imperial Forces destroy rebels and planets.

She made a suggestion which changed the direction of the pitch, saying, “No, the Death Star should become an arbiter for the Rebel Alliance; helping people, helping planets...”

While Lucas rejected her suggestion (a friction that Michael says often happens in negotiations), he accepted the advice of Trade Federation character Nute Gunray instead, who suggested he use a Droid Army.

He updated his 'pitch card' to include this final solution and there we have it – through PitchHub, the Star Wars characters helped Lucas continue the plot that we all know and love.

There are several key selling points which differentiate Michael's PitchHub from similar products.

“PitchHub enables an easy and collegial sharing of ideas between users,” says Michael. “They can also choose who sees their information, which is important to protect their intellectual property, while the high tech security prevents malicious access to the platform.”

So how did Michael apply what he learnt during his courses at Victoria?

“What I learnt at university was absolutely essential. Knowing how to break down what I needed to do, and then say: “This is the next step… this problem may occur later...” That's what I learnt at university”.

Michael has tested PitchHub to ensure it can cope with the 400,000 to 600,000 potential users (the size of New Zealand's innovation community) and it is now live at pitchhub.net. Callaghan Innovation has pledged financial backing to develop the project from prototype to commercial product.

In the meantime, Michael is off to Sweden's Uppsala University to study Masters courses in Cryptography and Distributed Systems. He plans to continue his studies at Victoria upon his return.

“Victoria has really sparked something in me, especially this year, when I was able to interact with my professors as colleagues.

“I believe that this Honours project, while it demanded blood, sweat and tears, will give me a great head start on a successful career in Engineering”.