​ You can read about our CIF visit in my earlier post.

Shaun and I spent some time with the Enterprising Barnsley Team, attending their series of Launchpad events. Based at the Barnsley Digital Media Centre the Launchpad service provides a dedicated team who will support anyone in Barnsley who is looking to start a business, no matter what stage their idea or business is at. For us of course, DigiBook is an early stage prototype that we hope to sell and so we were keen to get a solid understanding of how the commercial aspects would work. They're events provide that.

Since then, having learned A LOT we've agree to revise the design of the solution a little further. It will still maintain the visibility of where busy and free desks are but it will now go a step further and identify who is sitting where which we hope will be able to update Skype and possibly SharePoint automatically.

It'll work by replacing the button on the device with a scanner for our staff ID badges. Simply touch your badge on the device, and it will register that desk to you until you scan your badge again. To incentivise us all to do that, it will also control the power sockets on desks too. When you take a desk, the power will come on (i.e. screens, docks, etc.). When you release a desk the power will go off. This offers some good savings opportunities on our electricity bill if nothing else, bearing in mind that every desks costs money every day whether someone is using it or not currently.

It's all an idea at this stage, so I'll post again as we get a working prototype of this going. Would love to know what you think in the meantime.