Another year of the Australian eChallenge has come to a wrap. This year also marks the 18th birthday of the program (insert legal drinking age joke). As a gold sponsor along with Microsoft, Enabled sent 10 team members to the awards dinner held at Adelaide Oval last week.

A little bit of background information

The Australian eChallenge program - run by the University of Adelaide - is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality. It gives registered teams or individuals access to South Australian business mentors and academics through series of workshops or courses.

Participants learn the key concepts and frameworks around ideation, business model, prototyping right through to pitching and presentation skills.

They also go through multiple rounds of pitching to get market feedback and validation. In the end, participants present their product or service to a judging panel, who would pick a winner for each category.

The eChallenge program recently expanded to France to help French students launch their ventures. They’re also given access to SA business mentors.

What is Enabled’s involvement in the Australian eChallenge?

We run a course for participants who enter the Tech eChallenge category - which is about “technological innovation with the emphasis on product design and the development of a prototype that has market relevance.”

Our CEO Grant Hull covers many concepts also used in the client work that we do, such as:

• Jobs to be done in product development
• Minimum Viable Product (MVP) from Lean Startup methodology
• App maps and UX/UI in modern app design

The Awards Dinner

The Enabled team arrived at the Adelaide Oval on a fine evening. There are two things worth talking about in the picture below:

If you look very closely, you might just be able to see:

• “Will you marry me Natasha?” on the black score board.
• That blue ute surely has found a better parking spot than us

Normally most of us at Enabled rock up in the office in our normal “software dev” attire (whatever that is 🤓), but on that Thursday night: Suit and tie - and dress of course!

We even took an Oscar-inspired selfie.

The excitement of seeing our logo pop up on the large screen.

Rebecca Morse from channel 10 was the MC for the night, opening with a line about no spoilers wanted for channel 10’s Bachelorette TV show.

I glanced back at our table and spotted some familiar faces…

Seeing double?

University of Adelaide’s Professor Noel Lindsay showed off some impressive stats for the eChallenge program over the years.

25 years in the making

Stats about the eChallenge's economic impact on SA

Again, I couldn’t hide the excitement seeing Enabled’s banner on the big screen.

These students were finalists talking about their innovation

Obligatory food pics…

Drumroll please…Our CEO Grant Hull went on stage to announce the winner of the tech eChallenge category.

But before that, he made some jokes about the tech category being a kid that wanted to go to France like the other siblings.

And the winner is..

QTonic team took out the Tech eChallenge first prize

That’s a wrap. May the entrepreneurial spirit fly high in SA ✈️ See you next year!