As mentioned last year, Dan was fortunate enough to have joined Rachael Tapp at Smart Sail Systems Ltd, whilst still working hard at Light Black Design.
In the end, it turned out that the majority of his working day was taken up by the Smart Sail technology, with many long evenings spent doing other more "traditional" work with people like Antony Dodworth at Bright Lite Structures, Tim Tavinor, Simon Fry and Andy Beadsworth at Petticrows with their World Championship winning Dragon, Humphrey and Jaffa at CeCence, Oscar Mead at TeamO and Neil Cheston at Kabina.
Dan's principal role at Smart Sail, now known as We-Sense, was to find potential partners and investors whilst working with Rachael to make sure that the final product works as he feels it should do for the sailors. Dan was able to draw on his long list of friends, in key positions, within the sailing industry, to help guide ever section of both the software and hardware.
Key to the success of our business at We-Sense was signing a deal with Spinlock UK, who will take over the entire production, sales, and marketing of the Smart Sail technology we developed, which is now called Sail Sense to fit in with the Spinlock Sense sector of their business. This was a fantastic opportunity for all parties and gives our technology the best chance of success in the Marine Sectors.
Another huge advantage of our partnership with Spinlock was the chance to be nominated in the DAME awards, at METS in Amsterdam. Not only did the Sail Sense product and app win its highly competitive sector (Marine Electronics) but it also came a close second overall. Something that we are all extremely proud of. A huge thank you to all involved!
So now, as Dan & Rachael work with Spinlock to make sure the last few items on the job list are completed, they are talking to all the other industries that have approached We-Sense, to see how many can use the same baseline technology to monitor such things as shock and vibration in seats (both marine and industrial applications such as RIB & forklift seats etc).
Although all that has taken the majority of the year, as mentioned above, Dan was also extremely fortunate to work with a number of other people on a huge range of projects, some of which are shown below.
