Cooper Hewitt
ELIA is excited to announce that The ELIA Frames Alphabet has been selected for inclusion in Cooper Hewitt’s upcoming Exhibition of the Senses in April 2018. Located right here in Manhattan, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is the only museum in the nation devoted exclusively to historic and contemporary design. To share our innovative tactile alphabet with the world at Cooper Hewitt is quite an honor, and we will provide details about the exhibit as the date approaches. We hope to see you there.
Soho House
Since we last wrote, ELIA’s CEO Andrew Chepaitis was invited to participate in a panel discussion regarding Design and Disability at the Soho House in Manhattan. An interesting conversation, Andrew shared ELIA’s approach to solving complex problems related to disability. Also a challenging talk, Andrew described and defended ELIA’s process of qualitative and quantitative interviews and data analysis.
Tech Crunch
ELIA also exhibited at Techcrunch Disrupt NYC, where we demonstrated our TouchPrinter and ELIA Frames alphabet to throngs of attendees. There was much enthusiasm for our products and our mission, and we continued to forge relationships with potential customers and collaborators. A pleasant surprise was the variety of corporate service partners in attendance - we struck up relationships with SalesForce.com (for customer relationship management software), Topcoder (for game and app development), NetCapital (for fundraising), and Unum Provident (for a possible long-term disability insurance partnership where ELIA could help them better serve their claimants). We’ll be following up on those conversations and would be glad to share additional information with you. If you have suggestions regarding corporate partnerships, please let us know.
Futureworks
ELIA was recently chosen for inclusion in Futureworks, a product-hardware incubator in NYC - we were one of just a dozen companies chosen from over 100 applicant organizations. The program provides access to state-of-the-art machinery and hardware-building expertise throughout NYC. We expect to leverage its resources to build better products faster and for less cost.