June was perhaps the busiest month in the Logmore history. In addition to our usual operations, we had multiple major events to participate in, and major updates to our service. Here are some stories by Niko Polvinen and Jarmo Siira of Logmore.

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Transport Logistic 2019

June 4 - 7, Munich (Germany)

Niko and Jarmo can both attest to the fact that Transport Logistic was enormous. The world's leading logistics trade fair is certainly the largest, with a fair area that probably no single visitor could hope to go through in the couple of days that the event lasts. The booths and stands are something rarely seen, practically entire houses are built inside the halls, as Niko explains.

The central attraction for us was clearly the start.hub Logistic start-up contest. Organized in an excellent position, the stream of visitors was constant and the audience of the pitches and public conversations was always as packed as possible. If the contest wasn't already exciting enough, the fact that it was held for the very first time increased the interest even more.

In regards of the competition, Niko comments on the camaraderie between the contestants: everyone worked with each other and cheered each other on. As a lot of the briefings were held in German, the non-German contestants were often in need of directions, which they fortunately got from the other companies. Our new friends at TankContainerFinder were particularly helpful.

In addition to them, Niko and Jarmo especially remember all the other finalists and SensorTransport, our American colleagues, and our next-door stand neighbour Synfioo, who attended the trade fair both as a start-up contestant and an exhibitor.

The contest itself was something of a side dish for Jarmo and Niko on the first day of the trade fair, and as Niko put it, "we didn't take it nearly seriously enough". That showed, the pitch was far from what it would be on the following days, and we only barely made it to the second round. This served as a wake-up call. The guys decided to place much more focus and feeling on the second day's pitch, and surely enough, we succeeded much better and reached the finals in a strong position.

The finals came with a surprise interview with Jarmo. Despite the surprise, he handled the interview well, going through the general feelings and experiences of the trade fair in general and especially as a start.hub Logistic contestant. (He's been promised a video of the interview, which I'll add here as soon as we get it!)

The contest victory soon followed, with a large audience attending the ceremony and an amazing amount of people congratulating us for the win.

Overall, Niko and Jarmo left Transport Logistic with the best feeling about the trade fair. While we were highly successful even with these preparations, especially Jarmo wonders whether we should have participated with a larger trade fair team - after all, the event was so huge that two people could not map out the whole place, even if they weren't attending a stand or a booth at all.

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United Fresh 2019

June 10 - 12, Chicago (USA)

Niko travelled from Germany to the US with barely a detour to attend the United Fresh 2019 trade fair right after Transport Logistic. A specialist trade fair with emphasis on fresh fruit, berries and vegetables, we attended the event as contest finalists again, this time in the category of Food Safety Innovation. The contest was ultimately won by Nature's Frequencies with their food freshness card, which had earned them the victory in the same category in 2017 and 2018 as well.

While the event was smaller than Transport Logistic and overall very well organized, some surprise was bound to be included. This time we had not received a word of a display case we could prepare for highlighting our products for the public. Fortunately the fabled start-up agility allowed us to adjust accordingly, and we managed to produce the necessary showcase material in a flash during the at-spot preparations. While it was a close call, the end result was excellent.

Despite the trade fair's theme, the visitors proved to be representatives of vastly different industries and companies. As usual, Niko ended up having conversations with especially people working in the pharmaceutical industry, which was hardly expected considering the theme.

Upon returning to Finland, Niko praised Chicago as a fine city. The accommodations had been good and at an excellent location near the largest trade fair center in the United States, as he heard someone say. The portions of food were exactly what we'd heard they are in the US, huge and delicious.

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ProPak Asia

June 12 - 15, Bangkok (Thailand)

ProPak Asia was thematically something quite different from the other trade fairs our team attended in June. When Niko departed towards the US, Jarmo went the opposite direction to Bangkok soon afterwards. We participated in the event as a member of the Active and Intelligent Packaging Industry Association AIPIA, and Jarmo held a speech as asked by the association.

As it stands, ProPak Asia was probably the least successful trip for us. While the exhibitors of the other events were potential customers and cooperation partners for us in general, a distinct conflict of interest existed between us and a large portion of the ProPak Asia exhibitors. Where the exhibitors themselves weren't necessarily a good match for us, their own customers would have been excellent.

Fortunately we didn't need to leave the event empty-handed, as Jarmo managed to make interesting new contacts and secured an invitation to a similar event in the Netherlands. And of course, now we know better how to prepare for such events in the future!

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DHL IoT Day

June 27, Troisdorf (Germany)

The super month June culminated in the DHL IoT Day, where we had been specifically invited like all of the other attendees. In a strong contrast to the other events of the month, DHL IoT was attended by a mere 300 or so people. Where the quantity of contacts was much smaller, the quality rose through the roof - the contacts made were all extremely interesting people from interesting industries and companies. Naturally, the day was filled with fascinating conversations, many of which will likely develop into future cooperation.

Niko described the possibly most exciting event of the day as "business speed dating", where the event app directed groups of four people to meet each other for 10 or 15 minutes at a time before shuffling the groups again. This lead to a very easy way to make contacts with people we otherwise might not have ever met.

The Logmore trade fair booth was something really unexpected. Perhaps as a homage to the applicability of our service to the needs of air freight, our booth was built into an actual air freight container. Cool and amazing, and really considerate of the event organizer! The only thing that could be a downside in it was the unconventional location of the container, which left us a bit hidden from many attendees, but on the other hand we were pretty much the first thing people would see if they entered through a specific door.

As with all the other fairs, the keynote speakers of the IoT Day were very interesting. A special mention goes to the "600 employee start-up" Uptake. The speech was about AI, its development and applications. An obviously current and fascinating topic!

We're especially honored for the invitation to the event, and are certainly looking forward to the next time!

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Logmore Features of June

To finish this post, June was a fine month for service development as well. If you haven't already, take a look at these Logmore Feature posts to learn what is going on in the company's day-to-day service.

Logmore Feature: Report Exports

An often overlooked feature, accessible reports are vital for many use cases. Whether you need to be able to present the data to superiors or public authorities, having to look for the needed excel sheets is bothersome. Fortunately modern technology allows us to provide all the data in both downloadable and 100% online formats.

Logmore Feature: Dynamic QR Codes

QR codes are making a major comeback, and our service is completely based on a novel application of the dynamic QR code. Since we're talking about QR codes a lot these days, it's a good idea to open the concept of dynamic QR codes in the form of a Logmore Feature post.

Logmore Feature: the Web & Model Three Update

The most recent major update to the Logmore Web is tied to the recent release of the model Three data logger tags. The unparallelled versatility of the model Three QR tags obviously requires the cloud service to accommodate it, but also makes so much more possible.