D3 hosts Demo Night to showcase inventions, app and business ideas

Lizzy Levine
Fri, 12 Apr 2019 01:38:35 +0000
Campus, News, apps, coding, creations, d3, demo night, design develop and deploy, inventions, maker, ohio state, ohio state campus, ohio state university, ohio union, osu, reflection room, software, websites

Entrepreneurial student organization D3 will host Demo Night Saturday to showcase the work of students who created a new app, website, invention or business idea. Credit: Courtesy of D3

Design, Develop and Deploy — known as D3 — will host Demo Night on Saturday to showcase the work of students who have created a new app, website, physical invention or business idea during the spring semester.

The event is intended to gain feedback from “potential users” to glean insight on how to improve their products to help launch it in the real world.

“What we do is essentially building businesses by finding a problem, and then executing a solution,” Tsubasa Konishi, vice president of marketing for D3, said. “With an organization like D3, there is opportunity for immediate and long-term growth starting at our home, OSU, which will expand into the world for the better.”

Established in 2016, D3 is a student organization designed for innovative individuals who excel in building apps, websites and tangible inventions. D3 allows students to jumpstart their own businesses, making it different from other entrepreneurial groups on campus, according to Konishi.

Members have built many diverse products, ranging from grocery receipt scanners that help eliminate expired food to virtual-reality-based advertisements. Student teams showcase their final products on Demo Night, which other students, professors and professionals from outside Ohio State attend.

The success of projects along with the help of professionals who attend Demo Night have landed students summer internships with high-profile companies, including Honda. Konishi was the project lead of a successful project that ultimately partnered with One Line Coffee, a coffee bar in the Short North.

“At Demo Night at the end of the semester after all of our hard work, having a validation source from such a prestigious company was a shining moment for me,” Konishi said.

Students must apply to join D3, and once the group approve applicants, it separates students into small groups to design an idea and eventually brings their idea to life.

“With OSU having some of the country’s brightest students, we understand that many students have an idea in the back of their mind that they have the ability to bring to real life if they put the effort into it,” Konishi said.

Students of all majors are welcome to apply to join D3. The diversity members bring to the organization have contributed to its success and the success of the final projects.

“[D3] is the only organization at Ohio State that provides opportunity and value no matter what your skill set may be,” D3 president Michael Radey, said. “If you can identify a problem in the world, D3 will have a group of hardworking people motivated to help you solve it and make an actual impact in society.”

Unlike learning skills in a classroom setting, D3 offers students the opportunity to create tangible products and build a company out of it. Students are given the opportunity to expand their entrepreneurial expertise before their college careers end.

“Over the years, [D3 has] helped me meet a diverse group of people and hear ideas that I would never have heard in a classroom,” Radey said. “[D3 has] challenged me to not be afraid of failure and have confidence in my own work.”

Demo Night will be held from 6:15 to 9 p.m. on April 13 in the Ohio Union’s Reflection Room. D3 encourages anyone interested to attend as they will also provide dinner and prizes for attendees.