Lets welcome the Aquanetix team

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We sat down with Diogo Thomaz, one of the co- founders of Aquanetix and he told us about the UK based company which he created a few years back together with Stella Adamidou.

Aquanetix has built an application for aquaculture businesses which is based on cloud technologies. Everybody in aquaculture, from fish farmers to farm employees, can easily install it on their smart phone, tablet or computer and have an intuitive tool to collect their daily data on site, in real time. The data gathered, are analyzed with specialized algorithms, and are transformed into useful information which can help businesses minimize loses, particularly on feed. It allows, for example, to evaluate biomass in the production units, compare actual growth and feeding with models and continuously evaluate performance of each batch of fish or shrimp.

The Aquanetix team was created on early 2012. The original idea was to create a simple application that would empower the user to immediately understand how well fish feeds are used. Two years later, in the summer of 2014 they came for the first time to Stone Soup and met with Klaas Speller and Giannis Drosidis.  Klaas helped them in the system architecture while Giannis undertook the mobile application.

On January 2015 the app was released and they currently have clients all around the world from Africa to Europe and from America to New Zealand that grow more than 20 species in all type of farm operations.

Find more info about the company and download their app on their website. If you wanna talk to them in person, drop by Stone Soup where they currently reside.

Meet the Aquanetix team:

Diogo Thomaz  is an academic researcher. He worked worked in Selonda, one of the biggest fish producer in Greece  for several  years at the R&D department and as a specialist in hatcheries until the moment that he decided to cooperate with Stella to make together their own company for optimizing production costs.

Stella Adamidou holds a PhD from the Institute of Aquaculture at the University of Stirling in Scotland. At first, she worked as a manager in an trial farm for a joint project between Biomar and Dias SA  for 2 years and then as an independent consultant for aquaculture and fish feed companies.

Dimitris Avraam has held a number of Senior Management Positions in the Retail sector for the last 30 years. He has extensive International experience and has held the position of Retail Operations Director at Dixons Retail South East Europe and more recently as Retail Director in Media Saturn. He is now the CEO of Aquanetix.

Stek.io: a SaaS that makes Open Source Software accessible to non-tech users.

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Stek.io is a Dutch-Greek startup company, which works regularly out of Stone Soup. They are building a software platform that provides a set of tools in order to install and manage Open Source Software.  Users of Stek.io, have the control of their data in a secure surrounding.

Stek.io uses three tools: Ghost, Discourse and Hackpad. Ghost is a blogging platform that helps you record your news. Discourse is a forum that enables the creation of new communities. And Hackpad is a tool to capture, organize and share knowledge in order to collaborate with other people and work together. These tools are only the start. There will be more tools coming very soon as the main purpose of this project is to become an one-stop open source shop.

              

With Stek.io, you pay for ease of use, privacy, and security.The usage of the website is very easy. You only need to create an account, providing your email and a password, and you have access to each tool. Then you click on the tool that you want and you can either start a free trial or buy it from 15 euros per month.

The 3 creators of Stek.io have diverse and very interesting backgrounds.  They are Erwin Blom (VPRO, Fast Moving Targets), Mark Pors and Dimi Balaouras (both former in WatchMouse).

Here is a little bit info about them:

Erwin Blom is a journalist, media specialist and entrepreneur and he loves open source because of the fact that he was responsible for making content management system MMBase open source in 2000, at the public broadcasting organisation VPRO in Netherland.

Dimi Balaouras is versatile and passionate full-stack Software Architect. He continues to have a strong interest and be active in all aspects of Software Development. But the most important thing for him is that he enjoys working with Dev Teams.

Mark Pors is a tech veteran with a lot of experience in technology, project and people management and online business such as marketing, product design and more. He is Co-founder and CTO of WatchMouse (acquired by CA Technologies in 2011).

Diving into social issues and public awareness: We spoke to Nicole to find out more about her impressive work and background

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Nicole is a Social Scientist and she is currently working for the Library Without Borders NGO. LWB deals with the most vulnerable populations by giving them access to education, information and culture. LWB is based in France whereas Nicole is working in Athens as a program manager for several actions aimed for refugees in Greece.

                  Athens Greece Eleonas camp                                                                     Athens Greece Eleonas camp

She got her degree in Boston in the field of Environmental Sciences and International Relations. She also holds a master in Human Rights from the University of Sydney in Australia. During her studies in the US she worked in a law office in the environmental department.  She assisted in cases concerning environmental issues and learned a lot about how someone could handle such cases. She was also present to legal affairs in court and helped with the bureaucracy. While she was a master student in Sri Lanka she worked in the organization CPA (Central Policy Alternatives) and did a research about social issues and specifically how people with HIV’s virus live in the society and the racism they face. She traveled all over the country and she wrote down her findings that were published later by CPA.

She has also volunteered for many causes. She participated in the organization Invisible Children. The main goal of this organization is to make people aware for the civil war of Uganda and stop the Lords Resistance Army of Joseph Kony. She worked there with child soldiers and she tried to raise awareness and communicate with them. Furthermore, she worked in an orphanage at Gana and she increased public awareness for sickness of malaria and taught English to little children.

It’s a pleasure to cowork with Nicole and we would like to give her a warm welcome to the Stone Soup family.

Learn more about LWB at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram

People at Stone Soup: read about Richard Edwards from PAAVO media

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Hello to all!

We are happy to introduce one new member of the Stone Soup community. Richard Edwards, who is the CEO and Lead Producer of PAAVO media.

Richard has 10years+ experience in digital management and production. He started working for BBC in 2003 as a digital online producer, creating interactive educational games based on tv shows like Doctor Who, examining subjects like maths or 2D and 3D shapes. In total, Richard and his team, created 70 games about various tv shows, but apart from this he was involved in several other projects like devising music-making and interactive-drama projects.

After 8 years in BBC he decided to move in the Myanmar-Thailand borders in order to help several organizations, charities and social enterprises with their digital communication and strategy. One of the organizations he supported was the “Youth Connect Foundation”, whose mission is to provide training, apprenticeships and career services to Thailand students, so they can transition to safe, productive and independent lives.

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One year later, he returned back to London to work for a Non-governmental Organisation called “Care International UK”  and worked there as a Digital Manager, commissioning new websites, managing social media campaigns, improving online advocacy and fund-raising.

After 4 years he left the NGO and started his own online company called PAAVO. PAAVO offers digital consulting and project management,and specialises in the digital scene in Myanmar and the UK. Recent projects include road safety mobile games for Heineken and the Myanmar Ministry of Transport, website development for the International Rescue Committee, and social media consultancy for organisations and brands looking to grow in Myanmar.

You can find more of Richard’s work on his website.