2021 Wrap-Up | AULIOS
AULIOS – We envision a world where light is so powerful that it improves people’s lives in a useful, emotional, and healthy way daily.
What is AULIOS ?
We started in January 2021 as a CODE project and an worked during the semester most of the time as a team of 6 to 8 people on creating a software to create music based light shows fully automized. Our motivation was the fact that we thought and now know that it is possible and that lightshows in the whole entertainment industry are still done manually. That means instead of light technicians and lightjokkeys preparing or controlling the lights on festivals, concerts and clubs manually, our b2b customers will just subscribe our software to manage everything by itself.
During the semester we built our first working prototypes and are currently working on our MVP. In the process we realized that we underestimated the possibilities of our project and are now talking with companies like Berlin Green, Ligeo and Porsche about cooperations in other fields as well.
We worked through the whole summer to found the company and prepare ourselves to get in our first revenue and now is the time, where we need to grow our team.
There were several times, where we were not sure if what we do makes sense. It is difficult when you do something no one else has successfully done before, but we never gave up and carry on working.
Our biggest challenge this year/semester…
I wouldn´t say there was one specific challenge. We had one goal: Create the first working version of AULIOS which can run in a nightclub and looks good and we will probably reach this state in around three weeks. The complexity and amount of challenges along the way made it a bit stressful sometimes, but also held a lot of fun while solving.
Our greatest success…
Alex Gerick and I were proud that we managed to onboard and work with a team of a size of 10 people. This was challenging and new for us, but it is pretty nice to see that you can inspire others to believe and work on the same vision, even when you have no money to offer.
Our biggest project f****up & what are we proud of ourselves for…
There are a lot of things. The one time I felt really bad was, when I prepared a hybrid (half remote, half on-campus) workshop about our MVP features, but there was a huge problem with the microphones and speaker of everyone and some team members had no access to certain documents, which were necessary to do that workshop properly. We wasted one hour when I canceled the workshop. I felt pretty bad and responsible for it, but we reflected directly afterward and discussed all aspects of the MVP with the people on campus and also managed to run a second attempt a few days later and everything worked, thanks to better preparation. It was a pretty uncomfortable situation for me, but we managed to learn and do it better the second time and I think learning from mistakes instead of giving up is one of the most vital skills for everyone who wants to achieve something.
If it weren’t for CODE…
We would not have the workspace to properly work on AULIOS. We would not have been able to build such a great team to build our software and we would not have gotten the contacts to come as far as we are right now. CODE was and is a pretty good catalyst for our project to succeed.
A person or people that helped us this year with AULIOS…
There are quite a lot of people. To mention a few, there is the whole AULIOS team. Also, Tamas Fulop (Campus Manager) and Wanda Dominguez (Campus & Office Coordinator) helped us a lot of times because we always need something and they were there to get it for us. Also, Chris Bonau Schmidt (Product Management Professor), Peter Ruppel (CODE Vice President & Software Engineering Professor), and Daniel Buzzo (Interaction Design Professor) helped us, whenever we need help. A specific movement that goes on and forth and repeats itself over and over.
Another exciting update from AULIOS;
AULIOS alpha test run was successful and in the beginning of 2022 we will make sure to finish AULIOS v.1.0 until the end of march which then will be implemented officially to the first clubs!
Check out the AULIOS website to find out more!