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Mum­my­Mug con­grat­u­lates fel­low Dutch Mumpre­neur Noortje van der Loo with the Baby Inno­va­tion Award for most inno­v­a­tive toy, that she won at the major con­sumer fair for young par­ents, the “Negen­maan­den­beurs”, in Ams­ter­dam last week­end. I met her for the first time at Kind&Jugend in 2008, and know she’s really earned this recognition.

Her well-designed and unique prod­uct ; It’s A Clock ; visu­alises the pass­ing of time in a way that chil­dren can relate to. If you put one of the six cards that are deliv­ered with it at the right time of the day; your child will know when it is time to get up, have lunch, snacks and din­ner, when to take a bath and when it is bedtime.

It’s a Clock was found by the jury to “famil­iar­ize chil­dren with the con­cept of time and daily sched­ules in an orig­i­nal way. It’s a clock has an attrac­tive design using color and shape. It offers a lot of fun watch­ing the lit­tle char­ac­ter moves with the minute hand and sec­ond hand and is thus an orig­i­nal and attrac­tive product .”

Noortje her­self explains it as follows:

“All chil­dren have a need to under­stand the pass­ing of time and the struc­ture of the day.  Many con­cepts of time look easy for grown-ups, but are true mind-breakers for chil­dren. “How long is an hour?” “When is tomor­row?” “How long until my birth­day?”.  Research shows that when chil­dren under­stand time bet­ter, they feel more secure and in control.”

But most kids do not learn to tell the time until they are 8 years old, while many of them already mas­ter com­plex tricks of cal­cu­lus by that age. But chil­dren look intu­itively at coloured big objects that move fast. On a tra­di­tional clock the most impor­tant hand – the hour hand – is small, black and it hardly moves. With the inno­v­a­tive design of “It’s a Clock!” chil­dren can under­stand what time it is from the age of 3 because the hour hand is easy to rec­og­nize for chil­dren, and the cards that help to struc­ture the day.”

Keep up the good work Noortje — what is going to be the next addi­tion to the It’s A Clock prod­uct range??

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Once again, drink­ing cof­fee on board an air­line car­rier has proven a haz­ardous business.

This time, no per­son got injured (luck­ily!) but nev­er­the­less, there was cer­tainly some havoc: CNN reports today that an United Air­lines flight on route from the US to Europe had to divert and make an emer­gency land­ing in Canada, after the pilot acci­den­tally spilled a cup of cof­fee on the nav­i­ga­tion instruments.

Let’s hope he did not have too much sugar and milk in that cof­fee… or it could prove an expen­sive spill!

Any­one from United Air­lines inter­ested in dis­cussing how we can pre­vent this hap­pen­ing again?

(many thanks to MTB for the tip!!!)

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Merry Christ­mas everyone! 

We pro­pose a fes­tive cof­fee to cel­e­brate the holidays.

You need 2 pears, cane syrup, cof­fee, ground car­damom and corian­der, your favourite liqueur and cream.

Cut the pears into small pieces, cook the pears with the syrup until soft.
Divide into four glasses.
Brew the cof­fee with the spices.
Pour 2 cl liqueur in each glass, pour the cof­fee; top with whipped cream, serve and enjoy.

Merry Christ­mas and a Happy 2011!

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Today, we had the oppor­tu­nity to par­tic­i­pate as an exhibitor at the con­gress ‘In voor Zorg!’ (in Rot­ter­dam, the Nether­lands. Big thanks to the organ­is­ers! And many thanks to my friend Nienke for help­ing me out on the stand today.

It was very inter­est­ing to present our hot drink safety solu­tion to some of the the 800+ par­tic­i­pants, who came by our stand.
And encour­ag­ing that pro­fes­sion­als from home care organ­i­sa­tions and senior homes reacted very pos­i­tively and def­i­nitely saw the use of the Safetea™ mug in the care.

The theme of the con­gress was inno­va­tion and effi­ciency in the care of elderly and hand­i­capped peo­ple. Cer­tainly per­ti­nent, since care ser­vices has to deal with the dilemma of double-digit bud­get cuts, as the gov­ern­ment restricts the fund­ing, and grow­ing demand; as the pop­u­la­tion steadily ages.

Can Safetea™ con­tribute to inno­va­tion and effi­ciency in the care of elderly and handicapped?

We think we can: Safetea™ makes it pos­si­ble for elderly peo­ple to man­age to enjoy tea or cof­fee with­out assis­tance, in all safety.
The time that the nurses would have spent assist­ing, if the cof­fee would have been served in an open mug, is thus either saved or freed up for other things — thus poten­tially con­tribut­ing to higher effi­ciency and qual­ity improvement.

Now all we have to do is make good use of all the tips and feed­back we got today, and work out how we have to tweak the mug so that it really meets the needs for elderly.
We will do our home­work there, and run some tests to get it right. Luck­ily, sev­eral organ­i­sa­tions we met today offered the pos­si­bil­ity of field test­ing with their employ­ees and clients — excellent!

Then we will be ready to make our con­tri­bu­tion — per­haps not more than a safe cup of cof­fee, but hope­fully with the poten­tial of con­tribut­ing some­thing to a bet­ter care for all.

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In the period 2001 — 2006, over 50,000 elderly peo­ple sought med­ical care in hos­pi­tal emer­gency depart­ments across the US because of scald injuries. This is reported in a sci­en­tific study pub­lished on medscape.com.

Worth atten­tion: elderly had a worse prog­no­sis for recov­ery than younger patients after scald burns because of age-related fac­tors and other med­ical con­di­tions, and there­fore needed more exten­sive med­ical treat­ment to recover.
Two thirds of vis­its were made by women.
Most (76%) of the scald injuries had occurred at home; and 42% were asso­ci­ated with hot food and 30% with hot water or steam.

As the authors con­clude: the find­ings in this report high­light the need for effec­tive scald-prevention pro­grams tar­geted to older per­sons. It seems that also Granny needs a MummyMug™.

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At the North­ern Irish hos­pi­tal of Alt­nagelvin, staff con­clude that the num­ber of small chil­dren that come in for emer­gency treat­ment after trauma in the home is increas­ing significantly.

For exam­ple, they recov­ered £3.43 that had been swal­lowed by chil­dren under four — an increase of 56p com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year.

Most kids came in for treat­ment of bruises and bumps, inges­tion of chem­i­cals and med­i­cines and seri­ous head injuries.

But over the last two years, there was also a 50% rise in atten­dance by chil­dren under five as a result of burns and scalds in the home.

The hos­pi­tal has decided to take action, and will launch a new cam­paign to raise aware­ness about children’s safety at home.

Seems some MummyMug™s would be a use­ful contribution!

Source: BBC North­ern Ireland

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It’s time: the yearly Kind&Jugend trade fair in Cologne is about to start tomor­row. Dur­ing 4 busy days, every­one who’s any­body in the baby and tod­dler out­fit­ting indus­try will meet, net­work, make deals and show off their lat­est inventions.

We’re not an exhibitor this time, but are cer­tainly look­ing for­ward to recon­nect­ing with all the fab­u­lous peo­ple we’ve met dur­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tions in 2008 and 2009. So, Cologne, here we come!

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RyanAir claims to serve the best tea and cof­fee at 30,000 feet, and hav­ing tried a fair few brews at high alti­tudes, I’m inclined to agree.

How­ever — also RyanAir has now expe­ri­enced the hard way what that seem­ingly inno­cent and delis­cious cuppa can do:

last week, a RyanAir plane en route from the UK to Poland was forced to make an emer­gency land­ing after a woman had scalded her­self badly on a cup of tea, and needed imme­di­ate treat­ment. She then decided to take the train for the onward journey.

It seems not only par­ents are in need of a hot drink safety solu­tion — RyanAir; we will come to your res­cue: a Safetea™ mug with your logo is on its way.…!

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Of course you know about the extra­or­di­nary global entre­pre­neur Sir Richard Bran­son; who started with two empty hands and who has built a busi­ness empire span­ning from music to space ships, made bil­lions and suc­ceeded against the odds. And who has nearly 500,000 fol­low­ers on Twit­ter — wow!

Some­one thought I could use some inspi­ra­tion from this entre­pre­neur guru, and gave me a copy of Screw It, Let’s Do It; Branson’s 2007 book. I even got ‘the Expanded Ver­sion’ — I guess my friend thought I need to shed all inhi­bi­tions and dare to act the Bran­son way: be big, bold and focus on just doing what­ever it is that truly inspires you; believe it can be done and that, if oth­ers dis­agree,  try and try again until you achieve your goal.

It was a fun read. I am of course very respect­ful of his busi­ness achieve­ments, but most impressed by all that he is doing for to com­mon good: fight­ing HIV/AIDS, war and cli­mate change. That is wealth and enrepre­neur­ship put to good use.

The image that really stayed with me after I put the book down, feel­ing invigourated,  is one one where Bran­son tells about what he did on one story night, when he was stay­ing on his pri­vate island Necker in the Caribbean. It wasn’t just any old storm — it was the largest hur­ri­cane in the last 50 years that was com­ing his way. Of course he’s built a storm-proof house able to with­stand wind speeds of 300 kms/hour. I guess most peo­ple would have closed the shut­ters and rid­den out the storm safely behind the closed doors.

But what does Bran­son do? He decides to expe­ri­ence the storm in the swim­ming pool. It is a once-in-a-lifetime expe­ri­ence, he rea­sons, not to be seen from the side­lines and hid­ing behind closed doors, but to be grabbed, as an unique oppor­tu­nity to exe­prience some­thing unique — some­thing to be LIVED! If noth­ing else for the sheer inten­sity of feel­ing alive. The way he talks about sawying about in the water, com­pletely giv­ing him­self over to the forces of nature and with his nose barely over the water, is a great image I think. In his own words, a good illus­tra­tion of hav­ing the pas­sion and ini­tia­tive to expe­ri­ence the storm — out­side, where it really hap­pens — and the sta­mina and self con­fi­dence to sur­vive it.  This, and his relent­less focus on peo­ple, in and out­side of his own pool, is inspir­ing what­ever your focus and goal in life.

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