A number of people have commented, reasonably enough, that the Coffeemat Challenge is won, typically, by the person who is best able to mobilise their friends, family and contacts to vote for their ideas. This has always been the basis of the competition, as doing this kind of thing online through social media is a really important skill for young entrepreneurs to develop. We’ve always felt the University Enterprise departments are far better placed to provide specific advice and support in developing entrepreneurship skills. And people who do well in the Coffeemat Challenge are really well placed to take the skills forward in either the workplace or to further their idea.

Having said that, we’ve tracked sentiment scores for a while now and have been looking for ways to surface that information, and now we’re in the final stages of doing just that as we feel that we have some good data that makes for very interesting reading. To begin with, we’ve added it to the participant update emails but we have big plans over the coming weeks and months to do more with it.

To find out more about it, head over to the new Sentiment Score Page.

At Evans Finch we all have our personal favourite animations; I love it when the little man gets hit by a car. Well now we’ve added a bunch of new animations including one really, really cool one (even though we do say so ourselves)!  The more you vote, the more likely you are to find it and there are now 26 unique animations in total. The animations appear randomly so maybe you’ll get lucky and find the easter egg, maybe not.

Which is your favourite animation? Got an idea for an animation – something fun or gruesome? Let us know and you never know they might make it into future challenges!

Check the new animations out:

The Lancaster and Bristol Beermat Challenge first heats have just closed amid a flurry of last-minute voting. Check out the respective winners pages to find out who’s (provisionally, we’ll need to dot some i’s and cross some t’s!) walking away with the PEntax Digital Cameras.

Bristol Winners Page

Lancaster Winners Page

The last of the winter Beermat Challenges is launching on Monday: