Follow the links below to read the letters from the Hon Frank Sartor MP to Ian & Rickystan

Finalist in Nescafe Big Break Competition

An excerpt from

Another budding entrepreneur whose idea took time to come to the boil is Ian Cannon, 17. Cannon, a Year 12 student at Redeemer Baptist School in North Parramatta, is the classic inventor, hoping to take his ColorLuminator - a device for measuring colour and brightness - to the world market The idea sprang from research into colour-blindness Cannon did in Year 8, but building a device to help colour-blind people had to wait until he had a few more school years under his belt
“I needed to learn how circuits work and how you measure colour, which I didn’t know for a few years,” he says. The result was the ColorLuminator, a device that identifies colours, and also measures luminance contrast, which is the difference in brightness between two surfaces. It has been designed to meet the needs of vision-impaired and colour-blind people.
Developed by Cannon and a classmate, Rickystan Savaiko, the device has already taken out first prize for technical communication at the International Science and Engineering Fair in Indianapolis, and the pair have established that it is a world first.
“You can put it on a surface, press a button and it will tell you the colour of that surface,” says Canon. It uses LEDs, which shine the light on to the surface, and the photo-transistors pick up the reflected light, and by measuring the light reflected, can define the colour on that surface. People will use it when they need to see what colour is there, for example, when they’re choosing clothes or buying ripe fruit”

Possibly more important, he says, is the device’s luminance contrast capability. This is important in the building industry, where the building code specifies differences in brightness so that a vision-impaired person can find their way around a building.

But luminance contrast standards are difficult and expensive to implement, he says, which gives the simplicity of the ColorLuminator a major advantage.

“We’ve had the device tested by staff at Vision Australia and by leading building auditors, and they’ve expressed avid interest for it to be marketed in Australia. We’ve also had great interest from the standards authorities in America, Japan, Italy and Canada, so we know there’s a lot of export potential.”

Morris and Cannon are finalists in the 2006 Nescafe Big Break competition, which offers $100,000 cash awards to young people to kick-start business, artistic or sporting ideas. The competition shows that the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and well among young Australians and New Zealanders, says Janelle Skropidis, head of Nescafe marketing
“The calibre and volume of big ideas entered in Nescafe Big Break this year demonstrates that young Australians and New Zealanders are prepared to work hard to achieve their dreams. They are actively seeking an innovative way to get their idea up and running,” says Skropidis.

“For many young people, owning their own business is their big ambition. This year’s Nescafe Big Break program reflected this trend with almost 30 per cent of the 4100 entrants submitting applications for a start-up business,” she says.

Morris certainly wants to harness “passion and a head full of recipes” to launch Soulveg restaurant, and eventually expand it into a chain.

... Cannon also has big plans, hoping to take his ColorLuminator to the world market If he wins the $100,000, Cannon says it will go to securing the intellectual property, developing the third and final marketable prototype and having it tested.