Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it’s jaffles falling from the sky at UON’s Enterprise + Innovation week, writes Kieran Resevsky. 

Come Monday morning of August 8, you may notice something unique happening across the university campus. You’re not going mad like you may believe as you watch jaffles attached to parachutes falling from the sky (more on this later), but you have stumbled into the real and exciting world of enterprise and innovation with some great events, speakers and free stuff. Oh how we love the free stuff!

With UON declaring its commitment to providing students with the knowledge and skills to participate in technological, social or creative innovation and entrepreneurship comes the delivery of our very own Enterprise + Innovation Week. The week will be focused on celebrating and nurturing the entrepreneurial spirit of all UON’s staff and students, with events and activities designed to further develop the necessary skills of successful innovators and entrepreneurs.

The Brennan Room will play host to the Enterprise + Innovation Week Expo from Monday to Thursday. Here you will be able to meet student entrepreneurs, gain invaluable advice about starting or expanding your own business and see some of the most innovative things happening around campus.

Image via Jafflechutes. 

A multitude of guests will be visiting campus across the week giving talks, handing out advice and throwing delicious cheesy jaffles off rooftops (yes, you absolutely read that right!). As a jaffle lover, I’m more interested than I should be about what goes on your jaffle and whether you cut it into triangles, squares or rectangles. There are some people out there however, who think no matter what is on your jaffle, it is better delivered via parachute. To get the lowdown on the jaffle situation we spoke to Adam Grant, Co-Founder of Jafflechutes, who will be running a demonstration as well as a talk on Monday.

Jafflechutes all began when Adam Grant, Huw Parkinson, David McDonald and Peter Gordon took a trip to the Victorian countryside and stayed at an AirBnB cottage with no electricity (they’d failed to read the property description). At some point during that cold, dark night they started talking about an idea to manufacture jeans with little parachutes in the pockets. That posed some laundry machine issues, so they opted for tying chutes to sandwiches instead.

“We parachute jaffles to people, basically. And sometimes into trees. We accidentally hit a police car once. But they were cool with it,” Adam said. “We’ve been floating around Melbourne for the last few years, and a couple of years ago we did a four month stint in America. Americans don’t even know what a jaffle is.”

While Jafflechutes is currently a side project for the boys, they do have a dream of taking it on tour around the world’s windiest cities. With Huw busy making hilarious political mash-ups, David working radio magic by day, Peter being his brilliant self in the UK and Adam loitering around ad agencies trading ideas for beer money, the boys are short on time, though they have more than enough crazy food ideas to fill the world’s craziest food court and believe, “Whatever happens next, it’s going to be fun”.

You can order your own jaffle from the boys at jafflechutes.com. Find their drop spot around campus on Monday, stand where ‘X’ marks the spot and wait for your very own Jafflechute to drop from the sky! You will also find Adam from the Jafflechutes team on the ‘Innovate Me’ Panel Discussion from 4pm Monday in the Godfrey Tanner Bar.

For a full Enterprise + Innovation Week schedule, including Port Macquarie, Sydney and Ourimbah campuses, click here.

Feature image: via Jafflechutes.