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Uploaded on July 2, 2007 by pictoscribe

I was just thinking I needed some inspiration to write a post and Rob Sheffield emailed to point me at WhyNot? an ideas exchange from Profs Ayres & Nalebuff of Yale. Rob and I had been chatting recently about creativity, entrepreneurship and intersections between ideas. I’ve not seen this site, though it seems similar to global:ideas:bank and a couple others.

The concept is simple enough that you apply the wisdom of the crowds to identify the best ideas. People are free to post their idea, everyone votes on them and the best float to the surface. WhyNot? seems to be suffering from lack of participants, the top rated ideas are all from 2003 vintage and have just over 100 votes each (except for the top idea that has 337 votes). With over 3,500 ideas and 5 years you’d expect a bit more activity. WhyNot? uses a very simple vote count to determine the best ideas (Support, Neutral, Oppose).

The global:ideas:bank has a few more ideas (just over 6,000) and a different rating system based on % for Feasibility, Originality & Humour. The drawback here is that a small number of high rating gets you to the top. There doesn’t appear to be any weighting for a balanced opinion.

Of course Digg has been surfing the wisdom of the crowds for some time. Google also uses a variation on this to track site traffic and links and back-links to work out which are the best sites (or solutions) to your problem (or search query). There’s a whole industry in getting your product announcement to the top of Digg and your site to the top of Google (I just did a search for Angel Networks and Oprah has the top two spots on Google).

Digg and Google are successful (in small part at least) because there is an instant path to action. You find something at the top of the list that addresses your need and you click the link to go to the site. Alternatively, if you have a problem looking for a solution (or a site looking for ad traffic) then Digg and Google also work quite well for you. The challenge with many of the other idea exchange formats is that there’s no champion or pathway to change. So you vote an idea as being great, so what, does anything happen?

That’s the great benefit of purposeful network events like BEN, OpenCoffee (disclosure: I run OpenCoffee Bristol) and SeedCamp. They’re great melting pots for ideas because they go out of their way to bring diverse groups together. They also do this with a clear objective in mind; learn something new that will make you and your business more enterprising, find people in your city/region to help grow your business, hook up with investors and springboard your start-up.

They also give people the time and space to figure out who they can work with before disclosing the golden nugget idea. They also have the wider network to help bring the idea to some degree of realisation.

So how do you get your ideas to become reality? If it’s your idea, how do you find your partners and collaborators? If you’re into making things happen, how do you find cool ideas to work on?

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02 Aug 07.

The reason this post is a bit late is I spent most of yesterday evening setting up a Facebook group for OpenCoffee Club Bristol (and we already have 5 members, cheers), posting the next four dates (17 June, 1 & 15 & 29 July and 5 August), updating the upcoming group (17 Jun, 1, 15, 29 Jul, 5 Aug), and posting the OpenCoffee Bristol Twitter; still need to construct an OpenCoffee group in my Gmail (for those not on the aforementioned socnets) to send out reminders and updates.

Back to yesterday, Sam and I arrived just after 8am and set up shop downstairs while the Starbucks folks put up signs and balloons. First to arrive was James and we quickly had a couple tables pulled together with discussions bouncing around business, technology, social catching up and finding out what each other did.

Chris Garrett (via Twitter) and Craig Hellen came down from Gloucestershire with their new mobile, locative and video media ideas. After exploring their business model and target segments a few business cards swifted exchanged hands, which is what its all about.

About half-way through the morning a couple of fresh pots of coffee arrived and refueled everyone through to past 10.30am.

We closed with Martyn Shiner’s open source manufacturing systems development project at Severn Delta. They’ve built their own system and are looking for hot php/PostgreSQL/UI coders to help them turn an internal project into a set of repositories that they can open up properly to other companies as a series of modules (sorry if I got a few details wrong Martyn). Martyn’s still looking so if you’re in the Somerset area (or are happy to spend a bit of time there) drop him a note on twitter (if it’s up).

I mentioned earlier on Twitter that I was hoping to confirm some additional support for Open Coffee, well Starbucks are getting behind us and offering free coffee, free muffins and free WiFi to attendees of Open Coffee at 9am Tuesday, 6 May.

We’ll be downstairs at the Starbucks on Park Street (map).

Kick off will be from 9am but some folks will be there before and you’re obviously welcome to stay as long as you like. Rosie (the interim Store Manager) has offered free coffee until 11am.

Hopefully this will be a long term partnership for digital companies in Bristol. The next 3 Open Coffee meetings are already scheduled in for 20 May, 3 June and 17 June.

All the details are on the Upcoming group, I’ll be talking about them here and on Twitter, Facebook and anywhere else that folks will be checking out. I’m also hoping to get notes put in BEN event announcements, Creative Technology Network, Bristol Media, Business Link, etc. The purpose is to give those companies (or start-ups) that are building growth businesses in digital software, services or media have an additional physical network to augment their online networks and wider business support services.

See you there!

6 May 2008, at the moment this is looking good for the relaunch of Open Coffee in Bristol. I’m still waiting on confirmation for a venue (and some free coffee as part of the deal) but it’ll be central Bristol.

I’ve decided on a morning mainly because the focus is on networking around business development and entrepreneurship and I think that works better at the start of the day than at the end with a beer. Most of the Open Coffee clubs around the world meet in the morning and I’m sure there are plenty of people there smarter than me in organising network events. There will be evening social dinners to cement the networks but part of the focus is on discussing the business of doing business, and how to build innovative digital businesses in Bristol.

The rough schedule of 4 meetings over 2 months, followed by an evening dinner, shake, rinse, repeat; seems to be going down well with everyone I’ve spoken to. The current topic outline is:

• Explaining your idea; convince just one other evangelist and you’re well on your way (articulating your idea in 140 characters or less)=139
• Addressable market - who are the people that actually want your product / service, are they who you think they are? Perhaps talking over coffee with other entrepreneurs will open new market ideas, or give you research leads on building your business plan / invement proposal.
• Financial instruments - how are you raising / going to raise, the cash to build your product. Even with Google BigTable / Amazon EC3/S3 you still need some cash. Angel, VC, SFLG, FFF, Credit Cards, remortgage, what are your decisions, options and how are others finding cash?
• No “I” in Team; but there is a me - I love that bit of team building bumff “There’s no ‘I’ in Team”: there’s no f’in team either but you don’t tend to hear that one from the managment coaches so much - as a start up entrepreneur you probably are the team, even when you build an executive support squad, most investors say they’re investing in the founder. So how are you / should you build a support team around you and who’s in it?

At each morning I’m going to try and make sure that there are some professional in the crowd but the idea is to network and discuss in generalities to inform your decisions. Feel free to let the folks you know and work with that this is going on (it is Open Coffee after all).

More details as they settle down.

Normally I’d be sat here writing up tonight’s event in the Watershed featuring the Pervasive Media Sandbox mid-term report / presentation thing.

But I’ve already done that on Twitter.

In fact there were at least 2 others twittering (@iamdanw & @sammachin) and I suspect a few others as well. The inimitable Scoble has noted that he’s pretty much on Twitter now and a quick perusal of his blog shows much reduced posting activity. Whereas he’s allegedly tracking 16,000 Twitter feeds (which is quite likely given previous form).

So what does that mean for this blog?

Well I’m not really in the business of reporting on events and stuff. I’m not a geek-hound rooting out the latest technologies and dissecting / discussing them.

I am a business developer with an engineering background and research credentials, working in some pretty interesting areas (at least I think they’re interesting). So I’m going to try and write a few thought pieces relating to what I’m doing. These roughly fall into 3 categories music, education, entrepreneurship; with business development and digital technologies as a common thread.

Lets see how things turn out.

There’re a ton of networking events taking place in Bristol, but there appears to be a gap around the business of doing business in the digital media / interactive technologies / software
development type area. Simon Bunker launched Open Coffee Bristol almost a year ago but it never really achieved critical mass and became a bit of a pub session to discuss technology (mostly mobile), which is cool but doesn’t address this gap.

So is there a gap? Well I think so, and from the feedback at a South West Screen event promoting access to digital media finance, quite a few others think so also. The one clear call after the event was for more structured networking with investors. There was a corollary to that, Andy made the point that there’s no shortage of ideas in Bristol but that’s different to commercial propositions (rather than grant applications, lifestyle support schemes, and one-off art commissioning). The Angel/VC representatives at the event suggested there was no shortage of money, though getting to it might be a bit harder at the moment.

A recent lunch hosted by Nigel Belletty at Milsted Langdon saw the local banks cautiously talking up the business environment in Bristol. Clearly it’s in their interests not to run to the hills screaming “Doomed, we’re all dooooomed” but they were talking about businesses with revenues, customers, products, markets all seeing growth and approaching them for conventional banking services. The point of concern (from my perspective) was the lack of local angels that were prepared to consider digital media / innovation investment prospects. If you have a physical product to show off, you’re probably OK, otherwise you’re probably looking to London or beyond. Which is nuts. This is the 21C, the knowledge economy, mobile, ubiquitous, always on, digital, global, blah blah blah.

Oil and Water Fusion
Originally uploaded by JBR_JBR.

So I’m thinking of a series of Open Coffee-type networking events (to build commercial propositions) with occasional semi-structured evening dinners where entrepreneurs can mix with investors with a view to building relationships towards high growth. This isn’t Investor Readiness and it damn sure ain’t Dragon’s Den, it’s about getting local entrepreneurs, business owners, and start-ups into a support network that will let them learn, practice, connect, and refine their business idea and then decide if they want to jump on the high-growth escalator or carry on with their lifestyle/corporate job. It’s also not all about being the next Google, there are plenty of businesses that are growing very nicely thank-you-very-much on revenues but that may have hit a growth block, or are thinking about the next transition. Clearly the hockey-stick 10x return in 9 months is great PR but that’s not a practical business model for a city-region.

The sort of topic that each session would nominally work around will be familiar to anyone in the start-up, business growth support world:

• Addressable Market vs 6bn people on the Internet
• Business models (the whole free thing and monetisation)
• Financial instruments (equity, debt, share options, convertible debt, SFLGS, etc)
• No “I” in Team (though there is a “me”) – role of the entrepreneur and their management/advisor team
• Patents, Open Source, Copyright, Creative Commons, GPLx.x
• Forecasting growth (and presenting that forecast)
• Hiring – firing – outsourcing

And so on. If people need specific advise then there are lawyers, accountants, etc that can help, there are Business Link courses, and business professionals (me for one) that will help with planing, strategy, presentation, etc. In fact there’s no shortage of help but it’s not working together in a critical mass that become self sustaining.

So have I had one coffee too many? What would you want to talk to fellow entrepreneurs about? What are you doing in your city/region that’s similar? What works, what doesn’t?

Until I hear otherwise I’ll keep plugging away, everyone I’ve spoken to since the SW Screen event broadly agrees with me. There may be some developments in the near future with Bristol Media but I think there’s a momentum here in Bristol that doesn’t need huge resources to accelerate, just a bit of doing. Which I guess means I should shut up blogging & twittering about it and start putting some events together Read the rest of this entry »

Last night was spent up in Bristol University’s Chemistry lecture room courtesy of Bristol Enterprise Network (this evening chaired by Prof Stephen Hagan, Director of the University of the West of England’s Research, Business and Innovation group). The delegate list was rather larger than the turn out, but there were still plenty of entrepreneurs and business leaders to mingle and discuss leadership and business developments before and after (a very polite University porter had to throw us out, the networking was going so well).

First up was John Kirwan (Partner, Strategic Planning Solutions). A very good lead with solid theoretical grasp on leadership, psychology, and the practicalities of moving a group of people from a current reality to some future vision. This basic concept of leadership was backed up with quite a few concepts, quotes (from Mintzberg & Goethe to Paxman), stories and good humour. In the Q&A John even got into locus of control.

Possibly his best quote was:
“If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse. However, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.” Goethe

John ended with a description / definition of Living Leadership - The cornerstone of inspiring leadership is efficacy:
the capacity to make things happen that you consider important, starting with being and acting as the kind of person you want to be in your life.

Next was Chris Farmer, Founder & Leader, Corporate Coach Group. Chris had thoughtfully provided us with an advertising brochure, after-dinner speaker flyer, a diagram of his key message and 6 self-administered assessment questions on the leader-managers within our own organisations. Unfortunately it was more fun watching Chris, who I suspect is actually a very nervous speaker but managed very well, than listening to Chris. He had an interesting take on the basic foundations that John had talked to, his approach is probably as good as most, but there didn’t seem quite as much substance.

A slight change of pace introduced Melissa Henry (Marketing Director, Sustrans), talking about leadership and entrepreneurialism in the not-for-profit sector. Melissa began by asking “Why are charities founded?” and it turns out it’s often for the same reasons (in many ways) as any other start-up. To make a difference, do things better, fill a gap in the market/social need. Another point was that no one works for a charity / start-up for the money - it’s taking a stake in something bigger (social or commercial). An interesting element that Melissa touched on was the need for clear succession planning as an element of leadership (the idea that the charity has to be bigger than the leader). She also made the point that monitoring and evaluating outcomes were critical to ensure vision is relevant rather than idealistic. Too many charities (and start ups) spin themselves into a froth without checking their customer base for feedback on outcomes.

Melissa also talked about back casting (as a planning tool; start with a ‘known’ future and then work out how to get there; rather than a fly fishing technique). Charities use back casting because they have a clear vision of the future and need to plan a route to get there (and explain that route to funders). Start-ups do the same when they predict a future (100m users in 3 years) and then try to figure out the how. This became most obvious in the Q&A when someone asked about planning horizons and leadership. The 3 for-profits confirmed that most of their planning went out to around 6 months, with broader visions/goals out to around 2-3 years. As an in-the-thick-of-it entrepreneur Paul admitted to occasionally working to a 1 week horizon when critical issues hit, but that he always made a point to regroup post-crisis to learn from it and re-plan the following 6 months in the light of what he’d learnt. Melissa started with a 15-20 year vision then then worked back to the current projects.

One issue that Melissa did share, and that is probably quite common in the third sector, is the double edged sword that the open sharing knowledge to achieve vision brings. If you ‘give’ everything away and work to bring about social change, the important message is sustainable transport options, rather than Sustrans itself. Ultimately they don’t really mind who builds more cycle paths, green-ways, etc, but if no one know that Sustrans was behind it then grants and donations dry up. I’m pretty sure there’s something to learn from Hugh Macleod’s global microbrands, Jeremiah Owyang, JD Lasica, Chris Brogan to name a few (leaving aside the significant pack of marketeers on Twitter)!

Anyone out there have experience of working with non-profits and these open communications challenges?

Paul Tinkler, (Managing Director, Mirifice Ltd) rounded out the group with no theory (though a lot of thought) and lots of personal experience. When are you successful - never as an entrepreneur, there’s always the next goal, target, business, market, etc to conquer.

The 6 traits of an entrepreneur;

1. unswerving self belief in success, complete unwillingness to look facts in the fact that don’t support vision (not inflexibility
2. being a risk seeker, that is where fortunes are made (not reckless, know the risks)
3. durability, mental toughness
4. disregard for rules, at least the ones that don’t apply to ‘me’
5. know when to step down/ aside (though this one has to be tested at Paul is still in the thick of it)
6. communications are critical - be excellent - constantly learning / getting better, fear of not being the best (rather than of failure)

All in a really good evening.

At Open Coffee the other night, after bemoning the lack of access to pre-seed capital and the unlikelyness of the banks to lend Simon and me £1m to run our own venture fund, the topic turned to the usual mix of mobile, hacking and start-ups.

Somewhere between the beers, Dan proposed a hackathon in Bristol! Sam and James were up for it, I haven’t coded since 8086 days and a bit of kludging in ada but happy to support as always.

Thinking of a Friday night - Saturday session, perhaps at The Hub in Bristol.

So what should the focus be (mobile, games, soc-nets)?

Who wants in?

Last night was the launch of SkillSwap Gloucestershire, hosted by Gloucestershire Media Group. Based on the same successful formula as Brighton and Bristol, the evening brought together creative media types, digital tech types and a couple enterprising business types.

The venue was kept nicely informal at the Beehive in Cheltenham and expertise was provided by the Kevin Hapeshi (University of Gloucestershire’s Head of Computing), though in keeping with SkillSwap most of the expertise was dispersed among the room and freely contributed by all. It was a good launch evening, and the ambition of swapping skills between two fairly disparate groups is noble (and needed). The two main coordinating groups brought a balanced mix of people in the room but the working title for the evening was a bit vague, perhaps future events will have a tighter focus.

Lets see what future swaps bring.

(Disclosure; I’m working with a Heliotrope, on their new product, Prelude, that we think addresses some of the challenges that Akhtar discussed relating to building individual, group and community understanding.)

I was up in London on Monday evening at the SMARTLab at an invited talk by Dr Akhtar Badshah - Senior Director, Global Community Affairs, Microsoft Corporation. Prof Lizbeth Goodman and her team have completed a review of the Boys & Girls Club of America programme ClubTech (funded out of Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential programme). There wasn’t a whole lot on that (except that it was generally found to have been a good thing). There was a short video summary (3 min YouTube link) but that was very high level and a bit marketing orientated.

Akhtar talked freeform, no slides but they were video’ing so hopefully there will be a video up shortly. It was quite a wide ranging talk, starting with the premise that if you teach a man to fish he’ll survive, but if you stop there, he’ll only eat fish - how to do you get to economic growth (take the fish to market, etc)? And how can ICT support this?

Akhtar was really interested in the intersection between the bottom of the middle of the economic pyramid and the top of the bottom. That was where he (and by extension Microsoft) saw scope for economic development and corporate philanthropy.

The very bottom of the pyramid is the domain of the NGOs, and health is greatest limit on bottom of the pyramid sustainable growth. If there was a theme to Akhtar’s discussion it would be building economic engines for growth in that intersection between the middle and bottom parts of the pyramid. Unlimited Potential is about developing relevant, affordable, accessible products.

Akhtar recognised that everyone that wanted to use Vista in the developing world probably was, and was using a pirated version. So there was no point donating licenses since it was already ‘free’, Microsoft was having to justify other value added propositions to give people the economic engine that would then provide the justification for paying something to Microsoft. As an example Akhtar pointed to the Cell phone business models - pay as you use for Vista (Flex Go). He’d didn’t go into details so it was hard to see quite where the value-add was.
It was a very wide ranging talks with examples from across the globe where Microsoft are working.

Somebody else asked the question about building community and understanding through ICT. Akhtar didn’t really answer but hinted at a lack of models on how to use technology to facilitate building understanding and sense of community (other than wikis and blogs about which he was largely dismissive for lack of quality). I didn’t jump straight in as others had questions but did approach Akhtar straight afterwards to discuss Heliotrope, we’ll see where that leads.