February 14th, 2008 by Jason Roe
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Over the last month, I have been working in the background to secure additional coworking locations in Dublin. The theory behind this is to make coworking more accessible and available.
See my full post on coworking.ie
- J
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January 22nd, 2008 by Jason Roe
It looks like there is some cool stuff coming out of blacknight at the moment. I noticed that they just announced some customers opting for ipv6!
In other news, the guys in blacknight will be announcing a totally new hosting platform!
I had a sneak peak at the new control pannels / billing today (it is very cool)! Hopefully I will be able to play with my VPS (Virtual private server) account some time soon!
* /me pokes paul!!!
Im not sure about the new green look .. but I guess it works!
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January 21st, 2008 by Jason Roe
I haven’t got my notes from day two of enterprise start with me. As such, there will be a bit of a delay on the full gory details!
The second day covered what’s required in a business plan and what investors are looking out for.
We took a bit of a detour mid way through to talk about the advantages of the LTD Company over a partnership, more to come later in the programme. Looks like there is no way to convert earnings from a partnership/sole trader to LTD in a nice way!
At the end of the day we broke up into teams and were asked to evaluate 10 business plans. We had to scan over the Exec Summaries and pick a top 3. We went for some fairly interesting ideas ranging from retail stands, some form of atomic clocks and some kind of micro organism that could possibly take over the world (we were a bit devided on this one).
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January 19th, 2008 by Jason Roe
Today was the first day of the Enterprise Start programme run by the PDC (Hothouse) in DIT. I am going to detail some of what I took out of each day. I will post it up here each day (Friday and Saturday for 6 weeks) feel free to comment etc. A word of warning, I wont be talking about any of the business ideas being pitched (Including my own).
I was a tad nervous as I haven’t done one of these programmes before. To be honest I was delighted to be accepted in the first place. I’m not sure if it’s normally difficult to get in to this kind of thing, or if anyone has ever been refused, but I was delighted to have the opportunity.
We had to switch to a bigger room as 17 people are in the programme this year. Thats compared to about 10 last year, not a bad jump in numbers! It looks like I am the youngest of the lot, but whats new there! I have always seemed to have been the youngest person in any group since I was about 15. Im not sure what that says about me but I try not to read into it too much.
Note that this will be the summary of my almost illegible scribbles.
First hurdles - inability to share
The group was asked to do pitch their ideas to the group.
At the first hurdle, the reluctance of the entrepreneur reared its head over concerns of patentability and IP. The message here was if you want to protect you IP then keep it to yourself. Intellectual property and protecting you ideas come later in the programme.
Duncan Ballantine * talked about this in his book “Anyone Can Do It: My Story”. This seems to be one of the major pitfalls for a budding entrepreneur is the inability to share their idea with other people. It was noted that sharing with a family member or relation just doesnt count. You will more than likely get the optimistic slant on your idea.
Luckily for me, I have one of the world’s most pessimistic friends to bounce ideas off. (You know who you are if your reading this!) Honestly he can be one of best people to have around when that light bulb moment of inspiration strikes. A no nonsense, hows she cutting attitudes can be a fantastic trait. If you want to stay well grounded find one of these people (preferably someone who will still listen to you after 4 years!).
We were told was that many people do a bit of a spin on protecting their idea by pushing benefits and highlighting what problem you’re solving without actually detailing any processes. That being said, it was noted that the above may conflict when trying to patent, so each to their own.
Wanting to Jump
I wanted to jump out of my seat at times to tell people about my business idea! That time never actually came because honestly, I was shitting bricks. I had visions of someone in the group turning around and going well why anyone would need that kind of an idea?. So for the moment I held of.
End of pitching
After about 7-8 pitches we moved on to why we were all here and what we want out of the programme. There was a really mixed bag response from the group but the main message seemed to be clear.. I have always wanted to do this, but honestly I just never knew where to start?.
Can anyone become one?
The last part of the night the group was split in half. We were asked to have a mini debate on the subject, Can anyone become an entrepreneur?. We were put in two separate rooms and asked to work as a team on this. This was really difficult as I was on the side that had to debate that anyone could become an entrepreneur! Not one person in the room actually believed this was true, yet we struggled on anyway.
I personally dont think that “anyone” can be an entrepreneur unless they are willing to put the time and effort into creating, implementing and following through with an idea. Not to mention my feelings about peoples inability (including my own) to jump ship and risk it all for a chance to make it big. Thats living the dream!
This is where we closed off .. More tomorrow.
Some side notes:
Elevator pitches- The main messages were always and include the following:
Who you are.
The name of your company.
Your target customers / market.
What problem are you trying to fix.
What solution do you have or what can you bring to the idea.
The profitability of the offer you are presenting
What kind of ROI can your idea bring inElements of the pitch
The benefit of your idea, is it unique?
Whos in your market space
What category do you fit into (Sales, ops or financial) . You always need the first 2 in some form.
* I may have misquoted/paraphrased the wrong person on this. It was either this book or Seth Godin the idea virus. I didnt have it to hand!
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August 22nd, 2007 by Jason Roe
I have been a bit bogged down with work over that last month. After picking the winner of the co-working competition (ended on the June 29th), I somehow couldn’t find the time to announce our findings or a winner..
That’s no excuse! … So I’m going to increase the prize pool to €150 cash and a €150 donation to the registered charity of the winner’s choice.
On Friday, we will present the findings from our survey and announce the winner.
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May 19th, 2007 by Jason Roe
It’s been a very busy month for me. Fear not, Im back!
Coworking Ireland has really taken off over the last month.
We now have 4 active bloggers contributing to the project. Pop over to coworking.ie and take a look at some of the interesting topics being discussed. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Coworking blog.
James Corbett (EirePreneur) reports on Business Class Network looking for locations.
The inside track on Adam Street - Private Members Club in London.
Paul Campbell, Reported from Citzen Space San Francisco!
Irish Independent also got a facelift!
A lot of work went in by the team to get the site up and running. The site migrated fairly smoothly from unison to independent. Personally I don’t see the guardian resemblance with the new indo design.
The layout is much better than the 7 year old design. The site is a lot more accessible and each section now has an RSS feed. Mandatory registration has been removed unlike some other papers.
With a fairly bold move for traditional media, public comments opened up on the site! Make sure to post your feedback on the We Have Changed page. Your opinion is very important, Bad or Good.
LoadzaJobs changed a bit too!
I’m not sure if anyone noticed but Loadzajobs also got some minor cosmetic changes on the front page. The site now has a clearer Featured Recruiters, Popular categories & locations, and a handy list of Industries / Categories down the bottom of the page. I have dug up a snapshot from April of last year to help you compare the changes, Before & After.
More to come next week!
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April 9th, 2007 by Jason Roe
It looks like Google has implemented a new “Note This� feature into the SERPS (Search Results Pages) over the weekend. The handy little feature allows you to quickly and easily take note of search results for later viewing within Google Notebook.
This could be a big blow for some of the social bookmarking services. Form a data mining point of view, this might be another key tool that could be used to identify the value of a page link or service.
From The Google notebook homepage
Clip and collect information as you browse the web.
- Clip useful information.You can add clippings of text, images and links from web pages to your Google Notebook without ever leaving your browser window.
- Organize your notes. You can create multiple notebooks, divide them into sections, and drag-and-drop your notes to stay organized.
- Get access from anywhere.You can access your Google Notebooks from any computer by using your Google Accounts login.
- Publish your notebook. You can share your Google Notebook with the world by making it public.
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April 4th, 2007 by Jason Roe
It seems that 3v have finally copped on that charring a €5 euro premium for a prepaid voucher is just nuts. For a limited time 3v are giving you your 5 euro fee back in the form of credit.
With a €2.5 fee to get money back, you might actually lose out ..
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April 3rd, 2007 by Jason Roe
I have been toying with the idea of coworking for some time. For anyone that hasn’t heard of coworking yet, the concept is fairly simple:
“Coworking is a movement to create a community of cafe-like collaboration spaces for developers, writers and independents.�
The concept itself is nothing new. Freelancers and small business have always teamed up for office shares. What makes coworking any different to typical office share? In my mind the definition of an office share would be simple “A closed group of people spreading the cost of an office�. Whereas coworking is the next evolution of this model.
Think of it this way, what if you could not only spread the cost of your business, but quickly and easily pool resources with a larger community of likeminded individuals? Your office share is limited to a stagnant pool of talent that will rarely change. What if your community was more fluidic? How would that affect your business model?
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February 9th, 2007 by Jason Roe
Voting has now opened over at the Irish blog awards.
It seems that I was nominated for Best Designed Blog!! Thanks guys!
Voting will close at 5pm on Friday February 16th. A shortlist will be announced soon after and judging will decide the winner of each category. Winners will be announced at the Irish Blog Awards 2007 event in Dublin on March 3rd in the Alexander hotel. You may be contacted via your email address to verify your votes. This is the best use of a sitemap.
Keep an eye on my blog for more info! Creative Design Solutions
PS: I would appreciate your votes under Best Designed Blog - “Jason Roe’s Blog”!
Full List of nominations:
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