At each event, 6 companies present their businesses and the roles available to a room of highly talented individuals ranging from sales, marketing and finance board positions to mentorships, chair, CEO and non-executive director positions.

Join the hundreds of businesses have already presented at these events and have employed talented individuals as a result. Click here to read a great case study from a recent pitching company.

Get in touch with the AngelNews team today to discuss why presenting at “Pitching for Management” could revolutionise your business#8230; Contact Sarah Abrahams at sarah@angelnews.co.uk or call 07916 340 009

For more information visit www.pitching4management.com or book online at http://pitchingformanagementbristol5.eventbrite.com/

Rowan tree - BioBlitz Bristol 2009

Take them out into a rich habitat and let them catalogue everything they find! Fortunately you donrsquo;t have to go to the rain forest, one of the oldest natural parkland spaces is just south of Bristolrsquo;s city centre at Ashton Court.

The 30 hour exercise was coordinated by the Bristol Natural History Consortium and with support from Science City Bristol and DEFRA, and working alongside the Bristol Regional Environmental Records Centre (BRERC). I was really keen to see how the event was going and pick up ideas for future Science City Bristol collaborations. Sam was up for the weekend, the sun was shining, a perfect way to spend Saturday!

Officially I start as Manager of Science City Bristol on Wed (1 July) but since this was being supported by Science City, and it seemed like a really cool day out, I wanted to go along. Soon wersquo;ll hopefully have mini-reports like this on the Science City website. Stay tuned for more info.

After a quick introductory hello with Berry Goddard (BioBlitz Programme Manager) and Savita Custead (Director, Bristol Natural History Consortium), Sam and I were teamed up with our expert amp; guide Richard. After a few more volunteers and spotters joined the group we set off to record some trees, plants and birds.

Hounds Tongue at BioBlitz Bristol 2009

The first item of interest was a rowan tree. Apparently they arenrsquo;t usually found this far South but this one was making a start by the edge of the path. A bit further along the path we found a rare purple flower that turned out to be Hounds Tongue (we think) .

The last item of fauna foxed even our experts. Found near a dead beech tree the rather impressive fungus was found by one of the younger members of the group. We didnrsquo;t even try for a field identification. Back at Base Camp, Sam did have  look through a very thick book of fungi species, I used a simpler decision chart. Neither of us could figure out quite what was found.

Mystery fungus from BioBlitz 2009

So we left it in the capable hands of the BioBlitz experts to sort out.

Unfortunately they were off having an ice cream so it entered the ldquo;pendingrdquo; tray. Mind you, they logged over 560 different species so everyone was kept pretty busy over the 30hrs!

I thoroughly recommend checking out their blog which has loads of updates, images, facts, and the full run down on the day.

A huge thanks to everyone that helped make BioBlitz happen, especially the small army of volunteers and helpers.

Resilient people face and manage positive and negative life events. They persist in the face of obstacles and when necessary, accept circumstances that cannot be changed. Resilience provides a buffer to protect us from psychological and physical health consequences during difficult times. Clearly, resilience is a desirable quality and yet all of us experience fluctuations in resiliency throughout our lifetime. Some people never develop resilience. Others are quite resilience but donrsquo;t recognise it; they may avoid challenges they could easily surmount. Sometimes resilience is worn down by multiple stressors and challenges.

As with a lot of psychology it seems very obvious when people say it, but it is not unitl it is clearly thought through and stylishly presented that it really does seem like something anyone could have said.  That is exactly what happened during this workshop. The approach covered integrated knowledge from resilience research and traditional CBT approaches.  If this is an area you practice in I would recommend Christine Padesky book (and if itrsquo;s run again the workshop), as it was clearly delivered, making it appear simple to apply the developed models. I will definitely be feeding and sharing the references and resources with my clinical psychology colleagues.  This may not be an approach we use, but as with all good ideas their are elements that I am sure I can and will use, especially in designing future research projects.

Resilient people face and manage positive and negative life events. They persist in the face of obstacles and when necessary, accept circumstances that cannot be changed. Resilience provides a buffer to protect us from psychological and physical health consequences during difficult times. Clearly, resilience is a desirable quality and yet all of us experience fluctuations in resiliency throughout our lifetime. Some people never develop resilience. Others are quite resilience but donrsquo;t recognise it; they may avoid challenges they could easily surmount. Sometimes resilience is worn down by multiple stressors and challenges.

As with a lot of psychology it seems very obvious when people say it, but it is not until it is clearly thought through and stylishly presented that it really does seem like something anyone could have said.  That is exactly what happened during this workshop. The approach covered integrated knowledge from resilience research and traditional CBT approaches.  If this is an area you practice in I would recommend Christine Padesky book (and if itrsquo;s run again the workshop), as it was clearly delivered, making it appear simple to apply the developed models. I will definitely be feeding and sharing the references and resources with my clinical psychology colleagues.  This may not be an approach we use, but as with all good ideas their are elements that I am sure I can and will use, especially in designing future research projects.

This is a re-post from the Open Coffee Bristol blog.

postbear, 16 January 2009

This morningrsquo;s Open Coffee Club meeting took place in the very pleasant surroundings of The Boston Tea Partyrsquo;s garden. A lovely summerrsquo;s morning complemented the positive ideas being discussed in the light of HP Labrsquo;s partial pull out of their Bristol facility.

Stephen Maudsley was first after me but headed up to the first floor before I could catch him, meanwhile Dave Simpson from Engine House Solutions (holding site) arrived and we began chatting while Stephen explored the upper reaches of TBTP. I first met Dave at the Bristol leg of the FOWA tour, where he was launching his web development and software company.

StephenM soon found us and we began talking about the start-up scene and different requirements of growing companies for executive support as well as cash. Around then Steve Cayzer arrived and we began to discuss his ideas for launching a new venture based on some of his research into environmental computing and ways to underpin the low carbon economy.

A quick flurry introduced Brian Dorricott with his newly launched Meteorical, Andrew Wray from Bristol Universityrsquo;s enterprise support team, Andy Seaborne (also thinking about launching an enterprise semantic knowledge application) and Nadya Anscombe (freelance science amp; technology journalist). Introductions, connections, business opportunities and much coffee ensued.

Thanks to all for a great morning of stimulating discussions and opportunities to be explored.

The next Open Coffee is the Demo Session, Tues 30 June at eOffice, please sign up on Eventbrite (http://opencoffeedemo30june.eventbrite.com) so wersquo;ve some idea on numbers.

If you have a company / product / service that yoursquo;ve developed (or are thinking about) and would like constructive comments amp; ideas, please sign up as a presenter and wersquo;d love to help contribute to your success.

Next to us was the general cake stand with Jenny amp; Bridget overseeing a wide range of home made confectionary (including some Rocky Road Crunch Bars that had been modified from the original recipe by Sam).

All the usual stalls were there, Bric-a-Brac, books, plants, games for the kids (including a fantastic giant Connect-4). All the stalls were donating to the Centipede Trust (Reg No. 1126335) the charity behind  CDC. Although the centre has been running a number of years, this was their first Summer Fete so it was all a bit of an experiment.

Even the Fire Brigade turned up (and made a significant contribution to the Cream Tea sales). The Trust is the official charity for HMS Scott and some of the sailors turned up to open the Fete and provide the all important treasure hunt (and Pirate King, with bounty for those that found all the hidden swords).

Wersquo;re not yet sure how much was raised as the final tally hasnrsquo;t been taken. However it was a fun day, with plenty of supporters and despite a summer rain shower trade was steady throughout.

Just back from a cracking talk by Mike Turner, Senior Designer on the Bloodhound SSC project. [Full disclosure, I'm a member of the Bloodhound SSC 1K Club; everything I say is highly biased, I think this is a fantastic project to be based in Bristol. ]

The talk was introduced by Bob Mytton, Chair of the West of England Design Forum.

Mike began with a bit of background on his career so far, from trains to cars to JCB diggers. This last culminated with JCBrsquo;s DieselMax project, to design a diesel that would go over 350mph. Speed was definitely in Mikersquo;s future!

Although Bloodhound is an ldquo;Engineering Adventurerdquo;, their tagline, itrsquo;s ambition is to:

1. To create a national surge in the popularity of Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects

2. To create an iconic project requiring extreme research and technology whilst simultaneously providing the means to enable the student population to join in the adventure

3. To achieve the first 1000 mph record on land

Mike quickly moved on to his core specialty of designing the outer surface, the bit that interacts with the air flow. Beginning with the outline design concept, Mike developed a refined shape for the car. This went to the team at Swansea University that were handling the CFD work. The results from the CFD, together with the engineering structural amp; package development (steering, suspension, controls, Andy Green, etc) were then fed into the next design cycle with Mike.

In the Qamp;A afterwards Mike was quizzed on the time the CFD added to the design cycle time. When they first started each CFD run was taking a couple of weeks (to run the numbers, check them and be confident of the answers). After going public with the project they were picking up additional computing support, each run was around a day.

The main challenges are to make the whole car as strong as possible (without increasing the weight too much); as slippery as possible for a Eurofighter jet engine with a solid fuel rocket strapped to it; as stable as possible in a straight line (without being so stable that Andy canrsquo;t direct it at all); and keep it on the ground (without turning into a 1,000mph plough).

So no conflicting pressures for Andy to juggle in his design decisions!

For all the CFD modeling, I was particularly struck by the comment that Mike put up from Ron Ayers, Chief Aerodynamicist on appreciating the designerrsquo;s eye for form amp; proportion ldquo;if it looks right, it probably is rightrdquo;.

yewenyi, 16 April 2007

As an aside, it was Ronrsquo;s earlier work developing the Bristol Bloodhound Surface to Air Missile that gave rise to the project code name.

The Qamp;A was lively with Mike fielding questions for at least half an hour and staying around for another half hour as people continued to discuss the car, the design activity, and a bunch of technical questions that demonstrated real interest and enthusiasm.

A fantastic evening, thanks to the Bristol Design Festival and West of England Design Forum for organising.

Along with a couple hundred others, I thoroughly enjoyed the Bristol Design Festivalrsquo;s launch party last night, however, I was taking a specific interest in the Grafikea entries. As in previous years, the standard was excellent with some ingenious and occasionally subversive uses for a simple LACK Side Table from your friendly blue and yellow purveyor of Scandinavian style.

For those that havenrsquo;t seen Grafikea before, the rules are quite simple. You purchase a table (as on the right) and then, according to the official rules:

Let your creativity run wild and modify the table.

And thatrsquo;s pretty much it.

The results are quite astounding.

Before the prizes were announced I took a walk around the entries and a few leapt out at me. Apologies for the photos, I was using my camera phone, Irsquo;m sure better quality press-pics are available; even better, get down to the Old Fire Station and see for yourself!

One of the first that caught my eye was a very Bristolian scene of the SS Great Britain sailing under the Clifton Suspension Bridge, all on a coffee table! There were even a few fishes in the Severn that younger visitors seemed particularly entranced by.

I later discovered that this table (together with another 5) was designed and made by the ASD classes at Kingsweston School. This particular one was from Oak Class.

There were a number that had been decorated with graphics and very well executed designs (as yoursquo;d expect) along with the quirky and fun. I quite liked the lsquo;Coffee Table, Coffee Tablersquo; and lsquo;Table to Die Forrsquo;. On the quirky and subversive was this inverted table-come planter. Another table that caught my eye was lsquo;Exhibit yourselfrsquo; which had completely deconstructed the table and turned it into a pole-dancing platform!

There were only a couple that didnrsquo;t really do anything for me. One had some licorice allsorts spilled across and lacquered, another with digestive biscuits, I also wasnrsquo;t entirely convinced by the loud speakers amp; Mp3. Just my personal opinion.

The WFT award this year definitely went to lsquo;Shadows of a Tablersquo; - you have to go along and see this in person! No photo can do it justice,part Alien, part Necromicon it positively broods in the corner looking down on the other tables and viewers alike.

And the winners are: (these are the official competition winners in two categories, Junior and Grafikea)

Junior

	First Prize went to this entry from St Bedersquo;s Catholic College. Transforming their table into a weird and ferocious monster. This is right by the entrance so keep an eye out at ankle level!
	Second Prize went to Delectable from Lime Class at Kingsweston School. I had a long chat with one of the Specialist Teachers about the ASD Unit and how all the kids had contributed to designing their tables. In total there are 6 tables from Kingsweston showing creativity and ingenuity. In addition to Delectable amp; the Bristol Bridge, there are 4 other tables from the other classes in the ASD unit. Irsquo;ll let you find them in the exhibits, suffice to say that you have to look at the identification cards to know theyrsquo;re from Kingsweston, the quality is that high.
	Also from St Bedersquo;s this beach scene obviously captured the imagination along with Third place. Perhaps the title of lsquo;You Scream, We Screamrsquo; helped.

Grafikea

	First Prize went to a stunning entry from Helen Ward; Entomology. Each of the butterflies is cut from coloured paper and laid out as you might expect in any Victorian collectors house or museum. My apologies to Helen for the poor quality photo, please visit the exhibition to see the exquisite detail that has gone into this table and also take a look at her website for more images and additional background on the artisan paper and history behind the butterflies.
	Second Prize went Cork from Jack Patient, a fun table surrounded by colourful corks.
	This entry, entitled lsquo;Production Line Errorrsquo; from Dave Stannard won Third Place. A quirky mix-up between a table and chair.

Congratulations to everyone that took part, all the tables are available to buy from the artists so head down to the Old Fire Station for the opportunity to take home some local art!

Along with a couple hundred others, I thoroughly enjoyed the Bristol Design Festivalrsquo;s launch party last night, however, I was taking a specific interest in the Grafikea entries. As in previous years, the standard was excellent with some ingenious and occasionally subversive uses for a simple LACK Side Table from your friendly blue and yellow purveyor of Scandinavian style.

For those that havenrsquo;t seen Grafikea before, the rules are quite simple. You purchase a table (as on the right) and then, according to the official rules:

Let your creativity run wild and modify the table.

And thatrsquo;s pretty much it.

The results are quite astounding.

Before the prizes were announced I took a walk around the entries and a few leapt out at me. Apologies for the photos, I was using my camera phone, Irsquo;m sure better quality press-pics are available; even better, get down to the Old Fire Station and see for yourself!

One of the first that caught my eye was a very Bristolian scene of the SS Great Britain sailing under the Clifton Suspension Bridge, all on a coffee table! There were even a few fishes in the Severn that younger visitors seemed particularly entranced by.

I later discovered that this table (together with another 5) was designed and made by the ASD classes at Kingsweston School. This particular one was from Oak Class.

There were a number that had been decorated with graphics and very well executed designs (as yoursquo;d expect) along with the quirky and fun. I quite liked the lsquo;Coffee Table, Coffee Tablersquo; and lsquo;Table to Die Forrsquo;. On the quirky and subversive was this inverted table-come planter. Another table that caught my eye was lsquo;Exhibit yourselfrsquo; which had completely deconstructed the table and turned it into a pole-dancing platform!

There were only a couple that didnrsquo;t really do anything for me. One had some licorice allsorts spilled across and lacquered, another with digestive biscuits, I also wasnrsquo;t entirely convinced by the loud speakers amp; Mp3. Just my personal opinion.

The WFT award this year definitely went to lsquo;Shadows of a Tablersquo; ndash; you have to go along and see this in person! No photo can do it justice,part Alien, part Necromicon it positively broods in the corner looking down on the other tables and viewers alike.

And the winners are: (these are the official competition winners in two categories, Junior and Grafikea)

Junior

	First Prize went to this entry from St Bedersquo;s Catholic College. Transforming their table into a weird and ferocious monster. This is right by the entrance so keep an eye out at ankle level!
	Second Prize went to Delectable from Lime Class at Kingsweston School. I had a long chat with one of the Specialist Teachers about the ASD Unit and how all the kids had contributed to designing their tables. In total there are 6 tables from Kingsweston showing creativity and ingenuity. In addition to Delectable amp; the Bristol Bridge, there are 4 other tables from the other classes in the ASD unit. Irsquo;ll let you find them in the exhibits, suffice to say that you have to look at the identification cards to know theyrsquo;re from Kingsweston, the quality is that high.
	Also from St Bedersquo;s this beach scene obviously captured the imagination along with Third place. Perhaps the title of lsquo;You Scream, We Screamrsquo; helped.

Grafikea

	First Prize went to a stunning entry from Helen Ward; Entomology. Each of the butterflies is cut from coloured paper and laid out as you might expect in any Victorian collectors house or museum. My apologies to Helen for the poor quality photo, please visit the exhibition to see the exquisite detail that has gone into this table and also take a look at her website for more images and additional background on the artisan paper and history behind the butterflies.
	Second Prize went Cork from Jack Patient, a fun table surrounded by colourful corks.
	This entry, entitled lsquo;Production Line Errorrsquo; from Dave Stannard won Third Place. A quirky mix-up between a table and chair.

Congratulations to everyone that took part, all the tables are available to buy from the artists so head down to the Old Fire Station for the opportunity to take home some local art!

Single by The Clash from the album Combat Rock

I had a really good discussion with Jack amp; Nigel in the Watershed a couple nights back. Jackrsquo;s launching a new venture and wanted some advice. Nigel and I pitched in our thoughts, as did Micheal when he turned up a bit later.

Jackrsquo;s key question was around the business model. How much of his know-how did he give away on the website and how what did he charge for?

Essentially, Jack is building a personal brand as so many of us are.

In many ways Jack and I (and most consultancy businesses) are in similar positions, wersquo;re trading on our expertise and ability to do stuff thatrsquo;s really important to a business at specific moments in time. We also really enjoy what we do, which makes it easy to have a discussion with someone about how they could develop new ideas for their product / service, or how they could structure their business for growth, or find funding.

The challenge is when to do this over a pint in the Watershed (other pubs amp; coffee shops are available but good food, beer and free wifi is a tough act to beat) and when to sit down in a closed room and start billing. For me, the test is if wersquo;re discussing specific costed solutions for your business, or if wersquo;re having an advisory chat about business models, sources of funding, networks of finance, etc.

Jack also had a question over scalability, this was a question for Chris Garrett at OpenCoffee Demo where he presented a thriving agency with lots of work and skills, but no core IP. Thatrsquo;s changing for good reason, and theyrsquo;re developing a system for location based alerts and friend finding but with an interesting difference (more when itrsquo;s launched). For the rest of us, once yoursquo;re billing 24/7 at the maximum rate the market will stand, yoursquo;re maxed out. The solution usually is to hire more mini-mersquo;s.

But people are paying for your insight, not the internrsquo;s.

So what can you do?

• Keep building your tribes, they are your evangelist marketeers, global ideas pool, potential clients, and probably friends


• Keep building your know-how, your secret sauce (this is what people are paying for); read widely, participate in conversations, innovate up the food chain


• Look out for scalability: collect your stories / experiences /ideas, if yoursquo;re a coder write some code that you regularly re-use and license it as a development tool, if yoursquo;re a designer/creative put some designs on T-shirts / mugs / etc (traditionally itrsquo;s called merchandising, bands have done this for ages),


• Rinse amp; repeat

Donrsquo;t get stuck in a rut of securing clients, delivering, billing, securing clients, delivering, billing without any scalability or building any know-how; someone will come along that is faster / smarter / cheaper / cooler than you and you need a defensible position.

How are you building know-how and scalability?

Uploaded on November 2, 2006 by Paul Mannix

Is it possible for a Government to provide simple support to businesses?

Well the UK Government thinks it is, but recognises that it hasnrsquo;t been very good at the simple part. A few years ago some wag pointed out that there were over 3,000 different grants, programmes, schemes, advice networks, etc (nobody really knew the exact number), and that it was something of a mess. In the 2006 Budget the Government promised to reduce this to around 100. The latest plan is to get this down to 30.

As Dan Martin over at businesszone.co.uk more recently pointed out, this simple list of 30 has already become less simple.

As part of an application to the recent SWRDA post for Head of Business Innovation, I thought Irsquo;d revisit BSSP from a more strategic perspective. While I have dealt directly with several of the individual lsquo;productsrsquo; (as theyrsquo;re called) and have been involved in various briefing and discussion around the rest, Irsquo;ve not formally reviewed the whole documentation associated with these changes.

Enter Nigel Legg at Katugas Lex. I emailed over three documents: Solutions for business: supporting success, The economic drivers of Government-funded business support: supporting analysis for lsquo;Solutions for business: supporting successrsquo; and the South West Regional Development Agencyrsquo;s Regional Economic Strategy. I asked Nigel to see what the key themes and constructs that emerged from within these three documents, but didnrsquo;t set any specific boundaries or expectations.

After a couple of days Nigel emailed to say hersquo;d finished and invited me round for a presentation and discussion.

A note on the analysis method before getting into the findings. Each document was broken down and repeating words found, for each document the top 30 to 40 words were included in the supporting excel report. These words were then grouped to identify key themes with around 13 per document. Because of the way the statistics works, you donrsquo;t receive an absolute measure of thematic importance. For example, with the Economic Drivers the most connected theme was ldquo;businessrdquo; with ldquo;marketrdquo; being 73% as connected as ldquo;businessrdquo; and ldquo;informationrdquo; being 50% as connected as ldquo;businessrdquo;. So you do get a very good internal feel for the focus and thrust of the document, Nigel also included a combined report of all three documents.

The economic drivers of Government-funded business support

As yoursquo;d expect the dominant themes are around business, support, innovation, economics with a heavier weighting towards regional and south west for the SWRDA document. What was more interesting was what wasnrsquo;t there.

The market was clearly front and centre in the economic justification. Innovation is clearly linked to productivity and therersquo;s a reasonable focus on benefits (through examples). Unfortunately ldquo;profitrdquo; or ldquo;financerdquo; didnrsquo;t make the ranking for any of the documents.

Providing information is clearly seen as a benefit and service to inform the businesses understanding of the market and various support available. As I understand it this is a core function of the Business Links through their IDB (Infomation, Diagnosis amp; Brokerage).

Despite having a whole chapter on Skills (Chapter 3), they donrsquo;t show up as a key theme. The two main lsquo;productsrsquo; here are Train to Gain and the Manufacturing Advisory Service. Hidden away is a very interesting sounding service ldquo;Coaching for High Growthrdquo;.

The actual semanic map of the BSSP document wasnrsquo;t that surprising on its own. The main focus was around businesses and economic achievement, with a sizable grouping around Government Support, the schemes themselves and eligibility.

SWRDA Regional Economic Strategy

Its worth noting at the outset that the SWRDA Regional Economic Strategy goes much wider than business innovation or government support for businesses. There were quite sizable thematic groupings around people and future communities and their connection to the broad economy of the region. There was also consideration on the challenges and changes associated with growth. The focus in general has moved away from a historical focus on employment toward productivity (at least as far as business is concerned). Interestingly, important and business are closely linked themes. Possibly the most noticeable shift between the two maps is the disappearances of ldquo;marketrdquo;, ldquo;innovationrdquo; and ldquo;enterpriserdquo; as top level themes.

Some thoughts

• Personally I would have liked to have seen more evidence of developing market understanding and providing solutions to problems in the market.


• Irsquo;d also have liked to see more emphasis on developing the higher skills for entrepreneurship and innovation (principally team building).


• The emphasis on innovation amp; enterprise at the national level is excellent, as is the lack government focus on specific sectors (though this has already changed with the various sector bail-outs).


• It would have been nice to see more innovation amp; enterprise focus in the SWRDA RES, but moving from an employment focus to productivity is a start

Uploaded on November 2, 2006 by Paul Mannix

Is it possible for a Government to provide simple support to businesses?

Well the UK Government thinks it is, but recognises that it hasnrsquo;t been very good at the simple part. A few years ago some wag pointed out that there were over 3,000 different grants, programmes, schemes, advice networks, etc (nobody really knew the exact number), and that it was something of a mess. In the 2006 Budget the Government promised to reduce this to around 100. The latest plan is to get this down to 30.

As Dan Martin over at businesszone.co.uk more recently pointed out, this simple list of 30 has already become less simple.

As part of an application to the recent SWRDA post for Head of Business Innovation, I thought Irsquo;d revisit BSSP from a more strategic perspective. While I have dealt directly with several of the individual lsquo;productsrsquo; (as theyrsquo;re called) and have been involved in various briefing and discussion around the rest, Irsquo;ve not formally reviewed the whole documentation associated with these changes.

Enter Nigel Legg at Katugas Lex. I emailed over three documents: Solutions for business: supporting success, The economic drivers of Government-funded business support: supporting analysis for lsquo;Solutions for business: supporting successrsquo; and the South West Regional Development Agencyrsquo;s Regional Economic Strategy. I asked Nigel to see what the key themes and constructs that emerged from within these three documents, but didnrsquo;t set any specific boundaries or expectations.

After a couple of days Nigel emailed to say hersquo;d finished and invited me round for a presentation and discussion.

A note on the analysis method before getting into the findings. Each document was broken down and repeating words found, for each document the top 30 to 40 words were included in the supporting excel report. These words were then grouped to identify key themes with around 13 per document. Because of the way the statistics works, you donrsquo;t receive an absolute measure of thematic importance. For example, with the Economic Drivers the most connected theme was ldquo;businessrdquo; with ldquo;marketrdquo; being 73% as connected as ldquo;businessrdquo; and ldquo;informationrdquo; being 50% as connected as ldquo;businessrdquo;. So you do get a very good internal feel for the focus and thrust of the document, Nigel also included a combined report of all three documents.

The economic drivers of Government-funded business support

As yoursquo;d expect the dominant themes are around business, support, innovation, economics with a heavier weighting towards regional and south west for the SWRDA document. What was more interesting was what wasnrsquo;t there.

The market was clearly front and centre in the economic justification. Innovation is clearly linked to productivity and therersquo;s a reasonable focus on benefits (through examples). Unfortunately ldquo;profitrdquo; or ldquo;financerdquo; didnrsquo;t make the ranking for any of the documents.

Providing information is clearly seen as a benefit and service to inform the businesses understanding of the market and various support available. As I understand it this is a core function of the Business Links through their IDB (Infomation, Diagnosis amp; Brokerage).

Despite having a whole chapter on Skills (Chapter 3), they donrsquo;t show up as a key theme. The two main lsquo;productsrsquo; here are Train to Gain and the Manufacturing Advisory Service. Hidden away is a very interesting sounding service ldquo;Coaching for High Growthrdquo;.

The actual semanic map of the BSSP document wasnrsquo;t that surprising on its own. The main focus was around businesses and economic achievement, with a sizable grouping around Government Support, the schemes themselves and eligibility.

SWRDA Regional Economic Strategy

Its worth noting at the outset that the SWRDA Regional Economic Strategy goes much wider than business innovation or government support for businesses. There were quite sizable thematic groupings around people and future communities and their connection to the broad economy of the region. There was also consideration on the challenges and changes associated with growth. The focus in general has moved away from a historical focus on employment toward productivity (at least as far as business is concerned). Interestingly, important and business are closely linked themes. Possibly the most noticeable shift between the two maps is the disappearances of ldquo;marketrdquo;, ldquo;innovationrdquo; and ldquo;enterpriserdquo; as top level themes.

Some thoughts

• Personally I would have liked to have seen more evidence of developing market understanding and providing solutions to problems in the market.


• Irsquo;d also have liked to see more emphasis on developing the higher skills for entrepreneurship and innovation (principally team building).


• The emphasis on innovation amp; enterprise at the national level is excellent, as is the lack government focus on specific sectors (though this has already changed with the various sector bail-outs).


• It would have been nice to see more innovation amp; enterprise focus in the SWRDA RES, but moving from an employment focus to productivity is a start

Mariano Kamp, July 2008

In my earlier post, I revealed some analysis that Irsquo;d asked Nigel to undertake and my interpretation of that analysis. Here I offer some thoughts on what actions businesses might take away from this.

The first thing to note is that unless yoursquo;re a Bank or car company, Government support for you probably wonrsquo;t change that dramatically.

For the genuine start up, life is still going to be pretty tough until you can show some revenue. The good news is that there is lots you can do yourself that doesnrsquo;t involve lots of cost. Start blogging about your service/industry, join the Twitter conversation, keep an eye on the enterprise networks around you, get out there and meet people. The tools to support good old fashioned networking and business development have never been better or cheaper (and you canrsquo;t get cheaper than free).

If there isnrsquo;t a suitable enterprise network around you, start one. BEN is a great network around Bristol but tends towards established companies, so I set up an OpenCoffee Club, OpenCoffee is a ready made template thatrsquo;s free and globally recognised. So long as yoursquo;re building an entrepreneur support amp; growth network and not just pimping your product/service yoursquo;ll find folks are generally happy to support you.

For the company that has some revenue, or the promise of imminent revenue there are a couple of interesting options.

The first is the range of grants available for Ramp;D from SWRDA (South West Regional Development Agency). These are to part-fund small and close to market Ramp;D (typically £5k to £50k) with a specific focus on small companies. You identify a project value and SWRDA provides a portion of that, usually between 40% and 60%.

1. Proof of Market Projects test the commercial potential of an innovative idea for a new technology, lasting no more than 9 months. The output should be a thorough and professional analysis of the scale of the market opportunity. Grants of £5,000 - £20,000 are available to small and medium sized businesses.


2. Micro Projects are small scale development projects lasting no longer than 12 months. The output should be a simple prototype of a novel or innovative product or process. Aid of £5,000 - £20,000 for all micro businesses covering 45% of eligible costs is available.


3. Research Projects involve planned research or critical investigation into the feasibility of new products or processes, lasting between 6 and 18 months. The result of the project could be new scientific or technical knowledge that may be commercially exploited. Grants of £20,000 - £100,000 for micro and small businesses covering 60% of eligible costs are available.

There are also Development grants and two Exceptional grant levels gt;£100k. The development grants are only 35% and the exceptional grants arenrsquo;t really aimed at the small business or start-up entrepreneur.

Next up are more general business expansion funding. A couple of days ago SWRDA announced their South West Loans Fund. This is £10m of funding for small businesses that have been refused credit elsewhere. A good slug of that cash comes from Europe (£6.25m) so the focus is on the more deprived parts of the South West (Cornwall amp; the Isles of Scilly get £5m), but businesses from across the South West are eligible.

All grant applications have to address two very different needs. Yours and the funders. Having written plenty of successful business grants for funding, research or collaboration myself, knowing how to frame your business innovation so that it appeals to public sector funding is more art than science.

Although most of the cash is coming from SWRDA, BSSP means you access it through Business Link who will provide you with Information, Diagnose your needs, and Broker connections to the right bits of SWRDArsquo;s Innovation team.

As Irsquo;ve said elsewhere, there is evidence that banks are beginning to open up to good companies under the Enterprise Finance Guarantee. For business growth finance this is probably your best bet, and yoursquo;ll have to have tried (and failed) here before you approach SWRDA for a South West Loans Fund application.

Then there are the equity funding options from SWAIN, Catalyst Venture Partners, Eden Ventures, and those are just the main ones in the South West. There are other independent Angel investors and networks in London that are investing.

So as ever, there are quite a few options. Irsquo;ve only cover some here, those I feel are most relevant to the small business or start up entrepreneur. The full list of support products is available in a pdf from SWRDA.

Mariano Kamp, July 2008

In my earlier post, I revealed some analysis that Irsquo;d asked Nigel to undertake and my interpretation of that analysis. Here I offer some thoughts on what actions businesses might take away from this.

The first thing to note is that unless yoursquo;re a Bank or car company, Government support for you probably wonrsquo;t change that dramatically.

For the genuine start up, life is still going to be pretty tough until you can show some revenue. The good news is that there is lots you can do yourself that doesnrsquo;t involve lots of cost. Start blogging about your service/industry, join the Twitter conversation, keep an eye on the enterprise networks around you, get out there and meet people. The tools to support good old fashioned networking and business development have never been better or cheaper (and you canrsquo;t get cheaper than free).

If there isnrsquo;t a suitable enterprise network around you, start one. BEN is a great network around Bristol but tends towards established companies, so I set up an OpenCoffee Club, OpenCoffee is a ready made template thatrsquo;s free and globally recognised. So long as yoursquo;re building an entrepreneur support amp; growth network and not just pimping your product/service yoursquo;ll find folks are generally happy to support you.

For the company that has some revenue, or the promise of imminent revenue there are a couple of interesting options.

The first is the range of grants available for Ramp;D from SWRDA (South West Regional Development Agency). These are to part-fund small and close to market Ramp;D (typically £5k to £50k) with a specific focus on small companies. You identify a project value and SWRDA provides a portion of that, usually between 40% and 60%.

1. Proof of Market Projects test the commercial potential of an innovative idea for a new technology, lasting no more than 9 months. The output should be a thorough and professional analysis of the scale of the market opportunity. Grants of £5,000 ndash; £20,000 are available to small and medium sized businesses.


2. Micro Projects are small scale development projects lasting no longer than 12 months. The output should be a simple prototype of a novel or innovative product or process. Aid of £5,000 ndash; £20,000 for all micro businesses covering 45% of eligible costs is available.


3. Research Projects involve planned research or critical investigation into the feasibility of new products or processes, lasting between 6 and 18 months. The result of the project could be new scientific or technical knowledge that may be commercially exploited. Grants of £20,000 ndash; £100,000 for micro and small businesses covering 60% of eligible costs are available.

There are also Development grants and two Exceptional grant levels gt;£100k. The development grants are only 35% and the exceptional grants arenrsquo;t really aimed at the small business or start-up entrepreneur.

Next up are more general business expansion funding. A couple of days ago SWRDA announced their South West Loans Fund. This is £10m of funding for small businesses that have been refused credit elsewhere. A good slug of that cash comes from Europe (£6.25m) so the focus is on the more deprived parts of the South West (Cornwall amp; the Isles of Scilly get £5m), but businesses from across the South West are eligible.

All grant applications have to address two very different needs. Yours and the funders. Having written plenty of successful business grants for funding, research or collaboration myself, knowing how to frame your business innovation so that it appeals to public sector funding is more art than science.

Although most of the cash is coming from SWRDA, BSSP means you access it through Business Link who will provide you with Information, Diagnose your needs, and Broker connections to the right bits of SWRDArsquo;s Innovation team.

As Irsquo;ve said elsewhere, there is evidence that banks are beginning to open up to good companies under the Enterprise Finance Guarantee. For business growth finance this is probably your best bet, and yoursquo;ll have to have tried (and failed) here before you approach SWRDA for a South West Loans Fund application.

Then there are the equity funding options from SWAIN, Catalyst Venture Partners, Eden Ventures, and those are just the main ones in the South West. There are other independent Angel investors and networks in London that are investing.

So as ever, there are quite a few options. Irsquo;ve only cover some here, those I feel are most relevant to the small business or start up entrepreneur. The full list of support products is available in a pdf from SWRDA.

Take an interactive stroll around Bristol Docks and become part of a story set in 1885

Sam and I stopped by the Watershed yesterday to try out a new blend of storytelling and technology. Picking up our PDAs and donning in-ear headphones, we were invited to step back in time and experience a slice of Bristol circa 1885.

Over the next 90 minutes we walked around the historic waterfront area (starting at the Watershed, round to the Arnolfini, over the swing bridge, down to the SS Great Britain, back over to the Gasworks, ending up at Canonrsquo;s Marsh Amphitheatre) as our stories unfolded.

Sam followed the story of the unlucky Maude trying to escape her evil Uncle, whilst I stumbled over a murder to solve with the help of a nearby galley boy. As their respective stories unfolded we dodged some of Bristolrsquo;s seedier characters outside the old jail where hangings regularly took place and helped load cargo ships with Guinness, bananas and timber for the colonies.

Sam had several mini games throughout her journey and by successfully completing each, Maudersquo;s story progressed.

My murder mystery was a proper whodunit with half a dozen likely contenders. Having worked out the full story, I then had to decide whether to turn the guilty party in (knowing the hangmanrsquo;s noose would be waiting) or let them escape to Americahellip;

All really good fun, and surprisingly informative about Bristolrsquo;s history without being a dull audio tour, ldquo;Press 5 for more information about street vendorshellip;rdquo;

Back in the Watershed we had a chat with Tom Bennett, the guy behind Interactive Places, about the experience and what the future holds.

Tom is working out of the Pervasive Media Studio and that pervasive, locative technology was integral to the walk (a GPS PDA worn pendant style with in-ear headphones). By and large, however, the technology was almost invisible, there were only a couple of times that the technology lsquo;got in the wayrsquo;. Samrsquo;s lost its GPS fix once and one of her games didnrsquo;t want to finish; both times sorted themselves out within minutes and everything else worked fine.

In addition to providing a great afternoon stroll, Tom really wanted to know how people got on with the system and what theyrsquo;d like more of in the next version.

Both Sam and I wanted more direct engagement in the storyline with some element of multi-threading, like the ldquo;Choose Your Own Adventurerdquo; series from the early 80rsquo;s to mid-90rsquo;s. That is certainly in Tomrsquo;s plan but he also pointed out that some people has asked for more history amp; background to be included, whilst others had asked for more mini-games and side plots. So lots of opportunities!

If you want to spend a great hour and a half wandering around Bristolrsquo;s Habourside and help out one of our upcoming innovative entrepreneurs, then pop along to the Watershed anytime between 11am and 5pm until Sunday, 26 April and say ldquo;Hirdquo; to Tom.

Uploaded on June 26, 2008 by Caro#039;s Lines

Everyone likes a list, Darren Rowse says so!

So herersquo;s my personal list of lists that I use when starting a business or helping others to start their business.

1. 10 steps to writing a business plan, every business needs one, every investor has their own preferred style. These notes from Business Link are a solid reminder of the basics when bouncing between the business plan, investor plan, funding proposals, summaries, etc.


2. 9 team roles. There are more ways of looking at a team than I care to try and remember. Belbinrsquo;s 9 roles work pretty well for me (even if therersquo;s only 2 people in the team). Theyrsquo;re pretty focused on the effectiveness of the team, rather than the social ability to get on with each other.


3. Many lists of population, economics, etc. Any business plan needs decent market research, the National Statistics Office is a fantastic resource for free, validated, high-quality data.


4. 15 sources of Government help. Ok, officially therersquo;s 30, the list says 29 and theyrsquo;re not all relevant to entrepreneurs. However, there are 15 that are pretty handy for a start-up or business looking for support in their early years.


5. 10 webapps that help you pull it all together. The link is to a Web Daily Worker list, my personal list would be:

• Freeagent (finance amp; time tracking)


• Google (Contacts amp; scheduling (with goosync), email, RSS reader, Docs)


• Remember the Milk


• Skype


• Twitter

Bonus:

1. my list of interesting articles from around the web (via shared items from my GReader)

And the photo? Well I was going to write a post listing the people I look up to (another Plinky prompt) but that was proving too hard!

Uploaded on May 3, 2007 by reway2007

lt;this is a cross-post from http://www.opencoffeebristol.org/gt;

That was the experience reported from this morningrsquo;s OpenCoffee and another reported positive feedback that more would follow. Of course this is bank lending so low risk, but at least it is funding to underwrite growth and expansion needs. Both reports were of the positive impact that the Enterprise Finance Guarantee is finally having for smaller businesses.

Elsewhere we had a couple of new faces with Brian Dorricott (ByNetWorks) and Ian Grimley (Roxburgh Milkins), well new to me, they came to the last OpenCoffee but I was in Plymouth that week. Along with the regulars we did a pretty good job of taking over the upper section of Starbucks.

Peter mentioned one of his clients was having some challenges with an old website that theyrsquo;d had a ldquo;materdquo; set up and had since had a falling out. Within minutes Sam had his Macbook out and was sorting through how to change the Nominet amp; hosting set-up, Ian was providing legal commentary and everyone else was chipping in with business / technical thoughts. I think Peter just about kept up taking notes!

Nigel and I had a couple of good discussions about business developments and various grant awards that are available.

It was great to catch up with Brian again. After a successful entrepreneurial career of his own, he joined SWAIN for a spell before leaving to return to angel investing in his own right. Ever the entrepreneur we had a good discussion about his venturing experiences and a development idea hersquo;s working on, and a business development / funding project Irsquo;m working on.

A great start to the day and lots of buzz around the tables.

The next OpenCoffee Bristol is a company demo session at SETsquared, courtesy of Nick Sturge on Tuesday, 21 April from 8.30am.

Please do book so we have some idea of numbers, and especially if you want to present your business / innovation, what yoursquo;re up to amp; what support / ideas yoursquo;re looking for.

http://opencoffeebristol21april2009.eventbrite.com/

Uploaded on May 26, 2007 by annia316

Whatrsquo;s your elevator pitch?

This is usually the first thing I ask an entrepreneur (or any one else for that matter) even if the words lsquo;elevatorrsquo; and lsquo;pitchrsquo; arenrsquo;t explicitly used. In this context though, Irsquo;ve signed up for Darren Rowsersquo;s 31 Day Build a Better Blog challenge and his opener (in true consultant fashion) is to pitch the question back at us.

So what is the elevator pitch for jbsh? Well our tag line (above) is pretty good start; thatrsquo;s what we help our clients achieve.

Specifically on my side of the partnership I would say:

We work in partnership with our clients to help them structure their business strategy, plan their implementation, and finance their activities. Our core skills are in thinking about opportunities systemically, and finding specialists where needed. We firmly believe in partnership amp; collaboration, growing the pie for all. In addition to keeping up with the latest thinking on businesses amp; their development, we actively cultivate the entrepreneurial ecosystem to keep those specialists nearby. This blog provides a window into our thinking and activities that, along with other social media tools, provides a comprehensive insight into the people and philosophy behind the company.

Of course that slightly depends on who Irsquo;m talking to!

Generally I wonrsquo;t open with a spiel about how great I am, the great companies Irsquo;ve worked with, the great successes Irsquo;ve had, etc. While past success can be an indicator of future success, its not a guarantee. Irsquo;d rather hear about your great business, your great features and your problems so that I can figure out the opportunities and how to maximise them.

Business development is about spotting opportunities and helping people reach them. That means taking the time to listen to an entrepreneur and then frame their idea in a strategic context that means they can see a clear and simple path to success.

Sometimes that means temporarily filling the gaps in their skills amp; abilities, either by doing some market research, number crunching or putting together a convincing business plan, sometimes that means finding an expert partner that can help you over the longer term. While the basics are usually similar, its the implementation thatrsquo;s different every time, and thatrsquo;s whats great about business development.

So whatrsquo;s your elevator pitch?

Red Arrows over London - Uploaded on June 22, 2006 by mundocuadro

Show people!

lt;This is a joint post with Craig Hellen from BexMedia.gt;

People are visual, we like to see stuff. Long thesis and manifestos are great for explaining in great detail the nuance and subtly of your plan, but first to have to get people to read that stuff. Everyonersquo;s time is precious so you need to make a fast, powerful case to spend some of that time on your idea.

Yoursquo;ve got a fantastic idea and want to tell the world about it!

All communication is ultimately all about the message. Before you even pick up a camera there are three key things to think about:

1. the audience


2. the story


3. the storyteller

Audience

In writing these articles, the first thing I considered was the audience, you. You may be interested in making pots of cash. You probably donrsquo;t have pots of cash to start with.

Hello my name is... Uploaded on September 22, 2006 by rick

But who are you trying to reach? Are you after the Chief Executive of a global business, Angel investor, a respected academic at University, local government worker, an individual consumer or activist, other people like you? All these audiences will have different requirements and expectations in how to be approached with a great idea. Theyrsquo;ll get their news from different sources and in different forms. Unless yoursquo;re only interested in people like you seeing your message, really think about who the audience is.

You might want to try developing personarsquo;s and testing your message against them. Make up an example of your target audience. Give them a name and a back story. How old are they, where do they live, where do they work, did they go to university (which one), do they have a family, what car do they drive, what TV/Radio/Newspapers do they consume? The more detail you can generate the better. If you have time, make up a couple persona and try your story out on all of them.

In setting up OpenCoffee Bristol, I wanted entrepreneurs and the professionals that support them to get together once a fortnight to discuss business development and ideas around building an entrepreneurial ecosystem in Bristol. I researched what type of entrepreneurs started up in Bristol and what they were in to. I spoke to as many professionals as I could to learn about them and what they were in to. Before I launched I knew my audience and was able to communicate effectively to them, as evidenced by the successful launch with support from Starbucks and local PR companies and good attendance.

Story

Super starters - Uploaded on March 16, 2006 by Ranger Gord

Again, working backwards; what do you want people to do after watching your video? Do you want people to sign up to a service, buy a product, forward the video to their friends / work colleagues, change their behaviour, have a good laugh and move on to the next thing in their day?

Are you a business, charity, volunteer organisation or individual? Are you trying to show how easy it is to use your product / service? Are you explaining how your idea will change the world? What story are you trying to get across?

Whatever yoursquo;re trying to do, link each feature to a benefit. We have this feature so you get this benefit. Itty Biz has a great post on this.

If yoursquo;re doing a product demo then create a typical journey through your product and explain the features at each stage, along with the benefit to the customer.

A side note on humour; if you can pull it off then use carefully and be mindful of your audience. If yoursquo;re not a natural comedian then donrsquo;t even try to be funny, just stick to a simple narrative with clear feature-benefit links.

Storyteller

Not everyone is a natural story teller. Thatrsquo;s OK. Itrsquo;s usually considered a good thing if you can be the outward face of your idea / enterprise and its certainly cheaper than paying an actor! Other good people to tell your story are the people yoursquo;re helping, or selling to. Personal perspectives work really well in getting a message across, which is why charities always show an individual and give them a name (even if itrsquo;s a dog or cat).

The storyteller doesnrsquo;t have to be on screen, narrators can be very powerful. The story teller doesnrsquo;t even have to speak, they can reveal the narrative through their actions and images. Remember though that yoursquo;re trying to get a message across in a short and compact way, not create avant-garde conceptual art. Large companies with huge budgets can afford to run messages that make no sense for months and then lsquo;revealrsquo; the secret product/service that they were talking about; you probably canrsquo;t wait that long.

Putting it all together

Herersquo;s the classic rule breaker from Apple back in 1984.

First Day In Spring! - Uploaded on March 20, 2009 by swisscan

I join entrepreneurs with resources to grow the economic ecosystem. I use enthusiasm, inclusive networks amp; systemic thinking. How about you? (140 characters, gotta love Twitter!)

Spring is in the air, budgets are being reviewed, contracts renewed (or not as the econoclapse might dictate), a good time to move on, upwards (sideways at least), and to think about what it is that we do.

A couple of convergences brought this train of thought into words (apart from the stuff above).

Irsquo;m halfway through Sir Ken Robinsonrsquo;s ldquo;The Elementrdquo;, recently finished Seth Godinrsquo;s ldquo;Meatball Sundaerdquo; (and Tribes), and Plinky sent a couple of interesting prompts through (What do you do on a daily basis, and Whatrsquo;s your favourite gadget).

The first step to being able to help someone (entrepreneur, small business, community group, customer), is to understand what they do (or would like to be able to do). So Irsquo;m regularly approaching this challenge from both sides, explaining to folks what I do, and helping them explain to others what they do.

This is a variant on the elevator pitch, or the Hollywood pitch (depending on your attention span), and falls loosely under the topic of personal branding.

To a certain extent its a bit of fun, but its also very handy in figuring out which of the options available you should pursue.

So what do you (not your company) do?

It also explains my favourite gadget; my Touch Pro (and Irsquo;m looking forward to the Touch Pro 2). It allows me to stay connected to my loose networks (through gmail, twitter, sms), communicate with my direct network (via voice amp; Skype), helps me remember whatrsquo;s going on (through GCal, RTM), helps me get to where Irsquo;m meant to be (through GMaps amp; GPS, and you can find me on Latitude), and helps me work away from the laptop (via Word Mobile, Evernote and the camera)!

I know this is quot;internal onlyquot;, I#039;m waiting for a public version I can replace it with.

Irsquo;m increasingly unconvinced by the ldquo;social enterpriserdquo; label as a distinct business model. Of the legal forms of incorporation only one has distinct ldquo;social featuresrdquo; (the CIC) but thatrsquo;s not suitable for everyone. There are certainly many businesses trading for social improvement or with a strong social ethic running through them, just as there are businesses with strong design ethic, or engineering excellence, or any number of coherent passionate shared values.

As a branding mechanism I can see a value in being recognised as a ldquo;social enterpriserdquo;. It catches a very strong Zeitgeist and clearly flags your tribe, enabling people to make purchasing decisions.

Anyhow, on with the day. This was part of the ESRCrsquo;s Festival of Science.

Session 1

The first session was with Katie Alcott (Frank Water), a great example of a social enterprise, and based in Bristol. It was refreshing that despite the obvious social aims and largely philanthropic ambitions, Katie had been quite level headed in starting Frank. Shersquo;d pulled together a team of 5 to launch the product, identified different legal forms of incorporation and decided that a trading company was the best way to achieve her aims.

Unfortunately there was still a bit of confusion between a Limited Company and Social Enterprise. Katie seemed to be suggesting that they were somehow different, when its actually down to the purpose and operation of the business. There are specific legal forms of incorporation that you can use (such as the CIC which was talked about in the break out session) but Frank are a Ltd with a Charitable arm.

What set them apart was their ethic and business focus. The main alternative Katie and Tom looked at was a charity but felt that this was akin to ldquo;beggingrdquo; for money. Yes everyone got a warm fuzzy feeling at helping the less well off, but it wasnrsquo;t as sustainable as a business receiving revenue for a valued product or service.

Having launched the business, Katie has demonstrated very acute business development initative with their 1:200 campaign (something the other bottle water companies are following, always a good sign). They obviously have a good sense of marketing, a great design, a solid and building a tribe of followers, and are increasingly delivering the social change projects Katie wanted to.

Break Out

The break out session was to discuss what a Social Enterprise was. There isnrsquo;t a lsquo;templatersquo; presented to us, we were given some examples from the Ashoka Foundation and asked to consider them. We felt that there had to be a business, rather than a charity or volunteer group, and that the principle purpose had to be some social benefit. But beyond that we struggled to come up with a binding definition, which was a recurring theme.

Session 2

The second sessions tried to ask ldquo;How do we know, as consumers amp; citizens, that we a dealing with a social enterprise?rdquo; and was led by June Burrough (Pierian Centre). June was very proud of her Social Enterprise Mark as it represented a line in the sand, a recognition but didnrsquo;t require her to change what she was doing. The Pierian Centre provide training amp; conference space in the middle of St Pauls. When she set up the centre, June was advised to take St Pauls off her address as ldquo;no on would go there for trainingrdquo;.

That was just buying into the prevailing social attitudes to the St Pauls area. June stuck to her guns and now has a thriving centre with executive training, homoeopathy and counselling (and a whole load more) all making use of her building. A large part of the social in her enterprise is the use of local providers for catering, training, etc. She also runs a sliding price scale so that those will less resource to pay make a smaller contribution.

The Centre is set up as a CIC so that the assets (the Grade 1 listed building) are returned to the community should the company cease trading.

Break Out

We came up with a long list of things you might want to know about in deciding if the company you were dealing with was a rsquo;social enteprisersquo; but were hampered by know really knowing enough about the Social Enterprise Mark. It also became clear that while some companies (like Frank Water) are happy to have their photos on the web and to be very lsquo;out therersquo;, some other very valid social enterprises were less comfortable with that.

Session 3

Last up was Sam Robinson (eaga) asking about ldquo;What might we want to know about the human side of the benefits amp; changes that social enterprise promises to bring?rdquo;. eaga is quite an interesting business story outside any social enterprise context. Set up to disburse Government grants to improve home heating efficiency they quickly grew to be a large business, set up as a partnership (a la John Lewis Partnership) then floated retaining a controlling share within the Partnership Trust. With over 4,000 employees across half a dozen countries theyrsquo;re not your usual little social.

It might have been Samrsquo;s title (CSR Manager) that struck a slight discord but to me it was the disconnect between the core purpose of eaga, managing grants and installing energy efficiency systems, and the social aspects being discussed which were mainly in the sub-continent and around sanitation and education.

The far stronger story was the simple operation of eaga in efficiently using Government funds to implement energy efficiency and heating insulation in the less well of parts of the UK.

Sam acknowledged that they were using their muscle to encourage their supply chain to be more charitable. He also recognised the challeneges of just being a lsquo;CSR Ticketrsquo; and integrating social enterprise into ethic of business. Whether you can do that as a plc Irsquo;m not sure. Interestingly they floated in June 2007 at a share price of 227.75 and steadily fell to 94.75 almost exactly a year later, theyrsquo;re now back up around 130-140. There must be a lot of pressure on the senior management team to make up that loss in value.

Wrap up

There wasnrsquo;t really a wrap up session or final discussion. This is clearly an ongoing series of discussions and debates.

The evolving Social Enterprise Mark piloted in the South West by RISE seems like a clear encapsulation of ldquo;social enterpriserdquo; in an easy to present format that most people will agree with. The challenge will be to communicate this quickly enough, to a large enough audience that it gains currency, without exceeding expectations on what social enterprises can do.

Change of venue and format brought out the regulars and new faces for this morningrsquo;s OpenCoffee Club meeting. Mariama Njie welcomed us all with fresh coffee, tea and chocolate cookies to UWE Venturesrsquo; new business incubation space in Bush House right on the harbourside in Bristol. There was plenty of time for folk to have a good look around and catch up with each other before squeezing into the main Board Room for the company demorsquo;s.

First up was Michael Bartley from Test amp; Verification Solutions. Michael introduced us to software testing and code validation. His expertise was in providing clients with access to reduced cost and flexible resources at this specific point in their software development cycle. Michael works closely between clients and partners (mainly in India) to build find the right out source partner (rather than a body-shop as Sam Machin described it). The right partner was one that understood the application domain as well as the technology and could provide a high quality of service with good knowledge management.

After software testing, Ed Ross introduced his solution to oversized email attachments and overwhelming spam. Tonsho provides both services in a single subscription. Attachments of up to 100MB are handled through normal SMTP from your email to the Tonsho servers, the recipient receives a friendly email with a link to the file that they download (again through SMTP). Whilst all this is going on, Tonsho also offers a ldquo;challenge - responserdquo; solution to spam. Email that fails a spam filter triggers a challenge to solve a capatcha, if successful the email is automatically moved to the inbox and the sender added to the users white list. Ed was using Adsense and limited additional marketing, some good write-ups on About.com and word of mouth from existing users to grow the service. Basic accounts are free, added storage and features are available from Pro, and Enterprise accounts. Ed also offers a ldquo;Photographersrdquo; version that includes a photo gallery with watermarking.

Last up, but certainly not least, was Nigel Legg with a live demo of his latest enterprise Katugas Social Media Monitoring. Building on his experience coding and analysing free text responses on market surveys, Nigel is now delivering detailed analysis of a companies social media profile. Using software from Radian6 in Canada, Nigel pulled up a series of queries for Open Coffee and topics that might be talked about. Turns out the iPhone is very popular with nearly 500k mentions in the last 30 days. The interesting part was when Nigel pulled up individual mentions, and began grading them for sentiment (positive to negative on 5 point scale). He then pulled up the key influencers based on number of articles, comments, links, etc. A really powerful analysis of a businessrsquo;s online presence and valuable tool for monitoring brand perception. With the ability to report daily, weekly and monthly this is a fantastic addition to Bristolrsquo;s business environment.

After the semi-formal presentations folks carried on discussions until gone 10am. Mariama did an excellent job supplying coffee throughout and lots of new connections were started.

Thanks again to the presenters, attendees and UWE Ventures.

The next OpenCoffee Bristol will be on 10 March at Starbucks on Park St. The next demo session will be in a month or two (drop me an email or comment if yoursquo;d like to present).

Napolean Wrasse - Uploaded on November 30, 2007 by Michael Aston

What one piece of advice would you pass on?

A significant part of what we at jbsh get up to is building partnerships. These partnerships involve businesses, Universities, Primary Care Trusts, consultants (business amp; medical), doctors (academic amp; medical), private individuals, etc. With so many people there are always differing perceptions about what the collaboration is trying to achieve, and plenty of opportunity for miscommunication.

In my early days of change implementation with small engineering companies in Cornwall, I was given some sage advice by my PhD supervisor:

Donrsquo;t ascribe to malice what can be ascribed to ignorance

I believe the quote to have originally been from Napoleon Bonaparte though I canrsquo;t find a definitive reference.

Its very easy when yoursquo;re charging into a situation to assume that everyone knows everything you do and has the same ambition you do. This is never the case. If yoursquo;re not prepared for it, genuine cock-ups can sometime appear to be carefully planned Machiavellian schemes to bring about your professional and personal downfall.

I try to assume that people are acting with good intentions, trying to help me succeed as I try to help them. When things donrsquo;t work out its probably because I havenrsquo;t explained things well enough or theyrsquo;re acting on information Irsquo;m not aware of.

The solution is of course better communication. Better doesnrsquo;t always mean more, a 5 min phone call is usually more productive than several pages of email or ldquo;briefingrdquo; document; half an hour over coffee, or a beer, is often better than 4 hours in a stuffy meeting room. Spending the time to see someone on their territory is often better than dragging them halfway across the city/country/world.

When you have done the ground work with short, concise messages specific to each party to build shared understanding, then you can hold a larger meeting where everyone can discover that actually they are working to an agreed agenda. Yoursquo;ll also know where peoplersquo;s corporate and individual comfort zones are and can help a consensus emerge that still achieves the broad aims.

Of course, sometimes people do act in the short term against what might be broadly considered as lsquo;fair playrsquo;. However, in this world of instant, always on, communications and data overload, we are more reliant than ever before on trusted advisers and connectors.

A reputation is something you build over a lifetime, but throw away in an instant.

Thatrsquo;s another piece of advice for free!

Thanks to Plinky again for prompting me again.

That was Sir Ken Robinsonrsquo;s challenge to us (and everyone really) last night at the Arnolfini. I hadnrsquo;t seen his TED2006 presentation, you should, its just there on the right.

First of all, Sir Ken is an exceptional speaker. Very self-depreciating sense of humour, great timing, stage presence, etc. If the message werenrsquo;t so profound we might have been in the Comedy Club.

After a pre-amble Sir Ken opened by noting that he hadnrsquo;t really followed a planned career, that hersquo;d been opportunistic whilst following his personal true north. But then do any of us follow a planned career these days?

When we write our CV we impose a narrative retrospectively, or as Sir Ken put it:

hellip;thus I moved from being a gardener to helicopter pilothellip;[pause]

as have so many before mehellip;

He boiled his book down into 2 core principles for being ldquo;in your elementrdquo;:

1. Doing stuff which for which you have a natural aptitude


2. and loving what you do

Everyone has many aptitudes, things wersquo;re good at, that we get. The trouble is, because we lsquo;get itrsquo; we assume that its obvious, that anyone could do it. The trick is to realise that, maybe, itrsquo;s not so obvious and actually we are genuinely better at that particular thing than others.

The example Sir Ken used was Terence Tao. At two, Terence taught himself to read, by 3 he was doing double-digit mathematics, by 9 he scored 99% in the Maths SAT, by 20 he had a PhD and by 30 he won the Field Medal for Maths. Terence was good at maths, he lsquo;got itrsquo;.

Not everyone can be as good at maths as Terence, arguably no one is. But there are things wersquo;re good at, that we get, that others find difficult. Those are the things that Sir Ken is suggesting we find, discover and encourage in ourselves and others. In an aside (of which there were a few) the culture of corporate amp; organisational development was touched upon. A very powerful case was made for thinking of the organisation as an organism, to consider development more akin to gardening than engineering.

A good gardener creates the right conditions for plants to flourish, a good manager should create the right conditions for their people to flourish.

Sir Ken then moved on to the concept of loving what you do. He related a gig he went to many years ago. Afterwards they were having a drink with the band and he remarked to the keyboard player that hersquo;d love to be in a band and playing keyboards. The response was ldquo;no you donrsquo;trdquo;, after a bit the clarification was that Sir Ken liked the idea of being in a band, whereas the keyboard player loved it, would be doing it even if he wasnrsquo;t playing gigs.

When we find something we love doing that plays to our natural aptitudes, then wersquo;re in our element.

Like natural resources, human resources are often buried. Theyrsquo;re not always lying right on the surface to pick up and run with. That should be the role of the education system. In the TED talk Sir Ken makes the point that the education system is designed to produce University Professors. Which is fine for University Professors, but of varying use for everyone else.

Another issue that was brought but with education was that life is not linear but our education system assumes it is. You canrsquo;t plan the future of anything (the recent weather has re-taught us that) let alone people. Schooling kids at Primary / Kindergarten to prepare them for University is madness. A 3-year old is not half a 6-year old; a 6-year old is not half a 12-year old.

Unfortunately there wasnrsquo;t much on what Sir Kenrsquo;s education system would look like or how it would operate. Perhaps thatrsquo;s in the book. A lot of people are working on similar ideas, most notably in Bristol the Enquiring Minds project with Futurelab and Microsoft but the systemic transformation is some way off.

Thanks go to Bristol Festival of Ideas for organising and the Arnolfini for hosting.