‘Discovery Zone’ for new business ideas

March 9, 2010 – 5:49 pm

Discovery Images TempThis is an excellent opportunity for brand new business ideas. A new programme called ‘Discovery Zone’ has been set up in the Rubicon Centre, the host of many Cork Open Coffees.

If you are among the many that aspire to starting your own business but don’t know where to start, then the Discovery Zone could be just the launching pad you need.  The programme has been specifically developed to assist experienced professionals, who for a variety of reasons find themselves at a crossroads in their career.

You may be a middle to senior manager who has a wealth of experience running a business for someone else, but would now like the chance to run your own business! You may not possess a business idea, but have the experience and motivation to successfully establish and run a new business, with some training and guidance.  The programme will encourage new idea generation and will also explore commercial opportunities, through partnership with other entrepreneurs or academic institutions.

Run as a full-time twelve week programme in the Rubicon Centre, located on campus within CIT, the Discovery Zone will harness the ability of participants as they immerse themselves in the programme. A number of key topics will be discussed, including idea generation, viability testing and the various routes to commercialisation. Practical guidance will be on hand from individuals on how they successfully changed from manager to entrepreneur.

Not only will they examine in depth the potential of their own idea, but upon completion, participants will also acquire an understanding of what will be required should they wish to convert their idea into a viable business.  Alternatively, if their preference is partnership, they will be equipped with the knowledge of how to develop successful partnership arrangements.

The Programme will commence in March 2010 and places will be offered to 10 suitable participants, selection by means of an interview. The participants will be based in the Rubicon Centre, for the duration of the programme. Each participant will be expected to attend the Centre 5 days per week where they will receive guidance both individually and in groups to assist in the progression of their ideas.

ND100224b01webA dedicated Programme Manager will act as a resource for the participants. Additionally they will have access to the expertise of Rubicon staff, CIT Researchers and the CIT Technology Transfer Office. As the Discovery Zone is part funded by Enterprise Ireland, each project will be allocated the services of an Enterprise Ireland Mentor who will provide specific guidance to all projects.

To apply for a place on the programme, please log onto the Rubicon Centre website.  Closing date for receipt of application is 5pm on Friday 19th March 2010.

Further details on the Programme can be obtained by contacting Paul Healy, Rubicon Centre Manager – 021 4928901 or email paul.healy@cit.ie.

By Gordon | Posted in Announcements, Business, Community | Comments (0)

Cork Open Coffee Friday the 5th

March 4, 2010 – 1:23 pm

Hi Occers,

This weeks Cork Open Coffee is taking place this Friday the 5th at 10am in The Rubicon Centre in Bishopstown in Cork.

Phoebe Bright from Jumpstart Cork will be giving a quick talk and hoping for some feedback on the concept of profit-share as a payment method for work for businesses. There is time for a second talk if there is anoyne that would like to present something new to memebers for some feedback.

Cork Open Coffee is also looking for any businesses that might like to Sponsor some future Open Coffee events, this means for a small amount we’d be able to get in some Coffee and nibbles from local businesses. Paul Brugger from CityLocal Cork was good enough to sponser Open Coffee for a few weeks before Christmas.

In keeping with the ‘Open’ in Cork Open Coffee, we are publishing the email campaign stats on the Cork Open Coffee Blog. You can see the stats from the last few emails on the blog now. No ones email address will be displayed on the blog, just some overview information and hopefully some useful data that might be of interest to members sending their own email marketing campaigns.

If you think you’ll be attending, please let us know in the blog comments.

Talk to you all on Friday,

Conor, Ciara & Gordon
Cork Open Coffee Organisers.
http://www.corkopencoffee.org

By Gordon | Posted in Announcements | Comments (2)

Email marketing Stats for the Cork Open Coffee “After Dark” email

March 4, 2010 – 12:16 am

I sent this email to Cork Open Coffee members last Wednesday at 7.50pm. This was an evening campaign so I was curious to see any differences in open rates and click rates compared to the last couple of campaigns sent earlier in the day.

  • Email sent to 167 email recipients. (+7 from last email)
  • Subject length: 5 Words (29 characters, -8 characters from last email)
  • Open Rate: 26.9% (down 5.6% from the last email)
  • Bounce Rate: 1.2% (Down 0.1% from last email)
  • Click Rate: 3.6% (down 10.3% from last email)
  • Unsubscribe: 0
  • New Subscriptions: 0

The open rate is down a little this time. This is to be expected I imagine because at 8pm in the evening most people are at home and away from their computer.

The click rate is down quite a bit too, over 10%.  This email had only 4 calls to action, 2 in the content and 2 footer links. The last email had 8 links with a resulting click rate of 13.9%. This email just didn’t have a lot for people to do.

Interestingly, it was one of the links towards the end of the email, the link to the Cork Open Coffee blog that got all the clicks, instead of the map link like I’d expect since that was up top.

The opens and clicks all peaked 1 hour after the email was sent and dropping off after that, someone opened the email at 3am! There were a couple of opens and clicks again the following morning after 9am with some small activity right through the working hours of Thursday.

cork-open-coffee-after-dark

Looking back over the past couple of campaigns, nearly all the open and click activity happens within the first hour after the campaign is sent.

By Gordon | Posted in Announcements, Community, email marketing | Comments (0)

Cork Open Coffee “After Dark”

February 24, 2010 – 10:48 pm

Hi Occers,

Just before Christmas we experimented with an evening version of Open Coffee we affectionately called ‘After Dark’, the name seems to have stuck.

This coming Friday the 26th we’re having another After Dark at 8pm in The Bodega, Cornmarket Street in Cork (Map here).

It’s a great opportunity to attend Open Coffee and meet other members who can’t break away during work hours. It’s also a great excuse to grab a beer. We’ll be having these After Dark meetings on the last Friday of each month.

So if you’re free after work this Friday evening, call in and join us if you can. Look for the group of people with plenty of mobile phones and possibly laptops since there’s free Wi-fi in the Bodega. The last time, we gathered together just inside the door on the left in a little cubbyhole section.

Talk to you all on Friday,

Conor, Ciara & Gordon

Cork Open Coffee Organisers.

Don’t forget to follow @corkopencoffee on Twitter!

By Gordon | Posted in Announcements | Comments (0)

Email marketing Stats for the ‘Cork Open Coffee Friday 17th February’ email

February 24, 2010 – 3:16 pm

The last Cork Open Coffee reminder email to members was sent on Wednesday the 17th of February at 3.50pm.

This was an afternoon email compared to a mid morning email the last time.

As promised, here are its stats:

  • Email sent to 160 email recipients. (+3 from last email)
  • Subject length: 6 Words (37 characters, +1 character from  last email)
  • Open Rate: 32.5% (up 2.9% from  last email)
  • Bounce Rate: 1.3% (Down from last email)
  • Click Rate: 13.9% (Up from last email)
  • Unsubscribe: 0
  • New Subscriptions: 0

The Open rate and Click rate have both improved from the last email with a drop in Bounce rate making it a more successful campaign overall.  Perhaps an afternoon email after 3pm to people is better than a mid morning after 10am email?

This time, the most popular links to be clicked were the link to the map (10.3%), the link showing the previous email stats (51.7%) and the link asking people to follow @corkopencoffee on Twitter (13.8%).

corkopencoffee_email_screen

There is an email going out to Cork Open Coffee members this afternoon about Cork Open Coffee ‘After Dark’, an evening meeting of Open Coffee members that can’t make it for the morning meetings. The stats of that will be put up on this blog too.

By Gordon | Posted in Community, Reports, email marketing | Comments (0)

Cork Open Coffee Friday 19th February

February 17, 2010 – 6:50 pm

Hi Occers,

This weeks Cork Open Coffee is taking place this Friday the 19th at 10am in The Bodega, Cornmarket street in Cork. No demos this week, just coffee and networking. The Bodega opens at 10am, they have free wifi and a map on their website for how to get there.

We have begun using MailChimp to send these email notifications to Cork Open Coffee members. The email list is currently 160 members strong and is growing on a regular basis thanks to existing members recommending the meetings to others, please keep it up! If you know of others that might like to receive the Open Coffee emails, there is a new Sign-up widget on the blog.

In keeping with the ‘Open’ in Cork Open Coffee, we will be publishing the email campaign stats on the Cork Open Coffee Blog. You can see the stats from the last email on the blog now. No ones email address will be displayed on the blog, just some overview information and hopefully some useful data that might be of interest to members sending their own email marketing campaigns.

If you think you’ll be attending, please let us know in the blog comments.

Talk to you all on Friday,

Conor, Ciara & Gordon

Cork Open Coffee Organisers.

http://www.corkopencoffee.org

Don’t forget to follow @corkopencoffee on Twitter!

By Gordon | Posted in Announcements, Community | Comments (1)

Email marketing Stats for the ‘Cork Open Coffee Friday 5th February’ email

February 10, 2010 – 11:42 am

The last Cork Open Coffee reminder email to members was sent on Wednesday the 3rd of February at 9.50am. As promised, here are its stats:

  • Email sent to 157 email recipients.
  • Subject length: 6 Words (36 characters).
  • Open Rate: 29.6%
  • Bounce Rate: 3.2%. (Hard bounces, emails no longer exist)
  • Click Rate: 11.8%
  • Unsubscribe: 0
  • New Subscriptions: 5

There were 7 links in the email. The most popular link clicked was the link to the Cork Open Coffee Blog. I wrote in the email that I would be publishing this email marketing information followed by this link to the blog which received 28.6% of the clicks.

In the image below, the percentage of clicks to each link can be seen. It is interesting to see the links with the most clicks were sort of in the middle of the email, I would have assumed the links towards the beginning of the email would have received a bit more attention.

Cork Open Coffee Email

The last time a recipient clicked on any of the links was almost exactly 48 hours later, 5 minutes before the beginning of Open Coffee that Friday morning. 21 people attended the Open Coffee morning that morning, a ‘bum-on-seat’ rate of 13.4%.

Most people opened the email only once or twice. A couple of people opened the email as many as 15-20 times! I wonder why that that figure is so high.

Most of the email activity was in the first two hours after the email was sent with the most clicks happening in the first hour.

The Cork Open Coffee email was sent using MailChimp and the Stats were taken from MailChimps dashboard.

By Gordon | Posted in Community, Reports, email marketing | Comments (1)

Cork Open Coffee Friday 5th February

February 3, 2010 – 12:50 pm

Hello all,

This weeks Cork Open Coffee will take place on Friday the 5th in The Rubicon Centre at 10am. If you need directions to the Rubicon, there is a map on their website.

There are no speakers lined up yet, if you have a new or interesting web product you’d like to show and get feedback from a techie audience either this week on in the future, please let us know in the blog comments or by responding to this email.

If you think you’ll be attending, please let us know in the blog comments so we can have an idea of numbers.

We have begun to use Mailchimp to send these email notifications to Cork Open Coffee members. The email list currently just shy of 160 members, is growing on a regular basis thanks to existing members recommending the meetings to other people. Please keep it up!

In keeping with the ‘Open’ of Cork Open Coffee, we will be publishing some email marketing data such as open rates and clicks rates on the Cork Open Coffee blog. No ones email address will be displayed on the blog, just some overview information and hopefully some useful data that might be of interest to members sending their own email marketing campaigns.

If there are any companies out there that would like to sponsor coffee for some of the meetings, please get in touch. In return you’ll get some publicity about your business on the blog, email and Twitter.

Don’t forget to follow @Corkopencoffee on Twitter!

Talk to you all on Friday,

Gordon.

By Conor O'Neill | Posted in Announcements | Comments (2)

Cork Open Coffee Friday 22nd January

January 20, 2010 – 1:17 pm

Cork Open Coffee is back for the new year!

This weeks Open Coffee will be on in the new (and dry) UCC Western Gate building on Western Road. Friday the 22nd at 10am. We will be in Room 231/226 on level 2.

James Little from UCC, a regular at Open Coffee has arranged for a room for us for the morning. Thanks James! Coffee on Friday will be supplied by Mr. Cotton Coffee.  James will be giving a brief talk on Innovation Vouchers.

UCC Western Gate

There is room for another if anyone would like to give a talk or get feedback on their product or service.

Last year, the Coffee for the last couple of months supplied by Mr. Cotton was kindly sponsored by Paul Brugger from CityLocal Cork.

If there are any companies out there that would like to sponsor coffee for some of the meetings, please get in touch using the comments below or email us using corkopencoffee .at. gmail.com. In return you’ll get some publicity about your business on this blog and the notification email that goes out to members for each meeting.

Talk to you all on Friday!

By Gordon | Posted in Announcements | Comments (0)

Cork Open Coffee Friday 11th at 10am

December 10, 2009 – 9:33 am

This weeks Cork Open Coffee is in the Rubicon Centre, CIT Campus Bishopstown on Friday 11th from 10am – 12pm.This the last Cork Open Coffee of 2009.

There will be 2 demos on Friday. John Dennehy will be talking about his great time tracking application at http://www.assemblypoint.com and Paul Brugger will be talking about a new Twitter application called @Localnumber which allows you to search and instantly receive contact phone numbers for businesses types in your area through Twitter.

Some great coffee and nibbles will be there on the morning, free to all thanks to sponsorship from Paul Brugger from City Local Cork. The Coffee is from Mr Cotton Coffee and the nibbles are from Denise O Callaghans Delicious gluten free bakery.

Hope to see you all there tomorrow and feel free to bring any friends or other interested parties, ALL WELCOME.

By Gordon | Posted in Announcements, Community, Events | Comments (0)