OpenCoffee tomorrow 10am Rubicon
- Comhar will have a user/demo session for those who are interested (and are sponsoring refreshments)
- it@cork encourages everyone to vote in the Leaders Awards which close tomorrow
- I’ll soon be moving over to proper mailing list software to make sub/un-sub easier and to prevent my constant mistakes with BCC!
- In the meantime just email me at any stage to unsub from mails as almost everything will be published on this blog too.
Which location do you prefer for Cork OCC?
Now that OCC has been held in Rubicon twice, I’d like to get attendee feedback on preferred location. Please vote in the poll and add any comments you like to this post.
Start-up User Forum at OCC, what do you think?
We have had an offer from one of the Rubicon companies that I would like to run past you. They wish to conduct a user forum as part of Cork OpenCoffee this coming Friday 28th. This will allow them to get some feedback on their product offering.
They will sponsor scones/buns and coffee for the morning. They will have someone from outside their company to act as a facilitator to focus the group and take the responses. Of course, if it’s not of interest to you, please treat it as a standard OCC meeting since the user forum is opt-in only.
Let us know what you think by voting your preference below and add any comments you like to this post
Small BES/SCS Update
From Denise in GEP:
I spoke with Cillian in Revenue last week before he went on holidays re coming down to Cork to do open session on BES/SCS- he said although there were headline announcements in the news in the last 2 weeks, the details have still not been worked out and will have to go through the Dail (which is just resumed) before Revenue will start any public discussion on it. We spoke of mid to late October as possible and I am keeping in touch with him on it and will keep you posted.
From other sources, there has been comments that it could go out to Dec 5th with the Budget.
Unfortunately, it sounds like the previous melee (was it 2004?) is going to happen all over again with everyone trying to get in before Dec 31st.
Next OCC this Friday in the Rubicon
After such a great turnout at the last one, I hope we have even more new faces this week. Unfortunately I probably won’t be able to make it as I’ll be coming back from the DemoBar event in Dublin. If I catch an early enough train I may make part of the session.
I have received no update on BES/SCS. If anyone else has, please share it with the group. On Will Knott’s suggestion, I contacted Cillian Byrnes in the Revenue Commissioners regarding the possibility of him doing interviews which would capture all the important details of both schemes. He is currently on vacation and will get back to me on his return.
I would encourage all the OCCers to subscribe to the RSS feed or via the Feedburner mail option in the right-hand sidebar. I won’t be doing mail-shots after today’s one as I know some of you find them intrusive. Right now there are only 8 people RSS subscribed and 1 via email.
Declan and Diarmuid kindly covered the refreshments at the last OCC. Paul Healy has kindly offered to take care of the cost of the coffee which is excellent news. Thanks Paul! If people are eager for scones we can lob a euro or so each into a cup to cover the cost and have someone different volunteer to get them for each session?
Attendee Company Page
I thought it might be useful to have a page listing OCC attendee companies along with a contact name. Nothing too formal. If you want yours added, just send me an email.
First OCC in Rubicon Centre was A+
A while back Diarmuid Wrenne of Lukulu made the great suggestion that we hold Cork OCC in the Rubicon out in CIT. We had the first of two trial meet-ups on Friday and I think it was a roaring success. It looked to me that more than twenty people came and went in the two hours. We had regulars, Rubicon incubator companies and new attendees too which was particularly gratifying.
Paul Healy who runs the two Rubicon Centres (a new one with hot-desking facilities opened on Model Farm road recently) made sure to get the word out and co-ordinated on coffee etc. The event couldn’t have happened without him, thanks Paul! We did a quick round-the-room who-am-I which was a big help and the conversation roamed from Seed Capital Scheme to Nokia N770s to SeedCamp to guerrilla coffee marketing.
I was delighted that Joe Burke from South Cork County Enterprise Board turned up. I am convinced that there is a strong match between small Web companies and the target clientbase of the CEBs. Joe is keeping a close eye on SCS and BES developments so hopefully we’ll have more news there in two weeks time.
Another major improvement was the attendance of Phoebe and Sinéad. Apart from the first OCC and possibly one other, the meets have been 100% male until now. I hope they become regulars and encourage more women to attend.
A special word of thanks goes to Declan Nestor from Mr Cotton Coffee who sponsored the morning. I had thought that Declan was just an individual taking care of getting decent coffee on the day but it turns out [a] he’s in the coffee business [b] he is on the Genesis Enterprise Programme in the Rubicon and [c] he has some brilliant ideas for leveraging technology to help him sell even more coffee. If you do see any of his coffee vans in action around the city, make sure to buy a cup, it really is top class. Thanks also to Lukulu for sponsoring the scones.
This really had injected new energy into Cork OCC and I’m looking forward to the next one hugely.
If you have any suggestions for this new blog, do send them on either in the comments or using any of the methods listed here. If you would like to write posts here related to OCC, entrepreneurship and issues concerning small business, I’m more than happy to provide a login.
