Switching back to Upcoming for Calendaring
When Cork OCC kicked off, we used Upcoming.org as the site on which to list the dates of the meetups. For a variety of technical reasons I moved that to Eventful after a few months. Unfortunately, most of the blogs/sites that list technology/business events in Ireland use Upcoming so we are missing out on some publicity opportunities. The switch-back shouldn’t make a huge difference to most attendees. I’ll change the widget in the sidebar to point to Upcoming and you can subscribe to the RSS feed if you like. You can also “join” the group on Upcoming if you have a Yahoo login.
I’ll add the next meetup to Upcoming shortly. Just need to confirm that Webworks will be ok as the venue.
Useful guidance on Confidentiality Agreements
David Reilly from PJ ODriscoll’s has put together a great overview of the key issues to be aware of in Confidentiality agreements. Gordon has made it available via Google Docs here. Any questions or comments can be added on this post and I’m sure David will address them.
Dublin OpenCoffee tomorrow
Just a reminder that there are regular OCC meetups in Limerick, Dublin, Waterford, Belfast and Galway if you are ever there on a day they are happening.
The Dublin one is tomorrow (Thursday 31st Jan) in the Morrison Hotel at 9am. I have to say I love that venue. Bright and airy, with really friendly staff, good coffee and free Wifi. There is parking just around the corner (or try Arnotts or Jervis Street). Last time I came up from Cork for a meeting there, I shot the old way into town via Inchicore and Con Colbert Road, past Heuston, down the river and turned just at the Morrison itself which is before Ha’penny Bridge.
The bawld Paul Walsh from Segala will be there tomorrow and he is hoping to see those from the investment community and Enterprise Ireland attend. Hopefully we’ll see some Qik coverage of the proceedings, particularly if anyone has stuff to demo.
Bernie and crew in IT Tipp are building out opencoffee.ie and Eoghan has recently launched the Dublin OCC site, so lots happening in the world of OCC in Ireland.
Feedback and Videos from today’s OpenCoffee
- A big thank you again to Catherine in it@cork for making today happen, it was a superb session
- The recordings I did today of Brian McAuliffe presenting Something.ie were actually being streamed live to the web on Qik.com. The full set of videos from today can be found here.
- The feedback on today was all positive with the only comment being that we should time-limit the demos (this is no reflection on Brian!). Perhaps we should just do 15 mins talk + 15 mins Q&A or just 30mins combined?
- We didn’t get to talk about outsourcing which was a pity, hopefully next time.
- It was great to see so many new faces. I need to get their email addresses.
- Well done to Brendan from Tapasol for winning a FON router which was kindly donated by Tom Raftery
- It looks like Phoebe Bright will present at the next session on issues around energy. We are aiming for Webworks and will let you know when it is confirmed.
- Congratulations to Siasy for launching the all-new EuropeanIrish.com -Let all your friends and family on the continent know about the site, it’s a fantastic resource
Next few OCCs
I’m trying to plan slightly further ahead than previously and nail down the next few OCCs. This Friday is obviously in the NSC. After that I think we should shoot for:
- 8th Feb – City Centre. Either Webworks or Luigi Malones. If someone wants to demo that day then we should try and get Webworks. Please let me know if you want to take that slot
- 22nd Feb – Back to Rubicon. Demo by Shared Visions on their webconf products
- 7th March – Open for takers. Either NSC again or a new venue, possibly in a company office?
This Friday’s Demo and Topic
Brian McAuliffe from something.ie is looking for feedback on the soon to be released rev-2 of something.ie and will give a brief demo. Rev-2 will essentially let anyone create a white labelled social network as easy as creating a blog (or so they say).
It also looks like there is plenty of interest in discussing outsourcing etc. We have several OCC members (including my own company) that outsource design, development and other tasks. There are plenty of pitfalls and it would be fantastic to share lessons learned.
Next Meetup in National Software Centre on Jan 25th
The next Cork OpenCoffee is on Friday week in the NSC in Mahon. Map here.
Many thanks to Catherine Wall in it@cork for arranging the boardroom in the NSC and to it@cork themselves for kindly sponsoring the coffee.
If you are interested in demoing your product/idea at this session, please shout ASAP! Suggestions for a core theme or topic for the meet-up should be given in the comments here so we can discuss.
Recap from last Friday’s OpenCoffee
I think the 2008 kick-off went particularly well on Friday with the addition of a small bit pf structure helping things immensely. For those of you who couldn’t make it, here is a quick recap and links to some videos.
- We held it in the boardroom of the Rubicon Centre to get access to a projector
- John and Gordon from eWrite Essentials sponsored the Mr Cotton Coffee
- After some general stand-around chats, we had a very interesting round table about
- Cork OpenCoffee itself
- how it can be more effective
- ideas for making sure people didn’t just huddle with friends,
- Rotating locations
- Rotating days of the week
- Publishing the full set of dates and locations for the year
- Gordon’s document sharing initiative
- General helping/sharing ideas
- the structure of the meetups -best balance between free form networking and highly organised
- After an introduction from John on what they hoped to gain from presenting eWrite Forms, Gordon then presented the product and the ideas around the business
- There was immediate interest from the group and a long Q&A session ensued with tons of ideas put forward, directions discussed and a general brainstorm
- David Reilly then gave some great thoughts on the sharing of documents and other issues around start-ups generally. This caused lots more feedback and what was particularly interesting about this was that the focus was business and not legal nitty gritty.
- This lead into further discussions on Patent pros/cons and generally protecting your business. We ran well over the usual midday end and I learned about at least two new applications under development which I think will get a lot of attention.
I felt it was the most successful and productive Cork OCC yet. I understand the concerns expressed by some that it doesn’t turn into a highly structured pitch-shop and I think we can successfully mix the informal with the formal to suit most people.
I did some videos of Gordon’s presentation and Q&A using my phone. You’ll find them here but the sound quality isn’t great.
Rather than me writing a massive essay about the morning, it’d be great to get the thoughts and feedback of the participants in the comments here.
As always, if you want to write your own post here on any topic you think is relevant to the group, I’ll send you an editor login. Also, if you want to demo a product or idea to get feedback from the group, feel free to contact me.
Legal Aspects of Sharing Business Documents
As a commercial lawyer in PJ O’ Driscolls Solicitors in Bandon I think its a great idea to share a fairly standard legal document such as an NDA.
However, as a heads up, in these matters it is the background legal (and commercial) advice that is as important as the document itself, so, in the same spirit, please see some material legal and commercial pointers which I hope might be useful:
- Do not rely on an NDA as it will be very hard to prove the other party took your confidential information!
- bearing that in mind if you want to keep it confidential, then, keep it confidential ! Be very wary of letting too many cats out of the proverbial bag, because, apart from a third party walking off with your idea (or unprotected name) it also can mean that the information is “out there” in the public domain which could hurt your chances of, for example, having a patent granted later on as it might be perceived as no longer being an “invention” as it would already be perceived as being part of the state of the art;
- if handing information over actually mark it “CONFIDENTIAL” so that there can be no doubt in anyones mind as to it’s confidential status;
- don’t let me put you off !! .. it is very important to use an NDA if only for the simple commercial reason that it focuses the parties on the existence of, and, importantly the ownership of the IP in question (which normally includes know how/trade secrets) and that you view it as something protectable and therefore, valuable!
I would however grant a serious note of warning on using anothers legal businesses document in so far as it has no doubt been tailored to suit heir own business needs, not yours, and, most times, it’s what is not already contained within an agreement that is the pitfall, and not necessarily how you tailor what is already there…
Finally, (phew!), legal (I am just focusing on legal documents, not business plans/pitches etc) documents such as shareholder agreements can be very complex and, they govern the relationship between parties (to include investors for example) for years to come on matters such as
ownership, time spent, division of profits, transfer of shares, exit events/strategies etc and therefore each one has to be (sometimes heavily) individually tailored to suit the individuals concerned.
The sharing of information is a good thing, especially in the start up market where cost-is-king, but, in essence, some information should be just that, for information purposes only and not used to govern financial and legal relationships going forward.
Sorry for the long post, typical lawyer eh !!
I would add that if a start up member of Open Coffee wants to have a background chat on a commercial legal matter then I am happy to have a quick chat with them to (hopefully) give some pointers and basic advice and, at no charge.
Next Cork OpenCoffee this Friday in the Rubicon
We had a little lull there towards the end of 2007 but the interest expressed by many people in OCC over the Christmas means that 2008 should be full of energy.
Our first event of the year is in the Rubicon in CIT on Friday 11th from 10am-12midday. This time however, it is in the Boardroom upstairs (ask reception for details).
We want to have a specific focus in each upcoming session combined ideally with some sort of presentation or demo by one of the 61 people on this mailing list (or by other invited guests).
To that end, I’d like this first event to be around the idea of knowledge and document sharing by start-ups. Rather than re-inventing the wheel every time on standard docs and templates like NDAs, Contracts etc, it would be fantastic if people would offer some of these to the wider community. See (http://corkopencoffee.org/2008/01/03/an-open-coffee-collaboration/) for more details. I’d love to hear suggestions on Friday for things that might be shared (Elevator Pitch PPT templates, old Feasability Study Applications etc etc.)
In addition, Gordon Murray from eWrite will give a presentation on the latest project he is working on. “eWrite Essentials develop their own CMS and Apps for SMEs. They have put a lot of research into methods to protect web forms against spam and have decided to spin out this work as a service called eWrite Forms during 2008.”
Gordon is seeking feedback and suggestions from the group on this project so please be open with your thoughts.
If you would like to present your idea, product, service, company, advice, state body or expertise to the group please email me or talk to me on Friday. We want no shrinking violets, don’t be in anyway coy about pitching what you have.
As always, thoughts/ideas/suggestions welcome.
