A note from Saul Klein
As many of you probably know, Saul Klein kicked off OpenCoffee in London early last year. Here is an email he sent to a lot of the organisers earlier. Some great stuff with a very nice plug for Ireland.
Wow. There are now over 80 of you all round the world (see www.opencoffeeclub.org) – its pretty amazing how its spread over the last year and we have new locations starting every month.
For those of you who’ve been hosting an OCC for sometime, you know that we’ve mentioned on a few occasions that it would be cool to have better communication between groups to better share contacts, learnings and just generally leverage the fact that we are now truly global to take the pulse of the startup community better worldwide.
In this spirit, and since I have been shamefully poor at getting this done, I wanted to introduce Alasdair & Michael who are on the Seedcamp team and are going to help me better administrate and add some value to our Ning network presence at www.opencoffeeclub.org.
Michael & Alasdair will be help me to better figure out best ways we can share between moderators — ideas in the past have been Facebook group, mailing list etc — so let us know what you think would work best and who’s up for it.
Some great stuff going on by the way, just to highlight a few locations:
- Greece is blooming and India is taking off
- Amsterdam, Berlin and Paris stay strong
- New York, Boulder and Boston are rocking
- We’re local in Czech and Russia
- Plus many many more… tell us your stories (Rachel copied, still gets regular press interest on the global story of OCC)
I also wanted to let you all know that Seedcamp applications are open at the moment – the deadline for applying is August 10th. We’d really appreciate it if you can spread the word to your local founders who are keen to access the network of mentors, validation and access to capital that Seedcamp provides. There is already some great OCC-Seedcamp action going on in our star early adopters in Ireland
We’d also love to invite any of you that would like to come along to Seedcamp week (Sept 15-19th) in London – last year was a blast and it would all the richer for the international perspective you all bring. Please let Michael, Alasdair or Reshma (who runs Seedcamp) know if you’d like to attend.
Thanks again for flying the OCC flag. I hope alls well with you, that you’re having a great middle of the year — who knows if its summer or winter where you are
Best
Saul
Want to help (or need help) applying to Seedcamp?
The is a re-post from Web2Ireland:
Gordon Murray of eWrite has come up with a brilliant suggestion for SeedCamp. He thinks we should crowdsource some of the applications. There are plenty of people who have experience in filling out application forms for the likes of Incubation Programmes, EI Grants, the SeedCorn competition etc. Why not use that expertise to help those applying to SeedCamp who may never have dealt with this sort of thing before?
So yet another call for interest. If there are sufficient numbers in Cork then Gordon will arrange a meeting room in the Oriel House Hotel in Ballincollig for a morning. Those who want to apply and those who want to help can come together, figure out a strong message for each applicant and hopefully help them do better in the process.
If it works well, there is no reason this can’t be repeated in Dublin and elsewhere.
Usual story, fill out the poll (this one is for Cork only!) and ideally leave a comment or mail Gordon (gordon AT ewrite DOT ie) with some info about yourself. This is a very short term thing so the poll will close on Friday.
And the next OpenCoffees are….
The following are the next OCCs in Cork:
- Tomorrow Friday 18th – Luigi Malones on Emmet Place 10am. No formal demos but as always feel free to whip out a laptop and show us all what you are working on.
- Friday August 1st – No OpenCoffee. We tend to have minimal turnout on Bank Holiday weekends
- Friday August 15th – Joint OpenCoffee-SohoSolo meet-up in the National Software Centre in Mahon. We are starting this one early at 9am (running until 11). CorkBIC will give a short talk on the services they offer businesses in Cork. On a personal note, I found have found them and the associated Business Angels Partnership very helpful.
Latest Cork OCC Updates
Just a few notes on the latest from Cork OpenCoffee.
- We’re in today’s Examiner! Half page piece including a picture I took at the Tapasol Demo in the Rubicon Boardroom.
- Aileen Cussen wants to thank everyone who donated last Friday. She raised almost €700 from a total of €4000. In addition, she got multiple offers of help and expertise for the trip to Uganda including Wifi/internet guidance, laptop configuration, CD burning and local contacts. I’ll write more on this over the weekend in the context of the power of the network. An extra big thanks to Margaret in the Rubicon for rounding up lots of people on the morning.
- Next OCC is probably in NSC in Mahon next Friday 18th. Details TBC shortly
- OpenCoffee BBQ is on next Wednesday in Terryglass. We’re carpooling from Cork with cars currently planning to leave Cork at 9.30 and returning pretty early (4ish). If you haven’t already contacted me about getting transport (bus or car) please do ASAP. If you have, then I’ll be mailing the carpooling details shortly.
