Photos from Open Coffee in Blackrock Castle Observatory
Last Friday, Cork Open Coffee was invited to the Blackrock Castle Observatory in Blackrock in Cork for coffee and a tour of the facility.
One of our new members, Karl took some excellent photos in and around the castle.
A huge thank you to the hard working people of the Observatory, especially Clair McSweeney who took some time out to give us a 3 hour tour in around 30 minutes.
The castle is an excellent place, full of information and I imagine everyone attending that morning would highly recommend taking a tour.
View from Blackrock Castle Observatory
Cork Open Coffee in the Blackrock Castle Observatory
Thanks to a connection from Damien Mulley , This weeks Cork Open Coffee is taking place on Friday the 28th in the Blackrock Castle Observatory in Blackrock in Cork from 10am to 12pm.
For anyone not familiar with the area, here is a link to the Blackrock castle on Google Maps http://short.ie/
bcomap. There is parking around the corner from the castle gates.
Clair McSweeney, Facilities Manager of the Blackrock Castle Observatory has kindly invited us to gather in the The Castle Bar and Trattoria, which is on the right as you enter the castle gates.
Clair will also give a tour of the castle at noon for anyone interested and would also like to highlight some of the great upcoming events in the castle including:
- Tweet in to Blade Runner (Movies by Moonlight Film Club) Saturday the 29th
- Space Camp 2010 (Summer Camp July and August)
- The Castle Bar and Trattoria Summer Bar-B-Qs
Any blogging / Tweeting / Foursquare’ing about BCO or any of its event is greatly appreciated! Further events in the BCO can be seen on their events page or sign up their newsletter.
Cork Open Coffee Sponsorship
David Reilly, from Reilly & Co. Solicitors in Cork has generously offered to sponsor several of the upcoming Open Coffees which means we can bring in some excellent Coffee from Mr. Cotton coffee for a few of the upcoming Open Coffees in the Rubicon. If youd like to Thank David (or maybe get some legal advice!) you can follow him on Twitter.
Cork Open Coffee E28093 After Dark
Also taking place this coming Friday is Cork Open Coffee E28093 After Dark. This is an evening version of the Open Coffee for those who cant make it in the mornings.
It is very informal and takes place in The Bodega from 8pm onwards. Follow Ronald on Twitter for more details or questions.
Bizcamp
Bizcamp Dublin takes place this Saturday in the Guinness Storehouse. Check out their line up of speakers (PDF) C2A0and others attending the event. A fantastic event for businesses.
‘Discovery Zone’ for new business ideas
This 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.
A 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.
Email marketing Stats for the Cork Open Coffee “After Dark” email
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.
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.
Email marketing Stats for the ‘Cork Open Coffee Friday 17th February’ email
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%).
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.
Cork Open Coffee Friday 19th February
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.
Don’t forget to follow @corkopencoffee on Twitter!
Email marketing Stats for the ‘Cork Open Coffee Friday 5th February’ email
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.
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.
Cork Open Coffee Friday 11th at 10am
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.
Cork Open Coffee Friday the 13th
Hi OCCers,
This weeks Cork Open Coffee is in the Rubicon Centre, CIT Campus Bishopstown on Friday 13th from 10am – 12pm. It will be held downstairs in the lobby area as the Seminar Room is booked.
The demo slot will be taken up by one of our newest regulars, Israel Finnerty. Israel & his partner Dawn Manning will be showcasing their new company FireSale.ie – Ireland’s first Buy, Sell, Haggle & Auction website. The site will be previewed along with a discussion of the FireSale.ie opening event on November 20th in Corks Vision Centre.
Coffee and Delicious nibbles
Thanks to generous sponsorship from CityLocal Cork, there will be great coffee from Mr Cotton Coffee and some delicious freshly baked healthy foods from Delicious.ie available.
Barcamp Cork
The 3rd Cork Barcamp event is coming up on Saturday!! Barcamp is an “unconference\” aimed at stimulating contacts and idea generation amongst entrepreneurs, freelancers and business people. Attendance is free but if you are goi! ng to attend, please register at http://www.barcampcork.com/register/
Parking
There are some construction works going one outside the Rubicon centre this week so parking spaces will be reduced so arrive early or park elsewhere if you can to avoid problems.
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
New Rubicon Center website
The Rubicon Center which hosts many of our Cork Open Coffee meetings has a grand spanking new website at http://www.rubiconcentre.ie/. Its a great looking site with some great imagery from around the Rubicon building. Cork Open Coffee is in their Useful Links section.
The site contains plenty of information about the range of services offered in the Rubicon. If you’re a start up business take a look at the Enterprise Start programme and the Genesis Enterprise programme.
Keep an eye on the Latest News section of the site for enrolments for these programmes and other goings on in the Rubicon. The Enterprise Start programme is taking enrolments right now.
The Admin section allows us to book the conference room for Friday mornings for Open Coffee demos, we’re booked in for the next few months so we’re well prepared for the next few meetings.
Rubicon Center Conference Room
