Discussing Cork Open Coffee
This morning, Open Coffee took place in the Rubicon center from 10am til 12pm.
The topic of the morning was Cork Open Coffee itself, to see if any members would like to make any changes to how OCC has been working over the past 2 years or so.
There was some great feedback and I took plenty of notes while we all talked. Thank you everyone for all the feedback.
In general, it looks like people want things to stay much the same with just a little more notice about events, some time keeping when talks are going on and keep it tech-based.
Below are my notes in no particular order. I will be working on lining up speakers to demo products and services for the next several open coffees so please get in touch if you would like to give a talk, even if you have given a talk in the past.
If anyone would like to sponsor 1 or more Open Coffees, which pays for Coffee and nibbles for 20ish people, please get in touch by emailing corkopencoffee@gmail.com. The cost of sponsoring a meeting is only 60 Euro. €30 for a coffee urn and €30 for some little cakes.
Here are the notes, if anyone would like to add, please comment below or email us at corkopencoffee@gmail.com
- Fortnightly is good, don’t change to once a month for meetings.
- Needs a little more structure for talks, a moderator for talks being given to prevent topics going on and on
- Every now and then, when doing the initial round-table introduction, give an individual in the audience a few minutes to explain a little more about their business, similar to BNI but not formal.
- A person/business doing a presentation to show their product or service could pay for the coffee?
- 10 – 15 minute presentations, 10- 15 minutes for discussion
- Have Topics for meetings such as SEO, Sales. It doesn’t need a presentation to be made, just a topic for discussion with a person to start it off.
- Send out the email notifications 1 week in advance, Mondays and possibly a reminder again on Wednesday
- Have some more conventional talks such as Sales / Marketing with a tech slant
- Leave behind the Open Coffee’s that take place in coffee shops in the city.
- Try out other venues such as the National Software Centre / Web Works with a board room type environment like the Rubicon.
- Possibly take in donations to pay for coffee & nibbles
- Possibly a Linked-In group for discussions
- If people are looking for someone at a meeting, perhaps have a minute when introducing oneself to say what they are looking for eg: A developer for a project, A designer for a logo
- A page on the website to list profiles of regular members.
- Perhaps recurring talks about relevant topics such as Sales/ Investment/Funding
- Looking into funding to pay for Coffee & Nibbles?
- Try to make resources available to OCC such as access to libraries.
- Have events trough out the year, such as Summer BBQ/Christmas Party events to break up the year.
- Invite in Kieran Moynihan (The new Entrepreneur in Residence at the Rubicon) to talk about his new role in CIT/The Rubicon.
Update on last week’s OCC
Just got a mail from Tom Raftery in response to some questions about CFL lighting that Diarmuid Wrenne had during Phoebe Bright’s session.
Tom came across this article which he wanted to share:
Myths and Facts about CFL Lighting
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
