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.
Citylocal Cork Sponsoring Cork OpenCoffee
Since Cork OpenCoffee began in early 2007, we’ve had some intermittent sponsorship of the coffee and scones which has always been appreciated. So we’re delighted that Paul Brugger from Citylocal Cork has agreed to sponsor three of the Rubicon sessions (with the first one just two days ago).
This means no more icky instant coffee and the arrival of the great Mr Cotton coffee instead. By the way, well done to Declan for his appearance on TV3 this week.
Citylocal is great resource for local businesses, so the fit with OpenCoffee is perfect. In addition to the paid business listings, you can advertise your properties, post local events and sell items, all for free.
Thanks Paul!
Tomorrow’s OpenCoffee
Scones are kindly sponsored by Hayfield Manor
Coffee and Scone Sponsorship
The turnout for yesterday’s OCC was smaller than usual as expected due to the Bank Holiday Weekend. However we did have some superb conversations mainly focused on mobile, mobile services, SMS, Jaiku, Swarmteams and Location Based Services. A very interested side-chat occurred on To-Do list applications and how weak many of them are. Our current tool in LouderVoice (Remember The Milk) is good particularly due to Google integration but still frustrates.
I’m delighted to announce that the Rubicon Centre will be sponsoring the coffee at OCC from now on. A big thank you to Paul Healy for making this happen. A big thank-you also to Mr Cotton who has been providing the high quality product at each session.
However, we do have to take care of scones/nibbles ourselves so I would ask you to email me at corkopencoffee AT gmail DOT com if you are willing to be part of a round-robin system for paying and getting these for each session.
As always, thoughts and suggestions to the email address or as comments here.
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.
