Galway OC use the Webworks in Galway.

As you might already know, I co-organise Cork Open Coffee along with Ciara and Conor. Conor invited us to help run OCC some time back and in my mind if Conor decides Cork Open Coffee should be run a certain way; I’ll run it to the best of my ability.

However; nearly a month ago we had the OCC meeting that focused on Open Coffee itself, to get feedback from attendees on what is good or bad about Open Coffee. Among other things it was from there that the idea to drop the city center coffee meetups arose.

I agree that the board room style OCCs are better. It gives someone an opportunity to demo a product or service, to get some excellent feedback from people they might otherwise never meet and have a chance to get a coffee and network too.

Frank, Ciara, Conor and Sabrina, are all good and reputable people and Open Coffee would benefit from your expertise. As you all admit though, your attendance could collectively be counted on one hand for the past year.

I am inclined to continue to arrange Open Coffee meetings in a board-room style manner. I think The Rubicon centre and The National Software centre are excellent facilities and I think people attending OCCs will benefit from the talks themselves and being exposed to the facilities such as The Discovery Zone, Enterprise Start and the Genesis programme that are run out of the Rubicon.

For city center meetings, there is also Open Coffee – After Dark. These are monthly meetings on the last Friday of the month. Held in a pub from around 8pm in the evening, they are an ideal opportunity continue the informal meetups and give those that cannot attend during work-hours a chance to meet too.

I realise I barely get a vote but for the record, I see OCC as informal netowrking. I prefer it to be loose and open in a coffee shop. There is zero chance I would ever attend a board-room style event.

I’ve always found the mix of the two types of OCC to be its real strength. It attracts a wider range of people. My preference has always been the city centre ones and others take the opposite view.

The experience of a lot of the other OCCs around the country who take the very formal route with speakers every time is that they run out of steam/interest because people are being talked at too much.

Just my 2c.

Yes they are less structured, and perhaps some small improvements could be made to the format, but business doesn’t have to ba all… businessy.

Less formality, less structure and less focus isn’t always a bad thing. I have made some good connections through the informal setting. Not ones that led to business, but associations with like minded people that I can bash ideas off or reach out to for input on projects.

Anyone else think that the informal city center get togethers are worth keeping?

Perhaps they could be once a month and with a small amount of structure brought to them for example…

My other observation is more can be done to welcome along new faces, most of the regulars know each other well and are in regular contact between meetings, this can be very intimating for someone new and is something that people should be conscious of as first impressions last.