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First OCC in Rubicon Centre was A+

Publish date: Sep 2, 2007

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.

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