Entrepreneurial gardening

This morning’s Open Coffee Club meeting took place in the very pleasant surroundings of The Boston Tea Party’s garden. A lovely summer’s morning complemented the positive ideas being discussed in the light of HP Lab’s partial pull out of their Bristol facility.

Stephen Maudsley was first after me but headed up to the first floor before I could catch him, meanwhile Dave Simpson from Engine House Solutions (holding site) arrived and we began chatting while Stephen explored the upper reaches of TBTP. I first met Dave at the Bristol leg of the FOWA tour, where he was launching his web development and software company.

StephenM soon found us and we began talking about the start-up scene and different requirements of growing companies for executive support as well as cash. Around then Steve Cayzer arrived and we began to discuss his ideas for launching a new venture based on some of his research into environmental computing and ways to underpin the low carbon economy.

A quick flurry introduced Brian Dorricott with his newly launched Meteorical, Andrew Wray from Bristol University’s enterprise support team, Andy Seaborne (also thinking about launching an enterprise semantic knowledge application) and Nadya Anscombe (freelance science & technology journalist). Introductions, connections, business opportunities and much coffee ensued.

Thanks to all for a great morning of stimulating discussions and opportunities to be explored.

The next Open Coffee is the Demo Session, Tues 30 June at eOffice, please sign up on Eventbrite (http://opencoffeedemo30june.eventbrite.com) so we’ve some idea on numbers.

If you have a company / product / service that you’ve developed (or are thinking about) and would like constructive comments &  ideas, please sign up as a presenter and we’d love to help contribute to your success.

June 16, 2009 | Filed Under opencoffee | 3 Comments 

Business networking – the Bajan Rum Punch way

When my dad was introducing me to mixing cocktails he taught me the classic rhyme to remember the best punch recipe, ever:

“One Sour, Two Sweet, Three Strong, Four Weak.”

This morning we had one IP patent attorney (Chris Vigars), two connectors / evangelists (me & Martin Coulthard), three support professionals (Zoe Chalk, Charles van der Lande & Robin Beecroft), and four  entrepreneurs (Mark, Ray McConnell, Nigel Legg, and Sam Machin). Seemed like a pretty good mix.

Then I spotted Ian Burden talking to Charles, Zoe and Nigel, and my analogy rather breaks down from there onwards (especially as most people had mixed interests).

Oh well, the discussions were flowing freely. The new influx mixing well with the more regular OpenCoffee folks and a couple of business ideas are already percolating (just to mix my metaphors).

Apologies to anyone that I missed, especially as I had to leave early. Special thanks to Nigel for helping to look after everyone after I left.

June 2, 2009 | Filed Under opencoffee | Comments Off 

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