Celebrating startups locally; promoting them globally!
Posted in Events, Inspiring/Motivating, Opinions on Mar 15th, 2011
@Dreamstake is a network for creative entrepreneurs and last week I attended one of their events: Female Superheroes.When events like this go well, it’s like cocaine for business-minded folk. Suddenly you feel great and want to rush away to execute your ideas! There was a good turn out, lots of energy and inspirational stories. It [...]
Posted in Opinions on Mar 14th, 2011
I tweeted a couple of thoughts last week about social networks and these caught the eye of creative Dave Black of Black Arts. There’s a lot of pressure for businesses to get to grips with the variety of social media ‘out there’ and embrace them all! But is that the right thing to do? Dave says [...]
Posted in Opinions on Mar 7th, 2011
I thought Dave Black’s response to last wk’s post “Keep it simple, stupid” contained some good points so I’m posting it here for those who might find it useful. StartupCafe’s Jess also made a good point about being forced to describe what you do in 7 words only – how many of us can do [...]
A friend likes to call me contumacious. I prefer to be described as willfully disobedient. Both mean the same thing. But which is easier to understand? Contumacious of course! (Relax, I’m kidding). I was cornered by a man this week who interrogated me for a while before I thought it only fair to ask him what [...]
Posted in Local News, Opinions on Feb 24th, 2011
Current business model wisdom holds that increasingly, companies must provide excellent customer experiences to remain competitive. In other words, to stand out in a crowded market, successful companies must turn good products into fantastic services.
Posted in Opinions, Personal Management on Feb 23rd, 2011
With an abundance of digital agencies and software development companies dotted about the landscape like currants in a spotted dick (it’s a pudding), what can you do to be awesome? The usual answers are: provide an exceptional service, beat expectations, produce cool, innovative products etc But I was thinking along the lines of something less [...]
Women only tech/web/startup events are well attended. If these same women were to attend mixed networking events, the gender ratio of ‘typical’ networking events would start to improve and perhaps these wouldn’t feel quite so male-dominated. I raise this point because men and women bring with them different qualities and it would be a shame [...]
Posted in Opinions, Personal Management on Feb 10th, 2011
Apologies up front. This is probably a bit of a rant but I hope there’s a serious point to be gotten at here. Last night, I was at Techmeetup presenting the rough plan for the startupcafe mobile app. I have to say, I got a bit of a curious reaction. Let me give a bit [...]
Posted in Opinions on Feb 9th, 2011
Wow, I’ve been really interested to read the responses to our predictions for 2011 series. Rather than just hiding them in the comments, I thought I would gather together all the comments and my replies in one place. So here goes … [Ed: I actually wrote this a while ago but its taken a few [...]
Posted in Opinions on Jan 12th, 2011
This is the last instalment of my predictions for the big tech trends this year. To recap, they have been: 1. Home Entertainment Embracing the Second Screen 2. Gamification of Everything 3. The Rise of Multi-user, Multi-device apps 4. A Re-Focus on Non-Smartphones 5. Massive Growth of iOS Content Management Systems Everyone wants an iPhone [...]
Graduate Software Developer - Spinsight Ltd. - Edinburgh: Spinsight Ltd., an Edinburgh-based sports technology startup, is seeking a recent or soon-to-be graduate to join the firm's software develop...