Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

This coming Monday (23rd) will see the 1 year anniversary of Scottish Lean Startup Circle starting and a repeat of the 1st ever event held: Scottish Startup Lessons Learnt simulcast.

Startup Lessons Learned 2011 is the sequel to last year’s inaugural event, which brought together nearly 400 entrepreneurs and executives interested in building and supporting lean startups.  The goal for this event is to give practitioners and students of the lean startup methodology the opportunity to hear insights from leaders in (more…)

Read Full Post »

The Inspire ConferenceWe wrote about the Inspire Conference a few months ago—a TED-like event that brings together top industry speakers to talk about innovation, trends, and thought leadership in technology, creativity, and entrepreneurship from 7th–8th June in London.

Back then, we thought it was a bit pricey, at nearly £500 per ticket. Now, I’m happy to say that there’s a special rate for startups and students (£149.00 + VAT), as well as a StartupCafe discount code that you can use to get an additional 10% off (startupcafe).

This conference has been a bit hard to get my head around at times—I think because its aim to promote a high-level discussion of current technology and web trends is so broad and ambitious, that it’s hard to feel the urgency or direct relevance to any particular person or startup.

However, this is exactly the sort of event that has big benefits for Edinburgh entrepreneurs and startups. London’s a big, shiny source of funding, enthusiasm, talent, customers, exposure, and ideas—and the Inspire Conference provides a cheap, efficient way to tap into all of it. That’s why I’m going.

With only a month until the conference, it’s time to think about scheduling a trip to London. Grab a ticket now (and don’t forget the discount code!), check out the speakers list, and watch for updates from us about discounted hotel accommodation.

Read Full Post »

I don’t know what it is, but it looks to me that this week’s events menu is surprisingly sparse. Maybe it’s the half term holidays? To make the Friday Coffee morning meetup less lonely, I’ve added some upcoming events that you should put in your diary and look out for. In the mean time, enjoy your relative meeting free week!

Friday 29th April, 8am, Centrore, Friday Coffee Morning

Every Friday morning, Edinburgh’s creative early risers meet at 8am for breakie, and a chance to share ideas and Web 2.0 finds.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Background

On Monday morning, Hilary and I met with Erin Maguire (Digital Content and Event Producer at AmbITion Scotland) to talk about how AmbITion’s upcoming Culture Hack Day could be structured. We had a really interesting discussion, pulling together Hilary’s knowledge as an organiser of Launch48 Edinburgh, mine as a team member at Social Innovation Camp and team leader at Launch48, and Erin’s experience organising the London Culture Hack Day. We swapped tips and talked about experiences, so here are some of the notes I made from that list.

Tip 1: Open is good, but structure is good too. Having a completely open, freeform event works well most of the time, but sometimes, it helps to have some structure too. A lot of it will depend on how experienced your audience is with hack days. The less experienced they are, the more structured the event should be to help attendees get the most out of it. The trick is to take the best of open and structured styles, and balance them. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Sorry the events menu is a little late this week, but hope you enjoy the menu. And PLEASE contribute if you think there’s anything we’ve missed off (especially since it looks a bit thin this week):

Monday, 18th April, New Ventures Support Group: PR for Tech Companies

Sarah Lee, Managing Director of public relations company Hot Tin Roof will join us for this month’s meetup. Sarah specialises in PR for small tech companies, and has implemented successful, affordable campaigns for a number of Edinburgh startups and spinouts.

Friday, 22nd April, 8am, Edinburgh Coffee Morning

Every Friday morning, Edinburgh’s creative early risers meet at 8am for breakie, and a chance to share ideas and Web 2.0 finds.

Read Full Post »

A few weeks ago I went to see Richard Reed give a talk at the London Metropolitan University where he kindly shared some of his experience with us in the form of five lessons. Lessons one and two were posted a couple weeks ago, and the rest are here.

Lesson 3: It’s all about the people

If after a while you find that someone is just not pulling their weight after you’ve given them opportunity after opportunity to shape up – then you’ve got to let them go.  What if you can’t find someone to replace them?  “I’d rather have a hole than an assh*le” is the (more…)

Read Full Post »

Note the Edinburgh Science Festival is running 9th-22nd April, so you have a great excuse to get out of the office and explore some events there too!

Monday 11th April: Discovering Startling things from your Version Control System (BCS event), 6:30pm at Informatics Forum 4.31

The industry is awash in an epidemic of bad code. We all know what bad code looks like – it’s opaque and impenetrable. But, we spend little time trying to figure out how it got that way. We assume it’s tight schedules or lack of discipline, but perhaps there’s more. In this talk, Michael Feathers (Chief Scientist at Obtiva Corporation) will relate several things that he’s learned by taking a longitudinal view of a system – by issuing queries of a code base and relating the results back to events on a team. This event is put on by the organisation formerly known as the British Computing Society.

Tuesday 12th April: SiCamp Brainstorming event, 6-8pm at The Waverley (3-5 St Mary’s Street, Edinburgh)

As we mentioned last week here, Social Innovation Camp is holding a “call for ideas” event to get the creative juices flowing before the SiCamp event this June. Join Social Innovation Camp for an evening of thinking about how we can use technology to tackle social problems ~ specifically social isolation this time around. You don’t need to know anything about technology to take part; just an interest in making your world a better place. It’s a chance to (more…)

Read Full Post »

SiCamp

Social Innovation Camp, or SiCamp (who Kate wrote about earlier this week) are holding a free event next week to start brainstorming ideas in advance of the actual hacking weekend in June. I went to a similar event last time SiCamp were in town—it was a challenging, engaging evening, and a much-needed excuse to sit down and think about a brand new idea that could actually change the world (or at least part of it!).

Here’s the basic details, with more available on the registration page:

Date: Tuesday, 12th April 2011
Time: 18.00–20.00
Location: TBC

Join Social Innovation Camp for an evening of thinking about how we can use technology to tackle social problems. You don’t need to know anything about technology to take part; just an interest in making your world a better place.

It’s also a chance to find out a bit more about how you can get involved in our forcoming Social Innovation Camp in Edinburgh, June 2011.

Who else participated in SiCamp last year? Any thoughts on last year, or ideas for the upcoming event?

Read Full Post »

Wednesday 6th April: Leith Geekup, 1pm at The Constitution (Constitution Street)

Lots of geeks work in Leith .. let’s have lunch at the http://www.constitutionbar.com/ (You can pre-order food for faster service)

Wednesday 6th April: Tech Law for Startups, 5:30pm for 6pm at MBM Commercial

‘Tech Law for Startups’ is a monthly meetup for individuals planning, developing and growing high-growth businesses, primarily based around new technologies. This month’s theme is “Angels or Dragons? How to prepare your business for investment” … At the meetup, Dug will run through the various issues involved in preparing your business for investment before handing over to Shahida Imani, COO of AV9 Limited, a digital media business which provides opportunities for music artists to reach international markets.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Richard Reed shared some lessons last week that I thought I’d share with y’all who couldn’t make it to the event at London Metropolitan University.  I posted lesson one here: Have a mission that works. So, what’s the second lesson?

Lesson 2: Things that start small can get big; (and then small again) The founders of Innocent Drinks set a target of £6million turnover.  They reached this within the first couple years and went on to grow amazingly year after year until….2008.  Duh – duh – daaaaah….! (more…)

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »