Tuesday 7th September: Bootstrapping your startup

After the popular ‘Get funded!!’ June Nott Tuesday there were requests for a pre-funding follow-up talk. So, September’s Nott Tuesday will on Bootstrapping your startup.

Bootstrapping as defined by Wikipedia: ” a self-sustaining process that proceeds without external help. The term is often attributed to Rudolf Erich Raspe’s story The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen, where the main character pulls himself out of a swamp, though it’s disputed whether it was done by his hair or by his bootstraps.”

I know the challenge in self-funding, building and growing a startup. I’ve been asked to share our experiences of Bootstrapping our startup, Aware Monitoring. Although I do not feel completely comfortable giving a talk as I help to organise the Nott Tuesday event.


Aware Monitoring co-founders Nick Barker and Simon Oxley

Simon Oxley, my co-founder, and I spent a year building our web app, successfully launched Aware Monitoring live on stage at the Future of Web Apps conference, have gained customer traction and won this year Nottingham Post ‘New Enterprise of the Year’ award.

I’ll share our story of how we developed our idea, built and released a product with customer demand and are now scaling the business. I have given this talk five times this year at Nottingham University to MSc, MBA and PhD students. To find out more about me about me visit my personal blog or my company bio.

Nick Barker

So, to summarise:

18:30 – 20:30 at Antenna, Nottingham

Speaker: Nick Barker: Bootstrapping your startup

Q&A: topics raised

Tuesday 10th August: Seeing through the Social Media hype…

It’s Nott Tuesday time again – they do come round quickly :) This month we have Jason Navon from Clarity Digital. Social Media certainly has been hyped up but what is the reality?

Jason’s talk will be on Social Media: Seeing through the hype:

Social media marketing has become one of the hottest topics in marketing. Countless blogs, trade publications and web commentators are exhorting the benefits of social media to businesses owners. The hype suggests it’s a panacea to many challenges facing brands and businesses. The reality is somewhat different.

This talk looks at the way retailers are using social media and how many of the benefits can work for SMEs who don’t need large budgets to develop dialogues with customers and prospects. The session also looks the the often overlooked processes that any business needs to consider before diving into the social space.

Prior to setting up Clarity Digital, Jason spent 10 years agency-side at McCann Erickson and Fuse Digital advised clients on digital strategies. Clarity Digital are the  first dedicated digital planning and reporting agency outside of London.

So, to summarise:

18:30 – 20:30 at Antenna, Nottingham

Speaker: Jason Navon – Social Media: Seeing through the hype:

Q&A: topics raised

Tuesday 13th July: Keeping Rights Open

Glyn Wintle from the  Open Rights Group will be talking at the July the 13th Nott Tuesday. Glyn is a software developer and active volunteer at the Open Rights Group. He’ll be talking about the The Digital Economy Act and Interception Modernisation.

Glyn Wintle

The Open Rights Group is a UK-based advocacy group campaigning  on issues of digital rights. If you want to learn more about The Open Rights Group Glyn talks to O’Reilly GMT back in 2007, visit their website or follow them on Twitter.

As we know The Digital Economy Act entered into force on June 12th, 2010 and affects us all. How the Act will work in practice is another question. The law has not been tested as yet.  Glyn will be talking  about the potential effects of the Act and what we can do to change of future of online media control.

So, to summarise:

18:30 – 20:30 at Antenna, Nottingham

Speaker: Glyn Wintle: Keeping Rights Open

Q&A: topics raised

Nottingham Entrepreneurship Forum

There’s a free event running this weekend at Nottingham University with a Internet Tech track, including speakers from SpinVox and Mendeley, which maybe of interest to Nott Tuesday followers:

The NEF is a student run event bringing together people with an entrepreneurial spirit from across the UK, engaging them in a dynamic half-day event with fantastic keynote speakers, interactive breakout sessions, networking opportunities, dinner and a memorable social (dinner and social at Cast are included in the registration).

Daniel Doulton (co-founder of SpinVox – a London start-up that in 2008 raised over $100M at a whopping $500M valuation in 2008) will deliver the Opening Keynote Speech. For the Closing Keynote Panel, we have confirmed the international guest speakers Steven Lewis (Co-founder and CEO of Living PlanIT Valley – a €15 billion sustainable city development in Europe designed to be the world’s first leading centre of sustainable community innovation and research) and Mario Valente (investor at Seed Capital SGPS) and Robin Daniels (CEO of the Norwich Research Park).

For the workshop sessions we will have Seamus Garvey (UoN) and Adebayo Ogunjimi (UoN) on green, Nick Pope (Biospring and Mobius Life Sciences) on biotech, Victor Henning (co-founder of Mendeley) on internet and Ricardo Zozimo (University of Lancaster) on social entrepreneurship.

Why come?

· Excellent programme with venture capitalists, CEOs and founders of renowned companies, and successful entrepreneurs!

· Fantastic networking opportunities, with the speakers and entrepreneurs of the region.

· Opportunity to meet more companies, and career opportunities in the private sector.

· Share ideas and learn from the success cases experiences.

· Learn about funding sources and grants schemes that you can apply for once you have a business plan.

· Know more about business competitions, businesses incubators… among other things.

· Enjoy an exclusive dinner & social with the speakers at Cast Restaurant (Nottingham Playhouse)

Click here (http://nef.eventbrite.com/) to pre-register.

Be fast: attendance will be limited to a maximum of 60 participants and 51 places have already been taken.

Web 2.0 Surgery & 2nd Wednesday become one

Exciting news - Web 2.0 Surgery is merging with the long-standing Second Wednesday and  Susi O’Neill, is now managing the Web 2.0 Surgery. They’ve also got a brand new venue for the summer: Broadway Media Centre (Mezze Lounge, 1st Floor).

Web 2.0 Surgery, celebrating its first birthday in June, is a free drop-in event where independent businesses, freelance professionals and community groups can get advice from web experts on developing their website or ways to use free social media networks to grow their organisation. The project has helped a start-up business to sell online, a charity to use social networks for free promotion and a performance group to use live web video streaming to engage with audience

Second Wednesday is a long-running network for Nottingham’s web and digital professionals which regularly attracts web developers, online marketing experts and designers for an informal talk followed by drinks and networking. Previous speakers have shared their expertise on search engine optimisation, digital strategy and personal branding.

The two groups are now coming together as a forum to connect the city’s digital sector and to enable businesses seeking web services to meet web and marketing professionals in an informal setting.

Second Wednesday organiser Nick Heyward, from FCS Websites, said: “Linking together Second Wednesday and Web 2.0 Surgery is a great opportunity to develop Nottingham’s marketplace for web services and to help businesses and community group benefit from the £40 billion online spend in the global digital economy.”

The first joint event takes place:

Wednesday 9th June Mezze Lounge,
Broadway Cinema 14-18 Broad Street,
Nottingham,
NG1 3AL See Map

Web 2.0 Surgery runs from 5-7pm.  Drop-in at any time to speak to an expert.

Second Wednesday’s talk and discussion starts at 7pm, followed by drinks on Broadway’s terrace.

Both events are free to attend, no booking required.

This month’s speaker is Derek O’Brien on “Getting Down & Dirty with HTML5 and CSS3″, with a presentation on the latest trends in coding.

Tuesday 8th June: Get funded!!

June’s Nott Tuesday is focused on getting funding for your company and working with outside investors.

This month we have two speakers: Chris Scarth from education web application provider Prime Principle and Robert Cawdron from the from the early stage technology VC E-Synergy. Chris will share his first hand experiences of Angel funding and Rob will present on Venture Capital funding.

These are great technology speakers, Chris Scarth is co-founder and commercial director of one of the Midlands top software companies. Prime Principle won the Nottingham Evening Post Small Business of the Year Award in 2007 and are in this years finals!

Robert Cawdron is a key member of E-Synergy who are a very active Midlands based VC and have an existing £60m of managed funds. E-Synergy run the £5m East Midlands Early Growth VC Fund for early-stage businesses investing up to £100,000 in East Midlands startups!

If your thinking of getting outside financing for your startup idea or taking your company to the next level this is the Nott Tuesday for you.

Please remember that Nott Tuesday has moved from Bluu Bar to Antenna. We now have a Twitter live stream for questions and ideas during the talks – just use the #notttuesday Hashtag.

So, to summarise:

18:30 – 20:30 at Antenna, Nottingham

Speaker: Chris Scarth & Robert Cawdron & now Mark Chandler: Get funded!!

Q&A: topics raised

UPDATE: We now have our third speaker confirmed for the 8th of June’s Nott Tuesday. Mark Chandler from Lloyds TSB Bank plc will be presenting on getting startup/tech funding from the banks. Mark is the East Midlands relationship Director at Lloyds TSB Commercial banking.

Each of our speakers will have a 15 minute presentation slot, followed by a group Q & A session.

Nottingham SME’s Still Invisible to the Search Engines

Guest Post by Susan Hallam, Director of Hallam Communications and organiser of The Internet Conference taking place in Nottingham on the 14th May 2010:

Hallam Communications have today released a research report revealing that 86% of the small businesses in Nottingham cannot be found easily in the search engines.

This project has been conducted every year since 2006 by Susan Hallam. It is three years on from the original research project and the small businesses reviewed in the research are still struggling to be found on Google and the other search engines.

76% of the UK adult population are active Internet users and a lack of visibility on the web means that the small businesses of Greater Nottingham are missing out on a huge number of potential visitors and customers.

The research project discovered the following:

  • 86% of Nottingham businesses surveyed received a findability score of 70% or less. This means it is unlikely that these businesses will be found by potential clients or customers searching the Internet.
  • Only three of the top ten businesses got a score of 90% or higher.
  • The site that had previously been top of the findability research was now receiving a score of 56%. This shows that it is important to keep your website current and to update it regularly.

Susan Hallam, lead consultant on the project, comments “While it is encouraging that more businesses are achieving higher findability scores than in 2006, too many are still failing in the basics of Internet marketing.”

Internet Conference 14th May 2010, The East Midlands Conference Centre Nottingham Special offer

Susan has kindly offered a special reduced rate of £145 instead of £195 for Nott Tuesday members at the forthcoming Internet Conference.    All orders should be placed to conference@hallam.biz quoting Nott Tuesday.

Tuesday 11th May – Doom of the Media Dinosaurs

We have an exciting and provocative speaker lined up for May’s Nott Tuesday – Zacchary Barfield, CEO & Co-Founder of Stuffed Animals Media Ltd and serial entreprenur. Zach’s talk will be on Doom of the Dinosaurs: How Traditional Media Players are doomed in Digital World.” Please note that Nott Tuesday will be held at Antenna on May 11th , NOT at Bluu.

Zach is focused on New & Digtial Media and the impact on the Media Industry. He has spoken on Digital Media at various conferences and sat on various panels including BAFTA, BECTU, Broadcast and ITP. In summary Zach’s talk will cover:

Looking into my crystal ball, I will discuss business models &  technology, past, present & future and hope to plot a course through the next few years of the media jungle to highlight what may or may not occur. And who will be the winners & losers, but one thing is for certain the Age of the Dinosaur is over…

The media world is changing; the model that has existed for a hundred years has broken, in fact, shattered. Music was the first to fall to the meteor like power of the Internet, then Printed Newspapers. Television and Film are sure to follow.

How did we get here, why has the landscape changed so much, it’s not just the internet but Social Media, Smart phones, other technology and the consumers, You & I, have changed. On top on that the business models that had previously been propped up, where based on fundamentally flawed business premises and smoke & mirrors to us, the consumer, but what’s the way forward.

Who are the these Dinosaurs and why are they failing? Is it just the Internet meteor? What is the trajectory of this? Who are the mammals that will take over the landscape and how will they change the way we behave.

Zacchary Barfield

It should be a thought provoking and interesting talk!  After a straw poll at April’s Nott Tuesday we are going to try out Antenna as the new venue for Nott Tuesday. Antenna is a working spacing for the creative Industries. It also has a restaurant, and a fully licensed bar. It turns out we would have had to change anyway as Bluu has now closed down. Antenna is only round the corner from Bluu and offers wifi and mobile access – click here for map.

**  Don’t forget  Nott Tuesday will held at Antenna on May 11th  **

So, to summarise:

18:30 – 20:30 at Antenna, Nottingham

Speaker: Zacchary Barfield: Doom of the Media Dinosaurs

Q&A or Panel: topics raised

Web 2.0 Surgery – Ecommerce Focus

Guest Post by Martin Wright, Nottingham Twestival and Web 2.0 Surgery Organiser.

Web 2.0 Surgery is an informal event where you can get answers on internet related topics from a group of experts. This event is aimed at small and medium sized companies and organisations, as well as individuals, who use the Internet to operate their business but have questions on how to effectively use the wealth of Web 2.0 tools and services available.

This months Web 2.0 Surgery event focuses on Ecommerce.

  • Do you have a struggling ecommerce site?
  • Do you have ecommerce aspirations?
  • Do you have a successful ecommerce story that you’d like to share?

Join us from 5.30pm on Thursday 15th April at Antenna, Beck St, Nottingham NG1 1EQ (map)

For more details you can sign up to the newsletter, follow @web20surgery on Twitter or sign up to the Web 2.0 Surgery LinkedIn group.

Tues 13th April – Simon Wardley: Cloud’s and commoditzation

Well, we’re going to have to pull together to keep the Nott Tuesday momentum going without Adam’s passion and organisation. I’m really saddened to see Adam step back but very excited about his new challenge. The US – awesome Adam!!

Adam has asked me to post details on April’s talk as I invited the guest speaker. Simon Wardley, the Cloud Computing Strategist at Canonical (the main sponsors and supporters of Ubuntu), has kindly agreed to leave London for the evening to join us.

Simon is a hugely entertaining International speaker having spoken at The Future of Web Apps and many other Cloud events. Simon Oxley (my co-founder) and I have seen Simon’s 400+ slide deck on many occasions . Yes, 400+, I kid you not – but there worth every one!

Simon Wardley will be talking Cloud’s and commoditization. He’ll be building on from Simon Oxley’s popular October talk, and will be looking at the economics of cloud computing commoditization and the implications for the future.

Ryan at Shoosmiths is kindly supplying Aprils grub – Thanks Ryan. I can now eat again for another month – this bootstrapping is hungry work ;)

Nick Barker

So, to summarise:

18:30 – 20:30 at Bluu, Nottingham

Speaker: Simon Wardley: Cloud’s and commoditzation

Q&A or Panel: topics raised

See you there.