The winner of the contest will earn one year of free office space within one of 10 Technium incubators in Wales, UK, strategic counsel on financing, business planning, technical issues, as well as networking opportunities. The contest is geared towards biotech and IT startups. The deadline for sumission is March 28th, 2008.

Finalists will receive introductions to established business networks, direct guidance on developing a U.K. market entry business plan, as well as detailed briefings about European markets. From there, they will present their business plans in front of the final Technium judging panel, which will determine one overall winner. Judges include Sony Corporation Chairman and CEO Howard Stringer, a Welshman, as well as Gordon Innes, Director of UK Trade & Investment USA, and Geraint Jones, Chief Executive, Americas, International Business Wales

Detailed information about the competition including submission deadlines, terms and conditions, and background on last year’s winner is available on the Technium Challenge International website, www.technium.co.uk/challengeinternational.

About Technium

Technium is a network of innovation centres in Wales/UK supporting the growth of technology companies.  Technium offers the optimum environment to enable knowledge-based start-up and spin-out companies to realise their potential.  Technium includes a network of state-of-the-art facilities across Wales served by the latest information technology and fibre optic bandwidth capabilities.  Inside Technium, companies are supported by a team of business and technical support staff and have access to specialist laboratory facilities and communal networking areas.  Strong partnerships forged between Technium and local Centres of Research Excellence provide specialist academic support for research & development projects.  For more information, visit www.technium.co.uk.

About International Business Wales

International Business Wales is the economic development arm of the Welsh Assembly Government with the responsibility of helping international corporations locate operations in Wales, and with promoting international trade by Welsh businesses. IBW can assist businesses in finding suitable properties in Wales for their operations, help them in finding employees and in obtaining financial assistance from the Welsh government, when appropriate.  For more information, visit www.ibwales.com

Our first Pivotal Point Workshop will focus on “How to Organize and Systemize Your Business”

Can you think of a time when you and someone else were completely in sync? Chances are, you thought alike or felt the same way about something. Unfortunately, it’s not always like this when running your own business. You wear many hats and chaos is often the word of the day.

This workshop helps business owners address the importance of being flexible and resourceful. It is the process of alignment and then redirecting communication accordingly.

When you effectively organize and systemize your business, you can deliver consistent results to your customers. You’ll learn to duplicate the things that work well in your business, thereby eliminating the things that don’t. It’s about being efficient and effective. This workshop will show you how.

About the presenter;

Angie Segal is a certified Business Coach with ActionCOACH, the World’s #1 Business Coaching Franchise (Entrepreneur Magazine, Jan. 2004 & 2005).

As a business coach, she works with entrepreneurs in five key areas. This includes sales; marketing and advertising; team building and recruitment; systems and business development; and customer service.

Time and Place

Wednesday, September 19th 2007.

TeqCorner Building
1616 Anderson Road
Mclean, VA 22102

Please be sure to enter building from the front. The back of the building is locked. Because of security concerns, Teqcorner locks visitors from entering the building after 6pm. Please be sure to enter the building by no later than 6pm as we do not have the ability to let people in afterwards.

Agenda:

5:30-6pm- Mix and Mingle

6-7:30pm- Workshop

7:30pm-7:50pm- Mingle and close out event.

Cost is free if registered. Otherwise, $15 at the door.

Register here

We’ll be dining at J. Gilberts which is a great seafood and steak house in McLean, Virginia.

The two co-hosts for this event will be two lovely and successful ladies, Mali Phonpadith and Jen Sterling.

For complete details of the event, read and register here.

1. Give the user a sense of who you are. The web is a cold, anonymous place. Anything you can do to bring a sense of personality and assurance to your website will help.
2. If you use a site search, make sure it works better than expected. It should search more than product names. Make sure it can find products by SKU, Model Number, and even misspellings if possible.
3. Drives me crazy when the “About Us” section says nothing specific about the seller and just has some obviously canned verbiage.
4. Pay good money for a proper interactive graphic designer (not a coder, web ‘developer’, or print designer doing a bit of moonlighting). If your web site looks professional, people will trust it and buy stuff.
5. keep the 3 P’s above the fold on a product page. Product name, Price and Purchase link should all be visible without having to scroll.
6. Let the customer see the shipping charge without registering! Preferably on the basket or a easy-to-find ’shipping charges’ page.
7. Have a newsletter sign up and send out newsletters.

Anyone who has ever worked from home knows that it is not what’s cracked up to be. Sitting in front of the computer all day and not having anyone to talk to can be quite lonesome and hard for many of us. In comes co-working. It is described as “a cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents.”

As of this writing, there is only one co-working space here in the DC area which can be found at Affinity Labs in Adams Morgan. I like their description alot better;

Affinity Lab is an entrepreneurial launch platform serving a rich community of creative businesses, non-profits and start-ups. The Lab manages the shared business and operations needs of its member organizations, allowing them to better focus on mission and execution. While the convenience and cost savings are valuable, it is the culture, opportunity and idea sharing that makes Affinity such a compelling place start and grow your dream.

So who is co-working really for? If you are a work at home independent professional who wouldn’t mind being in an open community and could use some extra office space from time to time, then co-working may be for you.

Space is pretty cheap. For membership at Affinity Labs, it can be as low as $200 and go as high as $800 depending on your needs. Most spaces offer the basics such as fax and copy machines, internet access, and a mailbox. Anyone who has tried an executive suite knows how much it can break your budget, especially if you are an indie professional.

Check out Businessweek’s article on co-working, “Where The Coffee Shop Meets The Cubicle.”

These are some pictures from the Businessweek article of co-working spaces that are emerging all over the country;

And now Tech Cocktail just launched their first event here in DC. Judging from the Flickr photo set like these below, it seems that the idea will do just well here in our Nation’s Capitol.

They had demos from numerous startups such as Sportsvite, BuzzXYZ, and Clearspring.

I used to think Michael Arrington’s Techcrunch parties on the west coast were a whole lotta fun. Well, actually they are. But there’s no reason why Washingtonians technologist can’t try and do the same.

I have to question as to how much business productivity can be gained in a nightclub setting like the 1223 Club? Regardless, I’m glad to see some fun finally arrive in city dominated by conversations like, “Uh yeah, I’m in IT and government contracting.” Sigh….

The OpenCoffee Club was started to encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to organise real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow.

It’s a grassroots movement that started in London and has made it’s way over to the U.S. Their growth is very similar to the Refresh community and how it’s helped the web design community. Definitely alot of potential for this type of “open source” community building for the startup community especially as it relates to new media and the internet.

Though this is short notice, there is one this Friday in downtown DC. If you are looking to meet other startups, then you may want to come out. We are no way affiliated with OpenCoffee Club but I am always on the lookout for good events for other entrepreneurs in the DC area.

It’s hosted at the Blattner Brunner office

You can register at their upcoming.org link here;

From 8am-10am.

But this one is for the general entrepreneur population. Rick Dassler and Andrea Morris will be co-hosting with us.

Complete details and registration can be found here.

“I keep six honest serving-men: (They taught me all I knew). Their names are What and Where and When and How and Why and Who.”

Rudyard Kipling, in Just-So stories: The Elephant’s Child (1902)

–

The above quote is as good as any start who wants to make a change, with awarness, whatever change may be. Collect the answers, and get yourself a one page summary, and head on to get your first customer. Then you can make yourself a Bigger Plan.

Setting out a route to become an “entrepreneur”, is less static “to be” and a huge amount more of “to do”. Planning is not doing, it is planning. Doing is not planning. Doing is doing.

So - before anything else - you just write it down for yourself and your team, the first whatever idea shows up. Ask yourself:

“What shall we do?” Summarize it through an elevator pitch. But the elevator pitch, with today’s attention deficit disorder of 15 sec’s from your site visitor rests not beyond that. Think Google. You know what it is about, instantly, intuitively. And mission statements are bull-shit (will return to that in following articles, just wanted to provoke, as every -preneur have to do :).

“Where shall we do it?”

1. Which production place - where to produce it, online/offline?
2. Which consumption place - where do we want to get it to, and where does the transaction take place?
3. And through where? From A to B? Virtual/physical/hybrid distribution?

“When?” is always yesterday, otherwise you will not keep momentum, with a feeling of urgency coupled with patience and endurance to live with your time optimisim, your chronical disease :). Passion is what is required to ride through the storms. But Think of: Today and Tomorrow and of Ten to Fifteen Years. Struggle until tomorrow, and keep your firm vision about a reality you want to create, how you want the world to be. The rest is just intention, intention, intention, timeless. Your power comes from your will, not the other way around.

“How?” This is where it happens. That requires an article just by itself just to get you the slightest idea, because here is what counts. Ideas are cheap, talk is cheap, walk is gold. And to change quickly, with agility, and keep flexibility, is the strength you always will have towards your dinosaur competitors called Corporates. David vs Godzilla :).

“Why, oh why why why are you doing it?” That is maybe the most important question of all. If it is rooted only “I want to make shitloads of money fast”, you’re broke before you even started. Making meaning and making profound anchor deep in your spirit is what is required to sustain in the long run, and that is not created only by “making money”. Money needs to come, but that is to create opportunities for people not seeing it before through your services and products. Who was a customer of the Light Bulb before it appeared? No marketing research was driving Thomas Alva Edison of the 10 000 passionate discoveries of ways not working. Keep future light burning, where you want to go and create to make a profound change: Otherwise you will not cope with hell breaking loose, neither experience the light of heaven when you have the “near-life experience” you have when you BREAK THROUGH!

You want to change the world. So - what are you waiting for? The world is waiting for YOU!

I will write a series of articles where I dive deeper in every question here, and also about the questions YOU have. Add your comments so that we can have a conversation.

PS. The observant reader saw that I was missing a “who?”. Well, that is self-evident - it is YOU, otherwise you would not read this. But - who is also your family, your friends, your partners, your customers and clients, all your stakeholders, and the rest of the People and Planet. In that order, slightly. But “who” as in the team making it and “to whom” as the customers - especially the first one are the most crucial “who” questions… DS.

1. My love for good food. This holds especially true here in Washington DC with all of the great multi cultural dining scenes.
2. My love for collaborating and meeting up with other entrepreneurs. Because I run my own business, I love hanging out and meeting other entrepreneurs who are doing the same.
3. My love for people and their stories. I am a firm believer that everyone has a great story to share. This especially holds true if you run your own business. You can learn so much from listening to another person’s story.

Who is this event for?

1. If you like to meet up and share stories with other young entrepreneurs (B2C, B2B, startup, indie professionals & consultants), then this is for you.
2. If you are looking for an alternative environment from the typical suit and tie “networking” mixer scene, then this is for you.
3. If you love to dine and try out new restaurants while being in the company of like minded folks, this event is for you.

Register here