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Category: OpenCoffee

  • Upcoming… OpenCoffee Leeds {Tre}

    OpencoffeeDespite the incessant rain and a new home, OpenCoffee {Duo} was a another great success. We’re back with the third event on 7th August, again at Justin Whiston‘s Loftart gallery space.

    We’d love to share some interesting developments on coworking spaces for Leeds, the progress of BarCamp, participation in Seedcamp and the exciting new .north community. We want to make the North of England an essential hub for the web industry and we want you all to help make it happen.

    Please come along and join us for free wifi, coffee and cakes…geeks, coders, bloggers, investors, entrepreneurs, designers, developers and anyone with a passing interest in digital – come share+demo+network 🙂

    Head on over to the event listing at Upcoming and let us know you’re coming…see you on the 7th!

  • OpenCoffee Leeds {Duo}

    Duo
    Despite the rain and a new home for OpenCoffee Leeds, the second {Duo} of our monthly networking events went well last Tuesday. We counted 21 attendees, a little short of last month – but I blame the rain 🙂 However, we were pleased to see a lotta new faces and just a handful of old friends.

    • Glen Hopkinson, MD of Connect Yorkshire, – a public body assisting early stage businesses in Yorkshire – came along to learn more about tech startup culture.
    • Justin Whitson brought a few members of his web development team from Nexus. Prior to OpenCoffee, Justin, Ian and I spoke about how we can collectively improve the tech ecosphere in the region, including coworking spaces, forums for investors to meet entrepreneurs and exploring alternatives to venture capital, including a Y(orkshire?) Combinator model. Justin’s keen to apply his business expertise to the web industry and is interested in seeing where OpenCoffee can be a first step into new ventures and opportunities.
    • Tom Scott demo’d a neat app that helps friends choose a place for lunch by applying a reputation layer to existing social networks…not far off my old Simpatico project at Orange, but a great start in illustrating the solution to a real user need and opening doors to a bunch of other interesting social apps. Tom also gave me one of his new Moo business cards (his last card was hand drawn on a scrap of paper!)
    • Tim Barker, VP fo Software Development for Fire4, attended OpenCoffee Miami and after a quick Google search discovered the Leeds chapter right in his backyard. As a web-worker, Tim is interested in locating low-cost office space for his ventures and consequently drawn into the coworking discussions along with University of Leeds staffer, Paul Stanton…also keen on the notion of coworking for his new venture.
    • Anish Kapoor, CEO of Yuuguu, made an early morning effort to cross the Pennines. Anish is a regular in the north-west startup scene and the company is one of the sucess stories for the Rising Stars Growth Fund. Carbon’s hopefully going to be helping Yuuguu at an upcoming company strategy day 🙂
    • RSGF were also represented by Ed French and the very, very tall Mark Rahn. Come to think of it, Ed’s pretty tall too 🙂
    • Orange’s Head of Emerging Technologies, Ian Hay showed off Nokia‘s new mobile web server, triggering a few interesting discussions and potential applications of the technology. Ian also had a bag full of Heroes Xvids for me…shhh!
    • Dominic Hodgson, of StickyEyes and Leeds Met hinted he was about to start a new venture…but disappeared before I could find out more…
    • My cousin Mohsin also came by, Mohsin’s rapidly becoming the official photographer of OpenCoffee Leeds…Mohsin recently visitied the Interactive Telecommunications Programme in New York and is stoked to see a similar culture emerging in Leeds, where he’s about to join Leeds Met’s Innovation North school.
    • John Lambert, a regional IP  expert and barrister left with the spark of bootstrapping OpenCoffee Huddersfield and Edinburgh! John’s track record is awesome…I really wanna pick his brains on stuff!

    So month two has been a little quieter, many of the people we met between the first and second events were busy, some of the people I wanted to talk to more weren’t able to return and the rotten weather kept many people away…however, everyone seemed to find someone of interested and we again saw a bunch of satisfied customers 🙂

    OpenCoffee {Tre} is planned for 7th August…Justin W’s offered the use of the Loftart gallery again (great views of the City) and someone’s suggested The Living Room‘s Study…we’ll announce venue details soon…in the meantime enjoy the photos from {Duo}.

  • Upcoming… OpenCoffee Leeds {Duo}

    Opencoffee We’re back! After the runaway success of Leeds’ first OpenCoffee event, we knew we had to do it again…there were too many people we didn’t get a chance to connect with and we wanna make that right as well as meet some more friendly faces 🙂

    Whitson Group CEO Justin Whiston has kindly offered the use of the Loftart gallery space on Vicar Lane in the City (photo)- as well as free wifi, coffee and cakes! Thanks Justin – we owe you.

    We managed to get 27 people out for OpenCoffee {Uno} and found there was a real buzz in the room. Loftart can accommodate many more, so i’m hoping you’ll all help us get those numbers up…geeks, coders, bloggers, investors, entrepreneurs, designers, developers and anyone with a passing interest in digital – come share+demo+network 🙂

    Head on over to the event page at Upcoming and let us know you’re coming…see you in a couple weeks!

  • OpenCoffee Leeds {Uno}

    Opencoffee_leedsWow. Yesterday’s inaugural OpenCoffee Leeds got a turnout of twenty-seven people, much higher than I hoped and enough diversity for a palpable buzz in the room! Starbucks was kind enought to let us use a small meeting room, but with so many attendees, OpenCoffee rapidly filled the first floor of Leeds’ largest Starbucks 🙂

    The rich blend </groan> of students, entrepreneurs, academics, investors, developers and artists included…

    Andy  related that ‘everyone who I bumped into, the verdict was very
    positive. That’s what I like about these things – nobody thinks there
    will be interest, someone takes a risk, and lo & behold, it turns
    out there are plenty of people looking for community. So
    congratulations.’     {Uno} also got a shout out on a couple attendee blogs –     Inaugural OpenCoffee Leeds and Northern Grit and coffee make a good mix.

    Ian Pringle, Gang Lu, the Plusnet guys and I broke off for a separate meeting to discuss how we can bring our collective experience to help creat a sustainable tech ecosphere across the five major cities of the North.

    An interesting side discussion between Tom, Ben and Steve led to a ‘games corner’ as attendees related their interests in the local videogames ecosphere.

    All in all, a great start – I hope we can sustain the momentum for next month’s event as we build up to BarCamp Leeds later this Summer…

    { Flickr photos here… }

  • OpenCoffee Leeds – Cakes, Coffee, Code & Connectivity

    Opencoffee
    It’s ON! Head on over to OpenCoffee Leeds for details…in the meantime I’m thinking mid June (7/8/12/13/19/20) at one of the city’s big Starbucks (Albion Street, Briggate) or perhaps an indie place like Oracle or Arts.

    So far we have Ed French from Enterprise Ventures, Carl Rahn Griffith of Ensembli.com and a handful of others in the group. I’ll be roping in old friends and colleagues from Orange, Kingston Interactive, the Universities, Zythe and Inteleme…geeks, coders, bloggers, investors, entrepreneurs, designers, developers and anyone with a passing interest – please come 🙂

    Mmm – maybe we should give out a random prize too…?

    UPDATE: The first OpenCoffee Leeds will take place on 12th June from 10am-midday…full details here (we’ll be upstairs at that Starbucks!). To honour Starbuck’s Tall, Vente and Grande portions, we’re calling the first one ‘Uno’ 😉