Barcamp Sydney 3

Just finished up 2 days at Barcamp Sydney 3.

As usual, it was an excellent couple of days and another example of the potential that exists within the Sydney Startup Community.

Congrats to the barcamp unorganisers.

I did a quick talk on Open Coffee focussing on what else other entrpreneurs want/need in terms of support to help them grow their businesses. Got some really good feedback which we'll build into future iterations of Open Coffee.

Other than that, it was nice to spend 2 days with so many people in the same position as us. Makes me more passionate and motivated than ever.

if you weren't able to make it this time I highly recommend you keep an eye out for barcamp 4 and make it then

K

Friday Afternoon Update

I'll agree - I've been very slack of late with the posting

Between a few separate projects I've been too busy to even think about posting - which isn't much of an excuse as it doesn't take long to put a few words up - but its the excuse I'm going to use :)

Since the last post we had our first Sydney OpenCoffee Meeting. About 20 people showed up. It was great to hear about other people's experiences and struggles in the process of trying to run a start up.

So far we have over 50 people signed up to our Meetup group and the number is growing daily. All this interest makes me glad that I decided to help get the Sydney Startup community together as there was obviously a need for it.

One Eye Deer is also coming along. Admittedly it got stalled for a couple of other projects we're about to launch - but we should be back on point very soon and ready to get something out to our friends to test.

I haven't been doing my usual amount of reading but it's been interesting to see the interest that has come up in SMS in the US. Most of the hype was started by Twitter (I still don't get what the fascination with it is) but now others are jumping on the bandwagon. All this excitement is kind of handy because one of the projects that kept us away from OED just happened to be an SMS application. Hopefully all this SMS buzz will allow us to create a much bigger presence with it in the US than we would have been able to only 6 or 12 months ago.

I've also been trying to keep on top of microformats, openID stuff and, of course, visualisation of data, but the fields are moving quite fast at the moment and I need a little more time to bury myself in the detail.

Off to work on things again.

Hopefully I can be better with the regular posting from now on

K

Sydney Open Coffee Club

I've been reading a bit about Saul Klein's brainchild - Open Coffee Club.

Essentially its about making an informal (no name badges...ever!), regular (i.e. same place, same time) meeting spot where people know that if they want to roll up to meet other entrepreneurs, developers, investors, tech journalists or whatever, they can.

Because I like the idea so much, I'm trying to organise (what I think is) the first Sydney Open Coffee Club (OCC)

Here's my post over at the Open Coffee Club site.

If you're interested in coming to the Sydney OCC please answer the 2 questions I've put there and tell your friends/family whatever so that we can get this thing started.

I really believe we have the necessary ingredients to put Sydney on the tech map, to produce an excellent investment environment for those willing to invest, to create amazing projects for develops to work on and maybe to stop our budding entrepreneurs from having to go overseas for recognition and reward.

Remember - spread the word!