Hi
A few of the people who have been involved in SSWC were talking on Twitter yesterday. Mostly @ann_donnelly@paraic @calvin141170 and myself, @deepspin and the consensus seemed to be that we should have another planning meeting in early September with a view to setting up another West Cork Network focusing on rural Cork starting with a tech/geeky/entrepreneur leadership group but eventually reaching out probably via Open Coffee style meetings (?) to any home based and small business people and entrepreneurs.
It will necessarily be self organising and funded at least to start. If you you interested in being in on the first planning meeting, probably at the start of September and probably somewhere within the Bantry/Clon/Dunmanway triangle add you name here by adding a comment.
I think it would be useful for us all to spend a few minutes considering this like any start up business would and maybe do a SWOT analysis, business pitch etc. This may seem a bit grand but I think it would be sensible to know what we are offering and looking at answering the question; What’s in it for me. when asked by a prospective new member.
I know I was asked this when I asked friends if they wanted to come along to meetings and apart from a vague and rather lame ‘It’ll be good for networking’. I was never very clear myself what the main ‘product’ was.
If we take, as a start, the marketing adage that ‘the money is in the list’ we are basically trying to build a member base of users who have opted in to a West Cork networking group and that needs to be as broad based and easy to access as possible. If that includes Facebook, email newsletters, events or whatever is for the future.
I think it probably needs not to include sales pitching as such but provide benefits of itself. Even if the ‘our reach meeting where to include a very basic introduction to the web for example, we could maybe draw in a wider public.
These are just a few of my musings. If you have any, please add comments below.
All the best Dave
Dave Spathaky writes about and produces web sites from a secret location deep under ground in old copper mines near Allihies in West Cork. He uses teams of under-paid pixel hobbits to hand craft sparkling and wondrous images from recycled electrons. He holds the world record for plate spinning, once worked for one of the world biggest publishing software companies and was also the model for a statue of Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square in Dublin.
Sometimes he gets to forge his own biographies.
Thanks for posting Dave, I am interested and will come to a planning meeting, unless absolutely impossible.
An idea I’d like to put out to the group: Should this be open to all business people interested; not just small businesses, start-ups, etc.? Perhaps we’d better input and networking opportunities if we widened the group.
Thanks for the comment Anne.
I think personally we need to make a balance between wide open and a tight focused concept that prospective members can hook onto.
To borrow from that great guru Shrek, I tend see the organisation structure like the layers of an onion – A small core group, a membership layer and then the members client base (more layers). The last group is the area where members would have an opportunity to share maybe.
As the focus of the membership are going to be computer/new media types (I imagine). The benefits would be networking, branding (website banner?), combined marketing clout, advocacy, mentoring, buddying, etc etc, (fill in blanks here anyone…)!
Any more comments and/or thoughts?
Hey guys,
Count me in for the planning meeting… I think if SOHO Solo has taught us anything it’s that a self-organised group without the bureaucracy and complication implicit in an “organising” / administration body is the way to go.
As for membership criteria, I think open is better — depending on how we structure the group it will attract people, or it won’t, and the membership will find its own level. From my perspective having a mixture of solo entrepreneurs / freelancers, smaller businesses with several employees and perhaps the occasional entrepreneur who aspires to global domination will make for a diverse and interesting group.
There’s lots of scope… best thing is to get together and discuss where we go from here.
August has been a bit manic on the home front (visitors galore), but things will settle down once the munchkins are back in school next week.