SOHO Solo West Cork

Calvin January 3rd, 2009

Welcome to 2009! We all know that this is going to be a challenging year in lots of ways, especially for small and micro-enterprises like the typical SOHO Solo outfit (actually, I don’t think there is such a thing as a “typical” SOHO Solo but that’s a topic for another post :-)), but there are also opportunities out there that SOHO Solo’s are ideally positioned to explore.

One such opportunity is the use of technology to help reduce costs and improve efficiencies – and there are some pretty amazing online services available to help small businesses do exactly that. Over the coming month’s we’ll explore some of them – starting in January.

Our usual SOHO Solo West Cork meeting haunt, the Celtic Ross Hotel in Rosscarbery, is closed – which leaves us venue-less for our January meeting. Rather than hunting for a different venue, I thought this might be an ideal excuse for us to try an online meeting / web conference instead.

We’ll be using Vyew, a FREE Anytime Collaboration and Live Conferencing service. It’s something I think most of us are pretty new to… but let’s give it a try and see what it has to offer. From the little I’ve played with Vyew it seems to have great potential for both online seminar / webinar type presentations and collaborative working. There’s also no need to download and install any software on your computer, it all runs up in “The Cloud” – which makes it quick, easy and convenient to connect and engage from anywhere.

I’ll post more details about our virtual January meeting soon. Meanwhile, check out Vyew for yourself – it could be just one of many online tools that could help your business be more productive in 2009.

Tags: collaboration, online meetings, Resources, tools, Vyew

• Home Working , Meetings , Next Meeting , Resources , Social Media , internet
• Comments(0)

Calvin October 14th, 2008

At the SOHO Solo West Cork meeting today Jim Flynn of MTS Consulting gave a very interesting talk on Time Management for Small Business Owners.

Here are the slides from Jim’s presentation:

Jim covered a fair bit of ground in his presentation… including tips on organising your contacts and a history of your interaction with them, and focusing on the tasks that add real value to your business. He suggested keeping a log of your time for a week, then analysing it with a critical eye to see where you could improve efficiency.

Some of the highlights included:

• Identify the tasks that are really productive (focus on them) and those that are just making you busy but deliver little return (reduce, eliminate or delegate them)
• Look at ways you can speed up your regular tasks – set yourself deadlines and strive to meet them
• Organise and plan your workload with prioritised to-do lists
• Keep your promises to yourself
• Focus
• Monitor and manage stress
• Under promise and over deliver
• Know yourself – how do you work most effectively?

Jim certainly offered plenty of food for thought… and I think everyone at the meeting went away with at least one thing they could apply that would be of tangible benefit to their business.

If you have any feedback, or some time management tips, techniques or tools that you’d like to share – please dive right in and add your comments at the bottom of this post.

You can download Jim’s Time Log and To-Do-List templates (PDF files) using the links below.

Time Management: Time Log (62)

Time Management To-Do List (90)

Tags: Meetings, productivity, Resources, time management, tools

• Meetings , Networking , Presentations , Resources , Small Business , Soho Solo , West Cork , tools
• Comments(9)

Calvin October 3rd, 2008

Image via CrunchBase

One of the best things about being a SOHO Solo member is all the great events that I get to attend throughout the year. From the monthly SOHO Solo West Cork meetings to the fortnightly Cork City meetings – all with great speakers – to discounted and/or free entry to events hosted by IT@Cork, Cork BIC and other partner organisations. There are also fantastic one-off events, including conferences, seminars and training tailored specifically to the Small Office Home Office (SOHO) worker and solo entrepreneur.

In order to give our members a convenient “One Stop Shop” to access all SOHO Solo event information, we’ve set up a public SOHO Solo calendar on Google Calendar. If you use Google Calendar to organise your schedule, you can simply add the SOHO Solo calendar to your account, and hey-presto – all of the SOHO Solo events will appear in your calendar automatically.

For those of you who don’t use Google Calendar we’ve also published an interactive version of the calendar on the blog, giving you one convenient place to check out what’s on. If you’re new to Google Calendar, you may want to take the Google Calendar tour and give it a whirl….

Tags: calendar, Events, Social Media, tools

• Events , Social Media , tools
• Comments(0)

Calvin August 5th, 2008

Just installed Twitter Updater — a Wordpress plugin that automatically posts an update to Twitter whenever a new blog post is published to the blog. Now, if you follow SOHOSolo on Twitter you’ll receive a twitter update with a link back to the blog whenever there’s a new post here.

For those of you who don’t know what Twitter is, I’ll be dedicating a post soon to how small businesses can use this short-messaging social media tool to engage productively with an online community that includes customers, peers and thought leaders in your industry.

It’s a great tool for keeping up-to-date with the latest developments on- and off-line, for seeking advice and sounding out opinion.

You might be sceptical about the benefits of a medium that restricts you to posts of 140 characters or less… but the real value of Twitter isn’t so much in the individual posts, but more in the networking, the collective awareness and sense of community that develops over time. Put your preconceptions aside, give Twitter a try and before long you’ll find it invaluable.

Tags: internet, Networking, Social Media, Soho Solo, tools, Twitter

• Networking , Social Media , Soho Solo , Twitter
• Comments(5)