Help entrepreneurs to grow, mentors wanted

Helping 80 entrepreneurs to grow

The World’s largest free business accelerator, Entrepreneurial Spark, is opening its doors to exciting and dynamic businesses in Belfast this February (and we can’t wait!). Powered by Ulster Bank, we are offering free office space, a 6-18 month programme of hands-on enablement, a start up boot camp and regular events that will help the 80 entrepreneurs build and grow their businesses.

Looking for mentors

In addition to all of the above, we are on the look out for experienced mentors to support, coach and help the businesses- are you the person to make this happen?  The right mentor can provide expert support and ultimately increase the likelihood of businesses becoming a roaring success and we are looking for passionate people who have the skills and experience to share with Entrepreneurs, giving them the extra edge.

You are invited

Join us for a light lunch to find out more about the programme and see our state of the art Hatchery. It’s also a brilliant opportunity to tell us a bit more about you and how you could support the entrepreneurs, as well as meet other potential mentors.

WHEN
Wednesday, 10 February 2016 from 13:30 to 15:00 (CST) Add to Calendar
WHERE
The Belfast Hatchery – Lombard House. 10-20 Lombard Street. Belfast, Antrim Bt1 1RD GB

BOOK HERE

Hope to see you there.

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thinkbusiness

Young Social Innovators Announce New Partnership with Ulster Bank

New partnership

Young Social Innovators and Ulster Bank have announced a new partnership at an event in Dublin. Over 150 people gathered to hear from speakers including An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny TD who spoke about the important role that social innovation has to play in developing an economically stronger I. The event was emceed by Diana Bunici, TV presenter and author.

Support

Through the new relationship, Ulster Bank will provide financial support to YSI and its participants, ensuring that social innovation in Ireland continues to be fostered from a young age. A record breaking 444 innovation projects have been entered into this year’s Young Social Innovators of the Year Awards by over 6,500 students nationwide, an increase of 8% from 2015. Across its programmes, YSI is currently accessed by approximately one in ten students throughout Ireland whilst it works to grow its interest and activities in Northern Ireland, Canada and Zambia.

An example of social entrepreneur

Ulster Bank is also committed to providing participants with access to support for their projects, many of which have the potential to be developed into a social enterprise and sustainable business. One such example, Greener Globe, was conceived by a team of students from Tullamore College in Co. Offaly including Jack Dooley who was speaking at today’s event.  They patented their energy free Aquacica showerhead which uses a traffic light system to encourage users to reduce the length of time they spend in the shower, from an average of eleven minutes to seven minutes, therefore leading to reductions in water use and energy costs.

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CoderDojo Community Platform Hackathon

The CoderDojo Foundation recently relaunched Zen as a new open source community platform! With the awesome support of Code For Ireland, Dogpatch Labs and Ulster Bank we are hosting a 2 day Hackathon at Dogpatch Labs to show you how to contribute to this opensource community platform!

Register here

About Zen

This new system allows CoderDojo community members (Mentors and Champions) to fully manage their Dojo activities like  issuing tickets to individual Dojo events, posting in forums, editing and setting up profiles etc. The system is completely open source.

Below are some of the really cool community features:

– A forum for community members
– A forum especially for youths over 13 years of age
– An improved Dojo listing where you can book tickets to a Dojo event
– Profiles for individual community members where you can showcase your skills and the Dojo you belong to

We’re using some cutting edge open source technology for the system:

– NodeJS
– AngularJS
– PostGreSQL
– Mozilla Open Badges
– Jenkins

About the hackathon

If you’re interested in developing for this open source project please come along to our Hackathon in Dogpatch Labs, the top tech start up hub in dublin! On the day there will be 2 streams, a coding stream and a translation stream.

Coding Stream

We will cover how to get set up for development and open your first pull request! Don’t worry about having / not having lots of experience, we will have experienced developers present to help you, and we have a list of issues that are “suitable for beginners”!

This is an ideal opportunity to:

– Showcase your development skills on an open source repository. Employers love to see open source activity on Github so it is an easy way to prove your skills.

– Learn from experienced developers in the tech industry. The system was developed by a leading NodeJS development house, NearForm

– Learn how the peer coding reviews and deployment processes work in a real world scenario.

Translating Stream

We are also looking for people to help us translate the community platform. If you are fluent in any forgien language we would love your help on the day. We are using Crowd In to translate the community platform. More details about helping translate on the day can be found here.

This is an ideal opportunity to:

– Showcase your language skills

– Contribute to a open source community project that impacts youth all around the world!

What you will need:

Your Own Laptop and charger

You don’t need to be an expert but you will need to be very familiar with javascript.

Resources

View repository here https://github.com/CoderDojo/community-platform where you can see issues and the Readme if you’d like to get started pre-workshop.

Where can I contact the organiser with any questions?

If you have any questions please feel free to contact us directly via: info@coderdojo.com

If you are interested in contributing to the platform outside this event, we are always looking for developers to help out, get in touch via the mailing address above.

A special thank you to the event sponsors Dogpatch Labs for providing the amazing venue for this event and to Ulster bank for providing the food.

Hope to see you there!

Register here

WHEN
Wednesday, 6 January 2016 from 18:00 to 21:00 (GMT) Add to Calendar
WHERE
Dogpatch Labs – Unit 1 CHQ Building. North Wall Quay. Dublin, Dublin D1 IE – View Map

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thinkbusiness

Climate Launchpad launched

Climate Launchpad, which is part of Climate-KIC Europe’s largest clean/sustech accelerator, is launching again.

Climate Launchpad

Sustainable Nation is running Climate Launchpad, the ideas competition of Climate-KIC again this year. Last year one of the finalists Orbas (internet of food, http://www.orbasconsulting.com/) got to the last 20 out of 80 finalist and 700 submissions. Not bad, but we like to win this year.

Tallinn, Estionia

Same set up this year, 3 finalist from Ireland will compete with finalist of 28 counties. The finals are in Tallinn, Estonia in October. Anyone with an idea in the climate/green/clean is welcome. The size of the problem/opportunity is 37 trillion. 

Programme

The programme will consist of a number of orientation/preparation sessions across Ireland, between February and April followed by a two day workshop with an international trainer from Climate Launchpad in May.

The 2 day workshop delivers a new, very sharp methodology to get to a realistic proposition and a pitch (it bleeds). It is loosely based on “Disciplined Entrepreneurship, 24 steps to successful startup” by Bill Aulet. Happy to share the methodology with anyone interested.

Mentoring

The workshop is followed by 6 mentoring and coaching workshops and a pitching final. The 3 winner get to pitch at the international final in October in Tallinn.

Help

If you could spread the word, or make any introductions, I would be much obliged. More details you can find here http://sustainablenation.ie/.

The post Climate Launchpad launched appeared first on Small Business Can.

This post was originally published here - http://www.smallbusinesscan.com/87532-2/ on
thinkbusiness

Climate Launchpad launched

Climate Launchpad, which is part of Climate-KIC Europe’s largest clean/sustech accelerator, is launching again.

Climate Launchpad

Sustainable Nation is running Climate Launchpad, the ideas competition of Climate-KIC again this year. Last year one of the finalists Orbas (internet of food, http://www.orbasconsulting.com/) got to the last 20 out of 80 finalist and 700 submissions. Not bad, but we like to win this year.

Tallinn, Estionia

Same set up this year, 3 finalist from Ireland will compete with finalist of 28 counties. The finals are in Tallinn, Estonia in October. Anyone with an idea in the climate/green/clean is welcome. The size of the problem/opportunity is 37 trillion. 

Programme

The programme will consist of a number of orientation/preparation sessions across Ireland, between February and April followed by a two day workshop with an international trainer from Climate Launchpad in May.

The 2 day workshop delivers a new, very sharp methodology to get to a realistic proposition and a pitch (it bleeds). It is loosely based on “Disciplined Entrepreneurship, 24 steps to successful startup” by Bill Aulet. Happy to share the methodology with anyone interested.

Mentoring

The workshop is followed by 6 mentoring and coaching workshops and a pitching final. The 3 winner get to pitch at the international final in October in Tallinn.

Help

If you could spread the word, or make any introductions, I would be much obliged. More details you can find here http://sustainablenation.ie/.

The post Climate Launchpad launched appeared first on Small Business Can.

This post was originally published here - http://www.smallbusinesscan.com/climate-launchpad-launched/ on
thinkbusiness

[Event] The Impact Series – Building an Inclusive Recovery

Social Entrepreneurs Ireland are delighted to invite you to join us for the next event in our exciting speaker series which will focus on the theme “Building an Inclusive Recovery”.

Date: Tuesday 28th April | Venue: Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin 8 |
Doors open: 6.30pm, First speaker: 6.45pm

As Ireland moves towards recovery, are we in danger of leaving behind the most vulnerable members of society? How can we ensure we build an inclusive society for all?

This Impact Series shines a light on leading visionaries who are pioneering innovative solutions to build a more inclusive society – a society which supports people on the margins and ensures they receive very opportunity to reach their greatest potential.

Each of the speakers below will use their unique experience to inspire and challenge us all to think differently about how we might build an inclusive recovery. By sharing their wealth of knowledge and experience, and most importantly their vision, they will demonstrate how their individual projects and experiences are having a lasting impact on the lives of those they support.

Speakers:

  • Welcome Address: Kevin Humphreys, T.D., Minister of State at Department of Social Protection
  • Graham Jones, Founder, Solas Project and SEI Elevator Awardee 2013
  • Sr. Stanislaus Kennedy, Visionary and Social Innovator, Founder of Focus Ireland
  • Elizabeth Waters, Founder Virtual Community College and SEI Impact Awardee 2014
  • Lynn Ruane, Graduate of An Cosán & President-elect of Trinity College Students’ Union

Ticket price is a donation of your choice when you book online (or €15 on the door). All ticket proceeds will go towards The Minnovation Fund which will be given to one high potential start-up social entrepreneur on the night. Further details on how to apply to pitch are provided below.

For further information and to register for tickets click here: http://theimpactseries6.eventbrite.ie

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Web Hosting – Unlimited Doesn’t Exist!

You may hear people often talking about unlimited web hosting. This could either be unlimited disk space, bandwidth or both.

The truth is – it doesn’t exist.

It’s a marketing technique that has been used successfully over a number of years to lure people into paying money for something which will eventually stop working for them over time.

Imagine your website as a computer. You can only fill a computer with a certain amount of data before it starts to fill up and become slow. Your website is the exactly the same.

We all know that there’s no such thing as unlimited hard drives, or unlimited bandwidth. These are finite resources that have limits. Regardless of the size of your web host, they will probably have some sort of limit along the line.

It’s all in the fine print.

Let’s be honest, have we ever fully read the fine print? We merely just click accept and continue with whatever we were doing. This is where you will get caught out.

If your website is running a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, and you suddenly get a large burst of traffic then it’s very likely that your account would be suspended, rending your website unavailable. This could mean you lose customers and could hurt your SEO efforts too.

Moving away from the ‘unlimited web hosting lie’.

There’s a vast number of web hosting services available to choose from, all offering different prices for their services. However, picking one may be difficult.

HostNinja offer managed hosting solutions (they handle all the hard work) for a respectable price, and even offer solutions for those who are running sites with WordPress. They have 100% uptime, which means your site will always be online.

Quote SBC100 to get 100% off your first 2 months, and a free migration from your old host. Visit HostNinja by visiting www.host.ninja or by emailing them at hello@host.ninja.

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Blogging Tips: 4 Common Myths You Shouldn’t Believe

The idea of starting a company blog nowadays is quite a popular one. Look online and you’ll find that leading brands such as Innocent, Argos, Whole Foods and even Tesco are managing to create a social hub around what they do, maintaining customer trust by keeping them informed and offering useful, engaging content.

But many smaller businesses with much less market share are hesitant to start a company blog, for various reasons. In the same way that social media was once dismissed by leaders as an unnecessary extra to their marketing efforts, brand blogging currently remains a pool of the unknown into which businesses are afraid to dip their toes.

However, many reasons for not blogging are simply down to either a lack of understanding about the platform, or a result of negative conjecture from the ones who executed it badly.

Here are some common myths about brand blogging you shouldn’t believe.

1. ‘There’s not enough to write about.’

Not knowing what to write about is perhaps the first and most common stumbling block for brands wanting to start a blog. The important thing to remember is that your blog doesn’t have to be limited, as long as you’re aware of your target audience (the people you’d like to be able to sell to) and will be posting things likely to be of interest to them.

Product guides, monthly round-ups, top-ten lists and tips are all easy, recyclable templates for producing content your audience is bound to be drawn to. Keep it relevant to your industry or field, and perhaps pay special attention to the kinds of problems or challenges your customers are likely to face on a day-to-day basis.

If you’re trying to bring a more transparent, human element to your brand, maybe you can give weekly insights into the goings-on of your office or workplace, and even hone in on individual employees who can share their own tips and advice. Be sure to stay in the know about ongoing developments in your field, so you can be the first to inform your customers when something changes. This will help them to see your brand as a reliable authority figure, and builds trust.

For some examples of brands that are doing a great job of content, click here.

2. ‘It’s just another advertising platform we don’t need.’

You might think that with SEO, PPC, and possibly video ad campaigns, your company is all set for the marketing side of things. But a corporate blog shouldn’t just be seen as ‘another marketing tool’. It’s so much more than that – it’s a way for you to open up to your readers; establish your brand identity and build up a long-term relationship with customers both new and old.

It’s here too that many business leaders make the other mistake of only using their blog to talk about their own products and processes. Not only will this bore customers to death and probably make them lose interest over time; it also yields little benefit in the long term. Customers will buy from brands usually by the way they make them feel – whether this is through TV adverts; shop window displays; social media banter or the type of content they push out through their blog. It doesn’t matter how much you tell your customers how great your new product is – they need more from you before they can believe it.

3. ‘It brings no direct reader-to-customer conversions.’

This one isn’t technically a myth. It’s true that blogging is a difficult tool to measure when it comes to customer conversions. However, the fault lies with businesses seeing conversions as the main goal in the first place.

When somebody reads your blog for the first time, the chances are they won’t immediately buy a product there and then. But if the same reader has been finding themselves drawn to your blog time and time again (for information, advice, or maybe just entertainment), who will they think of first next time they need a product or service in your niche? It’s true that blogging doesn’t bring fast results when it comes to increasing sales, but it will steadily bring results in many other ways you may not have considered. These include:

  • Building the authority of your website, leading to higher rankings on Google and therefore more organic web traffic
  • More exposure of your brand through higher rankings
  • Bigger and stronger brand identity, helping customers to really relate with you
  • More shares on social media, if you post content your readers really like
  • Insight into your most popular products and topics, which lets you know what customers want more of
  • Encouraging customers not to just choose your brand, but to stick around and give you their repeat business.

4. ‘It requires too much time/resources/manpower.’

Another frequent reason for leaders writing off the blog idea is that they don’t believe they’d have the time or manpower to make it a success. But the truth is, managing a company blog really doesn’t take much upkeep, if you know how to do it efficiently.

There are a few ways to go about producing and scheduling blog content on a regular basis. One way is to delegate a post per week or per month to every member of your team, so everybody can choose a topic they feel is relevant and contribute individually. This could be sharing updates about current business projects, or putting together some tips or advice on a recurring challenge your customers are facing. If you choose to do it this way, make sure your team members are all competent writers; otherwise have posts checked by a resident copywriter to keep grammar, spelling and discourse in check.

Secondly, you could outsource a copywriter with experience writing content in your field, to deliver a company post every week or month. Not only does this help take the strain off for a minimal cost; it also won’t be eating into anybody else’s time. However, it’s advised that all ideas and topics are still discussed within your team and that the content writer is fully briefed before posting. If your blog is to properly convey your true brand image, you’ll want to have as much control as possible over what’s being pushed out there.

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