SuperMondays brings you SuperStartup

I am happy to share with you another great event put on by SuperMondays.

We are very happy to announce that David Cohen (CEO of TechStars) and Kevin Mann (Take Publishing) will be running an innovation seminar especially for the startup community!

David is a successful entrepreneur in his own right, helping to found several software and web technology companies which were subsequently sold. David is now the Executive Director of TechStars an acceleration programme based in Boulder, Colorado and Boston, Massachusetts and has helped 38 startup companies setup bringing capital, connections and real-world experience to provide a unique opportunity for early stage start-ups.

Kevin Mann at Take Comics was one of those startups.  Take Comics was the first (and to date only) overseas team to be accepted on the TechStars programme – and is based in Teesside!!  Kevin will help provide insight into what it is like to be on an acceleration programme and what he has got out of it.

Finally, we will be running a competition at the event where two lucky people will win tickets to the Le Web conference on 8th & 9th of December in Paris! You can find more here: http://www.leweb.net

Date & Time: Friday 20^th November @ 15:00 to 18:00

Venue: To be announced

Registration: http://superstartup.eventbright.com

More details on the event is here: http://www.supermondays.org/2009/11/07/superstartup-supertelly/

SuperChristmas 2009

SuperMondays, in partnership with Thursday Fizz, Adesign Association, Refresh Teeside and VBUG are proud to announce:SuperChristmas is the Christmas party that brings our organisations together to round off an excellent year and to set the scene for 2010. The party will start at 7:00pm on Thursday 17th December 2009 at Hoults Yard.

Click here to buy your tickets now!

The ticket price includes a light dinner, ceilidh dancing, and as much free beer/wine/soft drinks as the budget will allow…all served in a farm house theme decked out with bales of hay!

Everybody is welcome, so please do invite your friends … there will be no presentations on the night so leave your laptops, notebooks and netbooks at home!

Looking forward to seeing you there!

North East Networking, where is it going?

As many of you reading this blog will know, I founded Refresh Teesside and earlier this year we had our first event. The idea behind Refresh Teesside was to provide a local event for the developers and designers who run most of their business in the region and give them a vehicle to get together and chat.

I went to Teesside University and was lucky enough to get a job in the industry as soon as I graduated. I am originally from Leeds; However I have grown to be very passionate about the digital industry in the North East. There are many networking events in the region. Adam, who I work with at Koodoo Creative , attends many of these including BNI, NECC, Network North and Entrepreneurs Forum. These business networking events are great for him to generate leads and network with other businesses. He enjoys this and enjoys handing out business cards and talking business. However, I am much more interested in getting together with other people who do what I do. What I mean by this is I am not that interested in what clients other businesses have, I am not interested in generating leads because thats not my main job. I work as part of a reasonably small team, with only a couple of developers in our development team. Therefore, I dont get to chat and run ideas by other people who have similar knowledge and mindset to me. This is one of the reasons why I started Refresh Teesside.

Recently I have noticed there are quite a few networking events and many individuals and businesses who are trying to get people together and advertise the talent in our region. Many of these events take place in Newcastle which is another reason why I started Refresh Teesside which would be a local event. There are many events in the region and many have their own individual agendas and target audience. Super Mondays, run by Ross Cooney, is a great event and is targeted at a specific audience. Thursday Fizz is again another event which seems to target creatives in general; However this event has been setup very well and has been well marketed. Its a successful event. Mark Easby is running a Twestival in Teesside this year after last years successful event in Newcastle. Robert Page has more recently setup NOCCI Middlesbrough which targets creatives in the region. I believe Refresh Teesside has its place as it has a unique agenda and target audience.

I am aware of the Digital City event First Wednesdays and Codeworks with the membership and events they run. I have this really frustrating feeling that there are quite a few people and organisations trying to promote the region and its talent, but some may have the wrong agenda themselves. By this I mean getting involved with setting up ‘another’ event for self promotion of some sort rather than trying to promote talent or the region.

I was recently made aware of a:design association which really interests me. I was invited to attend a focus group on Tuesday (25th Aug) which was very interesting. I really like the idea of having a not for profit organisation as an umbrella for all things in the region to make sure everyone stays on track. There were some really interesting points brought up at the focus group and I will be sure to stay in touch with the guys to make sure my thoughts are taken on board and also to offer my time to help out. I am going to see if we can run the next Refresh Teesside event in association with a:design so we show our support.

I cannot help but feel really frustrated that there are many many many people talking up the North East when it comes to digital media. Codeworks, Teesside University, Digital City and the government are all talking the talk about the talent in the Teesside region; however it really does seem to be all talk. I say its time for someone to stepup and group all the efforts and make sure they all stay on track. I would say running an event in assosiation with a:design would be a good start. You would have to prove the event in terms of how it will promote and how it is unique. I will be looking to do this with Refresh Teesside, lets see what happens!

Reply to the Telegraphs Milo Yiannopoulos

So I was browsing my tweets yesterday and came across this article by Milo Yiannopoulos – Sun Tech Mission 2009 its still grim up North looks like Milo has managed to upset quite a few people and in my opinion people are quite right to be outraged. I thought that the article warranted a reply. I started to put a few thoughts together myself and thought I would contact a few people in the region and collate some comments/replies and post them in addition to my response. This morning I received a few comments and also links to replies which have already been written. It looks like Milo has even responded to some of the blog posts and comments as well.

So I have scrapped my response as I fully agree with all the comments below in one way or another. There as also been a large number of comments on the blog itself so be sure to go and read.

To read the full story please visit my blog on blog.nebusiness.co.uk

One speaker, a couple of pizzas, a few pints and plenty of great minds.

The first Refresh Teesside meet-up was held last night (Thursday 2nd April) and I am pleased to report it was a great success. I would like to thank everyone for coming and making it a first event to remember. We had a great turn out with people from Barnsley and Newcastle coming to see what all the fuss was about.

The meet-up was kicked off with a brief introduction and welcome then a presentation from Craig Rothwell from the OpenPandora Project.

The Pandora is a unique machine. It was designed based on the input of thousands of forum users with one goal in mind – to make the ultimate open source handheld device. Craig also brought a fully working prototype and also a cardboard cut-out of his original idea. More information can be found at www.openpandora.org

We then took a natural break as the pizzas arrived and people asked Craig questions and took the time to get to know each other, putting faces to names which was one of the core reasons Refresh Teesside was started. Once we found out who everyone was we moved to the pub to carry on the informal style the Refresh meet-up events will follow.

The event has already had some great feedback and the response in the twittersphere (#RFTees) has been great. twitter.com/refreshteesside

Planning now starts for the next meet-up so keep your eyes on the website www.refreshteesside.org and please spread the word.

Refresh Teesside – Size does count, AND what you can do with it!

Refresh Teesside
‘Size does count, AND what you can do with it!’

I am pleased to announce our first ‘meet-up’ for Refresh Teesside members and friends.

Date/Time: Thursday 2nd April, 6pm
Location: IDI Building, Teesside University Campus, Middlesbrough

So what’s it all about: Let’s Gather Great Minds, Let’s All Grow And Learn, Let’s Promote Local Talent

The first Refresh Teesside meet-up will start at around 6pm and will be kicked of by a presentation from Craig Rothwell from OpenPandora project. We will then hold a questions and answers session and socialise! Then its down to the pub for a few pints. The main aim of the event is to have some fun and meet new people. Its not a business networking event, its an event for designs and developers to meet other like minded people although its not restricted to designers and developers… make sense, didn’t think so… basically if your in the creative or digital industry in or around Teesside then come and get involved and help shape the group into what you want it to be.

Please spread the word about the event in the twittersphere (#RFTees) – http://twitter.com/refreshteesside

Please signup to our upcoming group so we know how many people to expect http://upcoming.yahoo.com/group/5366/

Please blog and post and chat and message and tweet and… you get the message… Thanks for your support and look forward to seeing you there.

More about The Speaker – Craig Rothwell
The presentation will be given by by Craig Rothwell from the OpenPandora project. The Pandora is designed to be a handheld game console with high-end PDA capabilities, but may also be run as a low-powered full-featured Linux desktop. The unit uses a 1GHz Texas Instruments processor, 256Mb of RAM and a battery which should last 10 hours.

Find out more about Refresh Teesside at www.refreshteesside.org

Google Group – http://groups.google.com/group/refresh-teesside
Upcoming – http://upcoming.yahoo.com/group/5366/
LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/e/vgh/780867/
Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Refresh-Teesside/32393234001
Last.fm – http://www.last.fm/group/Refresh+Teesside
Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/refreshteesside/

Refresh Teesside

Refresh Teesside is a community of designers and developers working to refresh the creative, technical and professional culture of New Media endeavours in their areas. We aim to promote design, technology, usability and standards.

There are lots of Refreshing Cities around the world but only a couple here in the UK and it’s about time that changed. The drive behind digital media in the North East seems to be focused very much in Newcastle however Teesside is home to many up and coming digital media agencies and also many freelance web designers and developers.

We want to let people know that you don’t need to live down South to be considered a Web Professional in this country.

After searching for a long time it became apparent there was nowhere locally which met with point one of the Refresh Cities Manifesto – “Let’s Gather Great Minds”… so Refresh Teesside was born.