Uploaded on February 5, 2006 by drobnikm

What’s the coolest thing you’ve seen in another country?

This is a Plinky inspired post. My short answer is the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke, British Virgin Islands.

The longer answer is that it got me thinking about navigation and charting a route through choppy water/difficult times.

The backstory is that my sister was working out in the Virgin Islands when she decided to get married. Sam and I were a bit stuck for a gift, since she was already working in what many would consider to be paradise a holiday seemed a bit pointless. They were also living in temporary rented accommodation so house-type stuff was equally pointless. However, they hadn’t really explored the islands since arriving there.

So we chartered a yacht to take them around the islands for few days and to provide a different setting for the actual marriage ceremony. The backstory to the backstory is that my parents met running a yacht charter business in the Virgin Islands so there was a nice symmetry to the whole thing.

Being the height of hurricane season (late Sept) charter prices were cheap, if you could find a yacht still in the water. Fortunately we did, a very tidy Hylas 49. We provided the food & booze, the boat came with diesel & water. I was also expecting navigational charts of the islands. What I got was a 3-fold A4 drawing, pirate style, of the islands. Including several areas that were coloured in red - danger, don’t go near there!

Call me old fashioned but I wasn’t keen on taking a $500k yacht anywhere with what amounted to a novelty drawing of the area.

So I went to the nearest chandlers and bought a set of navigational charts, that now make very attractive wall art. One of the areas that was coloured in red on the novelty chart was the bay where the Soggy Dollar Bar is located. I did the simple calculations, checked our draft, planned an entrance pilotage, knew where the safe water was, and safely navigated in for a wonderful afternoon (and some excellent rum cocktails). Without having good information we’d have never found the place, and if we had, we could have easily run aground since the entrance was a bit tricky and there wasn’t a lot of room.

Are you navigating your business by high quality information or a novelty napkin?

Ok, perhaps one word mangle that’ll never make it into the OED but Twestivals are taking over. At least until 12 Feb.

Organised out of London (who says Brits and Europeans don’t “get” twitter) and with a global network within days, if not hours this is a fantastic demonstration of something that simply couldn’t happen this big, this fast even 2 years ago.

Dan Martin from BusinessZone.co.uk is coordinating the Bristol contribution with very kind support and sponsorship from Sift where Business Zone is one of stable of great online magazines & services.

I helped out in my usual small way with the planning and connecting of people but thought I should also make a more definitive contribution and put my reputation where my mouth is. So I’ve thrown my metaphorical hat in the raffle with a voucher for 1 days consultancy (or 2 half days depending on what is more suitable) from me.

It is kind of exciting, not knowing who will win and what business challenges they’ll have. I just hope I can make a positive contribution.

If you haven’t signed up, please do, Bristwestival looks like being a great evening at the new Lanes Bowling Ally. Lots going on until the wee-small hours and all proceeds are going to charity mate. Actually they’re going to Charity:water so that’s nice also.

Learn to Draw a Horse - Vancouver 1980 - Uploaded on December 1, 2006 by Mikey G Ottawa

What do you get when you fill Olympia Hall, Earls Court with companies trying to sell technology to teachers? The BETT Show is possibly the largest exhibition of it’s sort in the world and certainly Europe.

What don’t you get? You probably don’t get much learning as a delegate.

I attended earlier shows in 2006/07 as part of Futurelab but as with all exhibitions the cost-benefit is sometimes hard to justify. Certainly now, as an independent consultant and working with start-ups, the exhibition is of minimal value. Leaving aside the cost of an actual stand, there’s travel and accommodation and most of a week out of the office. From memory Olympia has poor phone coverage inside (plus concentration breaking levels of noise) and no free WiFi.

I say from memory because I didn’t go to BETT. I did go to BETTr, one of a growing number of unconferences that are springing up alongside their glitzier cousins. The benefits are multiple, being a smaller gathering you actually get to talk to people.

BETTr was mostly developers and smaller companies that supply innovative technologies to schools and universities. I advise growing companies on how best to plan for the future and have a couple of interests in the education sector so that was a perfect match. There was only one teacher, but that in itself was a topic of discussion in a break out session.

I really like the unconference model. In particular we had a detailed discussion on how to engage teachers in the development process far earlier than is currently the case. People shared experiences, ideas, thoughts, barriers, solutions. Challenges included their limited time, curriculum constraints and the usual challenges of getting beyond the early adopters to mainstream. The most popular solution was to take teachers to the pub!

The demands of modern teaching are that for most teachers its more than a 5-day a week 9-5 job, but a way of life. INSET days were commented upon (not just at BETTr but also the twitter backchannel where I was posting along with others in the room and from all over the educational globe).

There wasn’t an action plan or formal report, but it sparked off lots of new ideas, rekindled some old ones, and put a few to rest. It also brought together folks I’ve been reading online so we could meet up, though the Friday night TeachMeetBETT09 was the main event for that.

A big thanks to Jukesie for organising and to all the supporters for making it happen.

Update: Looks like I’m not the only one recognising the difficulty of engaging teachers. Today’s Guardian is reporting on BSF still not getting sufficient engagement despite a new drive from the Government.

Atticus Finch - Uploaded on August 21, 2006 by Dunechaser

How valuable is engineered serendipity to your business? On my way back from a meeting in the Watershed I thought I’d stick my head into UWE’s new business incubator facility in Bush House. Only opened just before Christmas they already have a good selection of tenants including the usual scattering of graduate start-ups (such as Carolyn Newton from Whale Bags, a business plan competition winner).

I also bumped into Chris, Dave, and Toby from Evans & Finch. I’d spoke to Dave & Chris last year at OpenCoffee before they’d settled so it’s great to see them finding their feet so quickly. For one thing the holding page they had back in November is now funky showcase of their work.

Chris, Toby and I threw a couple ideas around for some funding they’re thinking about applying for. They had a very strong feature set (not unusual for a software / tech company) and a pretty compelling description of the benefits, which is nice to see. The challenge we were kicking around was how to bring that to bare upon the funding call.

We took a step back from the application itself and looked at the funders as clients. This lead to some great new directions for the proposal. We’ll find out how they get on in a couple of weeks.

So how does that help jbsh? Well in the short term it doesn’t. It does build the relationship with Chris, Dave & Toby (especially if they land the funding ) which may lead to some consultancy in the future. More likely, they’ll bump into someone that needs some business planning support and think of me.

Serendipity works like that, so long as the opportunity cost doesn’t outweigh the benefit its always a good investment.

I was in town, I could have gone straight home and sorted a couple emails or helped Chris & Dave and lay the opportunity. I think helping out Chris & Dave was a better use of my time and the emails will get answered in due course.