This morning saw the re-launch of Manchester Open Coffee, now pencilled in for the final Thursday of every month, in the café at Urbis.
After some confusion with a b2b event for Co-op Finance sharing the same space (grey men in grey suits), we all had a topic to break the ice.
The Urbis WLAN was down, so everyone concentrated on networking. No bad thing.
I met a really great crowd, including Zulf Choudhary, doing things with social banking that parallel my next project (more on this at a later date); Hwa Young Jung & Dave Mee of TANDOT; Ian Moss of Fly-the-Coop; & Asa Calow of ensembli. Ended up staying long after the official finish.
Talk ranged from Ruby internals & the Seaside web framework, through cloud computing, to Low Carbon Computing, and my attempts to bring a hackspace to the North West (more on that in tomorrow’s post).
Lots of other interesting people - sorry not to mention you all by name. Well done to everyone behind this - Manchester obviously needed #OpenCoffee back.
Having had to miss Oekonux, for family commitments – and miss other events due to lack of time, or not being able to be in two places at once, I’m musing on outsourcing.
There’s been a bit of talk about outsourcing lately, especially amongst those who’ve read The 4-hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich
But what to outsource? Tim Ferriss, the 4-hour Work Week author, has even outsourced dating – but most of us want to live our lives, just with more time for the bits that we like best.
Why mention this here? Well, in a busy couple of weeks I failed to find time to write on any of what kept me busy here. Not good, when I’m busy writing a workshop session on productivity, efficiency, & effectiveness (it’s called Keeping the Activist Active, if you’re interested, and I’m looking at delivering it at any third sector conference, barcamp, or unconference that will have me). No, it’s time to look at outsourcing.
I already have all of the code writing (and much of the systems architecture) from my current projects placed with people far better than me. Bits of sys admin are being examined. Writing? Well, I’m not sure how appropriate a ghost written blog is, so I’ll stick with it for now, and revieew the situation again in a year or so.
What does that leave that takes so much of my time? Networking.
A lot of time is spent by the average social entrepreneur (or any entrepreneur) on networking events, and social networking. Business breakfasts, Open Coffee, Speed networking, Co-working days, unconferences, you name it, there are a thousand opportunities to swap business cards, look someone in the eye, and contemplate a business opportunity in a new relationship.
Online we have LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, Identi.ca, FriendFeed, ThirdSectorForums, Ning, IM, IRQ, Groups, Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, good old-fashioned e-mail groups, hours of time at the screen and keyboard building and refining a network of contacts that we hope will enable us to change the world, or at least bring in a small contract to help to pay the bills.
Given the amount of time spent in networking, enjoyable though it is, little wonder that one looks for a way to free some of the time to get actual work done (unless you work in PR or sales, in which case managing your network of contacts is most of your day’s work). Can it be outsourced? I’ve tried it, after a fashion. At previous businesses we’ve divided the conference schedule, and reported back on the contacts that we’ve made – it can work if you’re systematic, and report well – but that’s no use for a one man band, or someone in a small company without colleagues enough to deputise to the role.
When it comes to social media, there’s a real possibility – get a concierge firm to write your Tweets and blogs to guidelines that you produce, and to reply to comments and tweets for you. It’s easy to review their work, and get reports; it can work – so why doesn’t it feel right? Because Social Media is about personal insight into what contacts are up to. Not gory details, but little snippets of a contact’s life that show you they’re a human being, not a company automaton. You can outsource your information channels, but how much personality can the contractor provide, and can it show any of the authentic you?
Hmm, an overlong post. If I can outsource something else, I’ll get more time to shorten posts. I’d be interested to hear what you’d like to outsource in your life, and what is stopping you from doing it?
FACT Gallery’s Climate for Change exhibition runs from 13 March - 31 May, 2009, and explores “how humans can be invested in the change needed to sustain civilization and examining the multiple crises affecting the world: ecological, financial, food, housing. Is society itself becoming unsustainable?”
The idea is to involve local communities, projects, people, and make links, and I’m trying to bring some of the themes of sustainability - particularly where it links up with technology - together in a series of 11 café events.
Small Steps to Sustainability poses the question “Can technology save the world?”, and looks for answers - in the face of crisis - in a more connected world
Each week (on the non-alliterative “Sustainability Wednesday”, at 6pm) we’ll meet in Gallery 1 with beer or coffee. A four minute presentation (in the 20:20 style) introduces the 11 themes, and the rest of the hour is open discussion around that weeks theme.
It’s called Small Steps… as it’s about both small steps we can take to sustainability, and about stepping through the themes to see how all of these things link up in different ways.
What I’d like to do is bring in local groups, individuals, and businesses, involved with social enterprise, sustainability, and the themes mentioned each week, to contribute. Particularly those already a part of Climate for Change.
I’ll put up more detail on the workshop (including the slides) next week. At this stage I want to gauge interest in joining in: I’m sure other people have far more ideas to share than I do, so please get involved. Either e-mail me, or talk about it on Twitter (or Identi.ca) - please tag your posts #smallsteps.
Yet another blog on the Interweb pipes? Is there a need?
Who knows - I gave up blogging (though it wasn’t called that, then) about a decade ago, but found myself micro-blogging rather a lot about work these last few weeks:
http://identi.ca/richardsmedley
http://twitter.com/RichardSmedley
…and found the need to add in more. More on the Social Enterprise scene in the North West (and N Wales, and the Midlands). More on Free Software developments, and the software we’re writing. More on websites, as I seem to be moving from the back-end (oiling the servers, and tweaking code) to the front-end, and far too much on Social Networks.
So, another business blog. Why not?
Anyway, off to find a good WP theme to customise, then write some thoughts on last week’s Speak To A Geek event.
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