Join the Club!

Our first post of 2015.

I have been thinking recently about how people spend their time and something that is really exciting for one person, is the most dull way of spending time for another. This doesn’t stop these 2 people being friends or finding other ways they can spend time with each other that they both enjoy.

This post is a meander through my thoughts, it may not be constructive to most.

These thoughts always interest me as I love to know what makes people tick and why they do the things they do. I then think through the conundrum that means that people want to be different from one another, but yet the same. This intrigues me.

I wonder about the ‘niche’, I wonder about how there are many businesses tailoring their services to a small group of people or businesses. They know what their customers want and they are happy to provide it well. Then you have the big companies that are all encompassing, persuading us that big is beautiful and success can only be found in the famous. They tend to cater to the lowest common denominator. Can you be all things to all people? I think not.

In today’s world, everyone says that ‘going viral‘ is the big thing, we have large corporations who want everyone to use their products and claim 100% market share. Because of this, people rate success on how many users/viewers/likes/retweets it gets. But is this successful? Why is it so important to reach the most amount of people, have the most followers?

Surely, it is important to reach the right people and the right followers. You become famous to the right group of people, you build the club around the things that interest you. You join the group of likeminded individuals who know how to help you in the best ways.

Joining a club is a great way to meet likeminded people who are different. You all have a common interest that brings you together, yet you all have the diversity of your backgrounds. You can share knowledge with people who may know the things you know, but also may have different ways of coming to a problem. Even in a group of likeminded people, not everyone is the same and people are held in esteem for the expertise that they have.

Relationships are built on shared experience, joining a club allows to you share! If you can navigate the internet, you can find a group, I am sure of it! This blog post is full to the brim of people who have started groups, created meet ups, set up events, all so they can find people to Join the Club.

This year, as I build my group of likeminded people, I am also working on finding other clubs, events or groups that suit our challenges. That in itself is a challenge that I want to solve in a systematic and repeatable way.

You may hear about some of the results in these pages.

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine

Doing things differently – A German Girl’s Recipe for New Food Startup Community

In my previous blog, I’ve shared with you my adventures trying to find food StartUps in London, now, I want to share with you how it was our Food StartUp School. The weeks leading up to the event were anything but sane, but I’m one of those people who thrives under stress and I soak up the energy at showtime.

“There’s a German in the house, we’ll be starting on time” is what my slightly cheeky last email update for attendees read before the event. With a reputation to live up to, workshops kicked off at 3:30 sharp and only few attendees missed precious minutes of wisdom from Karen Jones and David Franks.

The rest of the guests started pouring in after the workshops to sip on German Riessling and Portuguese red and nibbling on Cookbooth’s delicious “tweet to eat” cupcakes. I made a point of keeping name badges informal – First and last name and the company, that’s it. Why? I’ve found it quite uncomfortable when name badges at events or conferences I’ve been to revealed the company position and  people look at badges and judge before they even look into each others’ eyes. The Food StartUp School is no place for categorising and big egos and it should never become that – it’s a place of learning, passion and fun.

“Stage lights are hotter than I remember them back at high school” is what I thought when I got up on stage to introduce our keynote speaker Jim Cregan, CEO of Jimmy’s Iced Coffee. Maybe it was the heat, maybe the wine, but I broke the ice by giving a bit of a background on who this North American sounding girl is and why I run this event. A quick recap – German girl, Canadian teachers. And I love food. And tech. And events. I also passionately dislike boring graduate jobs and I wanted to start something that would allow me to both meet amazing people and be able to get up and feeling incredibly excited about work every single day. And on that Monday, I was too excited for words that the 180 people that filled the room came to an event of a concept that had been the germ of an idea just 4 months ago, when I moved to London and decided I wanted to take the food festival I’d run in Scotland a step further and actually help businesses be successful in the long run.

Jim kicked off with a game of rock-paper-scissors and light-heartedly shared his powerful business insights à la “screw it just do it”. Just get out there, give it a go, be crazy, have courage, believe in your product, stand out – those sound bites don’t do his talk justice but then again, you “had to be there” as the Haggerston Times’ article proclaimed. Jimmy is the perfect example that it doesn’t take a business degree or a business plan to build a successful business.  His talk was followed by Maximilian Seeburg – actually a former University friend of mine – who now runs EatFirst under Rocket Internet’s umbrella. Surprisingly, his talk focused on learnings of offline-marketing and while Rocket Internet is a company with lots of moolah available, it was good to hear how traditional methods still have a place and impact.

Networking pitches were up and drove the energy through the roof! Originally, I introduced them to the event to make the networking more effective – to let the entrepreneurs introduce themselves, their idea or company and who they are looking to connect to. As much as serendipity can be wonderful, there are often missed opportunities and I wanted to maximise the chances of our attendees making awesome connections. My personal highlights included Snickets, UncoverDining and UpPopMe, as well as the two energetic girls from DoubleDutch.

The energy was followed by insanely good food, not least the quirky and tasty indian snacks served by Jhalmurie Express owner Angus and James Poutler’s startup Pronto. It wasn’t easy to get all those buzzing entrepreneur back to the seats, but well worth it – the lady in pink, Tessa Stuart, spoke about her point-of-sale market research learnings and Paddy Willis shared his experience from working with countless food startups and their funding cycles through his Grocery Accelerator. Marc from DIGEATALL was our special guest for the evening – Europe’s first food tech accelerator didn’t just tell our attendees about their incredible programme in San Sebastián, Spain, but also offered direct entry into the second application round to Malwine Steinbock of Cookbooth.

More networking pitches took the audience by storm, and we rounded the evening off with more wine and Sweet Hangover Bakery’s alcohol infused cakes as well as healthy sweet bites with coconut cream by Teddy Bakes! I had way too much food, if that even exists. And I certainly wasn’t checking the time anymore when we hit round 2 of electric networking! The energy floated me home and I after so much good feedback, both on twitter and blog posts and requests for the next event already, I made the wait short and sweet – we’re looking at March 23rd and more awesome events in between as well! The new year can come – I hope London stays hungry! #KYCU

Stay updated about the Food StartUp School – sign up to our newsletter!

Victoria Albrecht
@FoodStartUp_LDN

The ambulance bike

That must be one very fit paramedic. This reminded me of 2 things,

• That you can help people out in so many different ways, not just the traditional ones;
• That traffic must be so bad in London that even a motorbike isn’t quicker than a push bike. Own steam (and tube) all the way!

Just looking on the NHS website about the “Cycle Response Unit” its how they are officially called, and saw this interesting facts:

• Cycle responders attend approximately 16,000 calls a year.
• They resolve around 50 per cent of all incidents at the scene.
• Their average response time to calls is six minutes.

Well done NHS!

Ghilaine

Imagine walking into a room full of people and you don’t know anyone

I have heard some good things, from people reading this blog, about how interesting the people I meet are. Luckily, I will take that as a sign to keep them coming, and there are more on their way.

With this, it has also made me realise that perhaps I am a little unusual in reaching out to people to meet/chat with them. One thing many of the people I meet have in common is their dread at walking into a conference, talk, networking event, alone and to be expected to start talking to people.

Many of these events create breaks in order to ‘network’ but don’t really facilitate it easily. I am not talking about sending everyone into the break with a question that needs answering or a competition to speak to as many people as possible. I am talking about how the room is set up or even how the event is set up.

I went to an event a few weeks back and it was designed to be informative as well as have networking in the breaks. Everyone had a name tag with their company name on them. You may say, so far, so good. However, the space that the guests had to grab a drink and stand about ‘chatting’ was minimal for even 50 people. I would imagine that there were over 500 people there.

So first up, in a tight space, imagine the noise. No-one could hear themselves, let alone others speak. Then there was the pushing and shoving. Understandably, people wanted to get a drink or use the bathrooms. Unfortunately due to the setup, there was nowhere to stand but in front of the drinks table and the toilets. There was no chance of getting into a conversation with anyone without being pushed and shoved into each other.

Now imagine walking up to someone you have never met and striking up a conversation………

So, if you wonder why I reach out to people on a 1:1 basis to see if they fancy a coffee, you can see why. I get a proper conversation, with a proper cup of coffee that I don’t spill down my front (or worse the person I am talking to), AND, most importantly, I get 30-60 minutes of uninterrupted time to get to know someone. That is where true networking starts, with meaningful relationships, not a big pile of business cards from people I didn’t manage to speak to.

This is one of the reasons I really like platforms like LinkedIn and I love meeting interesting people that have been introduced to me by other interesting people.

Just reading this post through, I realise that I have not really given any tips on how to get talking to someone in a room full of people – try this post for size.

 

Ghilaine
@LadyGhilaine

Channel 4 ad-break

I love this picture, makes me feel like I am in a Channel 4 ad-break. I had the opportunity of going to the Channel 4 offices last week.

 If you weren’t aware Channel 4 don’t have studios or produce content, they commission all of it. This means that collaboration and partnership are at the heart of its business dealings. This also keeps them on the cutting edge of technology as they are constantly in the ‘marketplace’ of new ideas.

 

Ghilaine
@LadyGhilaine

Solving problems around the watercooler

The communal area is often neglected in many companies. It’s the place where people eat their lunch (if they’re not eating at their desk), and it’s the place where you go and grab drinks throughout the day. I find that it is also one of the best places to solve problems.

My team and I have made a habit of going to the kitchen every couple of hours; we spend about 10-15 minutes there, shooting the breeze, and more often than not, talking about the issues and problems that we’re currently engaged with. The ideas and suggestions that come out of some of these informal chats can really shine a light on the problem and provide the signpost to the best solution.

One of the key benefits is that you’re outside your normal working environment here, no big screen, no white board, no code to distract you; it’s often far too easy to use technology as a crutch. In an environment with no tools, you have to use words to paint the problem, you have to use gedanken experiments to visualise the path through the problem. This in turn forces you to break it down into smaller chunks which aids your own understanding. Having to explain something to people you respect is a great way to getting a different view. The people in my team are my peers; we just have different specialisms; we have the same exposure to the same types of problems in our field; we’ve all read Donald Knuth.

It is also a great place to start building your team ethos and sprit. Our subject matter varies widely, often we talk about what the latest films and TV we’ve seen from Netflix or elsewhere; perhaps something more tangential like the benefits of transcendental meditation. It builds a tight-knit team where nobody feels like an outsider.

Lewin

@quotidian_ennui

 

 

Can you guess where this is?

Mad wooden structure – can you guess where this is? I thought it was very incongruous in the middle of the city. I am not sure what it is for or in fact what it is. I couldn’t find out a sign that would tell me either.

Ghilaine

Bubbles

November seems to have passed us by. I am meeting a lot of people who have said that it is crazy busy. This may be down to so many things, the run down to Christmas, the economy picking up, add your ‘I am busy excuse here’……. Whilst this may help pay the bills and we have our sites on Christmas as a chance to wind down, is it a realistic or healthy attitude?

MarcelClemens/Shutterstock

I was walking past Kings Cross and St Pancras station buildings today, on my way to one of my favourite places in the area, Karpo, and I saw a big flurry of bubbles. It made me stop and watch.

Unfortunately they didn’t hang around long enough for me to take a picture. I wondered where they had come from, who had created them and if there were going to be any more. I really wanted there to be some more. What is it about bubbles or balloons that are so mesmerising? Sorry, I went off topic for a second………

What I really liked was that it was unexpected and took me out of my normal thought processes. The benefits of this in order to find a solution to a problem you have been thinking about and getting nowhere with, are often written about. For me it gave me an fresh idea, no doubt you will see the fruit of that in the future.

So with life being as busy as it is, how do you get the chance of making time to just be and not think of the next thing on the list? I struggled with this for a long time and the advice to meditate didn’t always take into account that real life gets in the way (as an excuse or not). Then I read this article

written by Linda Lauren about the reasons for not taking quiet time and how to overcome them. It gave me productive and usable strategies. I don’t subscribe to religion, faith or creed, but I do like practical advice.

I especially like the tips that tell you when it is easiest to have a clear mind, this allows me to create habits rather than trying to ‘fit it in’.

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine

We had a lovely dinner!

A couple of weeks back, we had the pleasure of hosting our first Global Conversation Dinners, with our friend Sofie Sandell. She is an entrepreneur with interests spanning from technology and leadership to art and sailing. She is a Swedish Londoner and she is an speaker, trainer, university lecturer and author. Her book ‘Digital Leadership’ about how creativity works and the digital world was published 2013.

We wanted to create an open and fun approach to discussing the challenges we face in our globally connected life and work.

We weren’t sure if the format would hinder networking; A drinks event allows people to mingle more freely. However, it did facilitate much deeper conversations for the guests. Perhaps they met fewer people, but they made stronger connections.

We had 3 tables and, interestingly, like-minded people gravitated together at each one.

We filmed the introduction and the outcomes, which you can watch here if you are interested.

We believe that we don’t need an expert standing and giving their experience when we had a room full of experts. Each guest had an angle on the questions we posed. It allowed us to really understand other points of view and bring together solutions that stood up to the diversity of challenges we all face.

We got some great feedback from those who joined us. Gladly, a lot about what a good evening it was. Some that will help us make it even better for the next one!

We hope you can join is when we pose the next questions. Watch this space when we announce the next one in early 2015. If you don’t want to miss out, you can sign up to our newsletter here.

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine

More London Buses!

I found some more buses on my travels, I hope I am not giving too much away, 2 outside 127 Blackfriars and one in Leicester Sq. I am becoming a bit of a collector now! They are a little bit of fun on a cold and dreary day.

All this bus talk is making me wonder if Tech Talkfest should have a “Networking on a London Bus” event… maybe having an afternoon tea? What do you think?

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine