In a previous post Conor wrote about applying for Seedcamp. From the poll it seems a good number of people would like a little help filling out the application form (including myself) and some are available to lend a hand from their own experience of applying last year.
A room has been arranged in Oriel House Hotel in Ballincollig, Cork for Thursday August 7th starting at around 9am.
It will be quite informal, the aim it to get practical advise from each other on answering some of the questions on the form to highlight your business or idea as best as possible.
I’ll have print outs of the questions with me on the day. Anyone who’d like the them before hand, heres a link to the the Seedcamp application PDF.
Gordon Murray of eWrite has come up with a brilliant suggestion for SeedCamp. He thinks we should crowdsource some of the applications. Of course, this exercise will also help those who want to apply for SeedCorn and other similar competitions.
There are plenty of people who have experience in filling out application forms for the likes of Incubation Programmes, EI Grants, the SeedCorn competition etc. Why not use that expertise to help those applying to SeedCamp who may never have dealt with this sort of thing before?
So yet another call for interest. If there are sufficient numbers in Cork then Gordon will arrange a meeting room in the Oriel House Hotel in Ballincollig for a morning. Those who want to apply and those who want to help can come together, figure out a strong message for each applicant and hopefully help them do better in the process.
If it works well, there is no reason this can’t be repeated in Dublin and elsewhere.
Usual story, fill out the poll (this one is for Cork only!) and ideally leave a comment or mail Gordon (gordon AT ewrite DOT ie) with some info about yourself. This is a very short term thing so the poll will close on Friday.
Joe Drumgoole let us know that the outcome of the Tuesday Push on PutPlace far exceeded expectation:
For us it increased our number of visitors on average four fold for the week in which we were pushed. This converted to double the previous weeks registrations. We weren’t running any other campaigns so I attribute that all to the Tuesday push….Basically one of the most cost effective marketing exercises we have done this year.
And your reason for not signing up for the push is?
As many of you know, the first BarCamp in Ireland was held wayyyy back in September 2006 in Cork. It is still remembered as a wonderful day and I met many of the people I now know well for the first time there. Since that event in Webworks there have been further ones in Waterford, Dublin, Galway, Belfast, Kilkenny and Limerick.
Recently it was suggested to me that we have another one in Cork in January. I lobbed the idea out at an OpenCoffee to discover that there was tons of pent-up demand for a BarCamp and that January was too far away.
A further conversation with John Handelaar at the hugely successful and very barcampy OpenCoffeeClub BBQ got me all jizzed up about having one sooner too.
The next BarCamp is PodCamp II in Kilkenny on September 27th so I’d like to propose the next Cork one for the November timeframe. Sufficiently long after PodCamp but not too close to Christmas.
Please use the PollDaddy poll below to indicate levels of interest and, if it is there, I’m sure we can arrange something down here
UPDATE: I can’t see how to edit a poll after it is published but one great suggestion has been made, which is to offer “Any Saturday in November” as an option. If that’s what you’d prefer, just enter it in “Other”
The Tuesday Push on 1TIme started over Chez Mulley and spread like wildfire. Here are the reviews and posts that we’ve seen so far. Pop in a comment if we’ve missed yours.
So far only 5 companies have signed up for the push. There are some harsh words I could use here but I’ll simply ask the question; why wouldn’t you like coverage of your app and some honest feedback?
Damien Mulley gets community like very few other people in the industry. His ideas are always worth listening to and, more importantly, worth acting on. He has just kicked off a real corker called The Tuesday Push. Every second Tuesday, a startup is selected from those who put themselves forward and lots of us blog about them on the same day.
It’s one of those simple but potentially incredibly powerful ways of getting us all noticed. There is nothing nefarious about it, no PPP in the background or Google gaming. Just write in an honest way about a new start-up every two weeks. The posts will be even more useful to everyone if they contain constructive criticism and ideas rather than puff-pieces.
We would encourage those who read but don’t write to Digg/Stumble/Delicious the posts they really like. And obviously if you are a startup, register your interest in being covered.
The first start-up to be covered is the brilliant PutPlace. I’ll be doing my review of it later over on Argolon. Damien has already done his. We’ll also do aggregated posts here on Web2Ireland with links to all the coverage.
If you don’t mind me pimping LouderVoice too much, you can also make use of us to help spread the word. Just add the tag “review” and the tag “rating=N” (where N is from 1-5) to your posts. If you then register your blog’s RSS feed as a “FlagTag” feed on LouderVoice, we’ll pick those posts up and they’ll get indexed very quickly as reviews on Google. If you don’t have/want a blog, just write the review directly on LV and we’ll link it to all the others.
This initiative will only work if the community gets behind it. So instead of thinking “what a good idea”, go review PutPlace, now!
The logos are in and we like them all! Now it’s down to the Irish Web2 community to pick their favourite. To keep it fair, we’re not telling you who did what until the winner is selected. Remember, the winner gets the following:
One year of PollDaddy Pro sponsored by PollDaddy
A copy of Microsoft Expression Studio sponsored by Microsoft Ireland
A year of Blacknight VPS hosting sponsored by Blacknight Solutions
Just to round off ‘Collison week’ comes notice that Patrick will visit OpenCoffee Club Limerick this Thursday April 3rd at 11am. Attendees will enjoy the opportunity to pick his brain and pat him on the back for their huge success.
The venue is the Absolute Hotel and all are welcome. Remember OpenCoffee is a free of charge event where the emphasis is on networking, so new-comers are always welcome. Need directions or have any questions? Just comment here.
Application development on social networking platforms was the hot topic this week at the Graphing Social Patterns conference in San Diego. Ironically it’s like the wild wild west of a few hundred years ago - lots of prospectors in an undefined territory where the opportunity is massive.
Here are the key challenges and recommendations I collected from the speakers and conversations I had at the conference:
Challenges:
Applications and widgets are hard to monetize. Traditionally brand advertising is related to the web CONTENT (e.g. target “Grey’s Anatomy” watchers because they appear to fit with the brand). Essentially the new world of social network advertising is trying to monetize NEW types of experiences and context-free environments. Since users can create any type of group, profile, page etc. there is some fear over what the ads will be placed next to.
There are low barriers to entry. Anyone and their dog (who knows a bit about PHP) can create an application on Facebook rather quickly at very low cost. This has lead to low quality, low utility, disposable, spammy apps but the good news is that the trend is quickly moving towards high value, engaging, quality apps.
The metrics for measuring and analysing applications are minimal. This is an evolving area in itself.
There are multiple APIs. OpenSocial vs. Facebook/Bebo platform - different audiences, channels, usage patterns etc.
Recommendations:
Develop apps that have utility and meaning. Facebook is changing the rules of the platform to protect its users and provide an experience that increases communication and improves user engagement.
Ensure your app is: 1. Clear in its proposition and easy to use, 2. Measurable - track growth, engagement, advertising etc., and 3. Flexible - many crappy trials beats deep thinking/planning (Note: I believe this was the case for the low quality apps but the future apps require significant planning to make them of value. The main point of this is to get it out there early to see how users react - “perpetual beta”)
Apps have three distinct stages of development: 1. Marketing - use appropriate channels to spread your “call to action”; 2. Growth - tune and track virality; What are the other apps in your category doing?; 3. Engagement - increase page views and time spent on site
The level of trust must be improved between the users, applications, networks, and marketers.
Plan for a portable ID. The industry trend points towards a future that allows for an ID that’s shared between applications/networks but will be controlled by the users (e.g. permissions)
For social games the “social” aspect is more important than the “game” - it’s better when your friends are contacting you to “play”. You still must implement typical aspects of gaming - level/goal progression, turns, leader-boards, incentives/rewards: gifts, unlocking features etc.
31st of July 2008 by Gordon Murray
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