Where are the accountants at OpenCoffee?

This one makes sence "One's first step in wisdom is to kuesstion everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything."

registration is now open @ http://www.nwstartup20.co.uk. Spread the word

Dan, I do not think you can blame me for trying. However, you can blame me for not making any money out of these initiatives.

Graham, would be great to see you. Do register on upcoming.org.

We even have a Tiger's Den in Manchester next month, where 4 x £100,000 will be invested in to four startups. Check my blog for the article.

Manchester is cool, its just that we don't communicate well.

I think I'll pop along. I met Manoj at a more down to earth venue with you Den, a few months ago. As I'm only round the corner...

So the way forward then is to get some reporter types to see if they're interested in covering it. BBC did for London albeit the reporting was skewed. DT has made Woman's Hour I believe.

I don't know is the honest answer, I do think businesses/business people in London are more open to new concepts like OC.

May be there is a preconception that it is for geeky types only, may be the message should be that OC are a truly unique event for all types of SME not just the technical savy?

Excuse me Jason - everything stops north of Jaen for me these days -:)

FYI - I am an officially co-opted Yorkshireman having been part of that great county's cricket club for many a year and having lived in the Dales for 20+ years.

But seriously - if that's the case - where are the startups towards which OC is aimed? Where do they go? Who do they meet? Given the Manchester corridor must have a catchment area of some 2.5-3.5 million people then surely there must be *some* who'd benefit from this kind of informal event?

Cheeky bugger Den.

What is it with all you Southerners, there are a lot of entrepreneurs in the north, we have some of the most innovative business start up that trade very successfully.

Also we have some of the best restaurants (I have tried to eat well in the south it can’t be done), football teams, music scenes and bands and entrepreneurs, and above all Den we do all this without being given huge hand outs from 10 Downing Street, who like you operate under the impression everything stops north of the Watford gap! :-)

Has it occurred to you there may not be that many entrepreneurs up north?

People who go to the London event do so because they're in the area. Why would they take an expensive train ride or a 6 hour round trip to Manchester for a couple of hour's chat?

If KPMG is attending then you'd have thought they'd talk to their client base.

Dan, point taken. I am also speaking to CraigC. Need to find an angle for SAP to get involved. I am determined to slow down the traffic going to London, week after week. NW got lot of wealth. We need to be better organised. People are still not aware of these events. There are two other start up events taking place the same week. Upcoming.org can make a difference. Adaptation is bit slow.

Clarification....

James will do podcasting, but I want to make this a live event. So the details need to be worked out. All of this was arranged this morning. Please bear with me.

Hot off the press....Next NW StartUp 2.0 on 14/06 in Manchester...the panel includes....

Ajaz Ahmed – sold Freeserve for £1.5bn
Alain Falys – raised $30m for OB10, ebdex competitor (awaiting for final confirmation)
Sam Sethi – Blognation – raising capital for blogging
David Ingram – Izimi
VC - Saul Klien cannot make it..Looking for another
Paul Walsh – Segala – awaiting confirmation

Will blog later...James Governor podcasting with uStream.TV and Skype - lot more..really cool event.....

All sponsored by KPMG with Sun Microsystems taking over from July onwards....its all happening.....visit my blog for the updates....

I hope Manoj is reading this...change happens one person at a time

Manoj's Manchester OpenCoffee will be better now he's moved the time to 10:00. Hopefully we can get a few more accountants to attend the various locations around the UK and Ireland, and then blog, or talk about it on AccountingWEB.

Hi David, I know it can be done, but lets be honest most accountants are not as 'out going' and technically savy as Simon, Philip and Richard.

Many still need to be convinced of anything new having any real benefit, hopefully more will try though.

Den, you're right, thats why we/I don't play golf and haven't implemented 2020/AVN etc type marketing techniques, the events we go to are arranged to mix with other businesses not just legal, banks etc like so many, but also every day SME types out there who can meet on a regular basis for a chat and support/knowledge sharing to a point, thats why I am going to try the Manchester coffee meeting this year, it looks like the next step from what we already do, i.e. the informal version which will have the benefit of being more relaxed still!

I guess it's a good job it's not in the pub!

C'mon Jason - getting out and about for most professionals means a round of golf with their mates or going to some stupid 2020 marketing BS thing. (sorry - but they really do talk crap - even if it does work right now it's all rehash nonsense from years past that won't work going forward.)

BTW - I'd better not mention the 13,200 client FreshBooks picked up this last year in the UK.

Hi Den,
I will blog it over the weekend, when I get my broadband back. There was a fair mix of entrepreneurs, VCs and other investors (along with those PRs). Several music oriented startups, and one great little company with a product called TagandFile, which they are aiming at the legal profession, but which would work just as well for accountants. I'll be writing a separate piece on that.

Jason,
I'm managing to get the likes of Simon Hurst, Philip Woodgate and Richard Murphy to come along to my London Wiki Wednesdays (http://londonwikiwednesdays.com), which is a pretty geeky event for accountants to turn up at. It can definitely be done, and they come back for more!

Den I didn't miss the point, but you have missed my point totally, the SaaS comment was reference (Parallel) to new things, which the idea of a coffee venue to meet is, and remember many accountants are still in their safe zones, i.e. the office waiting for the phone to ring or a knock on the door, we do organised networking events on a regular basis, why?, because we get out there and put our name about and tell people about us and yes give free advice at times,but even this is an area most accountants don't get involved in and it has been around for so many years.

I totally agree these events are a great idea, and I may pop along to the Manchester one myself this year and see if i can't offer some useful advise or just plain old fashioned help to and early stage entrepeneur, or at worst have a nice cup of coffee and take 30 minutes out!

Jason - they don'thave to get SaaS - they only have to get the concept of collaboration. As for the coming down for coffee - you miss the point - most that attend are early stage entrepreneurs - they're the potential clients.

Well I guess Den the accountants either don’t drink coffee, or they are finishing off P35s while battling the Revenues computer system downtime, or maybe they are in the middle of the Limited Company December year ends, or maybe in the midst of preparing for P11D season which is upon us, or maybe … oh what’s the point trying to defend them, most don’t get SaaS Den what chance have you got of saying hey come down to Starbucks and meet a load of ‘techie and free thinking’ types and chat over coffee!

I believe SL from KPMG will attend the OpenCoffee Manchester event on 22nd, as they already sponsor the NW StartUp 2.0 events I run. SL is a reader of your and DT's blogs. Well tuned to web 2.0, etc. It may be a different story with respect to his colleagues.

Dan, I enjoyed the train trip back to the airport. Thanks for the chat...

I can confirm that Martyn was wearing his Linux T Shirt. He refrained from discussing double entry book keeping in favour of our open source build... we dropped in on the meet having spent a couple of ours with our bank who of course had no idea what we were talking about when we referenced open source, open coffee, web 2.0 etc

I'm sure Martin - but you don't count - you're a semi-geek looking for more OS stuff unless of course you were casting pearls. :)

At the Bristol event last night! Well I was, along with Clive.