Ted

 

TED, the event made famous by its amazing talks, is run in Europe by Bruno Giussani

Ed Bussey was one of the c0-founders of FigLeaves.  He went on to join the team at Zyb, selling the company to Vodafone.  His latest venture, Trigga News, was sold to Clash Media in May of this year, which he now runs.

Ed Cox used to work at the Department for Communities and Local Government, before moving to head up IPPR North, the think-tank.

Ed Curtis is a writer and theatre director, based in London, whose credits include the Take That musical, Never Forget.

Bob

 Bob Goodson is a British entrepreneur, living in San Francisco.  He is the founder of YouNoodle, which lists and connects entrepreneurs around the world, tracking their business success.

Bob Driver works with UKTI and is the director of the high technology sectors.

Investor Bob Benton has just this month launched Bob and Co,  “connecting vision, content and finance”. 

Robert Loch is an entrepreneur, connector and the founder of the YesAndClub, a membership group based in London.

Robert Fraser is a British actor who has worked around the world in roles including Marius in Les Miserables.

Dave

Dave McQueen is a fantastic speaker, trainer and coach.

Dave Alberts, previously creative director of Grey,  is the founder of  What On Earth Is Going On, connecting brands and causes around the world.

David Pearl is the inspirational founder of the Pearl Group and the creator of Impropera.

“That which is static and repetitive is boring. That which is dynamic and random is confusing. In between lies art.”  John A. Locke

 

With thanks to @Matlock @JonCard @SimonLewisOMJ

 

A few weeks ago I visited a fantastic charity which uses gardening to change the lives of disabled people.  Thrive looks after gardens in Battersea park and relies on an army of volunteers to carry out its work. 

I was reading their brochure again this morning, when a couple of paragraphs by gardener Monty Don stood out and made me stop and think.  I’m not sure why, but they just did…

“For the first fifteen years or so of my life
I hated gardening. I was brought up in a
large family with a sprawling garden and
my parents not unreasonably saw their
five children as a useful workforce in the
perpetual struggle of keeping it under
control and producing all our vegetables.
Most days we would be handed out
tasks that, with hindsight, were not at
all unreasonable. The lawn had to be
mown, the strawberries weeded, parsnips
thinned or perhaps the potatoes earthed
up. At the time I did them all slowly and
unwillingly and certainly without a glimmer
of pleasure. But I spent a long time in the
garden and, despite myself, learnt how to
do many basic horticultural tasks. I learnt
its rhythms.”

“Then, when I was about 17, I was
sowing carrots after school on a mild,
midgy March evening. The sun was
setting behind the beech tree and the air
was full of the soft, folding calls of wood
pigeons going to roost. I suddenly had a
powerful sense of absolute contentment.
The earth felt perfectly smooth to my
fingers, the seed absolutely in the right
place in my cupped hand. I knew just what
to do and exactly how to do it. I knew that
this was a measure of happiness that I
would always be able to refer to.
That feeling has never really gone away.
There are days when you are glad to have
finished a certain job or when you long
for spring, but the garden and gardening
itself has never failed to be a source of
inspiration and comfort for me.”

Please have a look at the work that Thrive are doing, and if you can see a connection with your own world, I know that they would love to hear from you.

“Every bursted bubble has a glory!
Each abysmal failure makes a point!
Every glowing path that goes astray,
Shows you how to find a better way.
So every time you stumble never grumble.
Next time you’ll bumble even less!
For up from the ashes, up from the ashes, grow the roses of success!”  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

In the UK, and if you don’t include frozen food, Iceland has become known for a couple of things.  I’m sure that it is a beautiful place and all that, however the inescapable fact is that its financial crisis and its erupting volcano are the things which stick out.  You may remember that in 2008, all three of the country’s major national banks collapsed.  Two years later, the unprounonceable volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, erupted for the first time in 200 years, causing one of the largest flight disruptions in history, due to volcanic ash.  You probably remember where you were.  Or where you weren’t.

 Step forward then, young Icelandic entrepreneur Kristján Kristjánsson with an idea which encapsulates both entpreneneurial spirit and cheeky opportunism.  He is selling jars of Volcanic Ash.  The containers, about the size of a hotel jam-pot, come with a printed label explaining the origin of the contents and even showing you how to prounounce Eyjafjallajökull (“eye-a-fyat-la-jo-kutl”, in case you’re wondering).  Lava Productions are selling their ash for $31 a pot and Kristján tells me that business is booming.  Now that’s what I call explosive growth.

 Entrepreneurship will be the main topic of conversation in Sheffield this week, as the MADE Festival rolls into town.  Hosted over several days and masterminded by Michael Hayman, Nick Giles and the team at Seven Hills, the event features a host of events including  the launch of the Sheffield National Enterprise Academy and a two-day bootcamp led by former Dragon, Doug Richard, called Made in 48 hrs.  I’ve been asked to host some speednetworking on the train up north, and have been told to expect some special guests in our carriage.  Here in Britain, where so much attention is given to what happens in London, it’s excellent to see that entrepreneurial activity in Sheffield is moving full steam ahead!   

“The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.”
Robert Frost

Some people have an office which they go into every day.  Others work from home.  For more and more people, it’s neither of the above.  From Starbucks to hotel lobbies, members clubs to park benches, everyone has their own formula. 

This has been a month of changes for me, one of which has been moving into a new office, close to Piccadilly Circus.  For some time before that, I was working from several locations, and so I thought that it would be useful to share a few of the good places I’ve found along the way.

Offices;

Finding a new office can be a fiddly old process and so here are three organisations I found especially useful.

1) Talk to Instant Offices if you’re looking for serviced offices and more of a ‘plug-and-play’ solution.  Instant, founded by Rob Hamilton, has been incredibly successful over the past few years.  I was looked after by Chris Stewart who found us our space with Reflex (see below).

2) Reflex are the company we ended up with because they offer flexible licences in non-branded offices around Central London.  Justin has looked after us extremely well. 

3) If you are looking for something a bit longer terms (perhaps you’re moving your growing business to its new home), then I recommend Devono.  Several years ago they found us an amazing space in the Piazza in Covent Garden and worked alongside me, visiting the properties, while we worked through what it was we were really after.  The founder Robert Leigh has always been extremely helpful and it was good to catch up with him some time ago at the Growing Business Young Guns Awards. 

Finally, if you’re just looking for a couple of desks to share or sublet within someone else’s office, have a look at Desk Space Genie.  Within a few minutes I had found a couple of good options which I was visiting ten minutes later, as many people listing are happy for you to pop in and have a quick look.

All of this raises the question of whether you really need an office these days anyway, and for many people I think that the answer is no. 

If you’re looking for something of a halfway house between coffee-shops/hotels or homeworking (by the way, check out the brilliant Emma Jones’ Enterprise Nation on that front) and a full-on office, then why not have a think about one of these options…

Clubs; 

Adam Street is a private members club in London (just off the Strand) aimed at entrepreneurs and freelancers.  I’ve been a member for years and like the team very much.  They have great event spaces, a peaceful (small) library upstairs where you can pop in to work for an hour or two and fantastic food.  They also have one of London’s best staff members, Jenny Cox. 

One Alfred Place  is a business club in Bloomsbury and is a terrific space.  I’m on the committee, so I’m a bit biased.  What I like about it is that it is divided into some wonderfully light, spacious areas.  There’s a bank of workstations where you can just sneak away to graft on your laptop for an hour.  There are comfy sofas.  There’s a good restaurant and I can often be found enjoying an early morning breakfast meeting in one of the booths.  It is pricier than Adam Street and tends to appeal to business people outside London who come in from time to time and need somewhere reliable to meet and entertain clients or get things done.

Like Minds Club;  Newly opened by the excellent Drew Ellis, this is described as ‘a social space to make  physical connections from virtual conversations’.  It uses some of the impressive facilities of a good hotel on Northumberland Avenue including a great boardroom which members can book. 

Other popular clubs include The Hospital in Covent Garden (for people in the creative industries), Soho and Shoreditch House (tricky waiting list but I think that Shoreditch House is one of the most impressive spaces in  London) and Century on Shaftesbury Avenue. 

The challenge with a couple of these places is that they are really just best for meetings and not so great if you want somewhere to plug in your laptop and get some work done for a couple of hours.  If you are looking for more of a co-working space where you might spend half a day or more, then have a look at these three, all of which, by coincidence, use the word ‘hub’…

Co-Working Spaces;

Hub Culture;  Founded by Stan Stalknaker (an excellent chap), this is an online community which has several clubs (or pavilions as they call them), one of which is just off Carnaby Street in London.  I was struck by how reasonable this is (membership includes teas and coffees, as does Like Minds above) and how refreshingly international the member base is.

TechHub;  Founded by Mike Butcher and Elizabeth Varley (I must stop waxing lyrical about everyone I mention on this blog, but they too are great!) and sponsored by Pearson and Google, this is a co-working space just by Old Street tube, for tech companies looking for a place to base themselves (they also have hot-desking available).

The Hub has spaces in 12 cities. Its London bases are in Islington and Kings Cross and I hear that another is being plotted for Paddington.  It tends to appeal to more social businesses and enterprises and hosts some excellent events.  Guess what?  Yes, the founder, Jonathan Robinson is a (seriously) fantastic chap. 

Ideas;

Well a post like this would not be complete without me chucking in a couple of random and quite probably unfeasible ideas.  So here goes;

Why doesn’t one of the UK’s endowment organisations launch its own co-working space?  Here’s looking at you NESTA.  And you Unltd.  Also, why don’t some of the leading business networks have a go too?  I’m sure that lovely Thomas and Penny Power at Ecademy have thought about this, however perhaps it’s just a question of the right people conspiring at the right time… 

Wouldn’t it be fun to approach a bedraggled coffee-shop owner somewhere, and offer them a deal?  Theywould keep owning and running it, someone else will promote it.  Up go the new signs (Welcome to Cafe Unltd, Cafe NESTA, Cafe Ecademy). It’s a  three month experiment.  Based on some of the empty coffee shops I pass, how could the takings possibly go down?     

So if you’re looking for a new office or a new place to work and meet people, hopefully there’s something useful in this post for you.  Please let me know if you have other favourite places which people should know about!