StartVI – The incubator

Oh how I have waited for something like this.  When the huge slow to react monsters can’t deliver what’s actually needed then it gives space for smaller more nimble creatures to evolve and react.  Welcome the small, mobile and beautiful www.startvi.com

VI is:

VI (pronounced ’six’) is a Virtual Incubator for very early stage companies based in Northern Ireland which focuses heavily on mentoring and operational readiness.

And how Northern Ireland needs it. All we have to do is get the Derry branch sorted out….

You’re only as good as your network says you are.

I think it’s fair to say, in reflection, that 2009 was basically spent trying to find my centre of gravity. Towards November I was starting to sound like a bit of a personal pity party so something had to change.  Thanks to my network, finding out the technology landscape and talking to good people I could put myself in the right place at the right time.

There were a few things that happened that did help it along.

Open Coffee and other network meetings do work

You can’t beat face to face networking.  There was a time when I didn’t have to do this, the work was streaming in during the boom times.  Skills are plentiful and it’s a case of being able to sell yourself.  From Open Coffee I’ve managed to show my face once at XCake as well.  On the online side I keep up with Digital Circle and the usual stream of info on Twitter.

Speaking

I don’t think it does anyone any harm to publicly speak once in a while.  I loved doing Barcamp Derry last October.  Prospective customers, investors, employers and collaborators can instantly see what you are like and what drives you.  From the Barcamp experience I would really like to do some more speaking in 2010.

You’re friends

Considering that I moved to Northern Ireland in 2004 it’s taken a good five years to find my networking feet.  There’s a couple of factors in that, partially to do with the existence of technology like Twitter.  I always had a LinkedIn account but I did my searches by sector, not location.

Through the likes of Open Coffee I’ve met some great people.  Even better that most have them have become good friends and are on speed dial if I really need them.  The help, advice and provision that these people are willing to give is also available to you, all you have to do is to make yourself available and willing to show your face.

Write

I have an “articles” section on this site.  These aren’t articles that I just wrote for the fun of it, they are important networking tools to prove your knowledge.  The likes of Java Developer’s Journal, IBM developerWorks and the Belfast Telegraph have given me the opening to write articles on a wide range of technology subjects over the last nine years.

So, to summarise, with this mix of activities I’m just starting to shape and form what 2010 is going to look like, I’m really excited for 2010.  There’s some big things to happen.

Cutting through the bull – when things just don’t add up.

I have worked in IT for twenty one glorious years, never thought I could see the day. Programming languages come and go, fads, fashions, websites I’ve pretty much seen it all. There is one thing that has constantly cropped up in my profession, fake advertisements.

To start off with it was agencies posting fake IT positions on JobServe (and hey, it still happens). In Northern Ireland they calculated that 50% of the agency positions are made up. No shock there. But it’s not just the IT job market, oh no.

If you have a Boeing 737-200 for sale, for example, you’d expect any sort of “exchange and mart” sort of sale to happen. I’ve got a plane, you want a plane, let’s talk! No. I’ve got a plane, and ten brokers want a piece of the action as well. And in time and honoured tradition of the fake job ads in the IT world there’s a bunch of made up aircraft for sale or rent notices as well. I’m sure it happenes in every other domain that exists.

Back to my Boeing 737. The senario is:

Owner -> Broker->Broker->Broker->Broker->Broker->Broker->End User

You could add an infinate number of brokers in that chain, it would eventually end somewhere. Each of them is trying to claw their 1% commission for referring a sale. It’s the same as estate agent and just as sleasy. Letters of intent mean nothing…. neither does an NDA.

Money is not made on data alone, it is made up on the quality of data. I’ve used the aviation industry as an example as it’s one that I know an awful lot about from the startsup I’ve done over the last four years. It’s all about signal to noise, something I’ve blogged about before with Twitter and the alarming number of data I seem to amassing. To gather meaningful data is becoming more of a pain.

I’m working on some tools for the aviation sector but I am constantly aware of just becoming another signal to noise service, providing more noise and what constitutes as free advertising (“as long as my phone and email address are on the site, that’s all I care about!” sort of mentality).

The question should really be how to cut out the noise.