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….

Better still was I got some good feedback on my own product and my thoughts were aligning quite nicely with what was going through my head as well.  Feedback though leads to new ideas and sometimes you just have to stop yourself doing anymore development before you go to launch.

The main thing is to put your product in front of potential customers and not developers, they are breeds apart sometimes.  I’m not say that all developer feedback is useless, far from it, but you need to get to the people who are going to use your thing/thang/doofer/doobrie on a daily basis.

The one feature I was toying with is a firm requirement so it got put into the main system this morning.  And the product went from being excellent to being a game changer.  Me, for one, I am a happy man.

So to recap:

• Get to open coffee or any other networking event. Networking face to face is where your potential customers are.
• You can explain things is more than sentences of 140 characters.
• Seek out who you want to demo to, be picky with your potentials.  Are they a short term, mid term or long term proposition?
• If the product is work in progress say so but also have a firm roadmap in your head of when you are ready to launch.  Also mention the future roadmap, it shows commitment to your potential customer and the product you own.
• Open Coffee is usually a relaxed place, so you can relax too.

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.

They are few and far between in my opinion.

If you take a startup that’s concentrating on the UK market then you’re user segment is more like 19 million (nearly 6% of the total amount).  Then when you start slicing down the age segments you are in the less than 1% numbers.

Hopefully in 2010 we’ll start seeing social media experts starting to get real about the numbers of people that you can realistically reach.

For me in 2010 I’m not looking at the “what next”, I’m sure a gathering of technology folk are too.  This will be the year of getting real about what social media is, what is capable of and what you and I can really do with it.

The Aerleasing story, a few people have asked so perhaps it’s now time to tell the story.  In 2004 on moving back to Northern Ireland we found ourselves in the Belfast International Airport more times that I can remember, for two reasons: firstly the bookshop was better than all the others at the time and secondly Junction One was the only place with a Starbucks.  True.

I bought a copy of the story of RyanAir and all it’s trimmings and nestled within the first couple of chapters is the fact that Tony Ryan started leasing out Aer Lingus 747′s during the quiet periods.  Brainwave hit almost immediately…. 

A quick look on the internet and there was a few sites full of listings but nothing like I was thinking which was realtime brokerage between lessors and lessees.  Plus the thought of all those brand new planes in the desert doing nothing, it would be good to get those in the air.

Before I did anything I found the trade magazines: Airline Business, Air Transport World, Airline Fleet Network and Planning and Air Finance Journal.  I put calls out out to Airline Business and got a subscription based on the fact I was looking to advertise.  Turned out to be my goldmine, the listings of the top 50 leasing companies was staring me in the face two days later.  

I spoke at Barcamp October past about not being a wallflower, I was one of them and it was really my wife that challenged me to phone one of them up and ask for advice.  I phoned the first one listed and to my astonishment the chap happily spoke to me.  Over three weeks I got the low down on the leasing business and by the end of it I “knew more than the banks do”.  All the time I was coding the system up and actually paid a good graphic designer friend to come up with the branding.

When I got to a point of testing I was invited down to Dublin to have a look around a few things and got into meetings with various folk about the product.  I came back with a ton of feedback and then set about improving the system.  

As a bootstrapping startup you are your own PR company, market research company, sales team and IT department.  The press releases were good but not great looking back, the Start A Business Programme was good but by no means relevant to what I was doing.

Airline Business ran the press release and before I knew it people were signing up and the company names were flashing before me.  Air Transport World wanted to do a small interview and this was pretty important as it was with their main editor in the US.  He speaks and the industry takes note.  

So from my little admin console I saw people adding aeroplanes and then one day someone actually put a sealed bid in.  Then the cracks started to appear, people were just treating it like another listing site desperate to get their phone number out there.  Brokers hated it for the fact that the chain of brokerage was essentially broken by an upstart programmer.  You live and you learn.

About 18 months later I worked on an add on to Aerleasing called the Digital Broker, it could fire out a message to 350+ aviation dealers, end users and airlines with requirements from other airlines.  This would save the end user a good couple of weeks emailing and phoning around.  It was a lead generation tool and the airlines liked it.  The major coup was when Air Finance Journal offered to do a feature on the Digital Broker as the next step forward for the sector.  I was expecting a couple of column inches in the news section.  What I got was a full page, with screen shots…. the user base shot up.  From initial phone calls to getting the editorial took two years to secure, a lot of phone calls, talking to editors and generally having to sell the idea to them.  Once they got it, they wrote about it.

All the time there was interest but not adoption.  There was talk of selling it to Boeing for $2m and there was various other talk by well groomed talkers.  It means nothing until the mandate is signed and the money is in your account.  Deals fall through, some salesmen talk rubbish, it’s all part of the rich tapestry know as startup.  I’m a lot more guarded now.

So where is it all now?  Well Aerleasing just curled up and died really, users lost interest for the simple fact deals weren’t being done so people stopped logging in.  The real issue is what I’d call the “old boys network”, most of this stuff is done on the phone to the folk you know and trust.  Until the new wave come in then it will be hard to change the broker mentality.

It taught me a lot, a heck of a lot about product, people, testing, beta customers etc.  And it’s something that I’ve carried forward for the next wave of madness.

The story continues…. tomorrow night is Go For It programme night.

Dictionary.com’s definition (among many) of the word “fan” is:
an enthusiastic devotee, follower, or admirer of a sport, pastime, celebrity, etc.: a baseball fan; a great fan of Charlie Chaplin.

Most of the things I get invites to be fans of are things that I’d never get involved in.  What it does do is just increase the ego and it’s becoming tiresome.  Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind friends sending me these invitations, it’s the nature of the invitation that bothers me.

Social networking is not a numbers game, it’s about relationships.  If I don’t know the person, company or organisation then what makes you think that I’m ready to be a fan?

So, looking forward.  Perhaps it’s time that Facebook lost its title of “social network” because it’s losing the social factor.  It has become a big directory of linkage, a connected town with it’s own rules.  

Looking for real social networks, I’m looking at the true social nature of things like Dopplr and Locle. Real people, real locations and real life.

The Open Coffee meetings are informal get togethers for businesses, startups and creatives to network, have a coffee and even perhaps generate some new ideas.

Starbucks have kindly offered us their cafe after hours, the event will run from 7pm – 9pm, plus free filter coffee and tea if you are prepared to give a donation to their chosen charity (if you want a quad shot skinny latte then you’ll have to pay ).

Last bonus is that from 1st July if you are a Starbucks card holder then you get Wifi for free.

The blog is at http://www.opencoffeecoleraine.com and there’s also a Twitter page as well.