Winchester OCC
Winchester Open Coffee Club, the informal networking event for internet and entrepreneurs, investors, and marketeers, held its first meeting this morning at Costa Coffee in Winchester.
More about Open Coffee Clubs Worldwide here.
We had six people turn up: Andrew Thompson (CRM consultant at IBM), Marc Lyne (CEO, izimi), Curtis Nash (Gresham Computing, Compliant Phones Ltd), Philip Murphy and Philip Rudland, and me. It was a small gathering, I guess first ones, especially outside of the major cities, usually are, but one that I hope will grow month to month. Next Winchester OCC is at Costa Coffee (above the Brooks Centre car park) in Winchester on July 19.
Andrew Thompson let us in on an idea he has for personal vehicle telemetry which sounded like a neat idea for petrol heads and for fleet managers. Its something that he’d like to develop further and is looking for some direction/business guidance for the project. Curtis, who I’ve worked with before but not seen for several years, was just as I remembered: straight talking, no bull, and overflowing with great advice, contacts, ideas and tried-and-tested advice on getting ideas off the ground and to market.
In summary, it was a small but very interesting gathering of people all looking to do out-of-the-ordinary things. I’m off to the London event now, expecting around 100 people at that one, so its clear we need to grow our Winchester group somewhat. If you’re located near Winchester, Southampton, Basingstoke, Portsmouth, Andover, Salisbury, and of course Winchester or surrounds and your involved or want to get involved in an internet startup, come and join us. The next event is on July 19, 8.00am. Details are here.