Cork OpenCoffee off to a flying start
Written on March 16, 2007 by Conor O'Neill
Wow that was some morning in Luigi Malone’s! I’d never been there before and the venue was just perfect. I arrived in to find a few of the guys along with Don the owner who stayed for the entire session. A huge thanks to Don for covering the cost of the refreshments today and for getting Wifi installed with almost no notice.
We had 20+ people turn up with the exact mix I was hoping for:
- Start-ups like Pixenate, Roam4Free and LouderVoice
- consultants like Aonach
- some pure techies
- a bunch of budding entrepreneurs
- a development advisor from Enterprise Ireland
- Eileen from CorkBIC (Business Innovation Centre)
- Peter from CorkBIC Business Angel Partnership
- an industrial liaison officer from UCC
- two ex-Motorola people
- and several people who (rightly) came along to see what it was all about
Given that it was the inaugural meeting, I said a few words, got everyone to introduce themselves and mentioned the ShareIT initiative, some thoughts on Coworking and a desire to get more people from the investment community involved over time.
Of course OpenCoffee here is being driven by the opposite group to the original one in the UK. Over there it is the VCs and Angels pushing it forward, over here it is the guys in start-ups. I did invite one VC but he prefers to wait and see that OpenCoffee has some legs first, which I do understand. It’ll take time for the community to grow and for the reputation to spread. I’d love it (or whatever it becomes) to be a place where opportunities are found, networks are built and people have a social outlet in a business context.
Richard (who is building something in a similar space to ourselves) made the very interesting point that his community has always been a virtual one with his peers in the US, he simply wasn’t aware so much was happening in Cork. I hope more and more local entrepreneurs hear about us and turn up for a great cup of coffee and some start-up banter on Friday March 30th. And if you are just curious about the whole thing, head on down, we’re a friendly bunch and we won’t talk about Twitter too much 
Several people requested a separate info page for OpenCoffee Cork so I’ll set something up next week and announce it here.
UPDATE 1: Saul has a list of all the recent OpenCoffee Clubs around the world. Damned impressive!
If you enjoyed this post Subscribe to our feed
It was a great start, well done Conor, really enjoyed it.
It was an ideal location, who suggested that one? Great Coffee and great Staff too.
Wow! That sounds really great. Well done for getting that set-up. Here’s hoping I can get some more excitement whipped up for our next Dublin one on Thurs.
All credit to Tom for suggesting the location and for checking out the situation with wifi.
Nice one Conor. Good meeting everyone. Hope to make the next one.
Great to see that happen all
keith
It was a great morning, looking forward to more of them..
met some great folk I hadn’t met before, including someone I’d been meaning to look up for a while and had a good chat.
I hope we can keep up the momentum on this idea!
thanks Conor for organising, and thanks Don for the great location and the great coffee!
Thanks Conor!
Really enjoyable and informative morning. Looking forward to the next one…
JohnP
[...] Cork’s first OpenCoffee Club had an impressive 20 plus turnout. Surely we can do at least as good as that! [...]
Thanks for doing this Conor.
Great location, great coffee, great people and great conversation.
here’s for more…
[...] Cork - hosted by Argolon [...]
[...] OpenCoffee off to a flying start in Cork tech hub, despite damper of Motorola layoffs (tags: ireland irish technology tech blogging) Posted in Daily Dosage - Links. [...]
[...] 2007 — Michael Tangeman I was glad to see Tom Raftery suggest that participants in the Cork Open Coffee Club meetups ask for fair trade coffee at their next pow-wow (Open Coffee Club VC and entrepreneur [...]