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Beers & Innovation (NMK)

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The UK's quirky innovation culture - at once dynamic and loveable, while at the same time maddeningly inadequate - has been taxing the minds of a lot of people recently. Come along to our inaugural Beers & Innovation night and discuss the issues with Tom Coates of Yahoo!, Skype's Saul Klein and Richard Jones of Audioscrobbler/Last.fm

The UK's quirky innovation culture - at once dynamic and loveable, while at the same time maddeningly inadequate - has been taxing the minds of a lot of people recently....

Like in this post, from Tom Coates on Plasticbag.org, which elicited an avalanche of comments and was echoed around the blogosphere:

"...our industry seems dominated by a few moribund and clumsy giants leading a culture that's inarticulate, unadventurous and profoundly constrained. There's something very wrong here.

My main question is this: Where are all the bloody start-ups? Where are the small passionate groups of creative technologists (people with clue) getting together to build web applications and public-facing products that push things forward? Where is the Blogger or Flickr or Odeo or Six Apart of the UK? What aspect of this country is it that confounds these aspirations? And I know that Audioscrobbler is wonderful. I really love it. But eventually you have to ask - is that really all we can do?

So is it a lack of money or a poverty of ambition?"

What is it about our cultural heritage and here-and-now that stops us from being more entrepreneurial? Is it that we aren’t coming up with great ideas? Or is it our lack of vision or business acumen that stops these ground-breaking ideas from coming to fruition?

When asked in a survey, “Do you think that starting a new business is a respected occupation in your community?” 91 percent of Americans said yes, as compared to 28 percent of British and 8 percent of Japanese respondents. (John Gartner ‘The Hypomaniac American’)

Can entrepreneurialism be taught or is it ingrained in the national psyche? Does Britain have the pioneering spirit, the optimism required, and the acceptance of failure prevalent in the US, or can we fashion our own type of dynamism and success?

Why EBay and not QXL? Why Bill Gates and not Tim Berners-Lee?

Why so much dynamism in digital advertising and marketing compared to the digital start-ups sector?

Come along to our inaugural innovation night, hear it from people who are - or have been - in the thick of it, and have your say on the issues. Perhaps we can start untangling some of them...

Who should attend:
Anyone who's ever had a good idea and never did anything with it. Anyone who did. Anyone else who cares about these things.

SPEAKERS:

Chair: Tom Coates - Yahoo! & Plasticbag.org
Tom is a designer and creative technologist who has recently joined a technology strategy and innovation group inside Yahoo! after two years of heading up a small R&D team for the BBC (exploring future media distribution / navigation and social software). He's also developed a geocoded discussion forum with UpMyStreet.com, and has worked with Time Out and emap. He runs a weird online community at www.barbelith.com and a well-known and dumb-award-winning weblog at plasticbag.org.

Saul Klein - Vice President of Marketing, Skype
Saul recently joined Skype as VP of Marketing after several years as CEO of online DVD service Video Island (dedicated to bringing unlimited DVD rentals to a mass-market) which he also co-founded. Video Island delivers this through its brand ScreenSelect.co.uk, distributed in partnerships with the likes of Boots, Dixons, Comet, Currys and Toys’r’Us, as well as via white label partnerships for national brands including MSN, Tesco, ITV and EasyGroup. In January 2000 Saul established TAG, an international management advisory network whose recent UK investments include Pleasurecards and Perplexcity. Formerly Group Program Manager for Web Platform Services at Microsoft, from 1992-1994 he developed and co-founded The Electronic Telegraph. To generate a large reader database, Saul founded Fantasy Football - one of the 1990's most successful marketing tools.

Richard Jones - Founder, Last.fm and Audioscrobbler
RJ started the Audioscrobbler project at university in 2002 - plugins for media players that report what you listen to and build a social network with music as the common interest. The concept was an instant hit. Merging with Last.fm earlier this year means the platform now boasts over a million users, personalized music recommendations and an awesome radio service that adapts its playlists based on your music taste. "Being such a grassroots effort (read: cash shortages galore), we're learning a lot about scaling a popular service with limited resources, and we're having great fun along the way."

Thursday 30th March Beers & Innovation (2) - User Generated Content

Check out the Beers & Innovation blog

NB: For enqiries about further nights in the ongoing Beers & Innovation series, please phone 020 7915 5412 or email: deirdre . molloy (AT) nmk.co.uk

Report on the event.

Location

The Bell & Compass (downstairs bar), 9-11 Villiers St, London WC2N 6NA.