The Difference Engine, a program to increase the growth of start-ups in Europe has been launched in the North East this week and will provide start-up capital of around £20,000, mentor support and a working environment that will allow ten teams of digital entrepeneurs to get their business up and running.
We got in touch with The Difference Engine's Managing Director, Jon Bradford for
the deets.
CHINWAG: Can entrepreneurs
can apply from anywhere in the UK?
Teams can come from elsewhere in the UK and beyond
(subject to working visas). They will be required to relocate to the region for
the duration of the programme.
The US picture may be bleak but are British women really as worse off as women in the States when it comes to social media salaries?
We got in touch with a UK-based social media recruitment company to find out if we really have anything to worry about.
According to Emma McNamara, Managing Director of recruitment firm Propel London, there are just more men applying for the roles at the outset:
"We have experienced more male applicants for
the roles, however have not seen any gender preference from clients or differences
in salaries offered. I think it really depends on the community involved and
the candidates overall experience."
The Crunchies are to technology what the Oscars are to Hollywood and January 2010 will be the third incarnation of the start-up and technology sector's annual awards ceremony hosted by TechCrunch, GigaOm and VentureBeat.
Last year's winners included Google Reader (best service), Cooliris (best design), Shop Savvy (best application) and Facebook (best overall start up).
TechCrunch Europe's grand fromage, Mike Butcher, offers the following advice,
"...it will be of interest to European startups that they have a good
chance if they nominate themselves in Best International StartUp
SXSW Interactive festival is the digital conference to attend. Yes, it helps that it's based in sunny Austin, Texas and that the BBQ food is *awesome*, but it's also packed full to bursting with top notch panels from the brightest minds in tech
There are hundreds of
networking events hosted by industry leaders and an unbeatable line up
of special programs showcasing the best new websites, video games and
startup ideas the community has to offer - all happening over 5 days!
More great news from companies who've taken part in the Digital Mission series, with an announcement from live phonecasting service ipadio, who recently returned from the Digital Mission to New York.
ipadio have joined forces with Sport England and Facebook to encourage more young people to get
involved with sport with the announcement of the Community Sports Hub.
The initiative will produce a beefed-up fan page on the social network which will integrate with ipadio's phone-to-web technology to encourage participation. Facebook are putting up in-kind advertising valued at £5m/year until 2013.
You've got to hand it to The Sun for its latest set of ads. Taking firm aim at Apple and harnessing the full wit of it's sub-editor's headline legendary word smithery to great effect in these parodies created to celebrate The Sun's 40th birthday.
The ads are beautifully pitched avoiding invective and taking a tongue-in-cheek approach,
"The Sun has been the UK's best handheld for 40 years. Top news, sports,
photos, gossip and games in an easy-to-share format. No waiting for
pages to load, no contract, no losing reception. There's no substitute
for the Sun."
There are a lot of challenges for any company taking on an intern.
From where to advertise the vacancy to the costs involved in hosting and training can all be a drain on company resources.
It's been challenging at Chinwag, so I bent the ear of Dominic Potter, co-founder of Internocracy, a company that helps employers set up and run their internship programmes.
Here's a brief run-down of his top-tips to consider before taking on an intern:
There were lots of highlights to this year's Digital Mission to New York, but one that stands out for me was the visit to the NYU:poly Incubator @ 160 Varick Street.
This initiative was announced by New York's Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, in February of this year, so it's still in its early days, although you wouldn't know it from looking around.
As the Digital Mission companies were given a tour by Micah Kotch, Operations Director and general making-things-happen guy there, the first thing that struck me was the scale of the facility: 16,500-square-foot, a whole floor of the Varick Street building, with over 20 companies, and even more associated indirectly with the incubator. There is everything a start-up business could want, including a receptionist, meeting rooms, mail facilities and so on.
Social media is the bread and butter of customer relations management and there's no doubt that for companies, employees who communicate well online hold a certain cache.
Any personal blog or website you have could be owned by the boss and the trouble lies where personal and work collide and whether blogging takes place in the office or at home.
If your blog mentions company-related news, who owns the rights to it, will be difficult to ascertain. In theory, working for a prominent organisation and mentioning their developements within your personal site is treading on terra-infirma. Should the site become successful, things get even more complicated. Once revenue is involved who gets a share of the profits?
