Category: Code4Pizza

The Cocoa Cooking Class

This came out of two ideas I had. The first was Code4Pizza – the idea that people, in order to learn, would be willing to spend their time coding for open source projects. I still think this idea is a winner for getting younger folk involved but as an evening class, it fills in many … Continue reading “The Cocoa Cooking Class”

This came out of two ideas I had.

The first was Code4Pizza – the idea that people, in order to learn, would be willing to spend their time coding for open source projects. I still think this idea is a winner for getting younger folk involved but as an evening class, it fills in many gaps present in the current market for young and really smart folk who want to use computers for more than FaceBook and MySpace.

The second was Tuesday Night Cocoa – something the lads up at Mac-Sys were doing – on a Tuesday evening when the Enterprise Park was open late, they would gang together and learn Cocoa from the books, helping each other through tough problems.

So, the Cocoa Cooking Class was born.

First off, I’m not even sure if Tuesday night is the best sort of time for something like this but it’s catchy, sosumi.

The Background:
Due to my organising of DevDays and generally being loud about the iPhone, I’m inundated with people wanting to learn how to do stuff on the iPhone. How to write applications and generally take part in the gold rush that is the iPhone. I’m working my way through the books but as my time is ‘expensive’ (in so far as as it’s really bloody hard to find ‘free’ time), I’m thinking I need to formalise something in this respect. My idea is that an experienced developer guides a workgroup on a weekly or biweekly basis through an application specification, design and build. The workgroup then owns that app and can do whatever they want with it. I’ve spoken to an experienced developer about it and he’s on board, details yet to be discussed. It’s unreasonable to expect him to dedicate this time for free so we have to take that into account and allow for him to help people ‘online’ in a forum or via email. Holding it on a Tuesday night might make sense but the idea is to get someone who knows what they’re talking about to come in and spend time instructing people and get paid to do it. If it’s not worth the money then we stop paying them and we hack it together on our own time. We even have the option of varying our instructors.

The Pitch:
Take one room with enough seating for 11 people.
Fill with 10 or so eager would-be application developers. Do not over-fill.
Add in one seasoned instructor. Mix for twenty minutes.
Establish base level of capability and break the people into 3-5 groups.
Distribute skills liberally through the groups to attempt to maintain consistency.
Start to build projects, one for each group for 90 minutes.
Break for 15 minutes to check consistency and share experiences.
Return to the room and continue to build knowledge for a further hour.
Stop activity and get each workgroup to show and tell for 5 minutes each.
Rinse and repeat weekly or bi-weekly.

To cover costs, everyone hands the instructor a £20 note. This covers room hire, instructor time and during the week support. That’s a reasonable night out.

Reasoning:
It’s my belief that this will create multiple opportunities for Mac and iPhone developers in the province. It will provide a collaborative approach to building applications with some real potential for IP creation and future revenue generation. Mix this with XCake and other initatives and we’ve got something to talk about. Would be even better if we could get some sort of funding for it (or even just a free room somewhere for the evenings).

What do you think?

Related posts:

  1. Cocoa Days
  2. Money for nothing and chicks for free
  3. Holidays in England
  4. Tuesday Night Cocoa

YCombinator receives additional funding

TechCrunch reports that Ycombinator, the really-early-seed-capital guys, have received some additional funding ($2 million) from Sequoia. Ycombinator only invests small amounts ($5,000 + $5,000/founder) in exchange for around 6% of equity and has invested in around 118 startups since their foundation in 2005. Some of their startups have been acquired (Reddit, Omnisio, Zenter, ClickPass, Auctomatic) … Continue reading “YCombinator receives additional funding”

TechCrunch reports that Ycombinator, the really-early-seed-capital guys, have received some additional funding ($2 million) from Sequoia.

Ycombinator only invests small amounts ($5,000 + $5,000/founder) in exchange for around 6% of equity and has invested in around 118 startups since their foundation in 2005. Some of their startups have been acquired (Reddit, Omnisio, Zenter, ClickPass, Auctomatic) and others are doing well (Scribd, Loopt, Dropbox).

It’s obviously not just about the money which probably provides a conservative 2-3 months of free development time – they get mentoring and polish from the Ycombinator principals who had previously invested all their own money – and are honed to pitch at later stage VCs and angel investors.

I was saying recently that development time for ideas really depends on the amount of time the creators can dedicate to it and the initial idea that you might get 3 months sold work into something can work wonders. This is one of the funding gaps we have – we have very little in this really early stage where you can make a huge difference with minimal outlay.

This additional funding from Sequoia means that YCombinator will be able to leverage a better cash flow and increase the number of investments from 40 per year to 60 per year – which should see them secure for another couple of years. Spreading the investment like that is the safest way to invest – as it only takes one success to make up for a large number of duds. That’s not to say that startups who don’t make it big through YCombinator are duds – it’s just one more piece of the puzzle.

I spoke with a friend recently about what I’d do if I had £100K to invest – I’d pretty much do a YCombinator style investment plan. We have the entrepreneurs, techies and dreamers here in Northern Ireland. We just don’t have the funding.

Related posts:

  1. The State of Funding in 2009 in Northern Ireland
  2. Coworking Microsupport
  3. YCombinator: KILL HOLLYWOOD
  4. Open Source Funding?

XCake 1st Meetup

After several months of talking about it, we’ve had our first XCake meetup. We had 20 people turn up, all told. They ranged from the education sector (Belfast Met, The University of Ulster and Queen’s University of Belfast) to the private sector (sole traders, bedroom developers, partnerships and limited companies) including some companies which have … Continue reading “XCake 1st Meetup”

After several months of talking about it, we’ve had our first XCake meetup.

img_0043

We had 20 people turn up, all told. They ranged from the education sector (Belfast Met, The University of Ulster and Queen’s University of Belfast) to the private sector (sole traders, bedroom developers, partnerships and limited companies) including some companies which have a distinguished history of software development.

Philip Orr’s Home of Serendipity has another XCake writeup.

It’s to be followed next Tuesday (24th) by an XCake meetup in Dublin.

Related posts:

  1. The Broadband Blueprint (re DETI Telecoms Consultation)
  2. XCake iPhone meetups in Belfast and Dublin [updated]
  3. Dublin XCake.org Meet, Thurs 26th March, 7 pm
  4. It’s a busy week….

Tuesday Night Cocoa

  Tonight was the Tuesday Night Cocoa group meet. Half a dozen hairy blokes sitting in the Mac-Sys Ltd offices with instructional PDFs up on a projector and open books in front of them. I’m very keen on this – this is a small cadre of fellahs, some of whom work in Mac-Sys and some … Continue reading “Tuesday Night Cocoa”

photo   Tonight was the Tuesday Night Cocoa group meet. Half a dozen hairy blokes sitting in the Mac-Sys Ltd offices with instructional PDFs up on a projector and open books in front of them. I’m very keen on this – this is a small cadre of fellahs, some of whom work in Mac-Sys and some of whom don’t, taking the time of an evening to fix issues with their coding projects and leaving with homework which they’ll work on during the week. To a degree I’m envious but I’mr eally glad I was able to help them get this started.

None of the guys there had any coding experience and yet they’re tackling the iPhone SDK in their spare time. They’ve buzzed me a couple of times in the last week or so with compile errors which they couldn’t debug (simply due to their lack of experience) but tonight they didn’t need to ask once – the previous nights and afternoons they have put into this have started to pay off.

It’s a great example of grassroots doing it for themselves – this is what I love about the current industry – people doing it without asking permission – whether they’re running a code class for the iPhone, running a coffee meetup for tech-heads just because they’re in the right place and the right time or knocking brains together to create a mashup of two useful services – it’s great.

Kudos to them and I can’t wait to see what they’re working on next.

Related posts:

  1. Mac-Sys is 9 years old
  2. Mac-Sys starts blogging!
  3. Digital Circle going independent and my thoughts on the Future
  4. The Cocoa Cooking Class

Make Corporate Butts Pucker

I wrote: A year ago Rich Segal wrote an article on how to make a corporate butt pucker. As we inch closer to opening the CoWorking site in Belfast, I find myself having loftier dreams regarding it. I envisage a place where we can assist startups and if necessary turn a couple of dreamers into … Continue reading “Make Corporate Butts Pucker”

I wrote:

A year ago Rich Segal wrote an article on how to make a corporate butt pucker.

As we inch closer to opening the CoWorking site in Belfast, I find myself having loftier dreams regarding it. I envisage a place where we can assist startups and if necessary turn a couple of dreamers into new entrepreneurs.

The level of support required for this would, of course, be minimal.

What does ‘Code4Pizza’ get out of it?

Well, the aim is kudos and ten percent. Ten percent? Yes, ten percent of the company created. Which means the directors of code4pizza are motivated to make it a success. It will be the only way that code4pizza can become self-sustainable.

What do students get out of it?

A real placement? How about a placement where they’re not washing the VP’s car (as happened in Nortel). Or making tea for line managers in manufacturing (again, Nortel). They’ll get real experience, real mentoring from real business people who are highly motivated to turn them into a success. And at the end they’ll hold 90% of a company they helped build.

So…

I’ve not yet tested the viability in terms of putting it in practise. I’ve spoken to lecturers and they think it’s a great idea. I’ve spoken to entrepreneurs and they love it too. I’ve even spoken to a few students about it and they’re convinced it would take off. So everyone loves it, now what.

  1. CoWorking Belfast
  2. Collaborative Contracts
  3. Initial Funding
  4. Programme Development

Okay….

…why will this make corporate butts pucker?

The idea is that a simple, lean company with three founders and one good mentor can kick butt.

Crazy? I don’t think so.

Related posts:

  1. A quick startup formula
  2. Food for Thought
  3. Do something…
  4. Corporate Social Responsibility