Keith Shirley

Carlow Enterprise Board are promoting a new workshop for those looking for a new direction to their careers. It’s to be held at Enterprise House on 9 June 2009 and is free (but you must register in advance).

The aim is to receive practical advice on finding and applying successfully for work and looking at other alternatives such as starting your own business.

I met one of the speakers, Yanky Fackler, at Bizcamp earlier in the year and enjoyed his talk. He has recently published a book which I have yet to buy (I’m refusing to buy more until I read what I have).

The opportunity to speak with Brian McQuaid from IT Carlow’s Lifelong Learning dept should also not be missed - there are also some accelerated programs at the IT which might be interesting (although not directly in his department I believe).

Click on the pictures of the flyers for the full size version:

Carlow Chamber and the Carlow Enterprise Board have a conference coming up this Friday at the Mount Wolseley Hotel. I went to last years event and it was a resounding success. Not only were the presentations informative – but the event gave me an opportunity to network with exactly the kind of business owners I needed for my business and my career.

I’ve been asked to blog about it – which means there are some spaces left. Unfortunately it conflicts with another event I have on – The IIA Conference for the Social Media Working Group.

You can download a pdf brochure and booking form for the conference – glass-half-full-economic-conference

Let me know what I missed.

Kudos to Motive8 for running a motivation seminar at the Killiney Hotel where anyone who is unemployed /redundant pays just for lunch ( €20).

Details are on the Blog from Motive8 but in summary:

Date; 27th March 2009
Venue: Killiney Castle Hotel
Time; 10am – 4.00pm
Cost; €120 per person includes lunch
Places limited. Book before 15th March and get 20% discount
Anyone who is unemployed /redundant pays just for lunch ( €20)

“This workshop is about taking action. It focusses on how we go about developing an attitude or mindset that will get us through this difficult period with a little less stress and allot more control over the final outcome.”

If you go then maybe you would like to do a guest post here about it. I want to continue the theme of “Feck The Recession” that we started at BizCamp.

At the same time – let me know if there are any other similar events that are running – I’m happy to provide some link love and publicity.

Thanks to Joy from Flexitimers for bringing this to my attention.

It’s a bit like waiting for a bus – Back in August I lamented about the lack of hot-desks in Carlow and now I find out that both the Shamrock Plaza and the Enterprise Board are going to have them.

Shamrock Plaza is being promoted by Jacqui McNabb (former Carlow Chamber of Commerce CEO). I met with her last week to review the offices and to talk to her about the facilities needed for hot desking. I am both happy and impressed to be able to say that she has covered all the points I could raise.

The building itself is located where Doyles of the Shamrock used to be – right on the Dublin/Kilkenny road in the centre of town. It’s a very impressive building with a finish that I hope other businesses will be inspired by. It’s always a pity to see a company move into a new premises and to let themselves down by using poor signs/flooring etc. There are a number of large corporate suites (with suspended floors) available which at the moment are completely open – you can configure them to match your requirements.It’s the small offices and hot-desk room that was most interesting for me.

The details are being finalised but the following were the points we discussed:

Lease Period: The offices will have short lease periods. This is important because in the current climate it’s hard to commit to a 5 year lease when you don’t know if you will still be in business. The vision for the hot desks is more of a mini office – you just rent the desk rather than an office. Real hot desking would involve leaving an empty desk at the end of the day. In this case you keep your desk – but if you still have it in 2 years then you need to make a commitment and upgrade.

Costs: Sorry – can’t say much about this yet and the details are being finalised. An office is available for 900 Euro a month – including phone line, power and internet link. The hot desk will be comparable. This is fantastic as it will allow people to try out an idea without having to sink all their savings into non productive assets. The hot desk includes a phone line and broadband.

Day-rental offices: There are no day rental offices as such – but they probably are not needed. Rented a meeting room for a day will probably cover most peoples needs.

Central Reception: The reception will be run by a Carlow company – AutoOffice – which I didn’t even know existed. They will provide full virtual admin services – answering the phone in your name, taking in post and deliveries and generally helping a small business to run efficiently and look like a bigger business. The phones are an interesting point – your bill be come via the central reception services – you don’t need to pay a seperate line rental.

Meeting rooms: There is a boardroom type meeting room available and a big room suitable for large meetings and training.

Out-off hours access: Everyone gets a little RFID chip that gives them 24 hour access. Obviously – if you are sharing an office with others you need to be a little more careful with securing your desk before you leave (this includes data protection issues).

Storage facilities: Each hot-desk will have some storage space with it. I spoke to Jacqui about providing extra space when needed but this might not happen.

Furnished desks: Furniture is included. It would kind of have to be. The good point is that it’s included in the standard office l;easing as well.

Parking: The building has underground parking as well as a few street level spots for short stays. It looks good and should avoid a lot of headaches.

As some of you may be aware – Shercom was lucky enough to be awarded an Innovation Voucher from Enterprise Ireland. I’ve enjoyed working with the people from IT Carlow and think it’s a great idea – although I’m probably biased as I was awarded one. I can be a sore loser.

For those that are lazy readers – It’s a relatively easy way for a company to get a 5000 Euro voucher towards some research activities in association with their local Institute of Technology. By easy I mean you don’t need to invest much time in filling out the forms. Of course – you want to make the most of it so investing some thinking time is suggested. In terms of research funds – 5000 Euro will not go very far. For a small company it can be a very good starting point.

Last time I mentioned this I was only able to squeeze in the announcement at the last moment. Thank you to Mary O Higgins from the Carlow County Enterprise Board for the timely reminder. This time I’m able to give you some advance notice. Hopefully Mary won’t mind me reproducing her mail here:

Good afternoon

Some of our clients have got Innovation Vouchers in order to grow their businesses.  So here is some information ……

If you own or manage a small limited company with a company registration number and you have a business opportunity or problem that you want to explore, you can apply for an Innovation Voucher worth €5,000.  The Innovation Voucher allows you to concentrate on running your business while knowledge providers (among the 38 third level institutions around all Ireland) come up with a solution that could take your business to the next level

The next call will open on 1st September 2008

For more details and an application form, please refer to http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/innovationvouchers / www.innovationvouchers.ie

Innovation Vouchers can be used for any kind of innovation such as:

• new product / process development;
• new business model development;
• new service delivery and customer interface;
• new service development;
• tailored training in innovation management;
• innovation / technology audit

There is certain stuff that is ineligible, mostly training course costs and marketing/sales activities so please check out the website.

Image via Wikipedia

Having spent 9 hours in traffic last week for what should have been just 4 I’m very glad that I don’t have to go to Dublin every day for work. My sympathy to those of you that have to go through this on a regular basis.

If you are commuting from the Carlow area to Dublin each day then I recommend you register on the Click for Carlow website. The idea is to create a list of job skills that people from the area have and then to either help match them to available jobs or even better – to convince companies to setup in Carlow because of the high quality of potential employees available.

Now that Unum are setting up a software centre in Carlow and Merck are setting up a pharmaceutical factory in Carlow the future is going to be very interesting. The recent forum held by The Carlow Chamber of Commerce was very informative on the future plans of both companies in the area .

So get cracking and Register your skills for a job in Carlow.