coclarity

LEAP is a year-long enterprise and management development programme hosted by the Enterprise Acceleration Centre @ Limerick Institute of Technology. We were selected to facilitate a workshop and day of training on project management. Ronan Skehill, one of the LEAP participants, wrote a great summary of the day.

I believe project management is important for any business but crucial for start-ups. In a start-up everyone needs to be a project manager, everyone need to make sure they are pouring effort into things that will matter to the business.

I’m making the slides available here (PDF files)

1. Introduction (6.6MB)
2. Traditional Approaches (2.3MB)
3. Agile & SCRUM (6.1MB)
4. Productivity, GTD and more (1MB)

If you have any questions or suggestions, please fire away in the comments section below.

I facilitated a discussion at Bizcamp Dublin last Saturday. The talk was called: “Simple Project Management for Startups”. 40-50 people showed up for the talk and we had a good lively discussion on the challenges startups and small companies face managing projects and staying focussed.

You can get the slides on slideshare.

If you have any feedback I’d love to hear it.

The day itself was massive. A group of volunteers put together a conference that was as good as any expensive professional event I’ve been at. The next time you see a mention of a Bizcamp be sure to go along.

Earlier this year we facilitated a discussion on simple planning techniques for startups at Bizcamp Limerick. We discussed Scrum, Getting Things Done (GTD) and The 4-hour Work Week. We’re going to facilitate another discussion on this subject at the upcoming Bizcamp in Dublin on September 19th 2009.

You can find the slides on SlideShare.

Please send us recommendations of other techniques and tools that might be useful for planning startup businesses.

Today’s Tuesday Push is cmypitch.ie who help connect businesses with potential investors through video pitches and intermediaries.

If you are looking for investment you can upload a two minute video pitch of your business. If you are looking to invest you can browse a number of video pitches. Cmypitch is free for businesses and investors.

Cmypitch make money by charging the intermediaries. From a business point of view there’s tips on how to pitch from people like Eddie Jordan. They have a number of guides on how to raise funding, so even if you are camera-shy cmypitch can be a useful resource.

They are planning an event in Dublin in September where businesses can pitch to a number of potential investors. The cost of “cmypitch Live” is €400.

All in all its a well designed site, with clear messaging and looks like a useful resource in helping businesses and investors connect.

Great news. On Monday we pitched and demoed coClarity to an investor panel as part of the end-of-year LEAP programme showcase. At the evening reception, we found out we won the “Innovation and Market Entry” award. We were as happy as windmills in a storm.

At the reception we did a three-minute pitch to everyone who attended the showcase. Unfortunately, we’d been distracted by the other big event that evening (Apple’s WWDC), so the three-minute pitch was only two minutes long.

We were delighted to get the award (and money), but we were just as happy to get fantastic feedback and questions from the judging panel. Our bank manager was at the reception too, and he was happy to see the cheque.

We’d also like to congratulate the other winners on the night, Off We Go Publishing, and Pedigree Cattle. We’d like thank Donncha and Graham who run the EAC and LEAP. We’d also like to thank the other 11 companies who were on the LEAP programme this year. We learned a huge amount from each other.

So if you’re thinking of starting a business and you’re based in the mid-west of Ireland, check out LEAP. You will learn a lot and you might even win a cheque as tall as you.