FSB National Conference

It's been an interesting last couple of days at the FSB conference 2010 which I have been attending. We have had some high profile speakers including Peter Mandelson and Alex Salmond who made good use of the platform to put forward their parties agenda for the coming election, the big question is just how much do we trust them to deliver?

Several speakers said just how important small business is to the economic recovery with one Labour MP saying that one of the best ways to make a difference would be if each small business were just to employ just one new employee. Which seems just a tad out of line with their planned increase in employer's National Insurance, a tax on on employing people, hardly an incentive!

Oh and by the way said same MP said that Twitter was a wste if time!

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March 20, 2010 at 12:28 pm | General | No comment

Sponsoring the Unusual and Creative

paint-shop-425The unusual and the creative, we love that at Real Point, so when given the chance to sponsor a photograph at a new photography exhibition at Coventry Transport museum, we jumped at it. The exhibition shows the Peugeot Ryton Plant during the final production period, a reflection on the end of an era in Coventry manufacturing, but certainly not the end of the creative and enterprising spirit that gave birth to the many motoring legends designed and built here.

The images are all taken by Lens Art, a local Coventry photography company. The colours of "Paint Shop - waiting for inspection" leapt out the page at us, making that our sponsorship choice.

Lens Art's website has photographs of BBC presenter Vic Minett at the Tracks of Emotion exhibition at the Coventry Transport Museum as part of the BBC series Peugeot: The Lion's Legacy.

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February 18, 2010 at 8:21 pm | General, News and views on design | 1 comment

Twitter at work

Many people see Twitter and other social media services as time wasters, still unsure of their benefit in the real world. But as Donato, Vankilter and myself can all testify, it works in the real world.

I met Andy, from Vankilter, a little while ago at the Solihull Business Breakfast, but as so often happens never got round to doing anything about seeing him to get the Kilt I wanted.

The other day, Donato, a business friend and avid Twitter user was at his shop and posted a picture of the kilts there. This prompted me to answer saying "I keep meaning to get a kilt", a few messages later and Andy phoned me, resulting in my visit to his shop and a kilt on order (Donato has also posted about this)

So next time someone asks, "why are you wasting your time on Twitter", answer "Because you never know just who might be interested".

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February 15, 2010 at 9:30 am | General, Social Media | No comment

The Price of Free - BBC Virtual Revolution

Another interesting episode of BBC's Virtual Revolution, interesting not because I learnt a great deal, but because it shows again how polarised opinion can be. As I enjoyed the ability to engage in debate and comment through twitter as I watched the programme, it demonstrated that some:

  • Are happy to make the trade - free services for my personal information (I happily stake my claim here)
  • Are nervous about who holds the information, and in to whose hands it will fall
  • Are blissfully unaware of just how much information is being collated and how it is being used

It is this last group that perhaps most concern me. As our use of digital services increase, and as everyone, from my parents to the young people at my youth group, search and post online, how educated are we on what this means? For many of us watching Virtual Revolution, we are well aware and as such make informed decisons, but I do think there needs to be some work done to ensure that everyone makes as informed a decision.

As I commented during the programme, "What happens in Vegas, no longer stays in Vegas" but do we all fully realise and appreciate that?

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February 13, 2010 at 10:44 pm | General, Social Media | No comment

Business Networks in Coventry, Solihull, Birmingham and surrounding areas

With our web design and social media work you may expect us to live almost entirely in the virtual world, to do all our networking online through social media from Linked In to Twitter. While this is a strong part of our marketing strategy it's certainly not the only one, and is actually made more effective by developing great social networks in the 'real world'.

So you will find myself and other members of the team here getting up at unearthly hours to attend local networking breakfasts or, for those who enjoy the extra hour or two's sleep, going to business lunches and evening talks and nibbles.

As people know that I network widely, I often get asked about what events are available locally. With that in mind I thought it might be useful to put a list together of local networking events. If you know of one I haven't added then do comment and let us know. Big thank you to Becki from Learn2 for supplying details for many of the clubs on this list.

Ones we attend regularly

We are also actively involved with the Federation of Small Businesses who run a wide variety of events at various times accross the region as do the IOD.

Other local clubs

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February 11, 2010 at 12:47 pm | General, Social Media | 2 comments

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