Stats all folks!

Considering these words mostly go unread, I am chancing the hideous pun in the title!

As you know I can't really get enough of the internet. Now I can't stop looking at my blog stats. It's intriguing to try and figure out what caused spikes in the numbers, why there's been no views for a few days and then bam, 20 visitors! I am pleased to know that there's probably max 60 people who know about the blog from me or through the SPEED Project, but I'd say we've had a good proportion of them view it!

It's also interesting to see what people search for...for example SPEED Project blog (pretty obvious) Hive SPEED Project, Coypu Speed (???). But since I put on the post about market research sources, I've had 5 visits from the keyword Silobreaker and funnily enough some of them were interested enough to have a look around!

The key is returning visitors, something I am trying to work on all the time, finding new topics to post about is pretty tricky actually.

Any suggestions?

Go Viral

Another cool article, found and sent to me by Mike Huxley of The Hive@Mansfield (aside- check out their blog, David has posted on setting up RSS feeds, using Google maps for your business and other technical help)

Last time I reproduced a blog post in full- which made for a very long post, maybe this time you could click this link to read it...

Another great link is to the Guardian's Viral Video Chart, check out the MUTO wall painted animation by Blu

Just a reminder, your NTU SPEED team are here to help you go from this...

To this!!

See you soon!

Researching your idea

Neil Infield's blog 'In through the outfield' can be hard work sometimes, in fact I subscribed to it thinking that the reference to the 'outfield' meant there would be more cricket talk and less business! Ho hum, nothing so far

Anyhow recently he reproduced this great post on background research which I thought really insightful, so here it is...

...Information expert Karen Blakeman of RBA Information Services publishes a list of top business research tips on her blog at the end of each of her Business Information workshops.

This is the list generated by the researchers attending her workshop in April. As you may have spotted the 10 has grown to 15 in this instance.

1. FITA Import Export Business and International Trade Leeds. http://www.fita.org/. The “Really Useful Links”in the menu on the left hand side of the screen takes you to a range of international sources on business information. One participant of this workshop found the “Doing business”, and in particular in the Middle East, especially useful.
2. Nationmaster http://www.nationmaster.com/.An interface to a plethora of statistics on web sites world wide. Some of the statistics are 2-3 years old but there are links to the original site so that you can search for more up to date information. Several participants suggested that this site is a good ‘index’ of where data is likely to be found.
3. Blogpulse http://www.blogpulse.com/.One of several blog search engines, but this was singled out for its Trends graphs. These show how often your search terms are mentioned in posts over a selected period of time. In a business context the occurrences will usually match reports in the mainstream media. When they don’t, click on the peaks in the graph to see what is going on behind the scenes. Superb for picking up on rumours and gossip.
4. Yahoo Finance. Go to any Yahoo and click on the Finance link. For the UK version go to http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/. Yahoo Finance provides basic information on stock exchange quoted companies on the major stock exchanges around the world. Information includes current share price information (delayed by 15-30 minutes) provided by the stock exchanges;
   company profiles; charts in which you can compare the company share price with another company, the sector and an index such as the FTSE 100; current news on the company and focussing on the regulatory news; and daily historical share prices as figures that can be downloaded to spreadsheets.
5. Freepint Bar http://www.freepint.com/.Head for the discussion area, labelled as the Bar, where you can post your query and tap into the knowledge of regular ‘tipplers’
6. Silobreaker.http://www.silobreaker.com/. A new site pulling news from
   the usual newspapers and journals, but also blogs, video and audio. In
   addition It offers geographical hotspots, trends and a network visualisation tool, which was singled out by one participant.
7. Contact a relevant research, trade or professional body for help inlocating experts. sources of information and reports. They may not have anything on their web site but there may something ‘on file’ that they are willing to supply free of charge or for which they are prepared to negotiate a fee.
8. Intelways. http://www.intelways.com/. An interface to many search tools grouped by type e.g. news, video, image. Type your search terms in once and click on the different search tools one by one. A reminder of the different types of information that you should be looking at and of the wide range of search engines that are out there.
9. Click on the Advanced Search option for any of the tools that you encounter, be it Google et al or a web site’s own search option. They offer great ways of focussing your search by date, file format, site, author etc.
10. RBA Business Sources. http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/.Selected sources of business information organised by type e.g. statistics, share prices, company registers. Yes, it is my own site [blush] but they did insist!
11. Phil Bradley’s web site and blog. http://www.philb.com/ and http://philbradley.typepad.com/. Excellent sources of information on Web 2.0 ’stuff’ and search tools. In particular, his blog has no-nonsense reviews of new search tools that claim they will change the world of search.
12. Intute. http://www.intute.ac.uk/. Forget about the ac.uk label.This is an excellent starting point for anyone working in business and wanting to identify quality resources on a wide range of subjects and industries.
13. Hometrack. http://www.hometrack.co.uk/.This site provides key statistics and data on the UK housing market and financing of that market. Especially relevant in the current economic climate.
14. Alacrasearch. http://www.alacra.com/alacrasearch.A Google custom search engine that focuses on business sites selected by Alacra. [A personal note: this is in my top 5 favourite search tools].
15. CIA World Factbook - country profiles. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/.Key statistics on every country. For those of you of a more adventurous disposition when it comes to travel, it even includes the number of airports with unpaved runways!

Next Event, book early please!

Creative Goal Setting

photo credit: dogfrog

Wednesday 25 June 2008

12.00 to 2.00 pm

Hive Seminar Room

Presenters:

Adrian Reynolds & Annie Dickinson

If you're going to embrace creativity in your business, start by using it in the way you set your goals. In this session you'll experience a simple way of tapping into your unconscious desires that brings renewed life to business planning, and new perspectives on your priorities.

Annie Dickinson works as an Executive Coach with Fortune 100 companies across Europe, focusing on changes that impact the bottom line. Clients include IBM, Unilever and AstraZeneca.

Adrian Reynolds is an award winning screenwriter with a background in advertising. His clients include HMV, Motorola, and Paul McKenna Training.

Suitable refreshments will be provided at this event

If you are interested in attending either of these events, please contact

Karen Doxey on 0115 848 4354

or e-mail: karen.doxey@ntu.ac.uk

Video

This video comes recommended by Michael Huxley of Mansfield Hive

SPEEDy Interview - Fit Brits

www.fitbrits.co.uk

State your name for the record- Warren Paul Nash

Please tell us what problem your business solves in 50 words or less - The problem is that many of us don’t eat healthy; we all have our excuses why this may be; my business solves these for you!

Expand on your idea – how will you make money from it? - My business poses great potential for sponsorship. It provides video-podcasts of cook-a-long recipes. These podcasts will be sponsored by a certain brand of food I am using in the podcast or equipment I may be using. As the website develops, I hope to add a feature where the user can transfer their personal shopping list to an online grocery vendor, I hope to get a % commission from this as well.

Explain who your customer is- Essentially, my customer is anyone who says one (or more) of the following:

‘I don’t eat healthy because:

• I don’t know what healthy food is’
  
• I don’t know the ingredients’
  
• I don’t have time to go shopping’
  
• I don’t have time to cook’
  
• I don’t know how to cook’
  

As you can imagine, this is quite a broad clientele, so, I am initially focusing my business on males aged 20 to 50 years.

Describe where you see yourself in 5 years’ time- I see myself having a mainstream television show on one of the 4 major terrestrial TV channels! Pah, not, have you seen my latest podcast?!!! Anyway, video podcasts are much better because they are far more relevant to the user who downloads them. Sorry, I’m going seriously off topic here. Anyway, as ridiculously over-ambitious as it may sound, I want to get Britain cooking again. People don’t realise how easy and cheap it really is, and if I can say in 5 years time, I made a difference to the health of the nation, I’d be happy with that (how corny!!!). I also want a Maserati (for the record)

I keep seeing so many more ways to lead a healthy lifestyle as well, I was thinking of healthy fast-food restaurants (and no, Subway is NOT a healthy fast-food restaurant!) a while back, how good would it be to have somewhere that sold smoothies instead of Cola and food that actually contained 100% meat. Anyway, that’s a project for another day! When I have my Maserati, I will pursue it!

Random Questions – choose one and answer

• Who is your hero?- Virgil Tracey!

He may only be a puppet but he’s the pilot of Thunderbird 2. Thunderbird 2 is the best Thunderbird aircraft! Virgil always confronts danger head on and it’s because of him that all Thunderbird rescue operations are so successful. Virgil also has great fashion sense and exceptional pianist skills (for a puppet anyway!). Best of all, he gets to see Lady Penelope whenever he likes!

SPEEDy Interview - Go Dine

www.godine.co.uk

State your name for the record - Adam Roberts

Please tell us what problem your business solves - We help people who want to find and book a restaurant in their region, allowing them to see the menus, view photos and read reviews, ensuring they find and book the right restaurant. We are confident that people who are short of time will enjoy our service along with anyone who enjoys eating out.

Expand on your idea - how will you make money from it? It's a free service to both restaurants and diners. The restaurants pay us a fee for every customer we send them. In short, they only pay on results

Explain who your customer is - Anyone who books restaurants and has access to the internet

Describe where you see yourself in five years time - Nottingham, London and Italy...in equal measure!

Random Questions – choose one and answer

You are flying to the moon, what is the one thing you need?

Who is your hero? Sir Alex Ferguson, he's someone I greatly admire!

Do you…Twitter?

Who would you most like to have dinner with?

What is your favourite word?

Which Facebook groups do you belong to?

What’s your special power?

Spot the difference!

What's missing...? You, of course!

Seriously though, we need your help. The Hive has just had new PCs installed on all the HotDesks, we have two fantastic seminars planned for May, and a further one in the pipeline for June too. What else can we do to entice you to use the Hive for your businesS work?

We're going to be asking this question to all our Hive-lives over the next few weeks, have a think and give us your honest opinion.

We miss you, come in and see us.

Intrapreneurship

“ As business in the UK leaves the recession behind and communications technology spreads its wings, companies seek a new breed of manager. They seek him here, they seek him there, they seek him almost everywhere. He is required in product development, in systems development, in market development, or in commercial development. I call him the “intrapreneur”. He is the agent of enterprise development.

The term “intrapreneur” immediately sets up a creative tension. For “ intra” means “going within”, inside of; “preneur” from the French “prendre” means to take, to go out, to undertake. Within this field of tension lies, in fact, not one particular kind of manager, but a whole cast of characters, set on enterprise development. In fact, the intrapreneur is a “holding category” for seven subsidiaries: the innovator, enabler, leader, entrepreneur, change agent, animator and adventurer. How we came to these seven will be revealed in the next chapter. But the reasons why are clear. Firstly the modern corporation requires a more varied cast of characters than either the traditional manager or entrepreneur. Secondly such a cast, as far as I am concerned, should reinforce, rather than detract from, our individuality. As the Chairman of ICI said to a group of managers in a recent speech, contemporary organisations should serve the individual rather than vice versa.

This book is therefore designed to help managers develop such singular and varied attributes as:

• Commercial insight and market awareness


• An ability to work persistently and autonomously


• An innovative and creative mind


• Ability to manage and direct change


• Organisational capacity and analytical skill


• Stamina and staying power


• Ability to get on with people at all levels “

For many of you who will perhaps not at this stage go further with your own business ideas but decide to take a job in commerce and industry, the message is that the skills and attributes you learn and develop with do not go to waste but are valuable assets to take with you. Enterprise and entrepreneurship is not wasted effort.

Now that's what I'm talking about!

My blog stats have improved! Thanks for sticking with me through subject changes, style tweaks and the like.

I hope you will return your interview responses so you too can be main feature on our blog!!