trendpreneur

Alternate title: Things I Keep Doing That I Know I Shouldn’t (And If You Catch Me Doing Them, Slap Me)

(Yeah, I have a few thoughts on FOWA I want to get down, but a thousand things to do as well; this was written late at night while dahn Souf, so it’s not like it’s effort to post. Right?)

1. It’s all me, me, me.

I know I’m the most important person in the world, but I should really take time out of my busy schedule to ask *you* questions. When you ask me ‘So, what do you do?’ I should reply with something brief, yet informative, and fire the same question back at you. Not only will it help establish myself as a good listener, it’ll help me centre my self-description around what you do and know.

2. When Harry Met Sally (Via Roger)

Not so much an in-person intro, this, but something I’ve been caught up with a couple of times lately. When you refer someone you know to someone else, don’t send them to each other – introduce them. “Hey Bob, how’s it going? Thought you might like to meet Alice.” Not “this is Alice’s email address, say I sent you”. The latter is appropriate in *some* contexts, but not in email and not in person.

3. Let’s get physical

I’m usually carrying a bag. This means if I have to carry a coat as well, or a second bag, or a small child, I’m not going to have a hand easily free without overbalancing and looking even more clumsy than I already am. The alternative is to look really impolite and not shake someone’s hand. I’m not Arrington. Ditch the coat (even if it does act as mobile pockets) and go around empty-handed, girl. Secondly, even though it might be a geek event, stop staring into the distance when talking to someone. You just give the impression something else is far more interesting than they are.

4. Card time

I partly blame this on the aforementioned pockets and bags and things, but it’s not a great excuse. I need to swap cards more. I’m getting pretty good at managing other people’s cards, and remembering why I took them in the first place, but if I don’t give people mine, they’re not going to contact me.

5. Keep in touch

Again something which came up recently; just because *you* think you’re waiting for the other person to call or email, doesn’t mean they think the holdup’s their end. If you haven’t heard from someone in a while, it’s not nagging to drop them a friendly line asking to touch base. It’s much better than finding out months down the line that they thought you were uncontactable and aloof because you were being too polite to nag them about replying to an email.

6. Stop apologising

Sorry.

7. Use small talk wisely

I recently read on the Internets  that making only small talk at a networking event makes you seem like an amateur. It’s not so bad if you’re at an event with unpracticed techies, not smarmy businessspeople, but still; if your entire conversation with someone is about the quality of the soap in the toilets, or the length of the queue you’re in, what point was there for you to talk in the first place? (Unless you’re building up to working a room, of course.)

8. Don’t be afraid to say something

Man, it’s scary being at tech events. People either side of you in a queue, or sitting in a hall, won’t even look at you. It’s as if you’re totally invisible. Don’t let this faze you. Even if you say hi and ask them how the wifi’s holding up, the worst that happens is they totally ignore you. Which they were kinda doing already.

9. Chat with people on stands, but get out quickly

Having worked trade show booths and stands, it can be nice to get people talking – if the area isn’t busy, even if they’re on a tangent, it’s more likely to get other people coming up to you as you appear interesting. Talking to people at stands doesn’t always mean you have to stand there rigid under the influence of a megaton sales pitch. Make it clear you’re there for the free stuff and you don’t think your interests overlap; make it a challenge to find out if they do, or to find out enough about them that you could introduce a contact to them. You keep their lives less dull and gain an ally for future use. A lot of the same people work the same booths at multiple conferences, of course! However, don’t spend ten minutes nodding sagely at a pointless sales pitch. Know when enough is enough, and get the hell out.

10. Make yourself visible – if you want to be

Ask questions in sessions. Talk to the speakers afterwards, Hell, talk to the people who asked questions. Try to remember names and faces and come up to them the next day with something from the previous one. Be active on twitter – interact with others. Ask someone you already know to introduce you to someone interesting. Introduce someone you already know to someone interesting. Buy someone lunch. Get bought lunch. Hang around an attraction and make yourself seem approachable. Stop standing in the corner staring at your feet and getting a headache from writing introspective blog posts about how antisocial you are. Just get out there and be social.

Jennie is currently trying to invent a cloning machine and/or time travel device. If it can do networking too, she thinks she’s on to a winner. She’s also looking for a new blog theme, if you know a good ‘un…

I’ve run across several young entrepreneurs lately who are starting up businesses in Scotland (well, Edinburgh specifically). I keep mentioning the same resources to them, so it’s about time I put it all in one place.

• EPIS at the University of Edinburgh is a great opportunity to get started with a safety net. A loan from Scottish Enterprise, office space and hosting within the University, access to academic resources and mentoring, and tons of help and advice to boot. The programme won’t be accepting new applications for much longer, so get in fast.
• Scottish Enterprise is a fairly hard nut to crack. There’s a lot of support available and I, at least, found it hard to research online. The easiest way to get a rundown of the grants, co-investment and support (mostly financial) available is to get in touch with a human being; you might need to go through Business Gateway, who are dubiously helpful.
• PSYBT, if you’re under 25, is a nice source of very practical advice (eg. a bookkeeping course) as well as grants and loans.
• If you’re doing something disruptive with digital media, 4iP could help. They’re worth contacting to hash out ideas as well as to try and get financial backing.
• 38minutes is 4iP’s social network, which is a great one-stop place to find out what events are on and what’s hot in the world of social media. For example, it tells you about…
• …Edinburgh Coffee Morning, every Friday at Centotre. I am notoriously bad at going to this, but if you want to hobnob with social/digital meeja, startups and web devs, it’s the place to be. You might also enjoy…
• TechMeetup, now in both Edinburgh and Glasgow flavours. A monthly hackerfest with the odd spinoff gathering and a mailing list that cool stuff occasionally floats across.
• If you’re interested in more structured events, Informatics Ventures often throw great educational and networking-heavy events, from courses to expos. Recent highlights have included Guy Kawasaki and Doug Richard.
• A shameless plug for a new site started by startup types here: StartupCafe (which, when I visit it, has as its first post a listing somewhat similar to this one!). Any site with a competition to win pancakes is good in my book.
• Related, Edinburgh Uni’s E-club and Launch.ed — both a little dormant now due to the end of the academic year — are good organisations with great people. Events, networking, advice, support, etc.
• And, totally unrelated to the above, Hacker News is an excellent morning read, and applying to Y Combinator’s funding rounds is a very educational process. There are a couple of Edinburgh startup types in its irc channel (#startups on freenode) and others from the UK.

Enjoy, and do let me know if there’s more stuff I’ve missed!

I have to share this excellent post on ThinkVitamin: 15 tips for freelancers starting their own business. It really drives home some of the transitions you have to make from working on your own to becoming a proper business, with other people and everything.

#10 and #15 are particularly interesting. I love being the person in the middle; if someone approaches me with something that’s not quite up my street, it’s very satisfying to refer them on to someone who will do a great job — I enjoy the matchmaking itself, that sense of making connections in your head and being useful to others, far more than the hard-nosed ‘well, they’ll both thank me for it’ business approach.

As for taking notes with a notebook, a habit I’ve adopted since my university days is to simply listen to what the other person is saying and remember it, rather than scribble down every other word and not really pay attention. I don’t do well with the in-one-ear-out-the-other approach, I prefer to challenge myself to think, to listen, and to recall the important points of the conversation later (and then note them down). Should I start writing as I go? I suppose it depends on the conversation. If I’m talking to someone about how I can customise my software to their needs, not writing down their requirements might seem a bit funny.

I also love the brusqueness of “learn how to deal with different personality types”. Whether you choose Helen Fisher’s chemical-inspired 4-way classification, Myers-Briggs indicators, Merrill Reid or others, personalities do tend to fall into four different classes and you can categorise people according to their dominant and secondary traits. However, it seems to me that instinct can get you a long way; learn what sort of person you have difficulty dealing with, what the key turn-offs for you are, and don’t worry about fitting people into boxes along the way.

[image from Guille on flickr]

Yesterday, I watched something beautiful happen. At our regular Monday meeting for entrepreneurs on the EPIS programme, a new member talked about a decision he was about to make. Bit by bit, people around the table chimed in with comments — it turned out that he wasn’t aware of some of the major repercussions to making this decision, and suddenly he had a whole army of people helping him out, warning him of the pitfalls and giving him a few phone numbers to call. I haven’t been in that position (yet), but it was amazing to see the sheer depth of experience and knowledge flying across the room, all to help out this guy nobody really knew.

A while back, I read a post about Marc Hedlund’s advice on entrepreneurship. One of the things that stood out to me was the comment “Write someone and ask them for help every day”. When I first read it, I was quite sceptical; who’s going to help some random person they vaguely know? However, having seen time and again how people are amazingly friendly and open towards you when they know you’re just starting out on this long and tough journey, how they trip over themselves to pass on advice and help you out, and how they’ll give you honest feedback on stuff you didn’t even realise you needed feedback on… yes, I now agree with Marc. Maybe not in the “sit down and think of someone every day” mentality, but in the spirit of it: advice is great, there are loads of people happy to share their thoughts, and you can often get a new angle on something or avoid a mistake before you make it with a little outside stability.

Another post in this vein is possibly a little too American to work in Edinburgh, but the sentiment is there; take someone you admire out to lunch. Perhaps with a little tweaking this philosophy could be altered to “a nice cup of tea and a sit down with someone who will have interesting things to say”, possibly a little more appropriate for these windy climes.

Ultimately the decisions you make are down to one person: you. (Or you and your co-founders, but you catch my drift.) With all the good advice in the world, people still make mistakes, and that’s how we learn — it’s also easy to be swayed by every new idea or recommendation that comes along, constantly changing direction based on what one person said the other day. Stick to your vision while being flexible enough to incorporate change, and don’t be afraid to ask for advice — it’s a sign of strength, not weakness.