Archive for March, 2009
Conducting your startup’s offsite: tips for success
by Magda Rocki
Last week’s post dealt with pre-planning the basic elements that assure your startup’s offsite is successful: who should be there? Talking about what, when, and why? This week’s focus is on executing the planning and ensuring everything runs smoothly the day of the offsite and onwards.
STEP TWO- Day of the offsite: Executing the planning and guiding your team towards resolution
Ask your team to turn off their cellphones: no distractions allowed! It can even be a good idea to disconnect the internet access during topic sessions, so that participants remain focused on the task at hand. The goal is after all to have everyone participate.
Remind the participants of the agenda items and add missing items ( if needed): to decrease the incidents of tangents and off-topic discussions, make sure to stick to the proposed agenda items. Think of the agenda items as promises you don’t wish to break.
Add comment March 25, 2009
Planning your startup’s offsite? Tips on making it successful.
by Magda Rocki
A startup’ s offsite is a very helpful means to getting the team focused on defining a strategy, roadmapping, planning a product launch or creating a revolutionary way of doing things. Far from the daily distractions of the office (lengthy meetings, stressful deadlines, glaring computer screens), the offsite environment is also a great formula for open conversations about subject items you don’t have time to broach in your regular schedule.
Done well, an offsite not only puts your startup’s great minds together to address a business issue but it also builds better teams that work more effectively together and get more things done. However, an offsite planned poorly will be viewed as a waste of time and be dubbed as a dismal failure.
How can you ensure your startup’s offsite is successful at building teams and getting things done at the same time?
The key: advance preparation. Consider following this efficient 3-step planning sequence. Step one outlined below with step two and three explained in a subsequent post.
1 comment March 18, 2009
Reminder: Co-Founders Monday on March 16
by Magda Rocki
Whether you are an entrepreneur looking for skilled individuals to join your brilliant project, or an individual searching for a brilliant project to join, you should attend the upcoming Co-Founders Monday.
Come mingle, meet like-minded people and gain awareness of new projects on Monday, March 16th at 6:30pm at the Bolidea offices.
There are just a few spots left, so make sure to register at the Montreal NewTech Meetup.
Add comment March 12, 2009
Recap: March YULHackers
by Magda Rocki
Who had time this past Saturday to leisurely enjoy the lovely beginnings of spring? Certainly not this dedicated group of knowledgeable entrepreneurs, creators and programmers present at the freshly minted YULHackers event.
Highlights of the event:
- An unconference format was adopted: Participants were greeted at the door with a giant, blank post-it board and markers and directed toward filling out alloted time slots with their topics of interest.
- Sebastien presented his programming language Sugar: The engaging presentation focused on the origins of Sugar, its practical applications through a journey into its design and syntax, and concluded with a few slides on its admissibility as a good replacement to JavaScript for front-end web development. Presentation slides can be found here.
- A group discussion was initiated about the future format and branding related efforts for YULhackers: So far, thanks to the magical hands of Alok, we have a website, a simple wiki and a tumblr blog.
- Peter of the Navarra Group presented their micro-finance web app which will be used for an online – lending system.
Thanks again to all the participants for attending, especially Alok and Heri for organizing and Sebastien and Peter for presenting their work. I’m certain that with your continuous enthusiasm, input and participation, the event’s dimensions will quickly grow into one of Montreal Tech community’s “ must attend” events. Keep tab on the next event by checking back here or here .
1 comment March 11, 2009
Unconferencing Free Hackers3
by Magda Rocki
After a brief reformatting pause, we are once again delighted to be hosting the Free Hackers event this upcoming Saturday, March 7th 2009 from 1-7 pm. On the hacking menu: a presentation and hands-on workshop on the programming language Sugar– by Sebastien Pierre founder of datalicious– followed by an open hacking session. The full details and the sign-up for the event can be found here , so join us and let’s revel in the new Free Hackers format!
Add comment March 2, 2009
