What happened when I asked 46 people for feedback

Work gets better when the relationships you have with the people you work with get better.

But you only have one perspective on those relationships - your own.

Make Work Better

Work doesn't have to be boring or fun.

What is the best WiFi for Coworking spaces?

There were periods of The Skiff’s history where access to the Internet from The Skiff was a running joke. We had members leave the space because it would occasionally become unusable for them. As one of the bare essentials for the vast majority of our coworkers this was inexcusable. It distracted us for months as we tried to create a network that we could all depend upon.

Is it a good idea to have multiple coworking spaces in one city?

I've had to ask myself this question many times since starting The Skiff. The growth of coworking is leading to it being asked increasingly by first time coworking space founders and long term owners alike.

Me and Steve Ballmer in 2007

Back in 2007 I asked Steve Ballmer a question at an event for people in the web industry in London. He didn't seem to understand it (to be fair I felt so out of my depth asking him a question, I probably wasn't being very articulate) so he asked me to follow up with an email. This is what I sent:

10 Things You Should Shout at Brilliant Web Developers

I spent Friday at ConfShop in the company of some of the most talented people in the UK web industry. Elliot Jay Stocks and Keir Whitaker pulled off a risky new event format that resulted in far more insight into the experiences of other attendees than I've ever before gained from a conference. Their "insites" brand is very aptly named. Some of the things I heard inspired me to write this, my first blog post in a very long time:

The unsolved scaling challenge

Everyone knows that scaling websites so that they can serve millions of users a day is hard. Most Twitter users have seen the famous Fail Whale often enough, which usually shows up because some component of Twitter's website isn't handling an increase in traffic so well. Many people familiar with web services can also appreciate the additional challenge that comes with providing an API, especially when, as is the case of Twitter, it has to handle 10 times the traffic of the website.

Differences between Y Combinator and Seedcamp

In a recent Techcrunch Europe post Mike Butcher shared some Seedcamp data showing the startup trends in Europe. In that post he made the following statement when comparing the organisation to its competition across the pond:

Pre-investment and Pre-revenue Product Development BootCycle

I have an idea about providing support for pre-investment & pre-revenue product development which I’ve been discussing with various people in Brighton for over a year now. It’s called BootCycle and it’s an approach to mashing up some of the best bits of Y Combinator, BarCamp, OpenCoffee, Coworking & Hack Day to help people launch products. I ran a session at BarCamp Bournemouth to get some more feedback and it again came up in conversation at Open Hack London this weekend. I felt it probably about time that I stuck it in my blog…

In case you missed it

At the beginning of January we posted an update giving the highlights of 2007 from Inuda Innovations. Check it out here: The Inudian - Looking Back On 2007

Looking Back

I’ve really neglected this blog. It’s been nearly a year since my last entry so it seems like as good a time as any to look back on what I’ve been up to.

Why Mad Motive?

Am I mad? Well a few people have said I must be crazy to link my business to a blog called Mad Motive. It’s a phrase probably most commonly used in describing axe murderers.