Sun Startup Essentials - A big hand for your business ideas from stewart townsend on Vimeo.

How can Sun Startup Essentials help you ? Watch this and see how Sun can help your small business with it's Startup Essentials programme http://sun.com/startups

SmallBizPod is a podcast, blog, news and community site for small businesses, start-ups and entrepreneurs. This is how it all happened.

Back in March 2005, Alex Bellinger became one of only a handful of people in the UK to start podcasting.

Looking around for a subject he realised there were no British-based podcasts on business. Since he had just set up his own business and had spent many years focusing on the small business sector, a podcast on entrepreneurship seemed like a good way to go.

SmallBizPod was born. The podcast, blog and website now attract tens of thousands of listeners and readers a month from all over the world.

Inspire, Inform, Entertain

From the start SmallBizPod has been there to inspire, to inform, and to be fun to listen to and read as well. I think thanks to some wonderful contributors and interviewees, it's achieved just that.

Over time, the site has grown to become one of the most visited sites for SMEs in the UK. It's also developed into a wonderful free audio resource to provide inspiration and advice from business people with real experience and real insight.

Take the time to listen to some inspiring interviews from some renowned people on subjects such as marketing, business advice, funding and many more, the beauty is that these are free and really insighful and great to hear that not just you in that Startup boat alone.

Visit http://www.smallbizpod.co.uk/  now and keep an update on the latest podcasts.

Busy entrepreneurs need to stay on top of all the latest startup information, but who has the time? Here's a look at what went on around blogosphere and in the news last week, in case you missed it.

Are advisory boards a good or bad idea for startups? Entrepreneur-turned-VC Mark Suster says that depends on your goals.

All the advice from startup industry analysts who recommend entrepreneurs consider starting new green-tech business aren't just spouting rhetoric. Finance mogul George Soros recently committed a whopping $1 billion to the clean-tech startup sector.

Do you have trouble balancing work and home life? Do you love the art of the deal? Are you addicted to pursuing the next big opportunity? You may be an entre-holic.

Some startups don't need barrels of money to get off the ground. If you're a U.S.-based business looking for a micro-loan, there's a good chance Kiva.org can help.

Startups looking to raise capital sometimes hire finders to help them out. If this is something you're considering, “We can’t find investors on our own� isn't a good enough reason to go this route.

Flickr image courtesy of angermann.

 Do you want to attend Social Media 09 ? - http://socialmedia09.com/

More details below, but with 

6 speakers
14 case studies
8 demos & 1 tools overview

with Sarah Beeny and Chris Thorpe on the agenda its going to be an informative interesting discussion based event.

Make sure you are a Sun Startup Essential Member and get a 20% discount on this great event now - http://sun.com/startups

Tuesday November 10th 6.00 PM till late

Sun CBC London

Tickets are free and are available here:



Tuesday 10th November at Sun Microsystems’ Customer Briefing Centre in London. 6pm for pizza and beer kindly provided by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials team. The event will be developer and startup-centric with the content best suited to people who are already developing applications on top of Twitter or who intend to start building a Twitter application in the near future. At 9pm we head down to the pub conveniently located directly underneath the briefing centre.

Nest Building

    * What next for devnest? What we can do in between meetings, to foster community, to lobby for governance, and to build great products and services (Angus Fox, Multizone Limited, @nuxnix)

140 second demo/presentation

Show and tell, 140 seconds countdown. Dont go over!

    *
    * @ollieparsley - Hootmonitor
    * @benoitx - Spotify.Chart.info
    * @rem - Snapbird

      Sign up on the night or DM @nuxnix to secure your slot

A special Guest industry luminary in person or via hi tech real time high definition conferencing

    * We could tell you who, but we’d be lying..

VIP Invitation to the exclusive Insider Secrets breakfast with Greg Dyke


We are pleased to be a host to an unusual breakfast session and I am delighted to invite you to it.

The breakfast setting is going to be interactive, challenging, stimulating and driven by the audience.

on

Date:             Thursday, 22nd October 2009
Time:             8 am to 10 am
At:                 Sun Customer briefing Centre

To get tickets at SSE Member rate please go here now  - SSE MEMBERS ONLY PRICING

There's no room here to list in detail what Greg did that prompted literally thousands of BBC people to take to the streets in protest when he had to resign from the BBC, causing "men, women and even journalists to cry" and flooding his inbox with 6,000 emails from BBC people, most of which said how upset they were that he was going.

Greg was Director General of the BBC and is now the Chairman of the British Film Institute, Chairman of Brentford football club and also Chancellor of York University.  He also was one of the original architects of the Premier League in his days with LWT.  He has changed the face of British Television and British football whilst introducing a new no-nonsense direct style of inspirational leadership.

In his typical direct no-nonsense, impatient style Greg will take on the challenges from the audience and share his nuggets of insights. 

These are the 5 areas he will span:

1.             The "Berlin Wall" moment for Democracy - His unique perspective on Public service reform and transformation of Democracy is that we are heading to a "Berlin Wall" moment that will change the course of politics
2.             Leadership in a crisis - is the outlook less bleak?  he has his own brand of leadership advice for entrepreneurs, corporate and public service leaders as they prepare to come out of the current crisis.
3.             Learning from shambles - the ITV mess provides a number of fabulous lessons for the choice of Board, the relationship between CEO and Chairman
4.             GAME changing innovations: Greg created BBC Freeview that changed British television and 20 years ago created the Premier League which has transformed the face of British football. 
5.             What next for the British Film Industry -  how can new technologies like the internet be monetised to the advantage of the film industry and not just the pirates.

It is an unusual opportunity as Greg does not do sessions like these very often.  He does get called to do his set speeches but speaking directly from what he is passionate about and responding interactively to the challenging and confronting questions in public will be the juicy part of this breakfast. So definitely, keep your questions ready.

There are only a few spots still available as we like to maintain the intimate interactive style of these breakfasts. 

We look forward to seeing you there.

Sun's Startup Essentials team was hosting a Chillout lounge  at the Future of Web Apps
London, where 750 attendees from across the globe came to hear the  founders of digg and winelibrary
inform people on how to build a multi million startup and make sure it is marketed well.

Amongst all this information digest, the SSE team were talking, informing and hosting our own talks
to the attendees Matt Hosanee gave a talk alongside James Proud form Giglocator on scaling your
startup on a bootstrapped financial model, and myself Stewart Towsend gave a talk on SSE in general
and how we have helped tweetmeme grow from a 2 person company to over 10 employees and 85% growth
month on month.

For a flavour of the event, check out to see how busy the Sun area got go HERE

And if you want to know what people had to say about it go HERE

Many people think of business or social networking as circulating around a room and exchanging business cards. But a broader view of business and social networking is that it creates a pool of contacts from which you can draw leads, referrals, ideas, and information for your job search and career progress. You can network without ever attending an official business or social networking event, although attending events is useful in networking.

The means is not only face to face events, but also Linked In, Facebook, e-mail, Conference Calls, etc.  In a nutshell, any form of communication is an opportunity for networking.  The "trick" is to be prepared, ready to promote yourself, present the right image to the right people, and use your networking contacts and events as opportunities for development.