We want to thank everyone for their interest in this workshop, and hope to see you all very soon at our rescheduled event.

The Dublin Hub Team and !AHA!

Organised by our good selves and Dublin City Council, 4 groups took to the stage to give talks and present the participants with a Burning Question for them to answer. The event was very kindly and excellently chaired by Mr. Noel Casserly from Comhar Sustainable Development Council with Michael Stubbs of Dublin City Council providing a very informative keynote to kickstart the event.

Presenting each question was Mark Bennett from Dublin City Council, a team of Masters students from the College of Europe in Brussels working on a report on how to promote green business in Dublin and two Innovation Studios members. I spoke about the core concept of Innovation Studios from a workspace point of view followed by David and Erik who presented our new concept in learning called “Integral Learning”.

The event took the form of a World Café, where after each talk we presented a Burning Question for particpants to chew over amongst roundtables of 6 people and write down their ideas collaboratively. At the end of each talk/question the participants moved to a different table so as to mix with other people and share ideas. We’ve posted slideshows below to show the contributions made by each table.

All in all, the day was a fantastic success with many people enjoying the World Café format which afforded them the opportunity to mix with peers they wouldn’t normally have the chance to. From our point of view, much of our reasons for the importance of Innovation Studios was reinforced with many people innately understanding the need for a grass roots driven enterprise space with open membership to support our country’s micro enterprises. We also had the opportunity to pitch our relavance to those who didn’t understand / appreciate the need for micro enterprise supports and their input gave us a much stronger ability to demonstrate the importance of an Innovation Studios Space.

Here are the transcripts of the sheets… DCC Hub CoE Workshop Transcripts
Here are the slideshows of participant’s contributions from the day, broken down by each Burning Question.

1. What must we do to ensure Dublin realises the potential of the Green Economy by 2010?

Mark Bennett (Dublin City Council)

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

2. Could a Green Hub add Value in Dublin? Would a Green hub Work in Dublin?

College of Europe

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

3. How do we Utilise the Nation’s/Region’s Strengths? We want your help – How can we help you?

Patrick O’Connor (Innovation Studios)

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

4. How Can We Kickstart Green Business Through Innovation Studios?

David Johnson & Erik van Lennep (Innovation Studios)

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Photos taken during the afternoon.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

12►

EU Employment and Social Affairs Ministers today agreed on a new facility to provide loans to people who have lost their jobs and want to start or further develop their own small business . The European Microfinance Facility will have a starting budget … Read more at EUROPA – Press Releases »

After all, opportunity and challenge is our daily bread, innit?

EUROPE 2020, A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.

(from the Executive Summary):

Europe faces a moment of transformation. The crisis has wiped out years of economic and social progress and exposed structural weaknesses in Europe’s economy. In the meantime, the world is moving fast and long-term challenges – globalisation, pressure on resources, ageing – intensify. The EU must now take charge of its future.
Europe can succeed if it acts collectively, as a Union. We need a strategy to help us come out stronger from the crisis and turn the EU into a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy delivering high levels of employment, productivity and social cohesion. Europe 2020 sets out a vision of Europe’s social market economy for the 21st century.
Europe 2020 puts forward three mutually reinforcing priorities:
– Smart growth: developing an economy based on knowledge and innovation.
– Sustainable growth: promoting a more resource efficient, greener and more competitive economy.
– Inclusive growth: fostering a high-employment economy delivering social and territorial cohesion.
The EU needs to define where it wants to be by 2020. To this end, the Commission proposes the following EU headline targets:
– 75 % of the population aged 20-64 should be employed.
– 3% of the EU’s GDP should be invested in R&D.
– The “20/20/20″ climate/energy targets should be met (including an increase to 30% of emissions reduction if the conditions are right).
– The share of early school leavers should be under 10% and at least 40% of the younger generation should have a tertiary degree.
– 20 million less people should be at risk of poverty.
These targets are interrelated and critical to our overall success. To ensure that each Member State tailors the Europe 2020 strategy to its particular situation, the Commission proposes that EU goals are translated into national targets and trajectories.
The targets are representative of the three priorities of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth but they are not exhaustive: a wide range of actions at national, EU and international levels will be necessary to underpin them. The Commission is putting forward seven flagship initiatives to catalyse progress under each priority theme: (keep reading…..)

The Green Economy is here lads, and Ireland would be wise to pay attention. For the rest of us, the article gives inspiration and insights we can take into our own entrepreneurial thinking.

SMEs – Sustainability Minded Enterprise

New places of work and new ways of working -

A response to emerging enterprise opportunities

­

Wood Quay Venue, Civic Offices, 8^th March 2010

Registration from 14.30, event starts 15.00 sharp, networking from 17.30

The Dublin Hub Innovation Studios and Dublin City Council with partners invite you to a workshop event followed by refreshments.  We would value your input and collaboration on our ideas for stimulating and supporting green business in the city, such as the creation of a green innovation and hotdesking enterprise space with a uniquely tailored training programme.

The event is being hosted by Dublin City Council in cooperation with Dublin Hub Innovation Studios and the College of Europe and invitees include city-based entrepreneurs, public authorities, NGOs and private sector.

Places are limited so please fill out a short form to request an invite. We’d love to have a diverse mix of people attending to demonstrate the wide range of interesting and dynamic entrepreneurs making up the micro-enterprise community in Dublin.

Click here for the invite request form.

We now have close to 120 people signed up to out HubDublin discussion group on Linkedin, and a reasonable estimate might predict another 50-75 interested but not using Linkedin. We have reviewed a handful of locations for the co-working space, but while there were definite opportunities presented by each of these, so far no single space possessed the magic formula of economics, location and quality of space we need for a creative community co-working environment. As the economic spin-down starts to level, but with little rebound so far in the property sector, it shouldn’t be long now before we locate the right office space at terms enabling our start up for start ups to open the doors. Over the autumn, we have also prepared a business plan, and this is now very close to completion.

Because the HubDublin vision is broader than hot desks alone, and because it emphasises the buzz of co-working in a collaborative community, we can do quite a bit as a group while we continue to search out spaces and terms. We are launching a skill-sharing facility via the main website, and encouraging any and all interested persons to list yourselves, skills you are willing to share, and expertise you may be seeking. There’s bound to be someone within our group of close to 200 people who either need you or can help you out. So let’s give it a go.

We’ll also restart our series of gatherings in February, and focus on continuing to build our co-working community as well as scheduling working sessions to bring us closer to opening the doors. If you have ideas about topics you’d like to explore at one of our Hub-meets, let us know, or better yet, post it for discussion and see how many others are interested. And of course, if you hear of a good bet for an open plan, flexible, inspiring and centrally located affordable space, let us know!

Finally, I’d like to underscore the “co” aspect of coworking. So far, the lion’s share of effort behind realising the Dublin Hub has been invested by three unpaid part time volunteers, with occasional backup from another three. We need a bit more energy at the core to spread the workload and enable us to pick up the pace. If you feel you have some time and inclination for this, we’d like to hear from you.

Erik

* Central / Easily Accessible Location
* From 200 sq m to 300 sq m (2150 sq ft to 3200 sq ft)
* Open plan
* Flexible meeting spaces, e.g. two meeting rooms that can be merged to one.
* Large 50-person events space (integrating aforementioned: a space can be cleared by moving furniture)
* Flexible partitioning
* Space for café – or communal kitchen
* “Greenable” – we can add a rooftop garden, for example
* Unstructured cabling
* Natural light, airy and warm (or heatable)

If we find all of the above, brilliant, but we’ll settle for less depending on how strong an impression the space makes.

A quick word on what’s not good:
* Georgian houses, because there are too many rooms and too many floors to create a sense of community;
* buildings on more than one floor, except where there is a larger space for the desks and the other floor space can be used for meetings;
* fitted, modern, anonymous offices: not because of the fixtures, because of the cachet that the building has to have to encourage people to want to work there – Dublin is overstuffed with property developer’s throw-em-up-and-pile-em-in uninspiring workplaces. We think you deserve better. ]]> http://hubdublin.com/2009/08/what-were-looking-for-in-a-building/feed/ 0 http://hubdublin.com/2009/08/dublin-hub-event-ii-poster/ http://hubdublin.com/2009/08/dublin-hub-event-ii-poster/#comments Thu, 20 Aug 2009 11:39:12 +0000 Patrick http://hubdublin.com/?p=142 Here’s the poster for our event next week. Thanks a million to Niall O’Cleirigh of NOC Web Design for his fantastic work on creating a great poster under a tough deadline!

Feel free to spread the word among interested people and print out the poster for distribution. A3 pdf here.

More to come so watch this space!

We would really appreciate it if you could RSVP so we can accomodate everyone attending. the last event packed the place so we have high hopes for this one
RSVP on Facebook or LinkedIn

UPDATE: The poster promoting the event has been created, feel free to send it out to anyone interested. Find it here…