Red Button Design

5 Newsworthy Notes to welcome 2012..

2012-01-05T14:15:00.006Z

Happy New Year! I hope you're all settling back into routine as invigorated and inspired as we are. I wanted to take this opportunity to share some of our more noteworthy news. We hope you will take a few minutes to read of our progress and please do get back to us with any comments and/or connections you are able to make. Your support is, and always has been, invaluable to us..

1.) Pilot Deployment with FARM Africa

As you will have seen, this summer saw a pilot deployment of 8 units in Mwingi, Eastern Kenya, with the support of FARM Africa. The trial was extremely successful and saw the culmination of many months of supply chain and logistical work as well as updates to the design of the unit itself and over a year of relationship building with partners in the UK, China and Kenya.

The core components of the units were shipped from the factory in China to Mombasa, then brought overland from Mombasa to our workshop in Nairobi where the frames were built using local materials and labour. Working with FARM Africa’s local staff, we then trialled these units with the community in Mwingi, where they were very well received by the site staff and local women/girls, alike. We were also able to establish that local craftsmen were more than capable of carrying out required routine maintenance such as replacing the filter cartridge and adjusting the cycle chain.

2.) Subsequent Product Development

Following the deployment in Mwingi we judged that the current pump, whilst perfectly functional, was not optimal for the usage environment. In response to this we have established a relationship with UK-based pump manufacturers, Williamson, and are collaborating on a bespoke pump design which, when completed in early 2012, will not only increase performance but will significantly reduce the cost of production and give us much greater control over component sourcing.

3.) Intellectual Property

Last month we were excited to receive a “Notice of Allowance” from the European Patent Office that confirms our patent will be granted. The patent was originally filed at the beginning of 2007 so to reach this stage represents a marked success in a major ongoing body of work.

4.) Partnership with Rotary

We have also spent much of the last 6 months building a relationship with Rotary International. At the end of 2011, at least one local club has taken the initiative and committed to fundraise for at least 50 units. We have high hopes that this enthusiasm, which is being followed up by a number of other local clubs, will be indicative of the wider Rotary response.

5.) Launch of a suite of CSR Packages and Donate Function

In response to inbound enquiries we launched a number of Corporate Social Responsibility packages at the annual “Good Deals” Social Enterprise conference in November. Beginning at £25k to supply 250 individuals with safe drinking water, Midomo is seen as a great low-cost, media-friendly option for organisations looking to create measurable social impact across multiple targets whilst reinforcing brand ethics amongst consumers and employees alike.

We also added the option for individual donations, and our Midomo Bracelet campaign is ongoing into 2012.

If you have any comments or if there are any connections you'd like to make relating to the above, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

All the best,
Team RBD.

Welcome to SHINE!

2011-11-16T15:05:00.003Z

(As producer for this year's SHINE, I was asked to write and present a quick handover between the policy events and the unconference true. I'm posting it here because.. well, it's not bad. This is what you can expect if you're heading to SHINE: the Unconference for Social Entrepreneurs this Global Entrepreneurship Week..)

From here the SHINE Unconference launches full force into a packed two days of activities from keynotes to conversations, one-to-ones to panel discussions, pitching for cash to wandering through the social enterprise marketplace.

To name just a few of our amazing contributors, we’ll be hearing from:

Pamela Hartigan, Executive Director of the Skoll Centre at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, who will be talking about creating entrepreneuring teams..

The infamous Liam Black; co-founder of Wavelength, author of “There’s No Business Like Social Business”, and co- founder of the Social Enterprise Coalition, will be telling us how not to screw up our ideas..

Drawing from experience in both the corporate world and conflict zones worldwide, Mark Walsh is here to advise us on staying sane while staring up..

Mark Walton will warn us of the dangers of drinking by sharing his story of how a couple of beers in the pub lead to the creation of start up with a mission to create a 21st century commons..

We’ll hear from former professional motorsport driver, Trudy Thompson, who dramatically changed her career and lifestyle in 2001 when she started adapting to a low carbon lifestyle and taught herself eco building..

And Nick Jankel, former rural African science teacher, come writer for The Guardian and Financial Times, will be sharing how to use Hollywood storytelling techniques to engage investors..

What’s more!

We have panels on the next generation of social entrepreneurs, the debate over diversity, money!: do you need it and how to get it, what we can learn from women in social enterprise, whether social media promotes activism or just slacktivism, and how the fashion industry can play a huge part in better social and environmental conditions for all..

And, don’t forget, we have the Minister for Civil Society, Nick Hurd, in the mastermind chair ready to take your questions!

And that’s just what we’re doing. I wont begin to assume I can predict the amazing connections and ideas that will come out of the conversations over lunch or a beer.. so on that note, welcome to SHINE and grab yourself a drink!

5 Tech Breakthroughs Bringing Clean Water to the Developing World

2011-10-27T16:28:00.004+01:00

Mashable (y'know: "the largest independent online news site dedicated to covering digital culture, social media and technology"..) are currently highlighting "five innovations that are bringing sanitary and safe drinking water to people in the developing world" and, I'm happy to say, we feature at number 3!

Though we get our fair share of publicity, as a bit of a geek myself I'm disproportionately excited by this one. Or maybe it's not out of proportion at all, with more than 20 million unique monthly visitors Mashable is one of the most engaged online news communities out there.. either way I'm thrilled. Check it out!

So long from Sophie!

2011-10-26T11:40:00.000+01:00

In a way it feels like yesterday that I was sitting in Rich Mix café, writing my ‘meet Sophie’ blog with all the zeal and cockiness of a newly-hired recent graduate. In another way it feels like far longer than a year and a bit ago. It’s really only now, as I prepare to move on to new employment, that I realise how far we’ve come as a company since July 2010.

When I started at Red Button Design, there was a Midomo prototype, secured investment, and some pretty impressive awards in the bag. As I leave, there is a deployment of actual Midomo units in Mwingi, Kenya, a designer jewellery collaboration in place that funded them, some exciting high-profile charity partnerships in the pipeline, and the dawning realisation that we may actually succeed in both making money and effecting vital impact to people’s lives.

I’m certainly not saying this was all down to me. I may be cocky and zealous but I’m not delusional! Obviously there is also a long way for Red Button Design still to go. But grant me if you will a small moment to marvel at what Amanda and James have achieved in little over a year, with some help from me, and some from Esme.

And wow, have I learned a lot. I learned that business is difficult, but it’s certainly do-able, with an ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get’ spirit. I am no longer a ‘networking novice,’ hiding behind my glass and not wanting to disrupt people’s conversations, but instead, I have thrust cards into the hands of Matthew Pinsent, Baroness Butler-Sloss, Doug Richard, and yes, Peter Jones (all of whom were gracious). I can just about get in front of a camera now without being completely trashed.

I’ve also realised the simple fact that good business is all about good relationships. We’re social animals and all, so the trick to getting press, sales, collaborations and stuff done seems to be to just talk to people and be decent and direct. And that can be by email, twitter or even the scary old phone. Getting on with your colleagues also helps the day along and I know this won’t be the last I’ll see of Amanda or James. I owe them much.

And that’s quite enough precocious musing from me for now[1]. If you want me, I’m moving to Knowledge Peers to work with directors of businesses and charities, challenging them to work better. I’ll also be working with Esme, in a new #marcomms team that will never forget its RBD roots.

Thanks everyone,

Stay in touch.

Sophie, FRSA x

(Enthusiasm and idealism still intact)

[1] Save for the job spec to follow...

The Winner of the ICADF Raffle is…

2011-10-25T14:19:00.005+01:00

At the Islington Contemporary Art and Design Fair this weekend, we ran a raffle to win a Midomo Bracelet.

The raffle tickets bought by those who entered have funded a Midomo unit, which will be donated to a family in Mwingi and provide an independent supply of safe drinking water.

There could only be one winner of the Midomo Bracelet itself though, and that person is…. Emily Whitesmith!

We hope Emily enjoys wearing her Alex Monroe bracelet, and using the hand-engraved ID number to track the difference that the donated Midomo is making. If you would like your own Midomo Bracelet, remember you can still get one right here!

Huge thank-yous to everybody who entered; your contribution has made a real and traceable difference to a community.

All the best,

The RBD team

Islington Contemporary Art and Design Fair

2011-10-19T16:39:00.002+01:00

Attention Please! This Fri/Sat/Sun the Midomo Bracelet will be on sale at the fabulous Islington Contemporary Art and Design Fair!

Our bracelet is designed by the well-established Alex Monroe, and so well suited to being exhibited at one of the largest contemporary art spaces in London.

Most importantly, every piece we sell will of course fund the donation of a Midomo water-purifier to a family in sub-Saharan Africa. If you type in the unique serial number into our website, you can track your donated unit and see where it is helping.

Catch us at CANDID ARTS TRUST, 3 Torrens St, London, EC1V 1NQ
between 21-23 October and at the preview evening Thursday 20 Oct (6.30-9pm)

Download the ICADF Flyer

Art for Freedom

2011-10-17T00:03:00.004+01:00

Last Tuesday the Red Button Design team attended the very glamorous Art 4 Freedom auction at Notting Hill’s 20th Century Theatre in our capacity as ‘Gold Sponsors’ of the Row for Freedom. The art auction was put on by the Row for Freedom girls as another opportunity to raise money for charities campaigning to end human trafficking, and they did themselves proud; raising thousands of pounds with this enjoyable evening.

We have explained in a previous post why human trafficking is a cause closely linked to Red Button Design, as it is often the long and arduous walk to collect potentially unsafe drinking water that leaves young African girls vulnerable to abduction by sex traffickers. Julia Immonen, Debbie Beadle and the rest of the Row team recognise this connection too, and along with star presenter Sky Sport’s Charlotte Jackson, they were proudly showing off their Midomo Bracelets, knowing that each one provides a family in the developing world with safe drinking water for a year.

The auction itself was conducted by Anthony Weld Forester, Managing Director of Sotheby’s Edinburgh, and included works from Michael Vaughan- former England cricket captain, Charlie Mackesy and Gerard Stamp. Christine Beddoe, director of benefiting charity ECPAT UK, also gave an insightful speech with staggering facts such as the hundreds of sex slaves being kept in secret brothels on our own doorstep. Consequently it wasn’t only the celebrity artworks that evening that were eye-opening.

We thank all the Row for Freedom girls for a fantastic and worthwhile evening, and continue to wish them all the best with the training for their December challenge.

Building Resilience in East Africa

2011-09-28T15:16:00.008+01:00

In June we visited the Mwingi district of Eastern Kenya, piloting the first Midomo water purifiers. Mwingi is a few hours drive East of Nairobi on the dusty road to Garissa. It’s a small town of 10,000 people that serves as a service stop for the Somali truckers who race khat harvests from farms in western Kenya over the border to sell fresh in Somalia.

Typical of much of Eastern Kenya, the Mwingi district is a semi-arid rural area with a high level of poverty. Many people rely on agriculture for both sustenance and a daily wage, which leaves families vulnerable to a climate that grows increasingly unpredictable. A recent study of communities in the district found that 80% of people do not use an improved source of potable water and the same proportion do not have adequate sanitation facilities.

Farmers in Mwingi are used to dry conditions, however in recent years rainfall has become even more scarce. Looking out over a depleted watering hole made by damming a small stream with earth, a local farmer told me that the April rains – which usually bring a month of daily downpours – this year lasted just two days. But in Mwingi, despite the ongoing drought crops are still grown with surprising success. Farmers have moved from growing maize (made popular by Western diets) to drought-resistant crops such as green grams, cow peas, sorghum and millet. 6,000 farmers in Mwingi are part of an agricultural resilience programme being run by FARM Africa, which teaches techniques for increasing water efficiency and growing a range of drought-resistant crops. The scheme additionally supports pastoralists by supplying seeds and equipment.

FARM-Africa is a British NGO founded in 1985 and now working across eastern Africa. It promises to be an extremely good partner for RBD in terms of their approach to the development of rural independence. They recognize that while 80% of Africans survive on the produce of their own smallholdings, it is here – in small, often isolated rural communities – that agricultural development is best directed. Working with smallholder farmers, pastoralists, and forest communities, FARM-Africa aims to develop skills and resources. In so doing, they enable locals to grow more food, keep their livestock healthy, and manage their natural resources in a sustainable way. The dryland farming projects that FARM-Africa are facilitating in Mwingi – including the introduction of drip-irrigation systems and water-saving techniques such as the zai pit – are increasingly important as the climate in eastern Africa becomes ever more unreliable.

- James

SIX Magazine- ‘Change a life with the Midomo Bracelet’

2011-09-27T16:56:00.000+01:00

“The Midomo Bracelet was born out of Red Button Design’s collaboration with jewellery designer Alex Monroe and is a unique piece of jewellery which has been thoughtfully designed to help change lives”

So runs the opening paragraph of an online article of one of RBD’s favourite magazines: SIX. SIX was founded with the mission to celebrate the designers, individuals, independent brands and companies who are creating a more ethical and sustainable future for the fashion industry. The people at SIX believe that all fashion should have style and value, so the Midomo Bracelet, each of which sponsors a Midomo unit, was a natural fit.
At Red Button we hope that the popularity of magazines like SIX is a sign that consumers are becoming increasingly conscientious and demanding ‘value’ for money in every sense. We also think that £275 for a beautiful, hand-crafted, sterling silver bracelet, which also provides an African family with safe water is a pretty amazing deal.

RBD returns to BBC 2’s “The Dragons’ Den”!

2011-09-14T12:04:00.007+01:00

Red Button Design will be returning to ‘The Den’ and your TV screens on Wed 28th Sept!

The new series “How To Win In The Den” will bring viewers up to date with RBD’s progress and showcase the Midomo water-purifiers at their most advanced stage of development. The units will at last be shown out in a community in Eastern Kenya doing what they were designed to do; providing locally managed, environmentally neutral, safe drinking water.

Directors Amanda Jones and James Brown will also be interviewed on the triumphs and tribulations they have experienced along their 4 year journey.

The episode will air in a fortnight: Wednesday 28th September, BBC2 8pm Scotland /9pm England

EDIT: check for regional variations / repeats via the RadioTimes.com listing

In the mean time, you can catch up with us on www.midomo.co.uk
and, for real-time communication, on twitter:
@RedButtonDesign and @MidomoBracelet

Midomo Bracelet on Boticca's Style Hunters' Diary

2011-09-12T13:15:00.009+01:00

In our last blog we mentioned how we were receiving quite a run of media attention lately, and this is looking to be more a marathon than a sprint!
Our latest piece of press, however, comes with the added bonus of a discount code..

Boticca is an online boutique for unique jewellery and fashion accessories by the most exciting emerging designers from around the world. Their blog, 'Style Hunters’ Diary' showcases their global inspirations. As their website has a dedicated section for ethical designers, the people at Bottica were particularly taken with the Midomo Bracelet, which donates a Midomo water purifier to Africa with every sale.

To say thank you for telling their huge, devoted following about us, we gave them the discount code, ‘BOTICCA’ for 10% off at midomobracelet.org

There are some beautiful accessories on Boticca, and we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it. In fact, some of those bangles would complement a Midomo Bracelet perfectly…

Kind words..

2011-09-05T13:05:00.010+01:00

The Midomo Bracelet featuring in the ‘Stuff we Love’ section of School for Startups is just the latest in a recent run of media attention for Red Button Design. Here’s our five favourite pieces of current press, for your browsing pleasure.

1. Doug Richard’s School for Startups: The Midomo Bracelet initiative is described as ‘intuitive, ambitious and visionary’ and ‘the perfect gift for an enterprising woman.’

2. BSSEC blog: The Birmingham and Solihull Social Economy Consortium wrote an article on the successful implementation of the first Midomos in Mwingi, which were funded by the Midomo Bracelet Initiative.

3. Director magazine: Red Button’s CEO, Amanda, was interviewed on the topic of frugal innovation. She said of Midomo, ‘everything about it came down to needs, not wants’

4. Trendhunter: ‘The successful Midomo launch in Mwingi, Kenya goes to show that humanitarian product design coupled with grassroots initiatives can have buoyant results without disrupting a community’s livelihood and way of life.’

5. Elevator: Red Button Design in a double page spread that describes Midomo as ‘an extraordinarily effective solution ..that could very quickly change the lives of millions of people,’

Midomo and the Row For Freedom.

2011-08-16T11:25:00.006+01:00

In December, the first female crew of 6 will row 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to raise awareness of one of the largest global organised crimes today: human trafficking.

It is estimated that 10 million young girls fall victim to trafficking every year, of which a majority are between 8 and 10 years old. With many of the effects of the water crisis also leading contributors to trafficking*, Red Button Design and the Midomo Bracelet campaign are proud to announce their formal support for the Row For Freedom challenge.

Lack of access to safe drinking water contributes to poverty and disease, impacts access to healthcare and education, holds back gender equality and takes young women outside of the community for hours of the day into potentially unsafe environments where they are at risk of abduction and trafficking.

For many young women, simple water management solutions like the Midomo unit could reduce their risk of becoming victims of trafficking. It is our hope that the strong symbolism of the 'Row For Freedom' venture and the amazing physical challenge to the 6 brave women involved, will inspire others to look at ways they can support the eradication of modern day slavery.

To this end, we're also pleased to announce that the Row For Freedom crew will be sporting Midomo Bracelets, each covering the cost of donating a Midomo to an African community; supporting a young woman and her family out of water poverty and into education and employment.

*For a fantastic and very-readable exploration of how these two causes interlink we recommend:
5 Ways A Lack Of Clean Water Leads To Modern Day Slavery

Social Entrepreneurs Needed!

2011-08-08T12:41:00.005+01:00

If you're running a Social Enterprise and can spare 30mins to contribute to Chloe's, LSE-based, postgraduate study - please see the call for interviewees below..

"Participation needed for an LSE-based postgraduate study exploring social enterprise and the varying tactics and connections utilised to carry out development practice. If you are directing, helped found or are setting up an enterprise and are interested in being involved for a short (in person or via skype) interview please get in touch. A copy of the final transcript is offered to participants which can hopefully provide a useful resource; bringing together development, social interest and the rise of social entrepreneurialism, and a point for comparison with other enterprises"

CONTACT: Chloe Last, MSc Urbanisation and Development, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Elevator Magazine Feature

2011-08-03T12:48:00.004+01:00

Red Button Design features in a double-page article in this quarter’s Elevator - Private Equity and Philanthropy magazine.

The piece describes Midomo as ‘an extraordinarily effective solution ..that could very quickly change the lives of millions of people,’

and the Midomo Bracelet initiative as the ‘kind of inspired thinking that makes the difference in getting a project and a product noticed.’

It’s always good to hear such praise about ventures you’ve been working relentlessly on, and when that praise is distributed throughout the UK, USA and Switzerland, and to a global digital readership, it’s especially rewarding.
The full issue is available to purchase online, or you could try and pinch one from a 1st class airport lounge or office waiting room…

Update: You can now read the article in PDF form here

Introducing a new stockist for the Midomo Bracelet: Ethique.

2011-07-27T14:33:00.005+01:00

After seeing the recent photographs of the Midomo launch in Mwingi, more and more of you have been inquiring as to how you might personally sponsor a Midomo into a community. Fortunately, this surge of interest coincides with us teaming up with an independent, but similarly principled, stockist for the Midomo Bracelet… Ethique.

We met Pimmi, Ethique’s founder, at last year’s Ethical Just Got Fabulous event. Back then we were excitedly showcasing the newly launched Midomo Bracelet; designed by Alex Monroe, made from sterling silver, and the cost of each one funding the donation of one Midomo, which could then be tracked online. Pimmi was there to scout talent for the boutique addition to her online ethical concierge service. Whilst chatting, we quickly discovered that the core values underlying both our separate projects were startlingly similar – ‘ethical’ and ‘luxury’ should not be mutually exclusive. It was Pimmi’s aim to help consumers discover what these terms mean to them, and gently introduce them to products that fulfil both criteria. A short while later, we’re pleased to report that the Ethique boutique has successfully launched and the Midomo Bracelet is one of their few, discerningly selected jewellery products on display.

So if you would like to help Red Button address the global water crisis, in a very stylish way, please check out this latest avenue of doing so. There’s plenty of other ethical eye-candy to browse over whilst you’re there too...

Successful launch in Mwingi!

2011-07-08T20:17:00.004+01:00

Following on from my last blog post I am very pleased to report that we had a successful launch in Mwingi!

The Midomo units arrived in Mombasa complete apart from steel work and wheels, (though with unexpectedly *bright pink* tap attachments!) We began the local fabrication process in our warehouse in Nairobi moving work into the local community at Mwingi as soon as we'd gauged their capacity. In the end there was very little that James and I needed to co-ordinate centrally. The significant hours of design work we'd devoted to engineering a product suitable for local manufacture / maintenance seemed to pay off; next steps will involve securing a secondary, African, factory site for the tricky process used to mould Midomo's robust plastic tanks... but more on that later.

For now, I don't want to say much more - pictures, 1,000 words, all that - so I will leave you with some of the stills we captured from the day the units arrived, and will shortly be uploading some of the video footage and interviews with members of the community at Kavoko and with Farm Africa, our NGO host.

In the mean time, we'd welcome your thoughts and feedback either via the comment function below or, if you're that way inclined, on our facebook group itself :)

Midomo units to reach Mwingi, Kenya - this week!

2011-06-20T17:27:00.006+01:00

I write this cautiously, from a pleasingly well tech-ed up Methodist education centre just outside of Nairobi.

Cautiously, not just because of the number of keywords this network will flag as inappropriate (I’ll be watching my language for once!), but because after three years of development and, more recently, what amounts to months of frustrating delays* we’re about to introduce the first batch of Midomo to a community in Mwingi.

If you were one of our Midomo Bracelet customers prior to the end of March, then it’s your units the community will be receiving this week! Read on with pride! If you’ve yet to discover our collaboration with jewellery designer Alex Monroe .. we’re really proud of it; check it out.

Mwingi is an Eastern province of Kenya about 3 hours drive North East of Nairobi with a population of 304k, 79% of which do not have access to safe drinking water.

The main source of drinking water (accounting for about 69% of users) is surface water and you’ll easily see from this photo we took last week why it isn’t considered to be safe. In addition, with 66% of the households reporting that they did not treat their water before consuming it, irrespective of the warning signs, it isn’t surprising that at any given time around 1 in 8 of the population is suffering from a water related illness.

Midomo is ideal for this community; not just because it’ll take the water from the dam and make it safe to drink but because, like many similar communities, water is collected from many kilometers away from the home. In Mwingi a majority of households (65%) take more than an hour fetching water, with the average time estimated as 1 hour 44 minutes.

You can imagine carrying 20 or 30 litres of water this far in the African heat and humidity is hard work, and we saw in Mwingi many of the innovative ways the women used to make this task easier - including using wheelbarrows to carry the full jerry cans! With existing habits like that we already know that Midomo will fit in well here, so we’re thrilled that Farm Africa got in touch and have been so supportive and informative in our visits. Part of Red Button Design’s ‘Design Against Dependency’ philosophy is not to introduce anything unnecessary into the community, be that materials, products or skills, and Farm Africa have been invaluable making sure that everyone possible, from our translators to steel fabricators, were members of the local community.

I’d say we’re excited, and to a degree we are of course, but as many of you will appreciate this has been a long time coming(!!) and with every new setback, be it an hour, a day, or a week, the tension mounts.

Oh, and as if that wasn’t enough, we’re taking with us a film crew for some BBC 2 business show we just can’t keep away from ;)

So I’ll leave you on a cliffhanger..
Pending any more delays, they should be on site by next week! Stay tuned!

*(everything from the Mombasa Port Authority’s computer system ‘going down’ for 10 days, to stocked trucks getting locked in warehouses over the weekend!)

**source: KNBS / Unicef

*** more pictures!

Happy New Year!

2011-01-19T09:42:00.002Z

Happy 2011 one and all!

Apparently January is meant to be about austerity, gloom and greyness, yet over here at RBD we’re all pretty cheerful. The reason for this out-of-season elation (aside from the bottomless Haribo stash) is that the Midomo Bracelet Christmas campaign was successful enough that we’ll be sending our first full crate of Midomos to Africa very shortly! This means that over 250 people who were previously without, will now have access to safe drinking water in 2011.

To anybody who received a Midomo Bracelet this Christmas, we hope you’re loving wearing it and are looking forward to the first tracking email regarding your sponsored Midomo. To those who were not so lucky as to receive the ‘ultimate Christmas gift’ we have some more good news…

Thanks to the good will of Alex Monroe, and the support of so many individuals, we’ll be extending the initiative until Valentines Day! Hopefully with a bit of luck, this means that a second full crate of Midomos will be being sent out to where they are needed, within another month.

Valentines Day has a bit of a bad rep as a Hallmark holiday, but we think any excuse to send a beautiful love-token can’t be that bad. When that token is a designer charm bracelet that funds clean water for a family in Africa, there’s really no reason to dislike Valentines Day at all (even if your Valentine is your gran)

So here’s to a productive January and a Lovely Feb,

Onwards and upwards
Sophie x

Global Innovation Game won by RBD supporter nominating Midomo!

2010-12-10T15:24:00.002Z

GiG was the official game of Global Entrepreneurship Week and- to our surprise and pleasure- shortly after GEW we received an email informing us that a winner of GiG had nominated Midomo as an idea!

The Global Innovation Game (GiG) challenges an international community of players to create, buy, and sell solutions to problems facing the world. It creates an effective stock market of ideas, where proposed solutions are traded and find value in the ‘ideas market.’

We are so happy that Hilary Singer, who writes for Startup Cafe was impressed enough by Midomo to have nominated it as a solution to a global problem. That Midomo gained enough value on the ideas market to become a winning idea has genuinely given us a real boost- (there may even have been some high-fiveing.)

The mission of Global Mind Games, who created GiG, is to use social games to spark debate and encourage real world change. What GiG has done for Midomo is a brilliant example of an online game creating interest in a real product that can create a difference in real people’s lives.

We’d just like to extend Hilary, and all those who supported Midomo in the virtual market, our sincerest thanks! It’s always been vital to our development that people take an active role in learning and speaking about Midomo and we’re ever grateful for new interest.

A Weekend at Ethical Just Got Fabulous!

2010-12-08T14:37:00.005Z

Last weekend saw the Midomo Bracelet team mixing ethics and fashion on Portobello Road

When we first heard about the Ethical Just Got Fabulous Christmas fair, we knew we’d stumbled on something special. The organisers, Naomi, Leona and Kate, are dedicated to ‘supporting the good work of those who strive to be both fashionable and ethical in their production,’ which struck a chord with us given the underlying message behind our Midomo Bracelet campaign: ‘you don’t have to change your life to change someone elses’.

‘Ethical Just Got Fabulous’ presented the perfect platform for us to promote a bracelet that on the one hand is a beautiful, exclusive, designer piece, and on the other provides a family in Africa with safe, clean drinking water for a year.

We arrived at the 20th Century Theatre, just off Portobello Road, to find a handsome old room decorated with upcycled chandeliers. There were so many inspiring companies including Josyflo for belts and accessories, Juzi and Delight Rubellery for jewellery, and Paperself for the most amazing cut-paper eyelashes! Moreover, each company shared the conviction that an ethical product should not have to compromise itself on style.

Over the weekend, Amanda and I ran a raffle, where shoppers could buy tickets for the chance to win a Midomo Bracelet. Demand was high, but there could only be one winner, and yesterday we announced that this lucky person was ….. ..Gwen Rahardja!

We wish Gwen all the best with wearing her bracelet and do hope she shows off its ethical fabulousness to everyone she knows!! At the same time, we would like to thank everyone who bought a ticket, together your support and interest has funded the production and shipping of a Midomo water purifier to an African community, where it will provide potentially life-saving benefit.

We came away from Ethical Just Got Fabulous with an optimistic view of how not just fashion, but the consumer market in general, is changing. There is a demand for products that deliver on style, function and ethics, and this surely means that supply must follow suit.

Global Entrepreneurship Week: A new website and a very busy week…

2010-11-22T11:20:00.005Z

We launched the Midomo Bracelet microsite a week last Sunday, just in time for the start of Global Entrepreneurship Week.

On the Monday of GEW, during a 'Good Deals' panel debate, ex-Dragon and exemplary entrepreneur Doug Richard called a commercial break. In this interlude, to our delight, he presented Julie Devonshire of One Water with a Midomo Bracelet. He then called on others to visit our website and buy one too!

The following days were a flurry of networking, speaking (Amanda), pitching, selling and generally 'seeing and being seen'. Then on Saturday, when we were attempting a recovery, the bracelet was featured in the Financial Times ‘How to Spend it’ Christmas Supplement! The excitement continues…

So you should probably check out our new website… www.midomobracelet.org

Red Button Design Do Parliament..

2010-11-10T11:32:00.003Z

On 3rd November Red Button Design had the great honour of attending the World Preservation Foundation conference at Westminster. That we had been invited to this event was exciting enough, but what really delighted us was the fact that this was also the first trip out for Midomo, in the UK.

As I wheeled Midomo towards Storey’s Gate it raised a few eyebrows..

But once settled at our exhibition stand it magnetically drew people towards us to sheepishly ask what it did. When we told them that this simple looking piece of equipment could provide safe, clean water to communities in the developing world- without dependence on infrastructure or energy resources- everybody was suitably impressed; we need to order some more business cards!

We also took along some Midomo Bracelets in order to show people how they could personally donate a Midomo, and at the same time obtain a luxury designer piece of jewellery. Many fashionable and philanthropic sorts duly added us to their Christmas lists and one lovely man even bought one for his wife!

As well as showing off our wares we also had an enjoyable and informative time. The speakers delivered quite alarming facts about climate change, and then offered some potential solutions, eloquently. We then tucked into a vegan lunch that was good enough to satisfy and inspire even dedicated omnivores.

Midomo’s emancipation into society was certainly respectable. And if they’ll have us, we’d love to roll by Parliament again some time…

Blog Action Day 2010: The Worth Of Water.

2010-10-15T12:29:00.006+01:00

There is a saying that states, ‘We never know the worth of water ‘til the well is dry,’ and isn’t it true?

I think for many of us, the particular pressures of modern Western life; excelling in work assignments, arranging fun times with friends, or even deciding which dress is the most stylish, leave us overlooking the marvel that is this clear liquid that descends from the tap when I turn it, and into my glass.

However, what if that seemingly infinite supply of clean water should suddenly become inaccessible to me? I probably wouldn’t care so much about my outfit. I certainly wouldn’t be able to concentrate on work. It’s most likely I would be too unwell to go out with my friends. It is an often-heard cheerful truism that ‘water is the building block of life;’ but without it, we cannot aspire to much more than basic survival.

This is the reality for almost 1 billion people in the world. More people die from drinking contaminated water than from all forms of violence and war. 1.5 million children die every year from water-related diseases; a higher death toll than that from AIDS, measles and malaria combined. In Africa, women and children spend up to 10 hours per day collecting water, meaning that -even if they manage to remain healthy- education, play, work and self fulfilment are all but out of the question.

Blog Action Day is about drawing attention to these facts. Hopefully, the sheer number of both high-profile and relatively unknown blogs inspired by blogactionday.change.org will raise awareness of a global, and preventable, problem. Most importantly, it might inspire people to action.

Of course, the aims of Blog Action Day also run parallel with the purpose of Red Button Design. The founding statements of the company were to design, produce and supply products for the humanitarian market, products that address the problems faced by the Developing World outlined in the UN’s Millenium Development Goals (MDGs).

Red Button prioritised our water solution ‘Midomo’ as we recognized the basic fact that without water to drink, the remaining MDGs; even shelter, sanitation, education and gender equality, all become secondary.

We are not martyrs. Red Button Design is not a charity, but a social enterprise that seeks to make a fair market profit in direct correlation to the benefit we can provide. For us, humanitarian goals, financial aspirations, and the proven utility of our products are all inextricably linked. After all, if we are not profitable our ability to effect sustained and meaningful change is severely capped.

Our ‘Midomo Bracelet’ Christmas campaign - a limited edition piece of jewellery by Alex Monroe that covers the cost of sending a Midomo to Africa- embodies this position. We are not about self-denial or guilt, but believe that modern and considered business models can mean that you ‘don’t have to change your life to change someone else’s’.

For me, the point is not that I shouldn’t worry over where the best night out is, the minutia of my grammar in an essay, or even the height of a heel on my shoe. However, I should absolutely remember that I am in a privileged position where I can take the basics of survival for granted, and that I have a duty to others who are not.

For that reason, my ‘blogger action’ shall be to ask for a Midomo Bracelet for Christmas. It will celebrate the fact that I have aspirations, give credence to an emerging, ‘win win’ model of enterprise and, by giving the most basic gift of safe, clean water to another person, it will enable that person to have aspirations too.

Sophie Orbaum,
Red Button Design,
U.K

Red Button Design's Midomo Bracelet - Social Vision 2010

2010-10-08T11:01:00.013+01:00

Red Button Design's newest venture The Midomo Bracelet needs 2 mins of your time!

Please Click Here to submit your email voting for us in the following competition..

Triodos Bank, the Social Enterprise Coalition and the regional social enterprise networks of England are working together to run Social Vision 2010: business at its best – the annual national social enterprise photography competition. (Our submission is the thumbnail above.)

The amazing prize on offer is:
• £750 cash
• an entry ticket for two people to Voice 11.
• a year's free associate membership to the Social Enterprise Coalition
• a year's free subscription to Social Enterprise magazine as well as £1000 worth of print advertising in Social Enterprise magazine

..all of which would be really important for us. But to get there, first we have to win the London heat. So please:

VOTE NOW!

The deadline for voting is 11:30am on Monday 11 October.

For some people, boldness is not a character trait but a function of need..

2010-10-06T21:07:00.007+01:00

Someone once told me that, for some people, boldness is not a character trait but a function of need...

..I am one of those people.

I spent years wondering why everything I did only came together at the last moment; why vital assignments were always submitted minutes before a deadline, why I only found high paid consultancy work when I was down to my last £10, why supporters, funders, mentors only appeared in my life as I was giving up and not in the agonising months prior while I was searching high and low for help...

It’s incongruous to the way I’d like to view myself but the truth is
it takes an extraordinary amount of pressure to displace me from my comfort zone.

If I am under no pressure, why should I do the arduous / complex / scary things?
Only when the deadline is looming, big and scary on the horizon, does the fear of failure even begin to overcome the fear of the actions required to succeed. Then, and only then, will I do the things I ought to have done from the outset. The things I knew in my heart were right but was fearful of.

Excelling at a subject, pushing your boundaries, upselling yourself to make new connections requires moving out of what is comfortable. Not merely working harder or smarter but moving out of your emotional comfort zone. It requires courage (because it’s nerve wracking) it requires confidence (because it’s intimidating) it requires faith (or why would you even try?)

99% of the time I haven’t achieved my goals it has had nothing to do with my level of competence. It has everything to do with indulging hesitance and fear.

Maybe if I worried more about *that* and less about making a prat of myself, we'd have something other than a last-second-success?!

Esme: Midomo Charm Bracelet - Preview Party Round Up..

2010-09-10T16:31:00.009+01:00

Press Release: Here
Pictures from the event.

Twitter @RedButtonDesign

Become a Fan on Facebook

The evening was approaching... The clock had nearly struck half past six...The guests had been invited, the glasses were polished, the cakes looked heavenly, the bracelet was displayed to perfection and we were in our party dresses (James was in a shirt, his dress stayed at home for the night). But there was one rather large and irritating problem - the TFL tube types had decided to go on strike!

Why they obviously decided to sabotage our party I’m not sure, but in the end most of our lovely guests battled on despite the odds and managed to join us, if a little fashionably late! Red Button Design’s preview party for the Midomo Bracelet was a complete and utter success and I am sure I speak for the whole team when I say thank you to everyone who came along.

This was a special night for everyone at Red Button because it was really our first ever fully-fledged-wine-and-cakes-in-the-evening event, and even more importantly because it marked the launch of the Midomo Bracelet.

Teaming up with Alex Monroe, creator of the infamous bumblebee necklace (for those of a fashonista inclination) was really a honour. Alex has designed and handmade a delicate, beautiful charm bracelet, featuring various charms to represent our latest project. The wearer of each bracelet will not only be the proud owner of a bespoke and beautiful piece of jewellery but can also wear it with the knowledge that they have helped someone else along the way. For every one bracelet purchased, one Midomo will be donated to an NGO in a developing country. The owner can track the journey and arrival of the donated equipment via a unique serial code imprinted on their bracelet - just log on to our site, and see who is benefiting.

I think that is what I have cherished throughout this project - that you don’t have to be a martyr to help those in need. You can enjoy the jewellery you love and all at the same time, know that your decision to buy that charm bracelet rather than any other, is directly solving the old age problem of water shortage for one family. Small steps, but steps in the right direction.

Aside from the serious stuff.... We had a great crowd of people at the party. To name a few, we spotted fashion bloggers including Hannah from His&Hers Daily Styling and Saskia from Not Just Medical swapping notes, the crew from Pants to Poverty, Lauren from Cosmo, William from Green Element and Jan from Global Giving. There were all sorts of media moguls hovering about the sumptuous cakes and I hope everyone had a chance to talk about the project. Emma popped in from Alex Monroe’s team to say a few words about the collaboration too, I liked her sparkly shoes very much....

Amanda, in the style of her confident and lovely self, did a great introduction to the bracelet and gave everybody something to think about after we watched the promotional video which accompanies the bracelet. James was a whizz with the electronic stuff as per usual and dealt with all queries of a technical nature... i.e. that us girls know nothing about! Sophie, who (I am so sad to write this) has just finished her internship, was amazing and the party wouldn’t have happened without her.

I will not mention much about the aftermath - merely that it featured eating all the left over cakes, almost thinking the only Midomo Bracelet in the world was lost, then finding it, and several more drinks in the pub across the road... Well we did have something to be proud of, after all...

Red Button Design to collaborate with Alex Monroe on Christmas Gift Initiative

2010-08-19T10:57:00.002+01:00

Critically acclaimed social enterprise Red Button Design has today announced an imminent collaboration with renowned jewellery designer Alex Monroe, on a Christmas Gift Initiative.

To celebrate the launch of Midomo - a revolutionary water purifier for developing countries - Red Button Design has commissioned a limited-edition bracelet by award-winning jewellery designer, Alex Monroe. Each bracelet will cover the cost of donating one Midomo to an African community and, through a unique serial number imprinted on the jewellery, the owner of each bracelet will be able to track the journey of their donated Midomo. The bracelet is a perfect Christmas present; forever symbolising the gift of safe water, it can be worn as a reminder of growth and development, as well as a beautifully crafted, stylish piece of jewellery.

This initiative is not simply about saving lives; it is about quality of life. For children who have been used to walking for up to 6 hours a day to collect water, Midomo provides not only safe, clean water, but more free time With these extra hours a child could attend school, learn a trade, or simply play and ‘be a child’. The Midomo Bracelet therefore represents more than the gift of safe water. It also represents aspirations, ambitions and the chance to learn and fulfil them.

Announcing the collaboration, Amanda Jones, Red Button Design's Chief Executive
said:

“Red Button Design believe that making a difference to someone’s life doesn’t have to mean making a sacrifice in your own. The bracelet Alex has designed for us not only embodies the feminine & celebratory style for which he is so acclaimed but those dreams and aspirations we all have for our futures. We hope that wearing yours will remind you of all that you have achieved, and encourage you towards those goals which you have yet to accomplish; just as you can know that simply by wearing it, you are also giving the same gift to an ambitious young woman in a more difficult situation.”

And Alex Monroe added:

“I really am honoured to be collaborating with Red Button Design. What they are achieving is amazing, and it's very humbling when you get approached to help fight for such a great cause.
Through their incredible product, Red Button Design are essentially giving life to thousands of people, and I hope that through my design I can make people aware of this. The Bracelet is a celebration of life - it's fun, and something to treasure, play with, and remember why you bought it in the first place.“

For more information please contact Amanda on 07982715187 or Amanda@thisisredbutton.co.uk

Notes

Red Button Design
Red Button Design is an internationally award winning social enterprise set up to design, manufacture and supply life changing products exclusively for the humanitarian market.
www.thisisredbutton.co.uk

Midomo
Midomo is a household‐level water transport, purification and storage solution designed for use by individuals throughout the developing world.
The device uses an internal filter system, powered by the rotation of the wheels, to transform harmful water to drinkable water on-the-go. A user would roll the unit to the nearest source of water, fill the 50 litre tank, and roll it home. Once home, the water drawn from the unit is potable to World Health Organisation standards.

Alex Monroe
British jewellery designer Alex Monroe grew up in Suffolk. He trained at Sir John Cass School Of Art in London, and uses nature to inspire his whimsical, intricately beautiful jewellery.
Established in 1986, his core aspirations remain unchanged; to make great quality, wearable jewellery, which is originally designed and well priced.
www.alexmonroe.com

Safe water and sanitation - a human right, not a privilege.

2010-08-05T08:56:00.001+01:00

On July 28th 2010, a vote took place which, for the first time, saw the United Nations declare access to water and sanitation a basic human right.

That's correct, despite the statistics and the decades of awareness campaigns, prior to July 28th access to safe drinking water was, for all of us, a goal, an aspiration, but not a legally enforceable entitlement.

At Red Button Design, we are thrilled that the balance of power has shifted. State Governments are no longer providing a service by ensuring access to safe drinking water, they are committing a human rights violation when they are not.

Harsh words, yes, but illustrative that a long awaited step change has finally been set in motion. Declaring access to water and sanitation as a human right is a huge leap forward. Not only does it bring to the fore just how important water is to human life and how it must be the basis upon which we build further medical, educational & economic development, but this resolution also acknowledges some of the lesser publicised water problems; from privatisation, exploitative pricing and the practise of controlling water supplies as a method of blackmail and weapon of war, to the effects of climate change and over population in relation to water scarcity.

This resolution will, of course, also bring significant challenges. The guidelines for minimum water requirements vary wildly from agency to agency, there is currently no centralised body to approve water quality, or indeed no universally accepted water quality standard. Water quality can be affected by a vast array of harmful contaminants which vary by season and by region, and on-site water testing methods are on the one hand costly and unwieldy, or on the other, hugely unreliable!

It is our hope that the next few years will see a renewed effort on behalf of the international community to prioritise the provision of sufficient safe water, and to consistently and appropriately address the above concerns with a combination of policy, funding, new technologies, better implementation and greater transparency, in order to assist international learning...
High hopes we know, but then again, at RBD we do travel hopefully!

Meet Esme..

2010-08-02T09:51:00.004+01:00

Hello! I’m Esme and I am the other new intern working with the lovely people at Red Button Design.

If we were to go zoom back in time roughly ten years, and were to ask a littler (but not much) Esme what she wanted to be when she grew up, I think she would say she wanted to be either a ballerina or work in a bullet-proof vest for the BBC reporting from a war zone. Seriously - these completely polar career choices have been my aim for as long as I can remember. And I did work hard to turn both ideas into reality... I went to ballet school (but hated it and ran away) and ended up doing all sorts of journalism and media work experience. This work experience ranged hilariously from working on Home Affairs at The Independent to tape logging for Cash in the Attic. Glamorous eh?

So... It is completely by chance, and a lot of good luck that I have found myself, a true fledgling graduate, working with an amazing and life changing company who have already inspired me continue a career in the same field. I still feel an attachment to journalism and feel that it encapsulates much of what goes into social enterprise; you have to be great communicator, a people person, and a passionate, driven individual. You have to care about what is going on in the world around you. But what divides the two is that a reporter observes and comments on the world, a social entrepreneur changes the world - they see a problem and they hope to fix it, for good. Trying to establish myself within the latter seems more worth while to me...

I studied English Literature and Language (opting mostly for all the novels...) at UCL where I managed to drink a lot, perform and organise a lot of dance through the union, do a bit of volunteering and most importantly, get a degree. The great thing about English Literature is that you learn about the world in all its shapes and forms; I covered everything from Old English to Ian McEwan but the Restoration will forever be my favorite age for writing.

So what have I been up to? I have been writing a lot of copy, have already shimmied to a social entrepreneurial party (where not enough food was eaten and too much wine drunk) and been collecting ALL sorts of literature on the web about Red Button. I have also been working on an overhaul of Red Button’s website, their manifesto and most importantly, the enormous task of marketing their very shiny Midomo. I can reveal... that we have teamed up with an equally shiny jewellery designer on a Christmas gift initiative! Sophie and I are so very, very, very excited to be a part of this project and our aim is it just get as many Midomos sent out to where they are needed, as soon as possible.

We also want to spread the word so keep looking out for us on twitter and on the facebook group for more revelations!

I am very lucky to be working with Amanda and the team, I am already learning so much and hope I can make a difference.

Esme x

Meet Sophie..

2010-07-19T11:12:00.010+01:00

Hi, nice to meet you, I’m Sophie
*offers firm handshake and best smile*

Despite being told from all corners of the media, my parents, and almost all adult acquaintances that I would end up on top of a big pile of unemployed, living at home, graduates after finishing my UCL degree, I seem to have landed on my feet.

That is, I’m here, less than a month after finishing uni, being the ‘affiliate marketing officer’ (no less) for Red Button Design. If that wasn’t good enough for you I’m also being paid for it by the UCL Advances internship scheme. So take that scaremongering media.

Anyway enough about me- oh go on then just a little bit more-. I’m a history of art graduate who took philosophy as a subsidiary subject. I have a wide range of interests (art, music, travel, parties), am very ambitious and a teeny bit (read: a lot) competitive. I also want to work at something that I feel is worthwhile and that makes a positive contribution to the world. Then I can be a really, really smug adult.

So that’s what drew me to Red Button Design; a business that could improve the standard of living for many communities in the world, and at the same time make a profit. I was not at all enticed by the fact I might get to go to a party and meet Peter Jones (ok well it was at least the 5th reason on my list).

Now after all my gloating and celebrating at defying the unemployment odds, I have actually had some work to do. Tea-making it wasn’t. So far I’ve been drafting letters, making spreadsheets and mood boards, attending meetings with potential business collaborators and tweeting my progress. Who was it that said work is more fun than fun?

Unfortunately I can’t tell you entirely about the project that most of my energies are being directed towards. If we keep you in suspense it builds up the anticipation you see… BUT I can tell you that you will like it. Especially if you are a woman (or know one), who likes gorgeous things but also has ethical tendencies. Ooooh. Did I mention I’ve been contacting Angelina?

So I will leave you there, hanging on to the cliff of suspense, wondering what Midomo has to do with a luxury item. Meanwhile Amanda and I will go and get a cup of tea (not made by me).

Sophie x

Snapshot: July 2010

2010-07-16T12:15:00.006+01:00

So the last post, June's Snapshot, was one of the most viewed posts I've ever written outside of the 12 Lessons Series. Who'd have thought you'd actually appreciate a bit of concrete info! Obliging as ever, I thought I'd make it a regular thing and see how long it takes you to get bored ;-)
Welcome to July's Snapshot...

Growing the Team
Spoilt for choice I have hired not one, but two new interns into the Red Button Family. Sophie Orbaum and Esme Jones are both fantastic UCL graduates poised to take over different parts of our sales and marketing efforts. Not exactly chosen for their propensity to be shy and retiring, I'll let them introduce themselves in due course!

Design and Build
Whilst awaiting delivery of our new units, design and build has turned into an operations and logistics mission relating to sales targets and the speed at which we are able to roll out in various regions/countries.. However, as ops & logistics is one of my least favourite things, it has also provided the opportunity for parallel fantasy-planning for our impending launch party! What can I say? Needs must on both accounts!

The Internets
Work has begun, not just on a new space for the blog, but a complete redesign of the site-that-never-really-was. Though, for convoluted and uninteresting reasons we have always based at thisisredbutton.co.uk, we've recently secured redbuttondesign.co.uk and midomo.co.uk for development. Big on ideas but strapped for time and resources, these are coming along very slowly indeed, so any web designers fancying a bit of pro bono work in return for love and beer/wine please do give us a shout! :-)

Sales and Marketing
Gosh this is an exciting subject at the moment! So, not only will you be able to buy a Midomo online this Christmas and donate it to a certified NGO of your choice, but we have a very sexy, top secret retail collaboration underway which .. well.. I can't say much (Sophie will kill me) but it's awesome. Really awesome.

Safety and Certification
Happy to say that following on from last month's hinting, we will be working with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to test our new prototypes and corroborate the previous trials undertaken up in Scotland and, subsequent to winning the National Laboratory Services design award for environmental technology last year, we will also be benefiting from this exciting partnership to create a simple water-safety diagnostic test, suitable for use on site. Cool, huh?

Problem Solving
Well, James elected to remove last month's problem by getting too sick to work for a while. Oh yes, despite me clearly telling him he was not allowed to go away and get ill, he managed to get Malaria ... all of two weeks before having his thunder stolen by Cheryl Cole! Don't worry though, he was well looked after and is now on the mend - meaning that I will very shortly get to battle with temptation at the Apple Store after all..

Reading
I'm currently reading The Island by Aldous Huxley on the recommendation of one of my shareholders and I just can't believe I haven't read it before.. No excuses, it's amazing, get your hands on a copy now!

Watching
Professor Philip Zimbardo's RSA Animate contribution The Secret Powers of Time which looks at the way in which our individual perspectives of time not only affect our work, health and well-being but how, depending on which of the six "time zones" you live in, time also influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world..

Moonlighting
at Pants to Poverty trying to coax them into being an all singing, all dancing, blogging, tweeting, facebooking lot. Y'see what I did there? I'm worth every penny they're not paying me.. :)

RBD Snapshot: June 2010..

2010-06-14T10:25:00.004+01:00

There's a slight possibility you've already noticed this, or previously had it brought to your attention, but it's June already. Yes, no less than 45.2% of 2010 has already gaily paraded by and is now drinking in the pub..

So having avowed to be better at communicating (as opposed to just making noise) here's a quick insight into a few of the goings on around here..

Growing the Team
Not content to settle at 12 we're after a Lucky 13th RBD'er. Using UCL's fantastic Advances Internship programme we have already had over a dozen excellent CVs and will be interviewing and hiring over the coming fortnight. For your interest, this is the 'job description' as advertised..

Design and Build
Work has recently resumed with alacrity towards our centrally manufactured prototypes and within a week we should know when the first samples will arrive in the UK.. Do I even need to say you'll be hearing more on this soon? ..

The Internets
I am trying to clear some space to tidy up our web presence. I know it's still rubbish, it's something that started badly way back in 2007 and has never really been resolved. Plans are afoot to create something worthy but, in the mean time, here's a sneak preview of this blog's soon-to-be new home. Don't switch your RSS just yet though - it still needs a little work!

Sales and Marketing
Speaking of online.. would you like to be able to buy a Midomo online this Christmas and donate it to a certified NGO of your choice? Yes, we rather thought you would.. working on it.

Safety and Certification
Just peeking over the horizon, we have some very exciting partnerships for certifying Midomo's performance both in the field and a repeat test under Lab conditions. Thinking a little further forward (and don't you ever accuse us of being unambitious) we're exploring the possibility of creating a new water-safety diagnostic test, suitable for on site use by minimally trained individuals..

Problem Solving
It would appear that, over the weekend, James was able to find a source of mains electricity for his MBP on the road towards Kenema. It would also appear that Salonean electricity and shiny Apple devices don't mix. Within a few hours of work, and just a few minutes on Skype with me, the power cable met it's demise with a exasperated little 'pop'* and the MBP would charge no more. Now we're both wishing he'd stayed old skool and stuck to the oil powered generator in Bo and all that remains is for me to:
a) go to the Apple store and purchase a new power cable.. only a
new power cable.. and NOT an iPad...
b) somehow safely send my existing power cable to Sierra Leone..
c) preferably arriving in less than the 8 weeks remaining before his
visit to the UK
d) get it somewhere James can collect it
e) send him these instructions..

In other news, here's some of what I have been up to..

Reading
I've just finished reading The Spirit Level and can't recommend it enough. I tend to alternate between books I want to read and books I categorise under 'development' (professional or personal) I rarely enthuse about the latter, as useful as they are, so it came as some surprise that this was a funny, engaging and insightful look into why inequality not relative wealth / poverty is the root of society's ills..

Watching
“How to start a movement” ..what transforms a lone nut into a leader.
It's a 3 Min TED talk by Derek Sivers and I cannot encourage you enough to watch. Seriously, you can view it in the time it takes the kettle to boil and it'll make your morning

Moonlighting
On a project code named "Hackney Pirates" which is every little bit as cool as it sounds and gives me regular opportunity to drop nautical puns and speak like a pirate. Learn more via the usual ports of call ;) @HackneyPirates, Facebook and though still a work in progress, we're online at www.hackneypirates.org

Not sure that's quite how an informative blog post ought to go - but feedback always welcome via Twitter or comments below.

* I totally made that up. I have no idea what sound, if any, it made when it failed.
Picture credit to James who is has been uploading some amazing images to this album

Human Nature, Social Enterprise & Business Models..

2010-05-30T18:19:00.000+01:00

Last week, from the comfort of lying prone in the grass on the sun baked Highbury Fields, I Tweeted a few ethereal thoughts on social enterprise business models. These were widely ignored ;) but a few people commented and so I decided it was worth expanding on, if only to clarify my original musings...

The original Tweets, responses, and my narrative clarification:

@RedButtonDesign:
Recent human meddlings aside, Nature is the perfect system.. But how does everything "get done"? Does Mother Nature have a to do list? ;)
.. or .. 1) when whatever happens is good.. nothing truly needs to 'get done'.. 2) or when things do what they do because of what they are..
..then whatever happens is a direct result of the actual nature of things. It's an honest system in the sense that there's no should/ought..
Pondering how #socent can build on the real nature of people .. (assuming we think humans are basically good well meaning creatures)..
..to create biz models that are more natural, less 'work' .. if we're basically good, the systems allowing us to act on this and *do* good..
..should be simpler? Or have we overworked our nature??
// Today's ramble brought to you by #zenhabits #socent & sunny day in the park.. ;)

Responses:
@Ghww: Re @RedButtonDesign multitweet: I warn against seeking 'natural' solutions. Capitalists have always done this. & nature has no should/ought.
@RedButtonDesign: RT @ghww: "nature has no should/ought" that's my point, a system that relies on discipline of it's agents to uphold the system will fail things will inevitably act according to their nature, therefore you have to adapt systems to human nature, not human nature to systems. Problem is we've forgotten what our real nature is, so we need to get that back ..
@curtistim: @RedButtonDesign so, a truly 'social' enterprise that treats humans as persons rather than functional, fictional commodities?
@Adilabrar: @RedButtonDesign come again?

So, some confusion...
Let me clarify.

Premises:
- Nature is a self organising, self perpetuating system
- Humans are basically good.
- Social Enterprise endeavours to be a self organising, self perpetuating system which allows Humans to act upon their natural instinct to be good.

Problem:
Current Social Enterprise business models do not appeal to our natural desire to do good, they appeal variously to our sense of obligation, guilt, commerce or vanity. All of which are strong enough drivers to promote action, but none of which are sustainable as they lack a certain authenticity of motive.

Argument
Nature works as a system because the system is simply the sum of the given behaviours of the elements within it. As soon as you try to force nature to act against these impulses.. (want seasonal fruits all year round, want forests here but not here, more of these creatures and less of those..) you disrupt the system and it acts out, or fails.

Humans vainly like to think of themselves outside this system, But the fact is, we have a set of characteristics which are inbuilt and though we may very successfully train ourselves to repress and control these characteristics, we aren't doing anything more than that. They're not going away.. we're just learning how to displace them.

Interestingly, one of the things that many societies have done, is suppress the desire for equality by suggesting (falsely) that achieving a higher status is actually beneficial. Capitalism and clever advertising have systematically manipulated our natural instincts until we have a situation where hierarchies, not communities, appeal to our evolutionary instincts to protect ourselves and our families. It's not as simple as desire. We create safety (or an illusion of) by having more .. more money, more food, more power, more weapons.."more". Where as traditionally it was understood that the best thing for an individual and their offspring was to be within a community of equals.

Only now are we beginning to gain perspective and see more clearly that this is fallacious. Brilliant works like The Spirit Level clearly demonstrate that inequality doesn't just cause more suffering to those at the bottom of the scale, but verses an equal society, inequality actually causes suffering to those at the upper end of the scale to.

So, my thoughts were that rather than create a system of business models and structures for social enterprise which are then implemented based upon the inequality we have mistakenly promoted: to create models based on the natural sense of equality and species protection that we diverged from, prior to this. To build the new system upwards from the last healthy point of development.

If you do that, and look at the way we naturally wish to express goodwill and philanthropy - it isn't from a distance. It isn't by signing a direct debit to a high-brand charity in return for receiving their end of year report. It is by having a human interaction, a human, emotive response to the act of helping another. Doing good makes us feel good, current models of Social Enterprise disconnect the act from the primary benefit of the act. Much in the way that Milgram's famous study allowed people to act more cruelly than anyone imagined when they were divorced from the effects of that cruelty, bringing people together to face the effects of their kindness will, undoubtedly, promote them to act with a generosity beyond that which we currently account for.

Conclusion:
Social Enterprise needs to be a force which enables the reconnection of our naturally good nature with the pleasure of doing good. The only way for this to happen is for the "models" to build upwards from true human impulses, not to build backwards or sideways from the capitalist mess we have created.

Shine 2010 Fink Club: What I meant to say was....

2010-05-25T21:16:00.010+01:00

May 13-15th saw the great and the good of social enterprise (and a few people I think must've snuck in the back door) gather for Shine 2010.
The original unconference upped the anti for it's 3rd year. One of the bolder ideas in a fantastically crafted, inspiration packed event, was the Friday night, not Fight Club but "Fink Club"..

"A boxing ring, 4 opposing positions, 4 pugnacious and opinionated social entrepreneurs refereed by the legendary Liam Black of Wavelength. The gloves are off. You decide who wins"

Oh yes...
Rod Schwartz, investor, serial entrepreneur and founder of Clearly So.
David Barrie, regeneration consultant, film-maker and founder of The People's Supermarket.
Saeeda Ahmed, Social Enterprise Ambassador, SSE Fellow, founder of community regeneration company Trescom

and .. Me. Literally, they couldn't get anyone better ;-)

My rallying cry in the face of calls to man up, become more commercial and attract more equity finance was, surprisingly, for social enterprise to "stay young, stay hungry & stay innovative" ..
Well, there was definitely hesitation, and repetition, as well as language Russell Brand and Wossy would have blushed at (sorry mum) but here's what I planned to say, the PG version..

"What is the most important contribution that social entrepreneurs can make to our society now?"

The most important contribution we can make to society, is to recognize that whilst the sector we have created is good – it is not the holy grail and it cannot and should not attempt to “do it all”.

Social Entrepreneurs are not like other entrepreneurs. We aren’t here in the ruthless pursuit for money, power and influence, we are here because we have organisations addressing the fundaments of human nature. Problems which are not new to society but, thanks to us, are now being approached with a new hunger and a fresh creative spirit.

This is a sector that is still dominated by early stage new start organisations. It’s fantastic! Young organisations are special. They’re cash strapped, they’re resource limited, they’re geographically and sector focused; they have to be responsive and single-mindedly motivated to create impact, they've a childlike desire to prove themselves in the wider world.

And as soon as you begin to shepherd them along the well trodden path towards traditional commerce, towards the status quo, you lose these characteristics.
The stability afforded by bountiful capital and regular contracts tempers the hunger, it introduces a fear that hinders innovation, what was once youthful and unafraid to make mistakes becomes risk adverse and unresponsive..

We must resist. We should not be swayed down a path of complacency by political buzz words and the all too common belief that if we throw enough money at it, it’ll somehow get better.

Yeah,
It *is* tempting to think that we can change the way investors think. But investors have a mandate to maximize profit. Do you??

I’m not anti-commercialising socent per se, for goodness sake, if we create anything of any real value the commercially minded will come right in and “monetize” it anyway whether we like it or not! I’m simply suggesting we don’t do their job for them.
It’s not the place of social entrepreneurs to fit our round sector into their square boxes

No. The SINGLE greatest contribution we can make right now is to harness the sectors majority; the youthful, hungry and innovative majority and focus our efforts for impact, continuing to innovate where innovation is needed most.

Stay Youthful.
Stay Hungry.
Keep Innovating.

Lets skip some of the narrative and get right to the good news..

2010-05-21T19:28:00.004+01:00

Yeah yeah, I hear ya: "It's all well and good telling us what you did 12 months ago but where are you now? Are you still going? ..Does it work? ..Can I buy one?"

Well, the short answer is yes, yes, no, not yet. Let me expand, but skip some of the narrative... 'eh? (buy me a drink in the pub if you want the rest of the "Dragon's Den" story, the "Law suit against a major business support agency" story, or the "3 minutes away from losing our patent" story .. buy me the whole damn bottle if you want the "So, you're in London.. and James is living in Sierra Leone??!" story..) ..and get right to the good news.

We're funded.
We've re-designed, re-branded, we've got manufacturers, suppliers, and we're beginning production.

There, that's better isn't it?

I won't say too much while we're still pushing paper on the investment, but suffice to confirm the deed is done (was settled on my 26th Birthday none-the-less). And incidentally, for those who knew us way back when, this means that the, long in exile, 3rd director is no longer with the company in any facet; shares, power or intellectual property
(if you don't know this story .. add it to the 'buy me a drink' list above!)

Unbelievably this also means we are now a team of 12. James heading up product design and cultural implementation, myself on business model development and sales/marketing, we have a primary investor, a non exec director, 4 vocal and hugely talented 'value-adds' and 4 (mostly) silent loyal supporters!! It sounds more hectic than it is, though, as the reality remains I'm the only full timer and most days I work from home.

I should expand on my mention that James is living in Sierra Leone. He left (the country not the company!) about 6 weeks ago to apply his engineering skills to developing an appropriate and accessible way to dig water wells in developing countries. Not only is this a natural expansion for Red Button Design and extremely valuable in terms of the data being gathered, but we also hope that the team he is forming can become our first worker owned manufacturing co-operative. You can follow his work via his Blog, his updates on Twitter: @RBDAfrica and see some of his pictures on Flickr

Product-wise, thanks to a concentrated effort by James, our design support team at Quadro, and our international sourcing contacts at Tiger Global, we have finalised what would have been "ROSS 3.0" but is now simply known under our new name 'Midomo'.

Midomo is about to undergo its first production run with our new manufacturers and suppliers. We expect this to go ahead within the next 8 weeks, meaning we should have something for you to put your grubby paws all over come Autumn! And yes, expect a London-based launch party in which I force lovely influential humanitarians, entrepreneurs & willing volunteers to publicly drink Midomo-purified water and hope they're still talking to me a week later.. In more ways than one!!

Which brings me on to that very obvious question.. "When can I buy one?"..
Now, my team don't like me making promises about when we will be ready to make commercial sales, so I absolutely cannot say that I expect to close the first orders in November. But as soon as everyone is comfortable announcing November as our expected sales date, I promise I'll let you know... ;-)

Just one last thing, this post actually has a slightly ranty but honest and well meaning Addendum, which you can read, if you so wish, by following the link below...

Addendum: An Optional Explanation Of Time & Rescouces..

Addendum: An Optional Explanation Of Time & Resouces..

2010-05-21T19:05:00.004+01:00

Appreciably, there are always a lot of questions surrounding the length of time this has been under development. Some genuinely interested .. some pushing on accusatory .. (some worse..) And I would be lying if I didn't say that, on occasion, I find this a rather irritating and difficult issue to address. I can't help but wonder what one imagines the capability could be, for two broke students to run and fund an R&D project on a new technology which needs certification from the World Health Organisation itself? Just how anyone, at 25, goes about getting meetings at the United Nations, raising half a million quid.. let alone the hum drum question of how to afford your mobile phone bill when you're refusing to take a 'real' job..

Don't get me wrong, though this sounds aggressive it really is nothing of the sort. I completely understand that given my pitch often includes the statistic "lack of access to safe drinking water results in 10,00 deaths every day" people gain a sense of urgency! The same sense of urgency perhaps that we all have, at RBD, and keeps us working on the project despite some unimaginably taxing and harrowing personal sacrifices.

I often use the analogy of a vaccine or a new drug to make my point known. because even once the development and internal trials are finished, the sheer beurocracy of creating something which essentially takes another human beings life, and puts it in your hands ...

Well.
That isn't a process I am willing to rush.

But I do get it, and I genuinely apologise to those of you who feel this has been a long time coming. I feel your boredom, eagerness and frustration more acutely than you know. I invite you to get in touch and find out how we've been progressing - you never know, there might be something you can do to help speed the process along..

We never set out to start a business... but this is how it started.

2010-04-23T00:40:00.010+01:00

(apologies for the delay ..my dog ate my homework? Well, actually, blogger ate my first post and I was so dismayed at needing to re-write everything it took a while to replace it.. I'm sure the first version was shorter, funnier and more eloquent .. but here we are)

Red Button Design was founded by James Brown and Myself in 2007, six months after we'd come up with what we thought was a pretty cool idea; a water purification product that avoided chemical or electrical components, and made dirty water drinkable at the same time as assisting in its localised transport.

The idea itself evolved slowly. James and I were, even then, both actively involved in humanitarian issues and understood the need for more sympathetic technologies. Over coffee one day we were bemoaning the need for something more responsive than taking what the capital rich R&D departments of medical and military institutions were creating, tweaking it for robustness and economy, and selling into NGOs under the fashionable banner of 'appropriate design'. With typical student arrogance and youthful naivety - we thought we could do better..

The market needed an answer. James, who at the time was in the penultimate year of the hugely esteemed Glasgow School of Art "Product Design Engineering" Masters, needed a dissertation project worthy of his skills and interests and I, only recently graduated with my second degree, this time a joint Masters in Psychology and Philosophy, was looking for a way to avoid "a real job" that was more productive than cycling back into the oppressive world of arts & academia...

We never set out to start a business... but that is how it started.

It didn't take long for the Scottish enterprise community to catch sight of our little hobby-project, and when they suggested that there were a few competitions with cash prizes for designs like this .. well. Have I mentioned my dislike of traditional work?

Our first win was the university enterprise group's "Big Idea" competition. We netted £500, a pleasing bubble of praise, a bit of publicity and a mandatory trip to the local high-street business advisory centre. They, with little more than a cursory glance, sent me off to "gather support", by which I suppose they meant conduct some market research and come back with interviews, case studies and testimonials. However, I was unsupervised (James was after-all still in full time education) and prone as ever to insubordination and grand gestures, I elected to take a .. slightly less traditional tack.

What we actually did was apply for and win a series of high profile enterprise and design awards and then, one night, about 3am, safe at home in my pyjamas, my ego got the better of me ... and I applied for the Dragons Den.

To be honest, the day the BBC phoned to interview me, I was at work in one of my many short-lived attempts at engaging with the concept of 9-5 in return for a wage. I conducted the interview hiding in the stock room and agreed to screen test 200 miles away the day after next. We had nothing. No prototype, just a drawing and some theory. I was supposed to be at work all that week, and I hadn't told James I had even applied for the Show (nor, infact, did I until we were on the train!! ..) It's a good story! :) However... it's not a story for today.

For what it's worth, we never did get a prototype together for the filming and yet the show yielded us the best deal ever seen on the programme at that time. All 5 Dragons' coming in for the full amount, for the original equity offered. Despite this, good TV is still just good TV, and off air some months later we turned the deal down. For the next year we proceeded agonizingly slowly, crippled by lack of time, money and resources.

It took a year, but when my ego finally gave in and we returned to the 'Den' to do the follow up programme we had a brand new working prototype show off. This first fully-functional unit was the fruit of James spending his 'summer holidays' hauled up in his Dad's garage with a tiny budget, a brief that industry experts said he couldn't achieve, and me 350-odd miles away. I will never know how he achieved it .. though I'm reliably assured the latter was somehow critical (!)

Thanks to a second spike in publicity we clawed in just enough support to commission a biochemical report conducted by a UN microbiologist, the last line of which, is probably the most boring arrangement of phonemes ever to have made me 'squee' with delight:

"It can be concluded from this preliminary study that the system was effective in the removal of organisms from contaminated water."

This prototype, hand built on no budget, fully expected to fail at every post, went on to pass some further stringent tests, won some more awards including one very notable scientific award from the National Laboratory Service. We were stunned. Don't get me wrong, it was not perfect and it also won us some harsh criticism. It was this polarized reaction, thought, that triggered what was to be a long hard slog to find the financial and experiential support we'd, frankly, been struggling to survive without.

It seems simple enough to say it now: "we built a prototype", "we commissioned a report", but that first year and a half was in every way the most extreme tax on our emotions and resources. By the time 2009 rolled around James and I were both, at once, ready to jack it all in and finally certain that what we had was viable.

I'll not speak for him but I will admit that there were times I had hoped that the prototypes would fail the tests, the patent searches would reveal prior IP, or that the market would be stormed by something better, and that I would be forced to step down, guilt free.

But it didn't. I haven't and that's just the first chapter.
So on to 'the now'...

An Update on the Update..

2010-04-20T07:24:00.003+01:00

It's a very telling thing, but as I went to write that long-awaited update post, it became very clear that I couldn't update you without recapping where we were last time we spoke. I couldn't really say or justify where we were, though, without mentioning how we'd gotten there. How we got there necessarily involved mentioning 'why' or what the overall aim was, which I would assume you all know except that, thanks to OxfordJam and recent re-runs of The Dragons' Den, I have acquired a volume of new followers..

All in, it started to seem as if I should just start at the beginning.
So I did..
And it got long.

Too long for one post.

So, as of tomorrow I will be posting the following..

1) The Intro
2) The Status Quo
3) The Future
4) The FAQs

And if there is anything that lot doesn't cover (!) you'll be able to add additional questions in the comments section of the FAQs. How's that sound? :-)

Lessons from OxfordJam (then promptly back to business..)

2010-04-17T21:29:00.012+01:00

I am very aware that we're well overdue a thorough update on Red Button Design's progress. A lot has happened in the first quarter of 2010, much of it good, some significantly better than good (!) and I am genuinely eager to speak about our achievements. Rest assured, all has not stagnated - as you'll see in my next post..

Meanwhile, I'm re-calibrating after OxfordJam: the social enterprise unconference/phenomenon that I mentioned last month I was involved with launching. Broadly speaking it came to be that I was responsible for websites, wikis, social media, a little bit of planning, pr, promotion, design-for-print work and first port of call for all manner of tech and digital fitzjiggery while the event ran Wed-Fri last week. (14-16th April, 2010).

True of all the best things, I found it very difficult to limit my involvement with OxfordJam by the amount of time I had available. Rather, I wanted to limit my involvement by the amount I felt I could usefully contribute. As the amount I felt I could offer greatly exceeded the amount of 'spare' time I had, (and I hasten to add this is mainly by virtue of having little time vs. being vastly talented in this arena!), I had to make the decision to displace some of my non-essential functions at RBD in order to benefit from the experience of helping make concrete something I believe our industry needed. Controversial, perhaps, but I am glad I did. I feel like I gained a lot from the process and I wanted to share with you some of my learnings.

I cannot comment much on the content from a delegates point of view, but suffice to say that feedback so far has been abundant and extremely positive. We'll be collating all this on the OxfordJam website. Meanwhile:

10 things I learned from OxfordJam
..and think apply to all entrepreneurs and small business owners, alike..

1) If you have 'the big vision' don't sweat the detail. It's easy to get hung up on the little things, but act with the vision in mind and the details will align themselves accordingly.
2) Stay flexible. Be willing to re-evaluate everything and anything, even at the very last minute, if doing so will make a positive difference.
3) The strain of long hours and high stakes can be mitigated by working with amazing people.
4) Understand that ultimately what you're creating is not yours, it's the delegates'/customers', and be prepared and willing to let go.
5) Resist the temptation to oversee other people's work. Get good people and trust them to perform accordingly.
6) Tea. Lots and lots of tea.
7) Good communication is the lynchpin of an effective team. Have a protocol for keeping everyone updated with the latest developments, allow disagreements, and have an open line of dialogue for when things get tough. Achieving the latter is by far and away the most difficult.
8) Smart crowds can usually self-manage, and will naturally weed out their own bad seeds if you let them.
9) A little bit of praise, when deserved, goes a long way when things are stressful and spirits low.
10) There is absolutely no substitute for genuine enthusiasm. Not contacts, money, prestige nor a perfect résumé.

A tough but worthwhile experience and great lessons learned. Better still, I do not believe that OxfordJam is over simply because we're no longer gathered in The Jam Factory! I hope to continue working on the project (though at a much more manageable pace) and will propose to help the contributors and delegates build a living, open, resource that will grow alongside our learning and understanding, and that this could also provide a platform from which to begin the discussions next year* As well as proposing this, I'd like to suggest perhaps a regular virtual conference or twitter-based chat in the vein of Ashoka's #SocEntChat and perhaps even the occasional 'tweet up' for us folk for whom London is fairly accessible...

So if that sounds of interest, or for more on OxfordJam, please check out the OxfordJam blog and Twitter feed, both of which are also manned by me.

And the next time you hear from me here (very soon!) it will be with a concrete and informative post about Red Button Design's progress.
Promise! :-)

* and yes, for good or ill, one by one, the OxfordJam team and attendees all gave up saying "if we do this again" in favour of "when we do this again"!

'Twelve Lessons' - the run down

2010-03-31T22:57:00.007+01:00

... Obligation,
commitment, brevity, advisers, business plans, delegating, tenacity and faith, actions, flexibility, people, priorities, caution and providence ...

I have my favourites, both to have learnt and to have written, but I would love to hear your thoughts on the series. So, if you've been reading, drop me a comment below and let me know your thoughts - whatever form they may take

All the best,
Amanda.x

#1: A favour given isn’t necessarily a favour owed.
#2: You can’t half-ride a bike.
#3: Brevity is good.
#4: Too much love will kill you.
#5: Schrödinger's cat.
#6: If you want a job done well..
#7: Be an emotional starfish.
#8: A speaker of words and a doer of deeds.
#9: Scrap that...
#10: Net-works
#11: The Cobbler's children
#12: Caution caution

#12: Caution caution.

2010-03-30T08:53:00.003+01:00

Throughout Jan-Mar I've been posting the "12 entrepreneurial lessons I learnt from 2009" series.

Installments so far: Introduction,
Lesson : #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11

This post is a big concept, which is a pleasing fit for the grand finale of a series I, at times, wondered if I'd even see to completion. Big concepts tend towards long concepts without supervision, however, and I've been sufficient in violating lesson three as it stands. So, you'll have to come dashing through with me and I trust it will resonate no less for it..

From the moment I was born, a ceaseless string of people have endeavored to teach me to curb my predilection towards impulsiveness. From my immediate family up to the government, from two days old through to two decades, one message held consistent: you ought to look before you leap, try a little bit first, wait for the second release (once the bugs are out), sleep on it, keep your options open, plan ahead, leave bridges unburnt, lines uncrossed and marks understepped..

It was Benjamin Franklin who said that “distrust and caution are the parents of security". Well, who in their right mind daren't aspire to security above all else?
Everybody understands that wanton, indiscriminate, risk taking is a recipe for destruction. Thoughtlessness in the face of danger will surely lead to disaster.. but what about indiscriminate caution?
How wasteful is thoughtless caution in the face of opportunity?

How often do chances of brilliance pass us by because we weren't 100% ready, 100% sure. Well here's something I proved in 2009, as strictly speaking I didn't learn it. I've always known it...

You'll NEVER be ready,
You'll NEVER be sure,
and if you try to hang on until you are..
You'll NEVER make a difference.

Only when you begin will you truly see what you've undertaken. Only then can you beg, steal, borrow or divine all that you need to make it work. To fail to plan may be to plan to fail, but you can't properly prepare for what you cannot know.

Goethe is over-quoted in his shortened form, far more beautiful in full, and I cannot resist..

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now."

'The moment one definitely commits oneself' - not before.

Caution and security are luxuries we can't always be treated to. Someone has to take a chance, brave the risk and leap anyway, because sometimes risk and fear are the only things powerful enough to overcome inertia.

And with society and planet close to bearing right down a dead end path, I only hope there are enough 'someones' remaining, and enough 'sometime' to realise that while only the former is government endorsed, indiscriminate caution is just as dangerous a thread in humanity as indiscriminate risk taking..

#11: The Cobbler's children.

2010-03-20T15:15:00.005Z

Throughout Jan-Mar I've been posting the "12 entrepreneurial lessons I learnt from 2009" series.

Installments so far: Introduction,
Lesson : #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10

We're edging towards the end of the series, so I'm going to go out on a limb and assert that those of you running an enterprise started doing so because you believe you have a particular combination of knowledge and skills which make your business idea both conceptually accessible and practically achievable to you.

Great stuff. The world would be a better place if more of us could be clear and honest about the skills we have, and create ourselves a space where we are able to do that which we are best at.

And as you can tell from my last post, I'm a big fan of the mantra 'make yourself useful'. Such that it sometimes feels as if it can answer all things; that the best we can do to advance as people, entrepreneurs and small businesses alike, is to share our knowledge, utilise our skills for others, and provide a genuinely helpful product/service.

But as with all things, even the great ones, there's a natural limit above which this behavior does no one any good at all.
So the saying goes "The Cobbler's children go unshod".

Admit it. We're all guilty of this one: expending our greatest talents on others, solving their problems rather than our own.

I can't tell you the number of times I've volunteered to help out a friend with a task identical to one sitting patiently on my own 'to-do' list. I'm not blind to the irony that this blog is hosted on blogger when I advocate wordpress, or that it has an old ready-made theme I am not happy with when, in the last month, I have launched and re-designed 3 custom wordpress sites for other people. It's a ridiculous contradiction but a common one. So why..?

As far as I can make out, there are a thousand excuses but no reasons.

I'll do a better job for you than I would for myself because my positive and negative incentives are different. I both seek your approval (who doesn't want to do a good job?) and I am fearful of your judgement (we hate letting people down). Yet, I neither fear my own disapproval nor particularly feel a drive to try and exceed my own expectations.
There are countless excuses not to act. The only difference is, my excuses to myself are always acceptable.

One of the things that changed last year when Red Button Design began to take on minority shareholders, establish expected delivery dates and accept in-kind investment, was that my excuses to myself ceased to .. well .. 'hold water' with the rest of the team. It became clear that I needed to readdress my priorities. My time and skills needed to be expended on my venture, first.

Sometimes the last people we help are ourselves, but it makes no more sense to be utterly selfless than it does to be utterly selfish. We need to take care of ourselves and our own in order to retain the capacity to help others. So next time you're about to step in and do that favour, check that you're only making yourself useful and not making excuses to displace an ulterior task. You started this because you believed you had the skills and knowledge, so be your own incentive. You owe it to yourself and your team to utilise your talent close to home before you make yourself useful to the rest of the world..

Dates for your diary: OxfordJam, 14-16th April '10

2010-03-08T19:00:00.007Z

Not for one moment forgetting the remaining posts of the 12 Lessons series, or indeed my very important birthday wish, but I did just want to have a quiet word in your ear..
In the spirit of Lesson #10 and gift economy, let me share with you a upcoming social-enterprise event on which I've been fortunate enough to do a bit of moonlighting..

Running 14-16 April 2010, parallel to the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, OxfordJam is a co-created, pay-what-you-can event for the nurturing of social economy and social finance projects the world over.

Instigated by Ben Metz, OxfordJam isn't going to be your average conference, or even your average un-conference. OxfordJam is a conference 'in relief' asking you to: "Invert everything you have experienced at any vanilla flavoured conference, however inspiring.."

But if that's a little too 'down the rabbit hole' said Alice, worry not.
The basic premise is strikingly simple:
⇒ Take the breaks “in between” normal conference programming and fill them full of inspiring TED style “talking heads”
⇒ Take the programmed time of a normal conference and empty it out immediately after each of these very short talks
⇒ Allow the inspiration borne from the talking heads to fill this space
⇒ Let the conversations and encounters go where they will…

The plan is to provide the space and the inspiration, alongside the tools and games to facilitate. That’s it, nothing more.

We're like your favourite Auntie; we'll let you loose in the toy box, you can stay up past bedtime, and we're genuinely eager to see what you create!

Yes, much to my delight and exponentially increasing interest, OxfordJam is becoming quite something other. Huge thanks to those who willed it into existence and adoration to the growing list of participants.
Tickets (free/by donation) will go live this week, so do check it out. Such a series of amazing people, coming forward with this level of conviction and energy, is not to be missed. Better yet, it is still yours to influence so get involved:*

Follow @OxfordJam on Twitter..
Check out the website..
Join the facebook group..
Subscribe to updates via RSS..
Contact the organisers
Comment below!

*Really, do volunteer to get involved... Else I fear, if left unchecked, the food and sexy metaphors may get the better of us..

Birthday Wishes..

2010-03-05T07:34:00.001Z

12 lessons series will be back after this brief birthday interlude..

This time next week will be my birthday! As I figure it, this means I am entitled to ask you all for favours.. or is that only if you're 'The Don' and it's the day of his daughter's wedding? ..I forget.

Anyway, I am going to be 26 on March 12th.

..And for my birthday, I would like it very much if 26 of my twitter followers^* were to register as organ donors.

Now, I have absolutely no interest in changing your views on the subject. So if, for religious or personal reasons, you're uncomfortable with the idea of organ donation^** that's fine; my Amazon wishlist is here ;-)

No, this is more for all of you who really don't mind, or perhaps agree it's a good thing to do and just haven't done it yet. Do it now, please. Before you, or someone you know, needs to use the service; before it becomes trite, or before it's too late. It is easy and it wont take long.

And if you do sign up, *please* tweet or comment below so I know how many people have given me this birthday present!
Thank-you muchly.

~ Amanda

*(or more! more would be good too!)
** ~~I assume you'd also be uncomfortable with the idea of receiving a donation if you needed one then~~ *ahem*

#10: Net-works

2010-03-02T10:29:00.011Z

Throughout Jan-Mar I've been posting the "12 entrepreneurial lessons I learnt from 2009" series.

Installments so far: Introduction,
Lesson : #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9

Everyone's heard it, some of you will have said it:
"It's not what you know, but who you know".
Whether you believe it's that simple or not, it is hard to deny that knowing the right people can put a good entrepreneur on the fast track to success. I do mean exactly that, though, knowing the right people can put a good entrepreneur on the fast track to success.

A really good entrepreneur can almost certainly make it without much outside support, it'll just take longer, and if you're a bad entrepreneur, well, all the who-you-knows in the world aren't going to help you. But for most startups, securing pertinent, influential contacts within our sector or customer base is an important part of our development.

And the way to get to know the right people in your industry is to build a network.. and when it comes to building a targeted international network, cheaply and effectively - the 'net works.*

There are a lot of doubters when it comes to online networking, and a lot of online networking platforms to have doubts about. There are also a lot of blog posts out there dedicated to; why you should care, which sites to choose and how best to use them. So I'm simply going to remind you that 80% of the UK use some sort of social network and I suggest that, unless you're certain both your influential industry mentors, product/service evangalists and your competitors and pissed off contacts/customers are all in the 20% not using soical media, you might want to do a little strategising in this area. That's all. ;-)

3 tips on building and nurturing a business network online:

1) Target

Very simple maths. There's one of you, there are lots of social networking sites; any one of which could easily consume several hours of your day, everyday. Target the right sites, target users who log in frequently, share good content and have a strong following themselves, and ration your time there.

If you're hiring and you want to see CV's you'll be better on Linked In than Livejounal, which would suit you better if you're an aspiring writer. Bands looking for signing head to MySpace: to quickly spread documents and links try Twitter, to build a fan base start a Facebook Group, to get the attention of an industry leader comment thoughtfully on their blog. If they don't blog, comment thoughtfully on your blog and send them the link.

You can't make a play on all the networking sites out there. Spend a little time deciding on your aim and audience, and pick the one that suits you best. Use your time there productively. Which leads me to my next tip..

2) Make yourself useful

Once you've picked your target site, settle in and make yourself useful.

The most common mistake I hear from newbies is asking what is the benefit they'll receive from online networking. To paraphrase an old one, "ask not what the network can do for you, ask what you can do for your network". Make yourself useful to others. It'll earn you friends, respect from the community, it could accrue you favours and it will showcase your knowledge. Explaining this to a freind the other day, they then likened Twitter to a gift economy. I couldn't have said it better. Make it your mission to be useful, the rest will follow.

3) Seal the deal, respectfully

Approaching someone online is a very different skill to walking up to them at a networking session. One of the deceptive things about the internet is how it distances you from the other person. You're socialising or collaborating but not face to face, not necessarily in real time, they can't see you, and you lose the 93% of communicative clues we use that are non verbal. Accordingly, it is more important than ever to be respectful when writing emails, messages, and forum posts to possible contacts. Always be polite. Always get to your point in the minimum number of lines, and you must double check spelling, punctuation and grammar, it's the online equivalent of ironing your shirt and polishing your shoes!

Many social networks try to account for the lack of non verbal cues by allowing avatars, font and colour customisation. All I can say is that these don't fully compensate for the complexities of body language and vocal tone but they do still count. Suffice to say people who email me in Coloured Comic Sans have a special place in my inbox. Oh and one more thing, get a sensible email address. No one is going to take "tinkerbell84" or "racerboy1" very seriously.

Treat your online network with no less care than you would treat someone you were meeting face to face. In fact, treat online contacts with greater care. There is often a temptation to hide behind the web and allow the distance and relative anonymity to fool us into become louder, brasher or more pushy than we would be in person. Dont.
No, really - don't!
Everyone has bad days and everyone misjudges situations sometimes but If you're a little pushy or rude to someone in person, only you and they know about it, and the moment (hopefully) passes. If you're throwing your weight around on a blog or forum .. the world knows and it becomes public property, out there to be re-lived ceaselessly.

Creating and nurturing a network is difficult! It is a high level skill which takes a huge amount of perception and social bandwidth, but your business needs someone who can do this just as surely as it needs someone to balance the books; and if you're a start up short on time & budget, using the net to broaden your reach is ideal.

Lesson No.10: When it comes to networks.. the net does indeed, work.

*Anyone who thought i'd get through these 12 blog posts without a bad pun, grab your things & move down to the front of the class where I can keep an eye on you. You've obviously not been paying enough attention.

#9: Scrap that...

2010-02-17T17:06:00.007Z

Throughout Jan/Feb I've been posting the "12 entrepreneurial lessons I learnt from 2009" series.

Installments so far: Introduction,
Lesson : #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8

So here's the thing;
my original idea for this ninth lesson .. isn't working out.

I'm getting frustrated, losing enthusiasm for the message and tangling my trains of thought. Deadlines for other tasks are looming as I tweak and re-write, yet I don't feel like I'm getting any closer to a breakthrough.

I figure I have two (arguably three) choices; I could persevere with the original idea and hope that a bit more time and effort will yield something I am happy with, (I could just post what I have in a form I'm dissatisfied with) or I could acknowledge that it is simply not going to work out this time and move on to something else.

We're often reluctant to move on from our original ideas.
Not completing something you set out to do can sometimes feel like failure, so we we resolutely stick at it until the bitter end; stubbornly meeting the goals we said we would no matter that the match is now being played on the adjacent pitch.

Stopping mid way through a novel you don't like, turning the car around as soon as you know you're lost, abandoning the initial idea for this blog post, moving on from a business idea which has proved non-viable.. Whatever the scenario, where there is time and effort to be lost in pushing through but little or nothing to gain, the way to fail isn't by productively moving on but by either: wasting your time seeing the unnecessary activity to completion or wasting the time you saved having wisely decided to move on.

There is frankly no benefit to expending resources, be that time, effort or money, on activities that will bring you no reward. Knowing when to cut your losses and roll with a new idea is vital. I decided not to continue working on my draft post because I'd tied my arguments into knots and it would have taken me hours to work though it. This has taken 15 mins and left me free to attack my ever growing flagged email list.

I recognise that it isn't always as simple as putting down a book or re-writing a blog post but, hard as it may be, sometimes the only good decision is to "scrap that" and move on.

#8: A speaker of words and a doer of deeds.

2010-02-11T11:44:00.003Z

Throughout Jan/Feb I've been posting the "12 entrepreneurial lessons I learnt from 2009" series.

Installments so far: Introduction,
Lesson : #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7

It is very easy to possess intent.

I, for example, intended to post this installment on Friday 5th. I intended to learn Hindi last year, and I intend to get 8 hours sleep tonight. For all that it matters I may also intend to run a marathon next year despite being, at best, a 10k kinda girl. That's the great thing about our day to day goals and decisions, as long as they sit clogging up our mental 'to do' lists, they needn't obey the pesky rules of time and space.

Our aims can be unreasonable, unachievable, you may wholeheartedly intend to do the impossible. It's for exactly that reason that good intentions can, all too easily, become a dangerous form of self deception holding us back. Intention protects us from dealing with the action and most of us 'intend' too freely.

Intent doesn't climb mountains or build businesses. Actions do.

An entrepreneur is a do-er above all else. Even the word "entrepreneur" derives from the French 'entreprendre' which means 'to undertake'. Everybody has ideas, lots of people talk abut them, entrepreneurs act on them.

I'm not saying it's simple, despite my intentions the facts are: I'm uploading this on Thurs 11th of Feb, meri Hindi kucch khaas nahi hai and I haven't come close to 8 hours sleep in a single block in... well.. a while. My actions mismatch my intent. It's something I am actively working on, but it is still, literally, 'easier said than done'.

The hardest thing to do is to bridge that gap between intent and action. Harder still if you're setting yourself unreasonable goals.

Setting realistic goals and acting on them is a far more satisfying and worthy endeavor than perpetually speaking about achieving the near-impossible. Just look at some of the most admired people on the planet; people who achieved magnificent, heroic acts of justice, triumph and overcoming adversity but did so day by day, action upon action. I doubt they set out intending to become heroes, rather that each small action was simply heroic.

I defer to Homer on this one (no, not the yellow one) and the 3rd Pillar of the Heroic Code as told to Achilles by his Father In the Iliad:
“be both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds."

Don't just tell me you're an entrepreneurial superhero. Show me.

#7: Be an emotional starfish.

2010-02-02T15:10:00.002Z

Throughout Jan/Feb I've been posting the "12 entrepreneurial lessons I learnt from 2009" series.

Installments so far: Introduction,
Lesson : #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6

Almost needfully, most people starting a business vastly underestimate how much it will cost, how long it will take and (assuming you make it that far) how audaciously difficult and achingly lonely the path to success is going to be.

It's an exercise in trial and error, which means you've got to try & you’re going to fail and it's going to happen a lot.

On a fairly regular basis people are going to tell you that you're wrong. You are wasting your time. All the sleepless nights, skint months, anxiety attacks and nerve wracking pitches are for nothing. At times it'll seem, and probably be true, that you work harder, for longer, and for less material reward than your peers. Moreover, when they switch off on a Friday evening, or for two weeks in August, you'll still have half a mind on work and one hand on the smartphone. You'll begin to wonder if your passion for the project has clouded your judgement and maybe the rational thing to do is wind it down. You may even, god forbid, consider making that antipodean step into .. ‘traditional’ employment.

And I admit, I do have moments, whole minutes even, where I wish I had taken a more conventional option; gotten a stable job with regular hours and a wage that arrived, in my bank account, each month. Found a nice house with a manageable mortgage, taken yearly holidays to destinations you can buy guide books for..

Enter the casual supporter. Worse, perhaps, than the doubters - the casual supporter will appear every so often to get your hopes up, tell you your enterprise has promise, a product that will fly off the shelves, and though they cannot personally help (though they'd love to of course) you've got to 'just hang in there.' Which, as we all know, is easier said than done.

Meanwhile, you've got to retain critical faculties, keep working on and, no, you're not allowed to let it drag you down.

Blessedly, one of the things which distinguish entrepreneurs from the rest of the working world is their wonderful ability to tie a neat tourniquet around each wounding disappointment and ride right back into battle as if unscathed. It never ceases to amaze me, the strength we can find and the odd places we find it, how often we'll lose it, stress-test it to breaking point and (seemingly irreparable) find it intact again when we need it most.

True entrepreneurs are emotional starfish, seemingly endlessly regenerative.

#6: If you want a job done well..

2010-01-27T16:55:00.005Z

Throughout Jan I've been posting the "12 entrepreneurial lessons I learnt from 2009" series.

Installments so far: Introduction,
Lesson : #1, #2, #3, #4, #5

"If you want a job done well, do it yourself."

I have heard this maxim uttered by some of the smartest self-starters I've had the pleasure and good fortune to meet. All to rarely have I had the freedom, and lets face it, the guts, to tell them they're talking utter tosh.

It is a glamourous fallacy that those who can conceive of great things necessarily have the skills to execute them.

In a former incarnation I worked as a professional choreographer, and I can tell you first hand that I was far better at that than I was a dancer. It is all well and good for me to have a notion for the way a body can move, to picture the lines of the movement in my mind. It is an unrelated matter to command my body to make those forms.

But I wanted a great performance, so did I 'do it myself'? No! I hired great dancers! It's a surprisingly simple notion. Just give the task in question to the best person you can lay your hands on who's skilled at that particular activity. If you can't lay your hands on them, stalk them! After all as far as I can ascertain, that's what Twitter was invented for!

I accept that the commonly accepted counter argument to this idea usually lands between "they dont care as much about my business as I do" and "I will work harder than anyone else because I stand to benefit the most".

Well and enough. I accept that I probably care about my business more than anyone else in the world; this makes sense, it's my business! Yet I am still not convinced that I care enough about Red Button Design to render me magically better at our accounts than our accountant, our sourcing than our procurement team or our appropriate design strategy than James. Infact, I'm certain that no amount of caring can make me more than merely competant at those tasks. It's just not my skill set. Therefore it is my job to make it worth someone else's while to care, either about my enterprise or presumably they care about their job? And working on the assumption that it is their job to do whatever it is you hired them to do, they're looking for you to be a happy customer and therefore their own self interest is in parallel to your self interest. As I have said before, when it comes to my business, linking their personal gain to my aims is the most comfortable I'm going to get.

So rather than a job done well being a job done yourself, it's ok to admit that you can't do it all. More than that, it's vital. An inability to accurately evaluate your talents might be embarrassing at a karaoke bar, but it's fatal in business. Hence, lesson #6:

If you want a job done well, learn to delegate

Thanksto.com Social Enterprise Challenge

2010-01-23T12:31:00.008Z

I'm taking a brief break from the "12 entrepreneurial lessons I learnt from 2009" series to tell you about a fantastic opportunity to win an entrepreneurial internship! But you'll have to be quick, deadline for entries is this Monday!

Do you have an interest in business and enterprise, helping your community and developing your entrepreneurial skills? The Thanksto.com Social Enterprise Challenge provides a fantastic opportunity to empower young individuals (18+) in the London region - and best of all, the winners have the chance to win exclusive internship opportunities with some of London's most successful entrepreneurs (as well as £5000 of sports equipment and £500 cash!). The deadline to sign up is this Monday January 25th so hurry and send an email with your details to a.dundas(at)thanksto.com or click here

Good luck if you're entering and we'll be back with the "12 lessons" next week.

#5: Schrödinger's cat

2010-01-21T16:04:00.002Z

Throughout Jan I will be posting installments of the "12 entrepreneurial lessons I learnt from 2009" series

So far: Introduction, Lesson #1, Lesson #2, Lesson #3, Lesson #4

Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment which was devised by Erwin Schrödinger to highlight the absurdity of quantum mechanics.
It'll do just the same, however, to highlight the absurdity of business plans.

Business plans are, at best, a guestimation of what might occur if a particular set of variables fall out in a particular manner. At worst, they're a work of fanciful fiction.

Either way, they represent an attempt to model the future which often spans into a delightful set of parallel universes because, well .. it's unlikely you're in the business of predicting the future. So, you'll probably have the version where you barely get by, the one where you'll have your own private island before you're 30 and the one in the middle where you've averaged out all of the highs and lows to reach reason. Most people tend to go with the one in the middle.

In Schrödinger's thought experiment he envisages a box into which you sadistically put a cat and some poison before closing and sealing the lid. You would them head off for an hour, (presumably to work on your business plan!) and after 60 minutes the following question is posed:
Is the cat alive or dead?

Now, without looking in the box, you cannot tell. The cat could be alive but equally it could be dead, having succumbed to the poison. So, one version of the experimental outcome states that as long as you cannot tell which is true, the cat is both simultaneously alive and dead. However, we know rationally that when we do open the box, this is the one outcome that cannot actually be evidenced.

I would argue that business plans are like Schrödinger's cat. While on the one hand the only way to predict the future is to assume a mixture of good and bad outcomes, this does create a tendency for startups to write business plans around impossible averages; forgetting that 'in the real world' cats are either alive or dead, not both.

An example: We're in for two funding bids where, in each, there is a 50% chance we're going to win £10,000.
Odds are, we'll get £10,000 in one or the other. My fantasy business plan says we get £20,000, my worst case scenario says we get zip, nada, niente.
My "most likely scenario" business plan would model this as a £5,000 income in each case. Despite the fact that getting £5,000 is the one truly impossible condition. We'll win £10k or nothing, alive or dead.

...Yes it seems simple now! but #5 was truly a lesson learnt the hard way:

Is Schrödinger's cat in your business plan?

#4: Too much love will kill you.

2010-01-18T20:35:00.012Z

Throughout Jan I will be posting installments of the "12 entrepreneurial lessons I learnt from 2009" series

So far: Introduction, Lesson #1, Lesson #2, Lesson #3

The thrill of starting a business arrives packaged with a rather daunting number of peripheral and unexpected tasks. Between the innocuous and the merely burdensome, there will be a few which invariably require new knowledge and the development of completely new skills.

For any entrepreneur, the natural response to discovering a task that you cannot easily complete is either to get someone else to do it, or learn to do it yourself. Unfortunately the natural state of being for any startup is dead broke, more often than not therefore ruling out the first option! Thankfully, knowledge (or at the very least the perception of it) is fairly easy to come across and frequently free.

Local authority support agencies, peers, Government advice publications, enterprise seminars, consultants, online forums, networking events, meet up groups and countless websites and blogs are waiting, eager to give you the answer that will propel you to success faster than you can say "the next Google" and if you really are a novel business with genuine growth potential they'll be clamouring over themselves to give you their opinion on your product & projections.

Is it altruism?
Is it heck! There's personal gain in the equation somewhere. The question is: where, how does this drive their motivation, and will it compromise the impartiality of their advice to you? I mean, is it really fair to ask a cash-strapped patent attorney their advice on whether you ought to engage in a world-wide patent or if UK & USA will suffice, when the differential is tens of thousands of pounds worth of business?

And all other things being equal would you rather take advice from a business advisor:
- paid by the hour
- paid in relation to the positivity of their client feedback forms
- paid according to the number of cases they get through in a day
- paid in relation to the number of companies they coached that reach tax threshold within 2 years

I’ve blogged before about how crucial good advice and support is to guide a promising startup through the tough transitions to healthy business. What I didn't say was, like so many things in this life: some is essential, too much can seriously set you back and the wrong kind will destroy you entirely. Brian May had it right as far as I'm concerned, “Too much love will kill you, just as sure as none at all”

You see the thing is, having 5 pieces of conflicting advice serving 5 different agendas, when you're uncertain .. well, it's not a great deal more helpful than having no advice at all, at least not in any practical sense.

Last year, after far too many months running around in circles, Red Button Design was lucky enough to get an introduction to The Ketchup Group who now provide us with support both tailored specifically to our business, and targeted only to the gaps in our knowledge. This creates minimum overlap and encourages us to confidently take the lead where we know best. Most favourably of all, due to the flexibility they afforded us in choosing a structure for our relationship, Red Button Design's success will directly benefit each of the companies in the group. And sod altruism, when deciding to trust someone to share my business decisions, linking their personal gain to my aims is the most comfortable I'm going to get!

Advice is essential. Take it where you need it and by all means give it where you can, but pick you advice sources carefully, examine their motives* and most of all, know when to stop asking and trust your own instinct.

Lesson #4

Too much love will kill you, just as sure as none at all

* I'm writing these blogs sharing my lessons of 2009 because I hope to increase readership and raise the profile of this blog. If you like them or find them useful (and I really hope you do!) please comment, subscribe by RSS or consider sharing the link on Twitter.

#3: Brevity is good.

2010-01-16T10:54:00.003Z

Throughout Jan I will be posting installments of the "12 entrepreneurial lessons I learnt from 2009" series

So far: Introduction, Lesson #1, Lesson #2

It's generally the case that the more important the person you're contacting:
a) the more valuable their time is
b) the greater your desire to make a good impression

Quite often getting directly to the 'ask' or using bullet points is portrayed as rude. Real rudeness is writing a 500 word email when 50 words will do.

- it wastes their time
- it wastes yours
- it lowers the chance they'll read and/or reply to you

Lesson #3:
Brevity is good

#2: You can’t half-ride a bike.

2010-01-13T10:13:00.006Z

Throughout Jan I will be posting installments of the "12 entrepreneurial lessons I learnt from 2009" series

So far: Introduction , Lesson #1

While it may be official that you’ll never forget how to ride a bike, the chances are good you'll forget the mindset which allowed you to learn to ride it in the first place.

On a bike, there are two points of safety. Just two.
The first involves having both feet on the ground, your hands on the handlebars and a stationary bike. The second is ... well, riding the bike. As any kid knows, you can’t half-ride a bike. You can’t keep one foot skirting the ground just-in-case (you’re going to need both feet to pedal), you can’t very well run along the road Fred Flintstone style, and as for riding a bike very, very, slowly … well, you just try that.
No? Well trust me, it doesn’t work either.

It’s a momentum issue.
When you’re 7 or 8 you get this, there’s no middle ground. You have to commit to the act of riding the bike and accept that you may fall, or bail on the activity completely. Thankfully most 8 year olds think they’re Evel Knievel and don’t know the meaning of ‘caution’... Sadly, most Entrepreneurs aren’t 8 years old.

This time last year I was splitting my energy between freelancing as a marketing consultant, a PT sales role, speaking at business events and careers fairs, acting as a course-mentor to three entrepreneurs and participating in a couple of Enterprise UK focus groups, amongst other ephemeral opportunities (!) We’d just returned from The Earth Awards in New York and James was entering the final 6 months of a full time Masters Degree with curricular split between two Universities..

We clearly hadn’t fully committed to our business. Despite believing I was giving it my all, Red Button Design was at best a side project for the first few months of 2009. Yet, we hadn’t bailed on it either and at the time I truly thought I was making progress. As it turns out, I was standing over a stationary bike making ‘vrooom’ noises.

If you’re working to start a scalable business, you’re attempting to do something extraordinary. You’re doing something new, something better, more efficient or more attractive. How many of us, if we're honest with ourselves, can say we'll be better than established competitors in our spare time?

Of course, there are excuses. Damn good excuses for the most part. I'm not even going to start on the things I either haven't had, or have had to do, since I shunned paid employment to work full time on Red Button Design. It shouldn't be possible to survive indefinitely without a wage, yet making the impossible, possible, is only the first in the set of daredevil skills an entrepreneur needs. No matter how much effort and focus you devote to your enterprise, you're still putting yourself at risk of bumps, scrapes and that word that scares us Brits so deeply, 'failure'. I don't know how many times you skinned your knees learning to cycle.. I recall a fair few topples myself, but just take a quick look at your knees today, to see that the scars of failure heal.

So take a step back and if it's clear you haven't already decided, decide today. Commit or Bail?
...and if you're not going to give up that easily, then take a deep breath and pedal as fast as you can because it's my second lesson for 2010:

Commit or Bail. You can’t half ride a bike.

#1: A favour given isn’t necessarily a favour owed.

2010-01-11T12:16:00.007Z

Throughout Jan I will be posting installments of the "12 entrepreneurial lessons I learnt from 2009" series I introduced last Friday

Let’s picture a reality in which you wrote a lovely blog piece about me.
Yeah, I know.. but imagine you had found a few kind words to say and strung them together into some elegant and witty prose; perhaps you linked to my blog, my twitter, the company site, even my Amazon wishlist* all entirely unprompted and of your own volition. That’d be nice of you, wouldn’t it?
And let’s say I even got a few customers from your efforts. That’d be really nice.

Now imagine you get in touch with me a few months later, you know how successful your post has been in driving me valuable traffic and you suspect you’ve helped increase my sales. You approach me at an event and ask me to endorse your new product on my, now pretty well eyeballed, site because.. y’know, you wrote that post a while back and it’d be kind of me to return the favour. You heavily imply that I owe you and speak as if my agreement is a given. As it happens however, as nice as you might be and as kind as you may have been, I don’t rate your product at all. Worse than that, I've actually only ever had negative experiences of it.

You’ve put me in a pretty tough position, torn between feeling indebted to return the gesture and my own integrity.

Will your previous kind actions weigh it into the balance of my decision? Of course! I’m nice like that. Do I consider a tacit agreement to have been made? No I do not. If you’re doing me a favour with the underlying motive of receiving something in return, you need to be upfront about it. State your proposition! If what you can offer is beneficial to me, and if what you want in return is agreeable to me, I’ll most likely agree to the trade. If what you want in return isn’t something I am comfortable to give then I’m not going to be swayed by a series of kind gestures impressing a sense of obligation onto my shoulders. That sounds... well, a little like bribery to me.

This lesson, of course, goes both ways. If you simply can't give me what I am asking for, no amount of me being lovely to you will, or should, persuade you to make that compromise for me.

More than once last year did I find myself going uncomfortably out of my way to help someone, motivated simply by a feeling of obligation to ‘hold up my end of the bargain’ when no such bargain has been made. Hence the first lesson I’ll be carrying into 2010:

A favour given isn’t necessarily a favour owed.

* Lesson #1b, it never hurts to try ;-)

No Regrets, Only Lessons From Another Year at the Fair

2010-01-08T09:06:00.005Z

"New Years Resolutions" ..I've not checked, but I wouldn't be surprised if a week into 2010 this is still trending on Twitter. Come Jan 1st most of us make them, break them, then forget them. Starting with the infamous groan on New Year's Day "I'm never drinking again!" and rapidly cycling through a series of health & well being promises, visions of prolificacy, of rediscovering your work ethic, keeping better control of your finances and acquiring new skills.. every year the same core aims make our lists.

I duly made mine last year, 10 in total, which took pride of place pinned to my office wall all year. I managed to succeed at an impressive 5 of them, very nearly achieved a further 2, and made epic failures of the remaining three, (and no, I shall not tell you what they were!)

But between you, me, and the little thing they call t'interweb: 2009 was nothing short of an utterly rampageous year for me.

People seem to like to describe the lives of young entrepreneurs and their nascent businesses as if we were on a roller-coaster, and I get that, really I do! The highs, the lows, the thrills and anxieties undeniably come to permeate every aspect of your life. Yet last year, if proof was even required, served to deftly illustrate quite how over simplified this analogy is. There's not only a roller coaster in the entrepreneurial fairground, there’s the spiraling helter-skelter, a haunted house, a shooting gallery (always rigged) and a candy stand where we can prove, yet again, that entrepreneurs have 'eyes bigger than our stomachs'.. and don't even get me started on the caged-in cycle of the carousel, or the dodge ‘ems with at least one driver who thinks he’s in a bumper-car.. It's all at once exhausting and dazzling.

Through 2009 I struggled at times between being so goal orientated I became inflexible and unresponsive, and so open minded and eager to learn that I was led astray by every bandwagon and exciting new idea. A lot is made of the 'art' to keeping resolutions, very little do we consider the art of allowing ourselves not to achieve our set goals if the goals are no longer appropriate. There are so many things from 2009 I might respond to differently should they recur in 2010, certainly too many to list and keep on my wall. So I have only one resolution for 2010:
'Carry no regrets, only lessons'.

And in a series beginning next week I will blog 'The 12 entrepreneurial lessons I learnt from 2009'.

WARNING! Disconnection Will Cause Adverse Side Effects..

2010-01-06T07:56:00.000Z

Happy New Year, I’m sure many of you have amongst your resolutions a commitment to learn something new? Well let’s start January off with a little bit of science*.

Here’s a little psychological experiment but do remember, kids, don’t try this at home!

Our participant for this particular experiment is called Amanda, like me. And, oddly, in almost every way imaginable, Amanda is like me.

Amanda has just moved into a new flat. She likes it a great deal but it’s not yet hooked up with a landline or broadband and all her neighbours have sensibly passworded their connections with unguessable passwords. That’s ok, however, because we have provided her with a Blackberry and a Dongle for her Mac.

For 6 days we leave Amanda alone to settle in and simply observe her routine. On the 7th day, at 9pm, we inexplicably stop the Blackberry’s data package, bar outgoing calls & texts, and disable the dongle.

What happens next?

A) Our participant fusses, half heartedly, for a few minutes with the devices before breathing a sign of relief, running herself a bath and getting an early night.

B) Our participant systematically troubleshoots the Blackberry, Dongle and the Mac to no avail before giving up and settling on the sofa with a book and some wine, breaking periodically to check and re-check all devices.

C) Our participant displays mild signs of distress and spends an entire hour shutting down all devices, trying to restart them in different combinations, checking and double checking all phone lines and connections as well as trying to call the relevant customer care lines only to remember the phone is non-functional before finally resorting to working on her flagged email list offline, queuing the completed emails to send, presumably from her regular Starbucks the next day.

D) Our participant displays signs of severe anxiety, continually checking all three devices, repeatedly turning them on and off again and futilely attempting to channel Angelina Jolie’s character from Hackers and connect to local protected networks. Resorting to distraction techniques fails as she attempts to stream The Big Bang Theory on 4OD, search for podcasts on iTunes and discover new music on Spotify. Disoriented, she wanders from room to room with the dongle and the Blackberry seeking a connection, apparently unable to set the devices aside and work offline productively. Finally she attempts to look for local 24 hour internet café’s, or a pub with wifi, by using Google before realising her mistake and lapsing into a catatonic state.

Answers on a postcard ;-)

All in all, the experience was a little too like the time my business partner attempted to discover if my caffeine addiction was psychological or physiological by switching everything I had to decaf without me knowing. When, by mid afternoon, I excused myself to head home ill citing my symptoms as migraine, nausea, mental fugue, inability to concentrate and unbearable lethargy, then he sought pity on me and confessed. A couple of medicinal venti, extra-shot, skinny cappuccinos later (his shout, obviously) and we were able to definitively conclude that the experiment did not need repeating. I didn’t quite get it legislated in the shareholders agreement but be warned, it doesn’t say “caffeine addict” on my business card for no reason and, after yesterday, “net addict” may be appearing beside it with the next print run..

Is there a moral to this rambling story? Perhaps a final thought about the increasing over-dependence of society on online and digital communication? Or perhaps an argument towards internet access as a human right?

I don't know, or care, I don't have time to think about that now I have the internet back in all its glory!

* If you really do fancy learning some creative-entrepreneur friendly science go check out the fabulous boys and girls of Prism Magazine

Thank-you & Happy Holidays

2009-12-24T15:01:00.000Z

In the course of this year I have been deeply fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet a huge number of amazing and inspiring individuals from all over the world: entrepreneurs, business people, world leaders, designers, humanitarians, activists, scientists, engineers, free-thinkers, change-makers ... overwhelmingly smart, determined & formidable souls who rendered almost insignificant, the naysayers, bullies and worse.

So to everyone who inspired me in 2009; those who listened, shared their advice and their experience, to any who encouraged and all who spent their time, I'd like to let you to know that I'll be thanking each of you quietly by making every effort to spend 2010 mindful of whatever lesson you had to share.

Thank-you for your support. We, truly, couldn't do without you.

“Friends are helpful not only because they will listen to us, but because they will laugh at us. Through them we learn a little objectivity, a little modesty, a little courtesy; We learn the rules of life and become better players of the game”
- Will Durant

Happy Holidays everyone. x

Red Button Design appoints new non-executive director

2009-11-30T21:35:00.003Z

Internationally award-winning social enterprise Red Button Design announced on Nov 27th 2009, the appointment of Peter Corke, MD of the marketing agency Willoughby Stewart and founder of The Ketchup Group, as its Non-Executive Board Director.

Pete has 10 years' industry experience covering a broad range of disciplines including new product development, sourcing, production and logistics management, marketing strategies, branding and design. His clients include large multinationals such as Costa Coffee and Fairline Boats, as well as start-ups and SMEs.

Announcing the appointment, Amanda Jones, Red Button Design's Chief Executive said:

"I'm thrilled to announce that Pete will be joining the board of RBD. He brings a vast amount of relevant experience into the company along with the capacity to both challenge and support the business while providing a great deal of enthusiasm on the way. We consider ourselves extremely fortunate to have found an individual who not only has the breadth of skills we were looking for but whose ethics and ideals match those upon which RBD was founded."

Pete added:

“I thrive on working relationships with companies and individuals with industry leading propositions, but the day Red Button Design walked through our door I instinctively knew it would be the start of something quite extraordinary! To be an integral part of Jamesʼ and Amandaʼs relentless pursuit of finding innovative solutions for humanitarian markets is an honour and one of my most exciting challenges to date.”

In his new role of Non-Executive Director Pete will actively participate in the work of Red Button Design, leveraging the diverse talents of the component companies within The Ketchup Group to make a creative contribution towards the launch of Red Button Designʼs flagship product and bringing an independent view to the table.

For additional information please view the full release

Why Making The Poor Pay, Pays Off

2009-11-25T17:24:00.002Z

(a.k.a. The blog in which I purport to argue that the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet should be charged for life-saving products and services)

This blog was originally written and posted on the UnLtdWord Blog as part of the 'SHOUT OUT for Social Enterprise' series.

For almost 9 centuries we have, in the UK, nurtured the idea of charity as an honourable activity that will win you respect from your neighbours, help you sleep soundly at night, enhance your CV and earn you kudos with the guy (/ girl / folks) upstairs. As a formalised notion it is viewed as a self sacrificing gift from the better off to those less fortunate, bearing the cost of providing otherwise unobtainable goods or services.

But, like any gift, donations are dangerous when they become expected and often not what was really wanted in the first place. For too long our love of charity has blinded us to the emerging realisation that the current donor/gift model is often no more appropriate a method to effect sustainable change in developing countries than relying on the novelty jumper, two sizes too small, sent by your great aunt at Christmas would be a wise provision for your long-term clothing needs. The jumper may be hideous (though she means well, of course) but since you politely say thank you and drag it out to wear it once a year when you see her, she never finds out how much you loathe it. Seemingly satisfied, she’s going to send you another next year..

So, for all the smiling images of African children receiving our gifts of aid I want you to hold in mind this alternative reality, because when the cameras go away and the charities have enough footage to satisfy their donor community, that novelty jumper goes straight to the back of the wardrobe.

Don’t take my rich, western, word for it either, take the following quote from one of my favourite articles on the matter:

“When free American maize turned up in Kenyan schools in 1984, thanks to Bob Geldof and USA for Africa, it arrived in gunny bags and presented itself at school dining tables: steaming yellow, not white like the maizeflour we knew as a staple [...] I must confess that I hated school food, anyway, and that yellow maize porridge tasted not that much worse than everything else we were forced to eat. But our speculation was powerful. It is American animal feed. And it started tasting a bit too earthy. It has been treated with contraceptive chemicals. And it started to taste metallic. It was sent to us because it has gone bad already. And it started to smell funny.
Soon, in the Njoro High School dining hall, vast amounts of yellow porridge went directly into the bins. Our teachers, normally violent fascists in matters of discipline, looked the other way. We had food fights with the porridge every evening, and the floor would be littered with the clumpy remnants of America's love.

("Pure Product" written by Binyavanga Wainaina for Harpers Magazine, June 2007 )

The inevitable reality is, be it food, water, fuel or mosquito nets, aid is managed most effectively where there is a price associated with it. Free is worthless and even ‘beggars’ will be ‘choosers’.

Ask yourself: so long as it doesn’t cost you anything to receive unwanted gifts where is your incentive to stop accepting them, and how do I know when to stop giving?

A fundamental truth of human nature demands autonomy; so much so that this will even be expressed to our own detriment. 35% of Sub-Saharan Africa's improved water sources are out of service at any given time, mainly due to poor maintenance. If the community had paid for that pump, had elected to install it and had invested time and money in it – do you think this figure would be so high?

Demanding a user pays a nominal fee for a product or service encourages autonomy, it becomes opt-in marketing and it’s far more valuable to all involved. Without it you create a market with no feedback loop. A charity works on a top down model, e.g. they look at a situation, evaluate the problem, raises funds from donors, procure a solution and deliver.

Done correctly, commerce and free market forces unavoidably establish communication channels. It is a more honest, empowering and, I would assert, cost effective model if an enterprise looks at a situation, evaluates the problem and offers up a solution; then, if no one purchases/contributes, modifies the offering until something of true value gets made.

If the enterprise can’t sell the product, they can’t evidence its desirability and they won’t break-even as neither end users nor those who provide any subsidy will back something that can’t be sold. Inevitably, if they don’t break-even the business goes under and natural selection weeds the offering out of a market that doesn’t want / need it. If a charity is similarly failing and doesn’t break-even – they raise more donor funding and remain in the market despite forces saying they should be gone.

If you want real world experience of why user buy-in is an absolutely essential modification to the traditional charity methodology, try this:

This Christmas it personally costs you to receive each gift, 10% of the gifts value. If you don’t pay, the gift goes back to the store and you get the cash.
I’d venture it’d cost less in total, reduce waste and more effectively provide what you really wanted.

(Almost) Everyone benefits if we allow market forces to empower the poorest populations to take responsibility for their own welfare. Those who don’t benefit don’t deserve to monopolise a multi billion dollar industry with ineffective product or service offerings simply because no one knows better (yet).

Please feel free to comment below or, even better, join the full debate at UnLtdWord!

Amanda Jones receives a Cosmopolitan "Ultimate Woman" award!

2009-11-16T21:16:00.007Z

Last Wednesday, November 11th, at a red-carpet, black-tie event at Whitehall's 'Banqueting House' I was awarded a Cosmopolitan Magazine “Ultimate Woman of the Year Award” for my work establishing internationally award winning social enterprise start-up “Red Button Design”

"The Ultimate Women of the Year awards were founded to celebrate Cosmopolitan's core mission - to inspire women to be the best they can be. Every year Cosmopolitan honours the women who really make a difference, who break boundaries, who help those in need and who have been fast-tracked in their field. Readers vote for the women they believe have been the most fun, fearless and fabulous over the past year. It is then left to a panel of judges, all movers and shakers in their own right, to pick the winners from the short-list to attend the glamorous awards ceremony."

So, it transpired that amidst kind words from none other than Fearne Cotton, Lamar, Vernon Kay & Sarah Brown themselves, I collected the award for Ultimate "Green Queen":

“She’s only 25 and the simplicity of her brilliant idea just jumps out at me.” Ultimate Woman judge Vernon Kay

Even though the award has had a few days to sit on the mantelpiece now, I still think that my instant reaction (though tipsy and somewhat bemused) remains heartfelt and genuine "Feeling humbled, supported & above all invigorated to fight another day... Thank-you!"

You can read "Five Reasons Cosmo Loves Amanda" right now and the full printed article can currently be found on page 90 of Cosmopolitan Magazine's December issue!

Red Button Design - Glenfiddich "Pride Of Scotland" Award Finalists

2009-10-26T11:33:00.007Z

For the twelfth year Scotsman Publications has joined forces with Glenfiddich to give readers the chance to vote in the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Awards.

We're happy to say that Red Button Design have been nominated in the Environment Category and once you have voted for us in The Pitch we'd sheepishly invite you to consider also voting for us in the Spirit of Scotland Awards.

Copy below courtesy of The Scotsman.

Few years have more tested Scotland's enterprise and talent than the past 12 months. Banks have tumbled, firms have failed, unemployment has risen and household spending has been reined in. Fear and apprehension have marked a year that has shaken our confidence and pride.

If ever there was a period in which the creativity and ambition of the nominees for the Spirit of Scotland awards were sorely needed, this is surely it. For it is in the difficult times that perseverance and success are especially important, and which inspire us to greater endeavour. Given this background, the achievements of this year's selection are particularly outstanding.

This unique awards scheme aims to recognise the individuals who make us proud, inspire our nation and lead the way across Scotland's rich cultural spectrum from the fields of Food, Music, the Environment and Screen to Art, Business, Writing and Sport: people who through their achievements are making every year count.

Receiving a Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award is now one of the country's most sought-after tributes – made all the more important because the winners are selected not by an elite few, but by you, the people of Scotland. Last year readers cast their votes by the thousand for winners including Olympian Chris Hoy, actor James McAvoy and young SuperJam entrepreneur, Fraser Doherty.

In the coming weeks The Scotsman will profile four individuals in each of the following categories: Business, Art, Food, Sport, Music, Screen, Environment and Writing. The nominees have been shortlisted by a consulting panel but it's over to you to decide who should win. In the final week, you can vote for the Top Scot Award, an open category where you can choose the Scot from any walk of life whom you believe has made the greatest impact in furthering Scotland's reputation at home and abroad this year.

The consulting panel for the Awards includes: John McLellan (Scotsman editor), Sally Gordon (Glenfiddich), Peter Irvine (Unique Events), Fiona Bradley (Fruitmarket Gallery), Celia Stevenson (Scottish Screen), Stuart Nisbet (Unique Events), and correspondents from The Scotsman newspaper.

"Fact Friday": 10 things you didn't know about water..

2009-10-23T13:22:00.007+01:00

1. Lack of safe water and adequate sanitation is the world's single largest cause of illness.

2. Over 50% of Hospital beds in the developing world are occupied by people suffering from preventable diseases caused by unsafe water or poor sanitation.

3. In developing countries 90% of sewage and 70% of industrial wastewater is dumped untreated into the same sources of surface water used commonly used for drinking / bathing

4. The average woman in Sub Saharan Africa walks 6km to find a protected source of drinking water

5. It's estimated that fetching water costs women/girls in Sub Saharan Africa 40 billion hours, or 5 billion workdays a year.

6. It's estimated that fetching water costs women/girls in India 150 million workdays a year, at a National cost of 10 billion rupees / USD $208 million.

7. Lack of easy access to safe drinking water is one of the greatest barriers to education and economy building in the developing world. A reduction in time spent collecting water enables women to engage in enterprise, enables girls to receive an education, and access to safe drinking water drastically reduces illness and therefore absence for all pupils.

8. Europeans spend $11 billion a year on ice cream, $2 billion more than the estimated annual total needed to provide clean water and safe sewers for the world's population.

9. Between 1991 and 2000, over 665,000 people died in 2,557 natural disasters, of which 90% of these were water related events.

10. In order to meet the water supply MDG target, an additional 260,000 people per day up to 2015 should gain access to improved water sources based on the current population. However, between 2010 and 2015, the world’s population is expected to increase every year by 74.8 million people.

Give me half the money I asked for and an advisor who can save me the other half…

2009-10-06T15:43:00.005+01:00

So there’s a rumor I keep hearing in certain circles; that whilst starting a business will take time, it needn’t take much money.

And I agree. Kind of.

Starting up a business is expensive only when you’re spending money on things you don’t need and, broadly speaking, I would claim that startups only need two things: ‘Stuff’ and ‘Understanding’

“Stuff”: Capital expenditure, physical things have a natural expense to them. The cost is usually linked to the wider world, abundance or scarcity of resources & the state of the planet in general, which is is all fine and rational by my account.

“Understanding”: Knowledge, however, has no such natural price point. As long as our accountant costs us less than the price we'd pay for getting the accounts wrong, and as long as getting that test verified earns us more than the certification cost us to get, it was the correct course of action. These experiential things aren’t justifiable or tangible costs but they’re also a bulk of our expendature.

Now, depending on what you’re starting, you’re going to want these at different places in the startup cycle and in different proportions. If you’re daft you’ll start a business that requires a vast amount of ‘stuff’ early on, pre-revenue even, and whatismore you might choose to do so in a recession.. y’know.. Just to make your life really complex but I digress..

At RBD we’re just putting the finishing touches to a £110k funding package. It has been an insane amount of work to push though, and as the money isn’t in our account yet there’s not even a guarantee that it won’t still all go awry, but it’s £110,000. I’m guessing it’d take me 3-4 years to earn that - so what is 3 months buried under a forest of paperwork of loan / equity agreements, tech docs and grant applications in comparison?

Nothing really, until you seriously consider the fact that we don’t need £110k.

We probably don’t need half of £110k,

What we need is a mentor / non-exec / advisor type bod.

Mistakes are expensive; without a mentor we have to budget for them, and so do you, and so do the vast majority of young start-ups with high growth potential who haven’t found adult supervision yet.

The lovely souls at the banks, grant making agencies, government and such would do well to realise that if they started training and encouraging mentors they could save themselves a bundle in cash. By all means buy the stuff, but ought we really to be buying in the understanding?

I, for one, would certainly rather have less money wisely used than a heap of cash with which to outsource my companies knowledge at the expense of my personal learning.

Come on guys, give me half the money I asked for and a mentor who can save me the other half…

"Press Relations Goddess"?.. I've been termed worse!

2009-10-01T10:12:00.009+01:00

I was at a Fast Growth Marketing event, run by School for Startups at the British Library last Friday and, despite all best intentions to sit down, shut up, and duly learn from the wonderful speakers, it would appear that what I actually did was manage to find myself causing a slight ripple of trouble.

'Oh', indeed.. And I can tell you're all surprised.

But let me explain; one of the great things about S4Startups is that the events allow for entrepreneurs in the audience to ask Doug Richard, or one of his guest speakers, for advice on how to resolve some of the issues they've been having regarding their businesses. With the advent of S4Stv the incorporation of live tweeting was encouraged, giving the rest of us in the audience the opportunity to pass ill informed judgement on the poor souls.. didn't I tell you this was great stuff?

So it transpired, then, that during a debate on PR and Marketing one such entrepreneur told a tale of how her business was contacted with regards to providing a 'profile' (not interview!) for a factual, industry specific, publication. Her problem was that when the copy came out it was riddled with inaccuracies, some simply wrong, others misleading to the company's extreme detriment and as a couple of others murmured from the auditorium that they too had suffered from the misreporting of facts in a similar fashion I, daftly I'll admit, grabbed my Blackberry and threw out into the ether this Tweet:

#s4stv Umm... am I the only entrepreneur who is successfully self-generating PR & who *demands* copy approval?! 'Copy Approval' people!! ;-)

So.. some followers on Twitter may have seen a little debate kick off between myself and @CriagMcGill which culminated in his recent blog post on the subject.

Now, to clarify, Red Button Design has been fortunate enough to receive a sizable chunk of press attention but up until recently we've been the feature of a huge number of factual publications and very few opinion pieces. When it comes to factual profiles I am afraid I am one of those difficult souls who do insist on seeing and checking the copy before print. To be frank, this is simply because, when it comes to technical or industry publications the difference between saying; 'cleans water', 'purifies water', or 'sanitises water' is technically significant in a way a journalist might not fully appreciate prior to a crash course in UN procurement and WHO sanitation regulations. And while getting the piece in the publication but having it inappropriately worded is harmful beyond measure, not being there at all is neutral ground. Perfectly defensible actions, I'm sure you'll agree.

However, I am pleased to say that the opinion pieces are beginning to come our way now, Gillian Bowditch recently interviewed me for the Sunday Times and produced a wonderful piece which I hasten to add I didn’t have copy approval over, nor did I request it. Similarly this morning I interviewed for a very well known national women's' magazine and didn't even consider making the request.

So I'd counter that my Tweet was misleading to those deprived of it's context, which given that there were maybe 100 or so folk at the event means that the vast majority of you might have been mislead and for that I am sorry. (I shoulda known better really, mea culpa and all that!) Hence I don't think @CriagMcGill and I are really ~~arguing~~ discussing the same thing, even,.. but tell us what *you* think either by commenting here or over at his blog, and I, for one, promise to post your opinions verbatim ;-)

Red Button Design feature in the first ever Social Investment Almanack

2009-09-16T18:49:00.008+01:00

The first ever Social Investment Almanack, which features a double page spread on Red Button Design's flagship 3-in-1 water purification product, was launched today by third sector minister Angela Smith.

You can find us in the chapter entitled "Shiny and New" (and how I do love that title) on pages 86 & 87.

The following excerpt is taken from from the Social Enterprise Live webiste:

"The first ever Social Investment Almanack was launched today by third sector minister Angela Smith.

Good Deals 2009: the Social Investment Almanack is published by Social Enterprise magazine and supported by the Office of the Third Sector and NESTA.

Speaking at the City Seminar on Social Investment at Mansion House, Smith said:

'This is an unprecedented collection of think pieces and case studies that aims to build knowledge and inspiration among those investment space as well as those looking in with curiousity from the outside.'"

You can download the Social Investment Almanack here

Wildcard voting opens for "The Pitch"

2009-09-10T18:01:00.013+01:00

Back in June I took part in a business competition, aptly called The Pitch, that had me filmed live "Dragons' Den" style with a four minute time limit, tasked to convince 5 judges of Red Button Design's worthiness to win yet another award.

Back then I made it as far as the Regional Finals, I didn't, however, quite make it through to the Grand Final, due to be held on the first day of Global Entrepreneurship Week 2009, (16 Nov for those sleeping at the back).

The Grand Final will see the winners of each regional heat (Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham and London) PLUS the winner of a public vote, a "wildcard" entry, competing for the £50,000 worth of business support available to the lucky winner.

You can now vote for us to sneak through into the final as the wildcard, 6th entrant.

Here's how:

1) Go here: www.thepitch2009.com/videos
2) Click the far right tab that says "Scotland"
3) Scroll down until you see me looking very emphatic & click me
4) ~~Watch the video that appears and~~ rate me ~~from one to~~ five stars ;-)

Also... (and I'm just mentioning) it looks as if you can vote more than once....

Small is..?

2009-08-31T14:12:00.004+01:00

Engineers Without Borders is organising a celebration and evolution of the ideas of 'Small is Beautiful' in a weekend summer festival in the grounds of Practical Action Bourton on Dunsmore, Rugby. September 5th & 6th

James will be there proposing that 'Small is' .. "Appropriate" and illustrating the importance, and subtleties of, 'appropriate' design using examples from Red Button Design, Maker Faire Africa and more.

James' session will be held at 2pm on Saturday 5th.

More information, full weekend schedule and tickets available from EWB-UK

Red Button Design co-founder Amanda, profiled in The Sunday Times

2009-08-30T10:12:00.004+01:00

For those spending bank holiday weekend in Scotland, you'll be able to find me in today's Scottish Sunday Times.

For those currently elsewhere .. the digital article can be accessed here:

"The ethical way to get ahead in business"

Red Button Design and Maker Faire Africa, a perfect fit?

2009-08-30T09:00:00.001+01:00

Before our recent trip to Maker Faire Africa in Ghana a short while ago I was asked to write an introduction to RBD, what we are all about and why we wanted to be at MFA09. My response is below, originally posted over at james-elliot.co.uk:

"Red Button Design is a UK based not (just) for profit startup which works towards developing products for emerging markets. We are currently working on a water transport, purification and storage device which uses human power to drive the filtration process. Other projects include a sustainable vaccine cooler, and a solar powered irrigation pump. In this regard we are a commercial venture, however our main social aim is to foster the sharing, development and manufacture of locally-sourced ideas and innovation through a network of local manufacturing co-ops.

Initially these co-ops would manufacture our products from ‘kits’ of components which are difficult to source locally in the required quality and quantities. However, longer term we see this network as a way of sharing ideas between distributed co-ops whilst providing access to resources that would be otherwise unavailable. We would offer support to the network, perhaps by providing product development services, access to specialist knowledge or components/materials etc.

We believe that a network of linked manufacturing co-ops could harness the latent talent that exists throughout emerging markets on a small scale with a multitude of local fabrication centres which, by exploiting the network, could each have an impact on a global scale.

An innovation in Ghana could be combined with another from India and developed with support from the US or Europe and the market ready product could then be manufactured wherever local demand existed. If the innovation was a way to protect against maleria, or a safe, low cost solution to lighting (or a drinking water transport, purification and storage device) then the global impact could be huge.

MFA09 for us holds the opportunity to meet people already involved in small scale manufacture, to learn more about their capability and barriers to growth and to learn about how we can best support local talent."

The Makers of MFA '09 - Post 2/3

2009-08-25T01:23:00.006+01:00

I am clawing a few minutes away from the chaos that has enveloped RBD post Ghana, to share with you a few more of the Makers we met there...

I'll start you off with Wisdom, who if i am honest, sort-of embodied the whole of Maker Faire Africa for me..

Craig Calfee / Wisdom Toxla - Bamboo Bike:

There are many versions of the "bamboo bike" concept, this one is the 'Bamboosero' and was designed by American Designer Craig Calfee and built by Ghanian Maker, Wisdom Toxla (a.k.a "The Boy").

Wisdom assured James that his Bamboosero was lighter, faster & more comfortable to ride than a metal frame cycle and, heavily prompted by James' questions, went on to give him detailed instructions on how to go about crafting his own bamboo bicycle, back in Blighty. Amidst all the enthusiastic gesticulating I noticed Wisdom's watch ... find me a man more MFA than him and I'll eat a recycled plastic hat ...

Amit Gandhi / Mark Driordan - Plastic Bag Recycling Press:

Another IDDS team, Amit Gandhi and Mark Driordan (USA, UK respectively), displayed their heat-press designed to transform waste plastic bags into useful plastic sheeting from 3ply to 40ply in thickness. This recycled plastic sheet can then be used to produce... well, anything! Shoes, satchels, pencil cases and folders were some of the examples on display but critically the cost of assembling and running this press is minimal and doing so is well within the technical capacity of Ghanaian Makers, meaning anyone could produce their own recycled plastic goods. Seriously good stuff.. I genuinely want to make and use one. What more can I say?!

...and I will be leaving it to James to introduce you to the zero-electricity fridge; as he spent most of the last academic year researching similar technologies before starting development on what will be Red Button Design's second product, 'Medicool'.

"Medicool is a temperature controlled vaccine carrier that allows health workers in developing countries to keep vaccines within their safe temperature range for longer, increasing the range of immunization programmes. It works by capturing waste heat so avoids the need for a traditional power source."

Once again, photo credits go to the brilliant James-Elliot.co.uk .. nah 'course we're not biased!

The Makers of MFA '09 - Post 1/3

2009-08-15T23:33:00.004+01:00

Installed myself just outside the hotel, in the heat & darkness of a Ghanain bar. I have live music, a beer, and my Mac :-)

...Whatsmore, I am very pleased with myself, because if I orientate myself *just so* I can pick up the wifi from the Hotel Business Centre without having to sit inside the ice cold confines of its sodium lit, air-conditioned, anonymity. Bliss!

Although is is somewhat hard to know where to begin, I thought I'd dive right in and introduce you to 3 very different "Makers" I met today:
Meet Bernard, Yasmeen and Stephen.

Bernard Kiwia - Pedal Powered Hacksaw:

Bernard is a Tanzanian bike mechanic. Like many at Maker Faire Africa, he was also part of 'IDDS Ghana' last week (The International Development Design Summit) Bernard's "Make" is ... well it is a bicycle / pedal powered hacksaw for disabled workers. Which really has to be seen to be believed. He has also created a mobile phone charger, a water pump and a windmill, each based around cycle technology.

Yasmeen H. Nsiah - Handmade Soaps:

Yasmeen hand crafts soaps from natural, locally abundant, ingredients like shea, eucalyptus and coconut. She sells them at a premium price in her small store in Accra, citing that her native, minimally processed products are much better for the body than highly processed chemically stabilised American brands which, as they are imported, also command a premium price. A business savvy eco-chic, Yasmeen is a one-woman Lush - what's not to love?

Stephen Gerrard - Bike Powered Water Chlorinator:

Stephen Gerrard (no, not that one) is a recently graduated chemical engineer from Cambridge and was exhibiting a concept-stage chlorinator. By producing enough electricity via pedal-power to pass a current through salt water, the prototype can produce a chlorine solution for use in disinfecting drinking water.

As I say, these are just three of many, many amazing innovations at MFA..

Stay tuned for information on the "Bamboo Bike", which is as it sounds, a bamboo framed bicycle, a "Plastic Bag Press" which makes clothes from a leather-like compound made from old plastic bags and a "Passive Cooling Fridge" which operates without electricity..

Photo credits to James Brown of James-Elliot

Introducing MFA 09 - 'Can't miss' BoP Tech!

2009-08-15T14:21:00.001+01:00

Well Maker Faire Africa is in full swing, stalls and stands sprawling out from the Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence and I like to think Red Button Design is holding its own amidst a bustle of new innovation & nascent collaborations from the obvious (water & agriculture) to the sublime (roboteers and traditional doll making - culturally diverse animatronics anyone?!)

Completely surrounded by dust and tech* but diligently on hand to blog the mind bending array of inventions presented: from traditional hand crafts, paintings & dolls, through eco-goods made from roadside trash, up to plastic fabrication technologies (made, in part, with old MIT kit!), robotics, cycle powered chlorinators, and agricultural rice processing...

I will endeavour to cover, in the detail they deserve, as many of these ... 'cant-quite-express-just-how-amazing'.. ideas as I possibly can over the next few days. SO if you don't already RSS us, get us on your Reader.

This is 'can't miss' BoP tech.

*(an interesting combination... I think our Camera equipment and Macs are enjoying the dust and humidity about as much as my damnable Caucasian hair!)

So... we're going to Ghana.

2009-08-10T19:57:00.001+01:00

Oh how I have wanted to post this!
No, it isn't just a dirty rumor,

Red Button Design are officially going to Accra, Ghana for Maker Faire Africa!

In true RBD style, flights, visas, inoculations and other logistical necessities have been arranged in less time than is theoretically possible, and we're off to Ghana in 72 hours thanks to some amazing ongoing support from some genuinely fabulous people.

Pleased for us, but still not sure what MFA 'really' is at its heart? Well now that it's all finalised, check out this great interview with Emeka Okafor (Maker Faire Africa co-founder) speaking about who and what will be at the event, recorded for the BBC.

Now you've seen that, I know you're as excited as we are and you'll not want to miss a stitch of gossip!
Here is how you keep ahead of the game:

Twitter
@JamesElliot - Tweets by James Brown, RBD
@RedButtonDesign - Tweets by Amanda Jones, RBD
@NubianCheetah - Tweets by Nii Simmonds, co-founder MFA

#makerfaireafrica - Maker Faire Africa official hashtag

and we'll be posting photographs to Flickr ... many more details to follow!

How Do We Define 'Community'?

2009-07-16T23:11:00.008+01:00

Charmian Love got me thinking this evening when she asked members of the Twitterverse to share their definitions of "Community". Hers is here but, not exactly known for my brevity *ahem*, I doubt I could even have asked that question in a Twitter-friendly 140 characters, let alone answered it too!

My characteristically rambling answer to Charmian's question is, therefore, below ;-)

1) A community is a number of individuals connected by the spirit of belonging to something synergic, or (to steal a phrase) greater than the sum of it's parts. To me the word 'community' evokes the notion "we're stronger together."

2) My conceptual community has an established set of core values shared by all members and, of which, the maintenance is equally and autonomously the responsibility of each individual. So the community is, therefore, self governing.

3) There is an established culture of co-operation to resultant mutual benefit which allows for the creation of a creative space to cultivate and grow ideas.

The definition I have settled upon is 621 characters long. Interestingly, it happily suits 'virtual' and 'cyber' communities as well as neighbourhoods and, I would assert, is the foundation for the happiest families I know.

It is also, I have just realised, pretty damn close to the definition of Anarchy .... oh well ;-)

Think you can do better? Go tell her yours!

Ponderings on Jeff Saperstein's RSA Thursday Lecture

2009-07-12T11:38:00.004+01:00

I attended this week's "RSA Thursday" lecture entitled "Vision Matters: Defining Identity - how visionaries can help us not only survive but thrive" by the wonderful Jeff Saperstein who I was Twittering in favour of throughout his afternoon session at Reboot Britain.

His lecture got, and kept, me thinking so my interpretations and resultant ponderings follow for your (hopeful!) interest. I do, however, encourage you to experience the 'pure' version by viewing the slides and listening to the full audio in order to judge for yourself!

Jeff outlined how we, as individuals, need to 'define'. We draw up definitions and boundaries of ourselves, each other, our environment and our roles, in order to interpret, understand and react to the world. If our definitions of ourselves are narrow they function to restrict us, e.g:

I am a marketing person <--> I do marketing things
This is not a marketing thing <--> I won't do this thing

If our definitions are wider, however, they seek to rightly distinguish us by skill and not restrict by implementation, e.g:

I am a person who facilitates communication --> I could be a journalist, telecommunications engineer, graphic designer, language translator, therapist (!), bar tender (!!) and so on..

The particular problem with restrictive definitions he was proposing (as clearly there are varied and significant problems that can be identified with labeling people in this manner) was that it stifles innovation.

As a collection of people restricted by our labels, be it a community, company, government or NGO, we loose out on a great deal of collected skill & talent as people aren't rising up to the challenge of taking on tasks which they could perfectly well complete. This is because they fall outside of the definitions they have established for themselves (or have been established for them.. yet there is so much to say on that facet I shant even begin!)

In this way, our restrictive definitions stifle our ability to try new things, to challenge and to innovate.

Innovation, he goes on to say, is the only path to increasing productivity and there are no limits to its progress. Clearly I agree, you will never become more productive by doing the same things, the same way you always have, with the same people you always did them with.

He rounds off this domino effect saying that productivity increases wealth and wealth is still the great divider between those that 'survive' and those that 'thrive' as illustrated by discussions of geographic, digital, socioeconomic and educational divides.

The interesting tie in, for me, was the assertion that the most important and effective innovation is the way in which we work together. This links further to messages I took from his "Reboot Britain" session around the common features of highly successful technology clusters being partly a 'respect for knowledge' but hugely weighted towards the concept of an open and flexible working culture where people are encouraged to collaborate with those unlike themselves.

When brought to bare bones it is a somewhat obvious but fantastically empowering message:

By not restricting myself in terms of the way I allow myself to be defined, by working flexibly and openly with people who are culturally/experientially different from myself, and by learning from these people, I can achieve great and unexpected things. Thus adding more to my community/workplace/family and becoming a productive and instrumental force in driving positive change.

(BTW, I'll also be at the Sustainability Project panel on Mon 13th 6:30pm - so shout if you're going :)

Pooling Our Talents *

2009-07-04T08:21:00.006+01:00

Spent last Monday's heatwave down in gorgeous Poole. Alas we were not flown down to laze idly on the beach but rather to meet with a team of designers / investors / manufacture, procurement and logistics / marketing & brand strategy, folk.

Again, it was one of those mountainous days. Up at 5:30am to fly at 8:40, jump first connecting train to make meeting at 12:15 (only a little after the 12 noon official start-time) Back on the 6pm train for a flight home at 20:20 and back through the door a little before eleven!

And, yes, I know what you're thinking. 6 hours does seem like a dauntingly long time to have the project (and ourselves!) under the spotlight but, aside from the crippling heat and my longing for the sea, the meeting just flew by in a haze of positive feedback and constructive points for development.

All in all it was an excellent day and we're continuing to work with the team as we speak. Should things proceed in this positive manner we may even have business related news to report!

* I wasn't going to... and then my better judgement left to get coffee. Sorry :-)

Printed Bag Shop win 'The Pitch' Scotland!

2009-06-28T14:14:00.000+01:00

Congratulations to Craig Smith, founder of The Printed Bag Shop, who was named winner of the Scottish heat of The Pitch 2009 !

We'll be keeping you posted to his progress.
Read the full article on The Business Zone site!

"Judged by a panel of experts including Jennifer Cheyne, Edinburgh entrepreneur and star of Channel 4's The Secret Millionaire, Smith fought off tough competition from five other small business owners to take the title.

After being made redundant and hit by spiralling debts, Smith set up the The Printed Bag Shop in 2007 with help from the Prince's Trust.

In just two years, the company, which supplies environmentally friendly printed carrier bags, has achieved impressive growth and attracted high profile clients including Coca Cola, Boots, The London Stock Exchange and Virgin Money."

SICamp Scotland ... Blogpost 2/2 - James' Take

2009-06-27T08:06:00.000+01:00

The third Social Innovation Camp (SICamp) was held last month at Glasgow Caledonian University. 60 people from across the UK (and Europe) gathered to help turn ideas into reality. Six back-of-the-envelope ideas for web tools that would make a positive difference to the real world had been previously chosen out of 133 applicants. The six chosen ideas, which included an online public planning tool (think google maps meets sim city!) and a website which enables flash-mobbing for social good, were taken on by a group of people with an amazingly diverse range of skills, from hardcore coders to services designers and interaction specialists.

Diversity, in fact, proved to be the aspect of this gathering that made it such an enjoyable and productive experience. Without exception all the ideas started off as rough concepts at 9am on Saturday and by the time we presented to the judging panel at 2pm the next day, every site was online. But not just that, one team who were working on a web tool which gives live bus information via txt message had a fully functioning demo. And the flash mob team (FlockLocal) actually arranged for a group of people to turn up to a communal garden in Glasgow and spend an hour fixing it up! Its incredible what can happen when a group of motivated people with a wide skill set focus on a defined problem, in fact the whole weekend had the feel of a FlockLocal-style flash mob, with lunch and dinner announced on twitter and the fantastic support crew from Gladserve running from team to team with the latest server news.

Each team was not only tasked with building a site, but also with defining the need, creating a sustainable business model, designing the site to work within the user’s needs and then putting together a presentation to show it off.

I worked with a fantastic group of people on a website which fosters and supports meaningful dialogue between local communities and the police which serve them. Named MyPolice, the site allows the public to share their experiences of the Police and allows the Police to respond, either individually or on more general topics. By encouraging people to talk more openly about both good and bad aspects of the policing service they receive we hope the site will be of true value to the Police, the public and support services.

At the end of the weekend MyPolice was awarded the idea with the most potential by the panel of judges and we have been given a range of business and technical support as prizes so keep an eye out for MyPolice.org!

* Cross posted from Social Design Entrepreneur RBD Design Director, James Brown's, personal blog

A Day at "The Pitch"

2009-06-23T23:22:00.004+01:00

Spent today tucked away in a breakout room within the Aurora building in Glasgow, alongside representatives from 5 other business all shortlisted for the Scottish heat of The Pitch 2009

The pitch is a Dragons' Den style business competition where 'business owners from across the nation pitch to a panel of top industry experts to demonstrate the innovation, market knowledge, customer engagement and financial viability of their business, competing to win a massive £50,000 worth of business related goods and services.'

I have to confess the day didn't start off as well as it concluded. There was some initial confusion as to the format of "The Pitch" including whether powerpoint was permitted, with some participants having been told it wasn't allowed and some (myself included) turning up with presentations prepared. In the end it emerged that while powerpoint was technically permitted, they had no projector or means of displaying it (*g*) So we all did without. Which was nice actually, I almost wish I was forced to present without it more often... (almost).

Also there was no schedule (or at least not one that was circulated amongst the participants) so we all turned up expecting a much shorter day than the crew had planned. For some this meant that meetings had to be jigged & trains home were missed, though no problem for us as we split up and James left to go about 'business as usual' periodically returning to check on progress and dropping off care packages while I stayed put at Aurora

So we went last, which gave me plenty of time to chat with the other shortlisted businesses: some new to me, and some entrepreneurs I am aware of and have admired for a while. SO, without further ado, lets introduce the competition!

The other pitchers in the Scottish heat were (in chronological order):

Russell Young - Proguard Plus:
Protective paint for Yachts and Jets

Craig Smith - Printed Bag Shop:
Suppliers of eco friendly printed carrier bags (@printedbagshop)

Andy Smith - Agenor Technology:
IT project implementation management software

Richard Burton - HoodEasy:
Suppliers of eco friendly printed carrier bags (@hoodeasy)

Alan Powell - Energy Mechanics:
Renewable energy services

And us. I was Pitching with James on hand to address any specifically technical or design orientated questions.

Our turn rolled around a little after 4:15. Previous 'pitchers' had alluded to problems with tech but the teething problems must have resolved themselves somewhere down the line as we had no such difficulties. The pitch went smoothly, technology behaved, and I timed in at an impressive 3m 58s.

The Judges ( Nick Price, Michael Canon, Jennifer Cheyne, Graeme Scott, Craig Patterson & Bill Morrow ) were great. I was impressed with how engaged they all still were having spent a long and unbelievably warm day stuck in a glass room under many lights.

Also, the folk running the day were really helpful and nice, as were the tech crew. Previous gripes aside, it is hard not to have fun, even under stressful circumstances, when you're surrounded by such enthusiastic people so my thanks and gratitude to them all for arranging the day.

So, what to say?
On the whole i'm pretty happy with the way my Pitch went, I got some lovely comments from the judges on my presentation style, some of which I am pleased to say made it onto the Twitter Stream. Other than that, however, I will withhold further judgement as the video will make it onto "The Pitch" website very soon allowing you to make up your own minds, and speaking of making up minds ...
the announcement of who is to progress to the finals of "The Pitch" is due to be made tomorrow.

Watch this space I guess??

SICamp Scotland ... Blogpost 1/?

2009-06-22T00:45:00.001+01:00

I spent the last 48 hours completely immersed in Social Innovation Camp-ness .. no wait, that didn't come out quite right ;) Still, the sentiment holds if not the expression. Unless it was Twittered to #sicamp I have no idea what happened outside of The Saltire Centre for the last 2 days.

Like the most convoluted of film plots I am going to start with the end, skip to the beginning and see if the middle sorts itself out in the interim, so bearing that in mind ... let me introduce FlockLocal.

FlockLocal was born in the spirit of the SICamp pseudo-mantra "using the online world to change the offline world." Using this idea we elected to create ~~ClusterFlock~~...,. ~~FlockYourCommunity~~... FlockLocal, which is a website and collection of associated apps & plugins to allow people to flash mob for social good. That is, to allow people who identify a social need to quickly mobilise volunteers to fill it.

Let me illustrate. We started to think about this idea in the pub on Friday night. By Saturday morning we had a fairly good idea of the user scenario. By 11am we decided we'd like to aim to actually hold a flash mob (henceforth to be known as 'organising a flock') 2 hours later (now 1pm) we had found the wonderful Glasgow Wood Recycling who were due to be reclaiming wood from a theatre set at Gilmorehill which needed loading into a van, driving across town and unloading into their community garden (which itself needed some painting and weeding). By 12noon the next day we'd assembled 15 people, done the job, and headed off for the afternoon.

Hence our tagline FlockLocal "Do Good. Fast"

But it wasn't just us!
The 5 other fabulous teams created the following:

Wee Day Out - A mapping tool for locating & rating disabled toilet facilities.

Fix the Freakin Buses (a.k.a "Hitch 'n' Bitch !!) – A SMS text platform for accessing live bus data.

AngelFish - Hyperlocal Micro-finace for community startups and business growth.

MyPolice.org – Allowing the public to give positive and negative feedback on the police.

Citipedia-An online public town planning tool.

.....and we'll hear more about them shortly.. in part 2 ... after I get some sleep!

but just before the zzZ 's hit, let me say a massive thanks to all at SICamp for working so hard to support all our hard work. We all really appreciate it!

Stay tuned for part 2.

Footnote: Glasgow Wood Recycling is an amazing organisation run by Peter Levelle to whom FlockLocal are very grateful and I will be blogging more about Glasgow Wood Recycling very shortly!

Thought for the Day..

2009-06-18T17:37:00.000+01:00

Today I was wondering.. how do you know when you've got a "good deal"?
What makes a deal desirable and how does it differ in different types of business?

These are my instinctive thoughts on the matter...

In traditional enterprise the definition is both parties thinking they got the better deal.

In ethical enterprise it's both parties thinking each got a fair deal.

In social enterprise it's both parties thinking each received non-financial benefit from the deal.

So, think i've nailed it? .. Needs work?
Or am I talking utter rubbish again?
Feel free to discuss, below or on Twitter

Shell LIVEwire "Grand Idea" voting open!

2009-06-14T10:30:00.000+01:00

Red Button Design are up for public vote as part of Shell LIVEwire's "Grand Idea". You need to register but you can vote for us to receive the £1,000 funding by visiting the LIVEwire website.

For this part of the award we were required to make a 60 second video, which would ordinarily have been a fun activity. However, email problems on Shell's end meant that I missed receiving this information until a stressed out researcher called to apologise. Anyway, I ended up doing our video pitch at about 5am in my pyjamas in order to meet the 9am next-morning deadline. Accordingly my hands are all of me that actually feature ;) Still, it's not too shabby an effort in our opinion.

Curious yet? Good good..
Now simply log in to view the 8 competing videos displayed on the home page. The voting buttons are just under each video and you only get one vote, so choose wisely!*

Voting is open until June 30th.

Pass the message on!

*well, choose us!

Press & Media for the NLS Environmental Innovation Award.

2009-05-30T21:23:00.003+01:00

The press wagon has been laggard getting moving on this one but over the last week, slowly and surely, the releases and announcements have been made.

Firstly, the NLS have issued a statement of congratulations and uploaded their Official Press Release announcing us as the winners of the Innovation Award for Environmental Technology.

NLS commercial director Ian Rippin issued the following comment:
“We are delighted to present this award to Red Button Design. Science innovation is at the heart of what we do at NLS and our support of this award underlines our passion for developing new ways of doing things. Congratulations to our worthy winners, Red Button Design.”

In addition there's a little voxpop below which was taken on the night (and demonstrably, by my near-laughter, fairly late on in the night, well after the bar opened!)

A full list of winners from the night can be found alongside the official press release on the Sustainability Live website.

Red Button Design win NLS Environmental Innovation Award.

2009-05-21T10:22:00.007+01:00

Having been as pleased as I was to announce that our water sanitation device "ROSS" made it into the finals of "The 2009 NLS Innovation Awards for Environmental Technology" I am now very excited to announce that, at a black tie event on Tuesday night, we went on to win the award!

While it is true to say that we have been fortunate enough to receive ... a fair few awards in the last 2 years it is also correct that (with the exception of perhaps the 'Wall Street Journal Innovation Award' some 18 months ago) these have not often been in recognition of the scientific and technical achievements we have made.

The National Laboratory Service (NLS) Awards, however, are judged using a strict set of scientifically demanding criteria and we are thrilled that the technical progress we have made has been recognised by winning an award from such a reputable and influential organisation with such an unrivalled reputation for scientific excellence.

I will be following up this post with a collection of some of the press and media surrounding the event, very soon!

Shine 09 & Web 2.0

2009-05-19T18:27:00.002+01:00

Well I have just about come down from the high of "Shine", the Unconference for Social Entrepreneurs, which ran Friday & Saturday last week. As I briefly blogged on the Friday, Shine represented a thoroughly enjoyable, inspiring, buzz of ideas, enthusiasm and (critically) caffeine.

According to The School for Social Entrepreneurs:
"The four partners started the event because they felt there was a need for an accessible, affordable, practical, well-networked, dynamic event that was less about long powerpoints and plenary speeches, and more about one-to-one support and moving your business on."
And I have to say I agree with both the premise and the execution of the idea.

I was particularly interested in how well this event translated itself to Twitter. You only need to browse through the Hashtag #shine09 to see how actively the event was reported by UnConference delegates and followed by those unable to attend. Increasingly I am coming to the conclusion that a good Twitter following can make or break an (un)conference and I had similar discussions at the highly Twittered Engage Invest Exploit Conference in Edinburgh last month (Hashtag #eie09).

For example, on the Saturday of Shine I hosted a scheduled, round table, discussion bearing the rather grand title "'Real & Perceived Barriers to UK Investment for Global Projects". I was asked to do so after a conversation which sprung up around my Tweet "Fed up of the misguided & labored notion that a social enterprise worth UK funding has to have beneficiaries within the UK"

It was advertised (optimistically in my nervous opinion!) as being an opportunity for 'provocative conversation' though I need not have worried. A brilliant hour or so was spent exploring common problems and barriers to investment, not only by the 15 or so people present in the room but, as some of us were Twittering, we had followers and contributors from the global Twittersphere! Most notably @cliffprior and @jameselliot chatting with me and @davedawes.

Furthermore it looks as if the roundtable discussion produced an idea that is going to translate to a longer, larger discussion on Ning and result in a sort of democratic, crowd sourced, crowd funded, international, endowment investment fund (!) inspired by the likes of Kiva, Zopa and MyFootballClub

....Oh I feel a web 2.0 / Social Entrepreneurship Blog post coming on! :)

It'll have to wait though, I'm off to the NLS Awards tonight. Wish me luck!

Social Enterprise - Powered By Coffee!

2009-05-15T15:40:00.001+01:00

In the run up to the NLS Awards on Tuesday I am in London having a crazy-busy few days networking, chatting, collaborating, debating, generally drinking loads of coffee with young, cool, like minded social entrepreneur / innovator types :)

I can only hope that my enthusiasm comes across loud and clear as I will find it difficult to expressly articulate just how much fun I am having and how much great business is being done!

The fun started yesterday when I had the absolute pleasure of chatting to Ian Wallis head of Entrepreneur TV for cmypitch.com over a coffee in Adam Street and continues in full force today at "Shine" the Unconference for Social Entrepreneurs.

There is far too much of interest going on just now for me to blog about it all but check out the action on Twitter! (Hashtag #shine09 !)

Shortlisted for Scientific Award by The NLS.

2009-05-12T22:45:00.001+01:00

I am thrilled to announce that our water transport, sanitation and storage device "ROSS" (due for commercial launch Feb 2010) has made it through multiple rigorous judging stages in order to be named one of 7 finalists for "The 2009 NLS Innovation Awards for Environmental Technology".

The National Laboratory Service (NLS) Awards are judged using a strict set of scientifically demanding criteria and we are thrilled that the significant technical progress we have made in the last 9 months is being recognised by such a reputable and influential organisation with such an unrivalled reputation for scientific excellence.

The winner of the NLS Innovation Award for Environmental Technology will be announced at a black tie dinner on May 19th at the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham, as part of Sustainabilitylive! 2009.

Kofi Annan's Astonishing Facts

2009-05-11T01:52:00.003+01:00

"4% of the 225 richest men's wealth could provide for entire globe: basic education, basic health care, adequate food, clean water and safe sewers. "

"Kofi Annan's Astonishing Facts"

(Courtsey of the New York Times News Service and taken from the United Nations Human Development Report)

Every year the United Nations Human Development Report looks for a new way to measure the lives of people. Putting aside faceless statistics like per capita gross domestic product, the report burrows into the facts about what children eat, who goes to school, whether there is clean water to drink, and so on. This year, the report takes its first look at what people have--from simple toilets to family cars--and what proportion of the world's goods and services are consumed, comparatively, by the rich and the poor. The pie is huge--the world's consumption bill is $24 trillion a year--but some servings are very small indeed.

The haves. The richest fifth of the world's people consumes 86% of all goods and services while the poorest fifth consumes just 1.3%. Indeed, the richest fifth consumes 45% of all meat and fish, 58% of all energy used and 84% of all paper, has 74% of all telephone lines and owns 87% of all vehicles.

Natural resources. Since 1970, the world's forests have declined from 4.4 square miles per 1,000 people to 2.8 square miles per 1,000 people. In addition, a quarter of the world's fish stocks have been depleted or are in danger of being depleted and another 44% are being fished at their biological limit.

The ultra rich. The three richest people in the world have assets that exceed the combined gross domestic product of the 48 least developed countries.

Africa. The average African household today consumes 20% less than it did 25 years ago.

The super rich. The world's 225 richest individuals, of whom 60 are Americans, have a combined wealth of over $1 trillion--equal to the annual income of the poorest 47% of the entire world's population.

Cosmetics and education. Americans spend $8 billion a year on cosmetics--$2 billion more than the estimated total needed to provide basic education for everyone in the world.

The have-nots. Of the 4.4 billion people in developing countries, nearly three-fifths lack access to safe sewers, a third have no access to clean water, a quarter do not have adequate housing, and a fifth have no access to modern health services of any kind.

Meat. Americans each consume an average of 260 pounds of meat a year. In Bangladesh, the average is six and a half pounds.

Telephone lines. Sweden and the U.S. have 681 and 626 telephone lines per 1,000 people, respectively. Afghanistan, Cambodia, Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have one line per 1,000 people.

Ice cream and water. Europeans spend $11 billion a year on ice cream--$2 billion more than the estimated annual total needed to provide clean water and safe sewers for the world's population.

Land mines. More than 110 million active land mines are scattered in 68 countries, with an equal number stockpiled around the world. Every month more than 2,000 people are killed or maimed by mine explosions.

Pet food and health. Americans and Europeans spend $17 billion a year on pet food--$4 billion more than the estimated annual additional total needed to provide basic health and nutrition for everyone in the world.

$40 billion a year. It is estimated that the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all and clean water and safe sewers for all is roughly $40 billion a year--or less than 4% of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people in the world.

Maker Faire Africa 2009!

2009-05-01T02:14:00.005+01:00

Q: What happens when you put the drivers of ingenious concepts from Mali with those from Ghana and Kenya, and add resources to the mix?

A: Maker Faire Africa.

"The aim of a Maker Faire-like event is to create a space on the continent where Afrigadget-type innovations, inventions and initiatives can be sought, identified, brought to life, supported, amplified and propagated"
- Emeka Okafor of Timbuktu Chronicles and the Director of TED Africa

We, at Red Button Design, are excitedly planning our visit to Ghana for Maker Faire Africa (#MFA09 on Twitter!)

MFA is new this year. We are very much hoping not only to support the event but to get RBD involved in promoting and harnessing African innovation as part of our ambitious new development plan to establish an alliance of manufacturing cooperatives, constructed to harness the country's extraordinary spirit of entrepreneurialism and innovation.