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Friday 2nd was the first time I had attended a MiniBar session, this time it was MiniBar4, held near Liverpool Street. I wasn’t really sure of the format, but it was basically a chance for developers and investors to get together with a bit of free beer thrown in!

Each potential project was given a five minute slot to present their idea or website, and questions were taken at the end. The following sites were presented:

• sellaband.com
  The basic premise is that “believers” invest in shares of new acts, so they can raise $50K to record an album. Each share is for $10 and will guarantee the believer one copy of the resulting CD. So buy $50 of shares and you get 5 CDs. Once the $50K has been raised, the website puts the band in touch with producers and the recording goes ahead. At any time before the full amount is raised, either band or believers may withdraw their offers. Two acts have already raised the neccessary capital and a third is well on the way.
• spikesource.com
  Is a site for the Open Source community to collaborate and set standards for business-ready applications
• flirtnik.com
  Billed as “Smart personals for smart people”, it’s apparently the first Web2.0 dating site, using folksonomy tagging. Users are able to add relevent tags for themselves and others, which can then be searched. Results can be filtered out on the basis of gender etc.
• play.tm
  Site aimed at gamers and has loads of news about the latest gear, games, etc. Also has community section.
• metaweather.com
  The site seems to default to Chinese (!), which was slightly disconcerting. It is an automated weather data aggregator that take the weather predictions from various forecasters and calculates the most likely outcome.
• rouq.com
  An unusual search engine which brings up thumbnails of the results pages.
• trustedplaces.com
  A site where users can rate restaurants, shops, or other places, and tag them with relevent meta data. You can play the tastefinder game, which will then match your tastes with other users on the site, in order that you get the recommendations which are most appropriate to you.
• openrightsgroup.org
  The last presentation was from the Open Rights Group, telling us about the work they are doing spreading the word on copyright, DRM, and other tech stuff happening on the web today.

So, if you’re an investor looking to put up some cash for good ideas, or a developer looking for financial input, MiniBar is the place for you. The next one is scheduled for 20th April.

There’s also an event called the London OpenCoffee Meetup which does more or less the same thing. Only this time it’s over coffee, every Thursday morning between 10:00 and 12:00 in Starbucks, Regent Street. I’ll bear it in mind when I have my big idea and need funding!

As an aspiring freelancer, soon to be cast adrift from corporate life, I’ve obviously been taking all opportunities to get advice on promoting my services and attracting clients. Three great posts have come to light in the past couple of weeks:

• First up, Andy Budd lists 7 Habits of a Highly Successful Freelance Web Designer - some great tips, and ones I shall be keeping in mind for my own career development.
• Andy also raises some interesting questions in his Blogging For Business and Pleasure article. One way to raise your profile in the web sphere is to blog regularly, and whilst it might not attract huge numbers of clients beating down your door (depending on their tech-savvy research), it can certainly pay dividends in terms of securing freelance work with other design companies, for instance. Andy employs freelancers on a regular basis, and says:
  

  By building your reputation as an expert, people will be happy using your services and recommending you to others. Blogging is a particularly good way of doing this and is something I highly recommend. When looking for a new freelancer I’ll get a much better sense of their interests and abilities though their blog than I’d ever get from reading a resume.

• One of Andy’s recommendations is to get a killer portfolio. On this theme, Jeff Veen gives us Five Steps to a Better Design Portfolio. Again, lots of good advice from people that have been there and done it (and done it very well).

Back to the networking theme…
I’ve just attened a two-day workshop, run by Penna, which helps people with their career transitions - what a nice way of saying “redundancy”, LOL. One statistic to come out of that was the fact that only 10-20% of new appointments are actually filled via advertised recruitment - the rest come from personal recommendations or individuals targeting the right people with their resumes. I was really surprised by how low that figure was, but our course leader pointed out that most people will spend their energies concentrating on this 20% and completely ignore the other 80% of, albeit hidden, opportunities.

Networking in a formal, business sort of environment has always struck me as particularly dull, but I’ve had a great time at recent geek events, chatting over a beer, and getting to know people. Now that sort of networking, I could really get to enjoy!

And of course, it’s not a case of bounding up to people and saying “gizza job!” - oh, no. The seeds might be planted now, but the rewards might not be reaped for months or even years. It’s a long term bet, but one in which it’s well worth investing.

I was perusing Derek Featherstone’s blog the other day (entitled Box of Chocolates, which immediately got my attention!) when I came across two articles of interest about success in business:

Five Business Mistakes I’ve Made
Ten Smart Moves to Improve your Business

Both contain wise words, which are now of particular relevence to me, since I heard yesterday that my current employer has agreed to let me take voluntary redundancy in the New Year. Looks like I’ll be working my notice and then free to set up my own freelance design & development company with my payoff! All very exciting, and just a little scary; but I’m looking forward to the challenge immensely.

Several friends are currently in the process of throwing in the towel with corporate life and starting their own business or freelancing, and I’ve come across several useful articles recently which are relevent to the subject. Here are a few:

• First up, Philip Wilkinson asks if you are ready to start your own business? He should know, he’s done it before, and is a successful web entrepreneur.
• Kevin Potts provides tips from A List Apart on Starting a Business: Advice From The Trenches
• Jason Fried gives handy advice on how to get on with work, rather than succumbing to all those distractions which hinder productivity - like IM, email etc!
• And Ryan Carson dangles the tantalising carrot in front of our noses that you can actually be more productive working a four-day week.

I’ll add some more as and when I find them.