An All Male Panel at the BIMA startup seminar in Google Campus

On Tuesday I went to the BIMA (British Interactive Media Association) startup seminar hosted at Google Campus, in collaboration with Rackspace. The panel was a great mix of large companies and startups, who all have experience relevant to those starting up today. The panel of speakers included John Webb from Rackspace, Benjamin Southworth, deputy CEO of Tech City, Joe Stepniewski founder of Skimlinks, Damian Routley the CEO of Glow, Jean-Michel Deligny of Go4Venture, Alex Wood, the editor or Tech City News, Drew Benvie founder of new comms agency Battenhall, and the chair Justin Pearse of Bite. However, it was rather hard to ignore that all eight members of the panel were male, and indeed, so was everyone who spoke on stage, including the welcome speech from BIMA and the closing remarks from Rackspace. This was picked up on Twitter Candace Kuss and Karen Barber, and then mentioned at the very end of the session by Craig Le Grice, the Executive Committee Member of BIMA. 

I got in touch with Craig who said that "Benjamin Southworth and Joe Stepniewski were fantastic additions to our panel - but both were in place of their respective female CEOs (Joanna Shields, CEO at TCIO and Alicia Navarro, CEO at Skimlinks) who were invited first but unfortunately could not attend due to diary commitments." 

Craig went on to say that "Speaking personally, I'm a huge advocate of - and fighter for - equality in our industry. I work with a number of startups and actively encourage diversity and the building of companies based on talent, regardless of gender, race, sexuality etc. I welcome the day when no woman attends a technology or digital focused event and feels she's at a boy's club."

This situation is clearly not ideal, especially as there are more than enough women who could at least match the experience on the panel. However, it is positive that people are realising that an all male panel is no longer neccessary or acceptable, and hopefully, these all male events will become a thing of the past. In the mean time, check out these future BIMA events and get involved in the discussion.

• 6 June - BIMA Thirstday (an event held every month on the first Thursday)
  • A networking event for anyone involved in digital. Every member is invited so the group is always a diverse mix.
• 24 July - Digital Hall of Fame
  • A formal ceremony to honour the five new inductees to the Digital Hall of Fame, and the inaugural BIMA Hot 100 list of digital's biggest talents. The '100' list is voted for and so represents a great cross-section of the industry.
• 12 September - The BIMA Awards
  • BIMA's annual awards, recognising the best of the digital industry, are in September. The call for entries is open now and the judging panel has been announced. Check out http://www.bimaawards.com/judges.php to see the great mix of judges.

Locomizer joins San Francisco Accelerator 'Momentum'

One of our startups, Locomizer, has just been accepted to the startup program Momentum, based in San Francisco. Alex Polyakov, Locomizer's Co-Founder, says "We are very excited to have this opportunity to get access to the Silicon Valley's network of mentors and potential investors."

Duncan Logan, the Founder & CEO of Rocket Space, said "Here at RocketSpace, we love meeting the top startups from all over the world, so it was only natural that we'd open our doors to great startups in London. The environment, networking opportunities and changes of scene will all help Locomizer continue the excellent work started at Collider12 to achieve their goals."

Momentum startups will benefit from RocketSpace’s startup services and access to their corporate innovation program, as well as spending 12 weeks at RocketSpace’s highly coveted San Francisco campus. They will be joining four other startups who have also been accepted into the program, which are:

• Fiverun
• Orbeus
• PocketMath
• Squrl

The 12-week program provides the class with weekly workshops, networking dinners, and an enviable mentor list of Silicon Valley’s top 50 mobile executives. The program team consists of Mario Tapia (AT&T, Disney, Yahoo!), Arte Merritt (Motally,Yahoo!), and Mike Rowehl (Admob, Chomp, Metaresolver, Skyfire).

The Momentum program is more of a graduate level program, geared to help accelerate businesses in the mobile space, as opposed to teaching startup basics, making it perfect for Locomizer, who are more than ready to take on Silicon Valley.

A New Report on Startups from Lord Young

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQhmOXhgNUY?rel=0] In his second report to the Prime Minister, Growing your Business: A report on Growing Micro Businesses, Lord Young highlights the increasing importance that micro businesses (those which have less than 10 employees) have on the success of the economy. You can read the first report here, which focuses on the first steps to starting your own business. 

Making up 95% of all businesses, Lord Young identifies that by helping startups develop their confidence and capability to grow, this also helps the UK to get ahead in the global race by supporting all the technological talent here.

Lord Young,  the Prime Minister’s enterprise adviser, said: "We have one of the best environments in the world for the creation of new firms. What this report endeavours to do is to help and encourage all those new firms to now take on their first employees and grow.

"Growing our smallest businesses would transform our economy — they are the vital 95%. If just half of the UK’s micro businesses took on an additional member of staff, unemployment would be reduced to almost zero. We need to raise the aspirations and confidence of these businesses and give them the tools to grow."

The Government hopes to help thousands of new businesses get off the ground by expanding their startup loan scheme. By opening up £230 billion worth of public sector contracts to small businesses, will help boost growth and transform the economy.

One of the most important changes he recommend is to remove the age cap for the loan, which is currently set at 30 years old. This would open the scheme up to entrepreneurs that would otherwise struggle to secure the necessary finance and support can benefit.

Also, Lord Young conducted a live webchat from 10 Downing Street this morning with Simon Finch of Finch Installations, who recently secured a £9,000 Start-up Loan, and Anthony Lau, founder of Cyclehoop and 2009 winner of The Pitch. They discussed how business owners can grow a successful company, and you can read it all here.

Competitions Can Help You Grow

WhichSocial, the software which allows you to measure and improve ROI from social media marketing, have a wide range of customers.  Their clients have a broad spectrum of social media activity, ranging from large brands with 75,000 Facebook followers, to small boutiques with a more select following.

One of their more exclusive customers, Me+Em, have been using WhichSocial to measure their competitions on Facebook.

Let's take a look at a recent competition they ran on Facebook called 'Share to Wear'. It encouraged users who have already liked the page to join in, creating a community, and by sharing the page allows potential clients to see the shop too. Using WhichSocial, Me+Em can also track how many clicks to the site this competition generated, which products were sold from these clicks, and which shared post generated the most interest.

Armed with this information, Me+Em have learnt enough to judge how, where, and when to run future competitions. They have data they need, but more importantly, they know exactly what to do with this data.

After they spoke at The Big Data Show, WhichSocial have been going from strength to strength, and are currently in conversation with even more brands. Keep checking the blog to see what they are up to!

HitMeUp Host Photography Competition

HitMeUp recently collaborated with the Red Gallery to help host their #R3D carnival in London. They took along the HitMeUp pin to see what mischief the revelers could create with it, and ran a competition for the best photo taken. There were some amusing entries, a few of which you can see below. To find out who won, check out the HitMeUp blog here.