Nur Ahmad Furlong

Tag: coffee

  • VeloCITI Session #1: Getting our Values in order

    For the 15 start-up businesses chosen to be on the VeloCITI 2008 program, today, March 18, was a truly inspirational and profoundly introspective day.

    See more about What VeloCITI is?

    We started off at 9 waking up to cups of coffee and a round of congratulating each other for making it onto the program. It was great seeing the familiar faces from the bridging course 2 weeks ago and re-connecting. I feel this year will unlock some really special relationships and it seems it already has.

    We were introduced to Judit from PeerPower, our facilitator and mentor for the day who was later joined by Mignon(PeerPower). I think I can speak for all when I say we were rearing to go and eager to find out what the topic of focus for the day would be.

    Introducing ourselves

    First off we completed a quick introductions/interview exercise in which we each interviewed one of our VeloCITI peers and had to introduce them to the team. We then focused on setting some guidelines going forward in terms of rules of engagement and how we as a group think we would need to work together to produce the best results within the team over the next 7 – 8 months.

    (more…)

  • Yesterday was one Great day to remember- Open Coffee and all

    Whfew! What a day, been getting birthday wishes(I’ve just turned 30) from all sides, messages of congratulations related to so many great things that have been happening lately and business looks set to boom in the coming months.

    I have to say thanks to all of you out there who have been keeping in touch and being great support. This buzzy period comes after month of struggle and difficulty and I’ve seen times of major doubt and disillusionment. My sites traffic has seen a huge spike, some nominations for a few awards and some prizes coming my way from others.

    It makes me think of a verse from the Quran which goes something like: “Truely, After Difficulty comes ease, After difficulty comes ease.”

    The thing is, this is only just the beginning for me. I look forward to building a great network, upping my game in the blogosphere, building a great business and solving some key problems for business and society along the way.

    Open Coffee was a huge success today with a great turnout. As usual Henk Kleynhans of Skyrove was there topping us up with free skyrove credits which we are all grateful for. Thanks a ton Henk! I finally chatted with Eric Edelstein briefly. Eric is the original organiser of the Open Coffee Cape Town Meet up.

    I also met up with the guys(Kilian & Nico) from Red Button and chatted briefly about their businesses development, cool things coming from their side regarding wireless hotspots. You can become a Red Button affiliate and earn some cash by recommending a venue which needs a hotspot. I think Red button could learn a thing or 2 from Skyrove’s event sponsorship approach.
    Callum Macdonald was around doing his regular Scottishly nomadic thing and promoting the wordpress meetup which has shifted to Wednesday 26 March due to the easter weekend.

    I had a very interesting Interaction with Frans Kuipers who I met at the first Open Coffee I attended last month. Frans is an open source enthusiast and a Drupal developer. We spoke about the problem Open Source seems to have with getting rapid uptake of it’s programmes and platforms in the general public. From my perspective it has to do with 1. Usability and 2. Communication and Marketing. Some areas programmers & developers don’t always have a tight handle on

    I also met Andre from Biz-community and a guy from Joyent who’s name I forget because his business card was a Joyent Logo on a sticker. A few others who I chatted with briefly were Scott Hayes(Encyclomedia), Michelle Matthews(Writer & Publishing Consultant) and Will Gubb(Wired Communications).

    Myself & Callum spent a bit of time trying to convince one of the above that wordpress is better for blogging than Joomla, I won’t mention who.

    I had to rush off after receiving a call for an urgent proposal, hold thumbs for me, it’s a nice big one. I spent the following few hours in Kauai recovering from the coffee scrabbling down a proposal just before the sun went down.

    All in all, another productive day of networking, doing business and sharing of ideas.

  • Open Coffee Feb 08 was gr8!

    Yesterday’s Open Coffee event held at Origin Roasting in Cape Town was a great success. I met some really interesting people and put faces to a few names I’ve come across online for a while. A little before the event I met with Callum Macdonald from Scotland who’s graced our shores with his nomadic presence for a few months. Very interesting guy indeed. Callum is amoung other things a blogger, web developer and nomadic entrepreneur with an interesting outlook on life and work. He’s the first person I’ve seen actually wearing a pair of black spot sneakers though I’ve read about them online quite a few times. We chatted a bit about business, life and even religion.

    Callum has gotten a WordPress Meetup project on the go, something we’ve all wanted for a while but have been too lazy to organize ourselves. He tells me he has plans to do a Cape to Cairo Trek in the near future.

    I met an American Philosophy Professor as well who shared his world view with us using a few very big words and some little ones in new and interesting ways, always good to know how others see things.

    I also met a Dutchman, Frans, who is an open source enthusiast and uses open source technologies to assist NGOs with their projects.

    Tim Shier was one of the organisers and it was also good to final shake hands in person and share a few words. As usually Dave Duarte was around checking out the scene and a few other online marketing and development types.

    Henk from Skyrove handed out free Skyrove credits worth 50megs which was welcome on the day as I had a few things to send off and download.

    I met a really nice guy who was preparing the coffee called Ghee, which he told me means humility. He’s from Congo and said he was pleasantly surprised that I spoke to him and ask his name even. C’mon people, where’s the Love?

    Business cards were shared and lots of networking and bouncing around of ideas of all types. All in all a great success. I think I might have had a little too much coffee though. Maybe we should start an Open Orange Juice or something :).

  • mmm, Open Coffee on tomorrow at Origin Roasting 2pm in Cape Town.

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    You might have noticed a post I recently wrote which took a look at the trend of drinking alcohol at Networking sessions and other web & entrepreneurial gatherings. Dave Duarte, the mind behind huddlemind.com, posted a comment suggesting I check out Open Coffee which takes place the first Thursday of every month.

    Tomorrow I will “God Willing” be attending my first Open Coffee. The event will be hosted at Origin Coffee Roasting and is organised by Eric Edelstein and Tim Shier.

    Arrive at 2pm on the first Thursday of every month. Bring your laptop if you want to do some work, or show people your site as there’s a wireless network.

    Work if you want… Or spend the time discussing ideas with other entrepreneurs.

    When? Thursday, Feb 7, 2008, 2:00 PM 20080207T120000Z

    Where? Origin Coffee Roasting, 28 Hudson Street De Watekant, Cape Town. call +27 (0)21 421 1000 for more info.

    Who? 13 members registered to attend

    If you have the time and value networking with entrepreneurs and web centric individuals pop around for a coffee and a chat!