scrambledmindsMixed up thoughts on the web world, photography and life.

I just read Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute – Government Calls For Comments over at TechNation which mentioned that the Commonwealth Commercialisation Institue (CCI) had opened it’s kimono for public comment.

From the CCI website:

As announced in the 2009-10 Budget, the Australian Government is establishing a Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute to provide a radical new approach to commercialising the best Australian research.

The Institute will support talented researchers, entrepreneurs and innovative firms to take their research and ideas to the marketplace.

…

You can contribute to the stakeholder input by completing the online form on this website. It is recommended that you read the Discussion Paper on the background and policy principles of the Institute before completing the online form.

This is great for two reasons:

1. They’ve started moving on getting the the money to those ideas that have potential.  In particular, opening it to the public for comments and a chance to influence how the Institute will operate.
2. They’re using social media (in this case a blog) to get it out to the widest audience possible.  It’s great to see the government’s continued push to use the web as a valuable resource.

Great work.  I beleive that Australia needs to get focused on fostering its entrepreneurial spirit and this is a step in the right direction.

Now I’ll have to try and contribute.

Have any of your heard of The Flight of the Conchords?  They’re a comedy musical duo from New Zealand with a fantastic album and TV series.  If you haven’t, you should check them out.  Here’s some stuff on youtube.  They’re hilarious!

I’ve found some peculiar inspiration from their song Business Time (linked above).  I’ll let you listen to it, but towards the end of the song is a lyric along the lines of  “… and you know what time it is when I’m down to just my socks?  It’s business time!  That’s why they call them business socks…”.  Genius.

Apart from being genius, and referring to something else entirely, this line holds some truth for me in my career.  After quite a few years in the Enterprise IT space, I’ve been thinking for some time that I needed to do something else.  I wanted a change.  I needed to strip back to my socks and start again.  I came to the conclusion that it was time to merge my love of technology, particularly the web, and my love of helping people.

Great linkage, huh?  But wait!  There’s more!

As a result I’ve decided to start my own thing providing training and advice to businesses about how to bring the power of the web to benefit their business.  I get to talk about the web.  I get to meet cool people.  I get to help said cool people.  Enough?  I think so.

It’s time to give it a go.  I’ll be at least able to say I’ve tried!  So, as the song says – It’s Business Time.

ps. When I launch, which will be very soon, it’ll be called 101 (i.e. one zero one).  The first offering will be training for virtualising your business to work from anywhere, opening the doors of the web through search and getting your goods in an online store.  What do you think?

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I’m a budding entrepreneur. I say budding because I’ve worked on some ideas in the past but with little or no success so far, no success by my standards anyway. I’ll continue to do so until something comes to fruition but until I see the fruit, I’ll remain budding. One thing that I have noticed though is that a book release to regale the populous of their success and how they achieved it comes part and parcel with becoming a successful entrepreneurs. It’s like an outgoing head of state releasing the obligatory biography. So the real question is, if you’re a budding entrepreneur, should you start writing the book before you get there? Which one comes first? Isn’t writing the book entrepreneurial anyway? Confusing huh?

Maybe I should write a prequel to being a successful entrepreneur called “The Nontrepreneur”.