Getting the Mayo Open Coffee Club started

On Friday the 30th I met with Joan Fahey from the Mayo Ideas Lab / Belmullet and Maria Staunton from the Innovation in Business Centre at GMIT Castlebar, they have been organising the last and I think first Open Coffee on the 8th of December 2008 and had planned to organise another one in early March. Joan and Maria have done a great job in getting this thing started in Castlebar, but their approach was maybe a bit too formal.

The idea of the Open Coffee Club is to have a quite informal meet-up on a regular basis in a regular loaction to give entrepreneurs and investors the chance to get together, exchange ideas and maybe spark one or the other project. After talking for a while, we decided to continue the Open Coffee Club for County Mayo. We agreed to to make a few changes compared to the first meeting and bring it back closer to the original idea of the Open Coffee Club.

The Mayo Open Coffee Club, will be held every two weeks of which every second meeting will be in the Innovation in Business Centre in Castlebar. This meeting will be a bit more formal, as we want to get people to come forward and present their business, ideas or fields of expertise and give them a chance to get feedback for whatever they present. On request we will try to get specialists from outside to speak on specific subjects, which the regular members of the MOCC can ask for.

As County Mayo is quite widespread, every other meeting will be held in different venues, all over the County. These meetings will be totally informal socialising events. We are now looking for sponsors like hotels or coffeeshops in Mayo to host these meetings.

The meetings will be on  Wednesday or Thursday between 11.30 am and 12.30pm. This will give us the chance to extend our meeting into lunchtime. The exact dates and venues will be announced soon!