TechHub Founder Dating

Yesterday evening I was lucky enough to participate in Seedcamp/TechHub's Founder Dating event, and very good it was too. Held at the newly opened TechHub Towers, next to Old Street tube station in Islington, it was basically speed dating for people looking for co-founders for potential start ups. I met really clever and interesting people, with some great ideas, and I was thinking it would be great to replicate this kind of event up in my native North East - I'm sure there are enough potential CTOs, CEOs, and investors up here willing to give it a go.

One thing did strike me though: there is no fear of failure. Several of these people had had start ups fail on them in the past, and just carried on. The advantage of living and working in London is that they can just pick up a regular job until they recharge their batteries and build up a bit of cash for when the next start up beckons. There is just so much work around. That is one area where the North East doesn't compete just yet - we're perhaps not quite able to support that kind of job market flexibility, I fear, and that may hinder start up activity.

As for the rest... the beer was good, the wine was good, the pizza was good, and The Angel across the road is a proper pub.

For more information on TechHub, see techhub.com

World Cup Fever

What is it about England? Hopeless against Algeria, brilliant today for 75 minutes. Then hanging on and hanging on with 15 to go, with an easy route to the semi-finals as the prize for the group winners. Then, and of course there's a then, the Americans score (and you just knew they would, or Slovenia would fluke an equalizer, or something), and we're playing Germany and Argentina, and there's a bit of sour in the sweet mix. It's a law of physics, of course, or if it's not we should name one. Anyone got any ideas?

Microsoft "Dallas" Project - Fish or Fowl?

From the website: "Microsoft codename Dallas is a new service allowing developers and information workers to easily discover, purchase and manage premium data subscriptions in the Windows Azure platform". From what I see the concept is to allow an organisation to upload data or datasets to the site, to be sold or given away to registered users. Isn't this a bit like the internet, but with a twist? Anyway, useful tool for storage, discovery, and delivery of important datasets; or thinly disguised attempt to implement a charging model for the internet? You choose.

Footnote: I wish a certain train company would stop routing their onboard wifi through Scandanavia. Too many websites are now defaulting the language based on location and I'm afraid that I don't Sprak Svenska.