Melbourne Silicon Beach is back in action for 2016!
Happy New Year Silicon Beachers!
We hope all your startup dreams come true in 2016. Are you well-rested, relaxed, and ready to take on the world?
A new year is the best time to reassess what you have been doing. Give yourself the space to reset and restart by being honest with yourself.
Does your startup need to ‘pivot’?
Is your startup working? If not, should you fold?
It may seem like a cliche but success is the final outcome of a series of failures. Do you know how many times Thomas Edison failed before inventing the light bulb? 1,000. James Dyson tried 5,127 prototypes over a period of 5 years to come up with a better vacuum cleaner. The point is to never give up.
This year we are starting several new projects specifically designed to help YOU on YOUR startup journey, whatever that maybe. Whether it’s to start your idea, become a tech co-founder, learn a skill or gain experience with a startup, you can depend on your community.
Here are some of the projects:
SiliconSchool
SiliconSchool is short for Silicon Beach School for Startups. It was launched in March 2015 with links to MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) that may help startup founders and employees.
Check out some example of the typical courses available right now -
- Identify, Analyse and Launch your Startup
- Design Thinking for Innovation
- Create your own Internet of Things (IoT) Device
- A complete list of MOOCs for you to select from.
The intention was to provide support to the Silicon Beachers who were doing the online classes by getting them together in one place in real life. If you have done an online course, you would know that it’s a lonely way to learn. The drop-out rate in online courses can be as high as 90%. The initiative was received well with the biggest jump in new memberships occurring when we announced Silicon School. The graph below shows memberships from the start of MSB in Feb 2011. Unfortunately, we had to put it on hold due to lack of a suitable space and facilities. Mid-way through, we partnered with Collective Campus to deliver educational courses to you.
See the live stats here.
Now that we have access to our own premises with A/V facilities to run onsite as well as online courses, there is room for innovation. We will continue to collaborate with Collective Campus and General Assembly as our education partners while we continuously develop our online course delivery. If you’re thinking Periscope on top of the usual video, you’ll be right on the money! We look forward to your feedback and ideas on courses you’d like to see.
Building SiliconLibrary for the community
The SiliconLibrary was inspired by the stack of real books — the kind that’s made out of paper — within the confines of the small library in The Bitcoin Group’s office. We thought, “Hang on, why don’t we start a library for our community — stock books for startups?” We bought our first book last month for the SiliconLibrary. It’s called the Startup Communities by Brad Feld.
This book outlines the history and current status of Boulder, Colorado startup ecosystem which is regarded as one that punches well above its weight as startup ecosystems go. Boulder is a small city, much smaller than Melbourne. But it has the highest per capita startups anywhere in the world. We will use this book as our bible as we build the SiliconBeach Startup communities in Melbourne and beyond.
If you want to borrow Startup Communities, let us know but be ready to wait a long time as the core group and a few others have already lined up. It’s going to be a popular book. You can order yours at booktopia.
Donating a wealth of knowledge through a book
We are looking for donations of books from the community to get the SiliconLibrary up and running. If you have any books you would like to donate, please contact us with the title and the author so we can check out the book. The shelf space of the library is currently limited, so we are aiming to reserve spaces for books that are worthwhile. Once accepted, we will acknowledge your donation on the book itself and on the SiliconLibrary page on our upcoming website. Books need not be new, just have to be in good condition.
Beyond #MostLiveableStartupCity
Photo by Cullen Pope
This is Athula trying to hammer home to Victoria’s Minister for Small Business, Innovation & Trade, Philip Dalidakis the hashtag #MostLiveableStartupCity. The minister wasn’t impressed, putting forward his own hashtag — #VictoriaTheStartupState
In the words of Athula: “Okay, that’s understandable. He is the minister for whole of Victoria, not just Melbourne. So he has to. Let’s go with it, we can promote two hashtags.”
We will launch a plan of action to establish Silicon Beach communities in major Victorian Regional Cities. This will be submitted to the LaunchVic company that will oversee the $60million Startup Fund of the Victorian State Government along with SiliconSchool idea.
From our Silicon Partners: Epic events to look forward to.
This Time Next Year
We are supporting the TV program “This time next year” because it’s an ideal platform for Silicon Beachers brave enough to share their startup journey with the world. If you are in the process of launching your startup, get yourself to this info session on the 21st.
All Above Human
Australia’s leading tech and innovation conference, All Above Human, returns to Melbourne on January 29th. Grab your tickets by using the code beacher to get 15% off. This event was sold out last year, and going by the program this time — you might not want to miss this.
Collective Campus Open Day
Experience the growing, exciting and fast moving world of tech startups. Learn how you can be part of the booming Melbourne startup ecosystem!
Melbourne Silicon Beach Drinks
MSB Drinks is on Thursday the 4th February at Royal Melbourne Hotel — upstairs in the Heritage Room. RSVP now, it’s going to be big.
Silicon Beach Radio
Find out what its like to volunteer with Melbourne Silicon Beach and discover the benefits of volunteering with our latest podcast.
About SiliconNews
SiliconNews is a Melbourne Silicon Beach initiative that provides news, updates and resources for the Startup community. You can get SiliconNews update every week, with a big issue launched once a month. SiliconNews is for the startup community, so we want to hear your feedback, ideas and contributions by emailing us at siliconbeachmelbourne@gmail.com. Please forward SiliconNews to your friends who might be interested in joining Melbourne Silicon Beach
Charity De La Cruz,
Editor, SiliconNews
Originally published from Melbourne Silicon Beach
