Sam Michel's blog

Startling economic growth, a colossal population with staggering spending power and a large, active and growing investment community are just a few of the reasons why startups are beginning to ponder the opportunities in China.

Looking to raise investment in the US? A big focus for the recent Space Mission UK trip was understanding the funding landscape, meeting and pitching to investors in Silicon Valley and LA.

What did they learn? Plenty. Here's the (slightly less than) 3 minute video download:

Witnessing the US election up close was surreal. I was lucky enough to spend that week travelling the length of California with ten of the UK’s top “New Space” companies for the third Space Mission UK trip.

Want a peak into how businesses are planning to use wearable technology? Take this super-quick survey (only takes 60 secs) and help uncover the future of wearable tech.

In return for completing it, we will send you a handy infographic on 'How to Create A Wearable Technology Strategy' as well as a summary of the survey results.

London's Mayor, Boris Johnson added his support to this week's Great Tech Expedition to the US, organised by the Mayor's office, UK Trade & Investment with support from Chinwag's trade mission experts, who programme the Digital Mission series.

He said, “We are a city packed with entrepreneurs who are experts in their field and my commitment to them is to provide whatever assistance I can to set them on the path towards international success. The opportunities that this whirlwind tour presents will convert into dollars for the companies and regeneration, jobs and growth back home in London."

The latest and greatest threat to our online security has been dubbed Shellshock. Apparently, it's worse than the Heartbleed bug. Fortunately, Tom Scott, has done a top job of explaining the whole thing in just 4 minutes. 

You've probably heard about it on the news or <insert favourite tech blog here> - but how do you test if it's affecting you?

We’re excited to announce the next Digital Mission trip, the Great Enterprise Tech Expedition, a collaboration with UK Trade & Investment, the Mayor of London and TechCityUK, supporting 20 of the UK’s fastest growing cloud software firms on a whistlestop 3-city US mission covering Chicago, Boston and NYC from 5-10th Oct 2014.

If you're a startup looking at the US market, there's plenty of hurdles. High on the list is immigration and which visa will be the best fit...if you can get it.

Today's morning session of the Robotics Mission, organised by Chinwag for the Technology Strategy Board and UKTI, visited Squire Patton Boggs who put together a very handy slide from immigration expert Beth Seal that summarises the options.

After five thrilling years, it's time for Social Media Week London’s (SMWLDN) next step and after much consideration it’s time for me and the Chinwag team to pass the baton.

The next edition taking place this September in London will be run by CrowdCentric, founders of Social Media Week and the team that runs the event in New York. It's a massive undertaking and we wish the NYC team all the best.

It's going to be the year of mobile. Really. This time it's really happening.

Mobile and tablets have been due to take over the world for the last decade, according to new research, it becomes a reality in July 2014.

Idris Elba, Kate Winslet and Steve McQueen triumphed at the Golden Globes. At least they did online according to an infographic from content recommendation network, Outbrain.

Unlike the 'real' awards where Winslet lost out to Blanchett, Elba to McConaghey and McQueen to Cuarón, Outbrain analysed 11,000 stories across their network, between 1-8th January reviewing the consumption rate and volume of stories published.

Got some data chops? Job hunting in 2014? Looks like it's going to be a good year for you according to recent data from OMI. Across the industry, marketers said that the biggest skills gap in their organisation was analytics with mobile marketing in second place.

In agency-land the talent gap for those with mobile skills was even starker with a 43% talent gap with analytics coming in at 30%. For recruiters and HR professionals this tells a story that's already familiar with organisations hard-pressed to find these skills.

The latest polls from research firm Global Web Index (GWI) show Pinterest having a very pleasant 2013 with a growth in membership of 150%. 

Whilst still relatively small in Europe with 8% of respondents having accounts, and only 3% of these active, the US figures are impressive with 34% holding accounts and 16% being active.

And there goes the morning.

If I could describe a deeply annoying start to the day, it would be thus: Wake up to discover that you're offering your Twitter followers a sweet deal on Jordan's (whatever the hell they/s/he is/are).

Then follows a flood of tweets, direct messages, emails, text messages and the other half shouting across the room, "your Twitter account has been hacked".

The speed of your website is critical. According to one report for every second that a page takes to load, wave goodbye to 7% of sales and who can afford that? Visa Europe estimating £450m will be spent on Cyber Monday alone.

There's all sorts of clever tech solutions: cloud-based servers, cacheing, content delivery networks to name but a few. Surely good old-fashioned comments don't represent a website glue trap?