digitalmission

We're very excited to announce our latest event in the USA, working with our friends at the amazing SXSW Interactive festival, we're announcing a one-day masterclass, "Doing Business in the USA", designed for international digital firms expanding into the US taking place on Fri 8th March 2013 in Austin, Texas.

Backed by SXSW and building on Chinwag's experience within the Digital Mission series, helping UK firms expand internationally this official SXSW event provides the essential guide for Founders, CEOs and C-level executives planning to enter or expand their business in North America.

Social Media Week September is almost upon us, next week, and for one year only, London’s playing host to its second week-long festival of all things social.

There’s stack of events, virtually of them free, to choose from, but with just a couple of days to go, spaces are getting snapped up fast. Fortunately a whole heap of events have been added in the last few days.

In a bid to find to navigate the schedule and provide a few pointers, I’ve rummaged through the list of events and picked out a few choice nuggets in a range of topics. Enjoy perusing them, and make sure you snap up a ticket quick smart!

On to the events...

Want to take your business global? An free half-day event next Monday during Social Media Week London, might be just what you're after. Find out how to use social media, online communities and collaborative tools can help build your company’s international business.

Opening with a spot of networking over coffee, we’ll discover Open to Export, the exciting new service from UK Trade & Investment and Yell, which help small fast-growing firms find the answers they need to develop their global potential.

Hear from We Are Social, Naked Wines, Nokia on how they used social technology to ‘go global’. Find out what hurdles they had to overcome, what worked, what didn’t and quiz them on their plans for the future at this free event.

On the face of it, it's tough to draw parallels between one of Britain's oldest publishing business and small, fast-growing firms in the digital, or any other, industry sector. But there's some useful lessons to be learnt here that apply to any business, especially those based on intellectual property.

Last week, the folks at Fresh Minds invited me to a breakfast roundtable with guest speaker, Mark Anderson, President of Strategy for Pearson International who took us on a tour of Pearson International's journey from book publisher to one of the world's largest education providers.

The deadline for UKTI's high profile Trade Mission to China (taking place 28th May - 1st June 2012) has been extended to end of play, Wednesday 25th April.

The multi-sector mission, which will be led by Lord Green, Minister of State for Trade & Investment, is timed to coincide with the China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) and will also include a "UK Day" Showcase with networking and bespoke b2b meetings, networking with Chinese government officials and more.

SXSW is just a couple of days away and the whole tech world is gearing up to fill their boots with the latest and greatest from one of the biggest events of the year. Last year the event saw attendance of over 49,000 from all over the world, with ±40% of that number firmly in the Tech camp - AKA Interactive.

So with the tech world watching, and the entire event on the look out for the next big thing, its no surprise that SXSW will be awash with a flood of new product noise, as founders and start-ups jostle to promote the next big thing.

So this year to help out, Publicate and Sarah Austin from Pop17 have joined forces with a host of companies (Rackspace and StartUpBus to name a few) to host The Founder Awards 2012, a big celebration of the good, the bad and the bust of the start up world.

It's that time of the year again, mince pies are coming out of your ears, that log fire smell is in the air, silly xmas decorations are up in the office, all in all there is alot of Christmas cheer about the place and to make it even better, we have another 'xmas drinks' to add to your list. 

Chinwag have teamed up with Kathryn McMann Consultancy and Put It Out and have organised a very informal xmas get together next Thursday,15th December in central London for some drinks, networking and chatter. We also have a magician for all your entertainment needs.

For the least three years, over 150 companies have taken part in Digital Missions to the tech centres of the US. The week before last, we met with a group of companies interested in heading East, to South East Asia and China.

Gathering at the offices of our hosts, Pinsent Masons, we talked through the outline plans that have been brewing at Chinwag Towers and had an in-depth discussion about the priorities for a potential Digital Mission™ to Singapore and Hong Kong including the primary objectives, timings and possible companies to meet on the trip.

Here's a quick summary of the discussion and an outline of the plans for what happens next and how to get involved:

It's award season and time for nominees to gather public votes. Having got your eye in with some thumbs-up, thumbs-down action on the SXSW panel picker, it's time for voting in the Smarta 100 awards and the Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition.

And we're chuffed that our friends and Digital Mission alumni ParcelGenie, Teamly and Zkatter have made it through to the Smarta 100, vote for them, or, if you must the other nominees ;-) - here:

UK Trade & Investment, the government agency responsible for helping firms develop their export potential and encourage foreign investment has announced a number of trade missions taking place this Autumn.

The six trips include five to the USA focused on cloud computing, app developers, 4G, mobile communications and digital media. An additional trip to China is planned to coincide with the UK/China Internet Forum with the delegation led by DCMS Minister Ed Vaizey.

IC tomorrow, a Technology Strategy Board (TSB) initiative has launched a brand-spanking new £25,000 competition for the University of Abertay Dundee to build prototypes to push the barriers of the games industry.

The Future of Games contest is designed to enable small firms to develop prototypes which can be developed into commercial models in early 2012. As part of the hook up with IC tomorrow, developers will get access to content from EMI, Tate, IPC Media and National Geographic.

I'm pretty sure it happens earlier each year, but maybe it's age. Policemen are all looking younger, too. The annual 'vote for me' fest that is the SXSW Panelpicker has opened its doors.

This year sees over 80 panels submitted from this side of the Atlantic from organisations big and small including the BBC, Iris Worldwide, FutureGov, TechHub, BBC, PeerIndex, mydeco, Somethin' Else, Madgex, Clearleft, The Economist and heaps more.