TechHub

There's lots of things coming up at TechHub. Take a look below, follow us on Twitter, sign up to our mailing list or check out our events calendar.

Crowdsourcing Real-time Data & Connected Cities: Di-Ann Eisnor from Waze

TechHubTuesday Member Drinks
Tue 21st June 6.00-8.00pm

A reminder that TechHub will be closed for the upcoming public holiday:

Monday 30th May

Residents can of course access the space as usual.

Have a great break everyone!

Welcome to a new feature on the TechHub blog - Member Posts. We're selecting a TechHub Member each week to tell you a bit about their company and product, and to talk about some of the issues they're facing or interesting industry news that's caught their eye.


First up, is Neil from Caped Koala Studios...


Neil & some of the Caped Koala guys in their previous digs before they moved to TechHub.

I’m Neil, CEO of Caped Koala Studios creators of educational virtual world Pora Ora. 

We’ve been resident at TechHub since Oct 2010 and you can see from the photo why we wanted to move here and away from the serviced office at Regus – paying £950 for a tiny desk and 1Mb/second internet connection does not compare to the more flexible approach at TechHub and their 100 Mb/second connection.

Our product Pora Ora is a 3D virtual world where primary school children can learn, play and interact online. All content on the platform is mapped directly to the national curriculum with a ‘parents’ portal, providing parents and teachers with personalised progression reports. 

Our aim is to foster a love of learning in young children, by engaging them in fun, social and educational content. The game offers children incentives including in-game currency, character progression and the ability to unlock new levels, enabling them to improve key skills at a level tailored to their personal ability.

Since moving to TechHub we have benefitted enormously from the  wide range of networking opportunities which have contributed directly to a number successes, namely: 

    Won the IC digital innovation contest
    Runners-up at geek n rolla
    Listed in the top-100 European startups in the Telegraph

We are now working actively testing our next release of Pora Ora which will be available to the public by close of play this week. This has many new exciting features that will kick-start the Pora Ora rollout. We have also engaged the BallouPR guys who sit behind us at TechHub and they will be running a number of events for us in the coming weeks so watch the space...

We have offices in London, Cork (Ireland) and Poznan (Poland) and, in total, employ 16 hard-working and creative individuals who want to put the fun back into learning!

In terms of recent news that's caught our eyes: we're seeing active increased interest in the MMO gaming space with the recent news of Tiny Speck’s latest  $10.7m round.

This really hammers home the message that there is significantly more money available on the West Coast US that Europe for early stage pre revenue companies. 

If you'd like to chat, you can find us on twitter:

@PoraOra
@Nelzer_1999
@capedkoala

A reminder that TechHub will be closed for the upcoming bank holidays:

Friday 22nd April
Monday 25th April
Friday 29th April
Monday 2nd May

Residents can of course access the space as usual.

Have a great break everyone!

Some journalism students from Westminster Univeristy have produced this short film on "Silicon Roundabout" which features TechHub partner SocialGo and TechHub resident Squadify. Watch it here.

Visit TechHub on Gowalla!

EVENT: From Book to Tablet: How Data is changing publishing

Wednesday, April 13, 2011 from 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM (GMT)

 REGISTER HERE FREE

Without metadata and standards, an amazing amount of next general digital activities would be lacking in richness and interoperability.  In the publishing space, metadata is critical. And, standards are pretty exciting when you see all the cool products they create. Both enable reuse and power digitisation efforts.

Discover the wonders of metadata and standards first hand with three experts in the space.  Speakers include Nicholas Tollervey from the start-upfluidinfo.com, Silver Oliver from BBC's linked data activities, and Madi Solomon who heads up Pearson's metadata / standards activities.

BIOS / LINKS

Nicholas Tollervey is a classically trained musician, philosophy graduate, teacher, writer and software developer. He works at Fluidinfo www.fluidinfo.com , a Betaworks funded start-up who are creating an openly writeable universal metadata platform. In typical start-up fashion, Nicholas doesn't have a job title and is involved in many different aspects of the business (but "developer" is probably the least inaccurate description of what he actually does).

Silver Oliver is an Information Architect at the BBC  specialising in ontology driven information architectures. He currently focuses on BBC News and Sport. Silver was the Information Architect on the award winning BBC World Cup website.

Madi Weland Solomon is Director of Content Standards for Pearson - www.Pearson.com  . She leads the development and management of Pearson content management and data standards to ensure the support of current and new product models.  Prior to Pearson, she was the Corporate Taxonomist for The Walt Disney Company and a taxonomy and metadata consultant specializing in rich media. Her background is in the visual arts sector as the former Project Associate with the Getty Information Institute in Standards and Vocabularies, and Curatorial Assistant with The Broad Art Foundation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWM4IFmHGIs

Well, it's been a busy few weeks!

This week alone we had the Massachusetts UK Innovation Economy Roundtable Lunch, a visiting delegation of tech companies from Italy organised by the UKTI, a tonne of French VCs hanging out in the boardroom, Atomico doing their Office Hours meetings here, a delegation from the Danish government coming to see what all the fuss is about, a photographer from Getty News Agency and some live webcasting from Elizabeth at SXSW.

It's all go here you know...

Not to mention last week we were featured in the Evening Standard as part of a huge feature about Silicon Roundabout. (Unfortunately the reporter came when the building managers were painting walls upstairs!)

And on that Roundabout note, if you do ONE thing today or this week, can you do us a HUGE favour? 

Please join our brand new Meetup Group here.

(See the details there for the Friday event and sign up)

That's it. Just click and join. We'll love you forever!

Meanwhile if you would like other startups, entrepreneurs, developers and tech people like you to join TechHub, then please spread the word! If you get someone to apply for an Annual Membership then email Tina@techhub.com and we'll look out for their application. A recommendation from an existing TechHub Members is worth a lot. 

As for desk spaces we are now currently full (yay!) but we are always on the lookout for amazing startups to join us, so don't forget to mention TechHub to great startups you meet as you never know when we will have even more desks.... ;-)

Lastly: Dear TechHub Members: Please bring in a passport sized photo of yourself for your brand new Membership cards which will really help us as we grow.

And don't forget...

TechHub is not possible without both its members and our awesome partners:

Pearson, Google and BlueVia

Plus: 

Orrick.com: Legal services for startups

Socialgo.com: Build your own social network!

Crunch.co.uk: Fast, easy-to-use, inexpensive accountancy perfect for tech entrepreneurs with a special offer for TechHub Members.

Bookingbug.com: a software-as-a-service platform that provides an embedded online booking and reservation system for almost any service business.

OK, on to the upcoming events!

Tue, 22 March, 18:30 – 21:30
LifeSort - file sharing product launch party. AWESOME PARTY!

TechHubFriday Forum
Fri, 25 March, 18:00 – 20:30
Open to Members and Non-Members, but Members come free.

29th and 30th March
D-Media Conference at BAFTA, London
Full-blown, paid-up TechHub Members have been offered some FREE places. email mike@techhub if you're interested. First come first served. You can also get a 30% discount (full cost £745+vat) by emailing events@d-media-network.com if you mention you are a member of the TechHub community and would like a 30% discount.

 

TechHub Residents Lunch 
("Pay-Your-Own")
Thu, 31 March, 13:00 – 14:30
Venue: To Be Determined
Please let Tina on the front desk know if you want to come.

 

TechHubFriday Demo Night
Friday, 8 April, 18:30 – 20:30
Open to Members and Non-Members, but Members come free.

Google Website Clinic
Tuesday, April 5 @ 7-8:30 pm
Improve your site's visibility in the Google index (run by Google)

FailCamp@TechHub
Sat, 9 April, 10:00 – 15:00
Details to be announced but this will be a great new event to figure out how NOT to fail with your startup.

 

Pearson Author Digital Mashup
Wed, 13 April, 18:30 – 20:30
Come and discuss the new era of the book!
Details to be announced 

 

TechHub Members Drinks
Tue, 19 April, 18:30 – 21:30
Details to be announced but put it in your diary

TechHubFriday Forum
Thu, 21 April, 18:00 – 20:30
Details to be announced but put it in your diary

 

Google I/O extended
Tue, 10 May, 18:00 – 21:30
Details to be announced but put it in your diary

(Please note that Member-only Events are for full members only. If you've been invited to join TechHub but haven't yet paid your invoice, please make sure gets to us before the date of the event, and email tina AT techhub.com if you need any help or a copy of your invoice).

 

On Friday we're having:

Our new Meetup event: Silicon Roundabout @ TechHub

Come along!