Daniel Cremin

After almost 12 months of entrepreneurial muster, oiled with investment and having navigated the high seas of software development our focus as a company now is the development and management of sales. I recently cast our net with an email campaign to every council across the UK and trawled in a reasonable catch of local authorities interested to know more about our product and services. The demand from council was such I soon realised our need to strengthen the Civico management team.

Realising that you can only sell once to a client, I wanted also to seek opportunities to test out my presentation of the Civico platform and to receive upfront and honest feedback before going on to face the full rigor of what I hope will be excited clients. The only brand of people I can think of who would give this sort of robust feedback and support would be astute investors and experienced senior managers.

As soon as I figured out what I needed, KabamKazaz! An email from Angel News offering me the opportunity to pitch to both people looking for Management opportunities and would be investors, as part of their national ‘Pitching for Management programme’ which they are rolling out in Major Cities across the UK.

Since the Spring Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and Bob Neill, Local Government Minister have been urging UK Councils to open up their public facing meetings to local people and routinely allow online filming of council meetings as part of increasing their transparency, participation and open local government. Their call being to bring the public closer to their council and visa versa by harnessing the capacities of social web technologies to extend civic meetings and local democracy, especially whilst important local budget decisions are being made.

We have all watched the growing interest for civic and corporate transparency in the public realm. How dramatically this has come into focus with this week with the Murdocks and Rebecca Brooks facing a select committee to answer questions about phone hacking.  

I imagine this must be quite a common problem in the life of any business so I thought I would share it here to see what your thoughts and experiences are on the topic.

I recently commissioned an element of freelance work against a clear set of specifications with a clear deliverable and for an agreed price and agreed time frame. The time frame having long pasted an issue of concern is that the work was never completed and could not be used however we have received an invoice for some of the work that was carried out.

Naturally, we tried to discuss the issue through with the freelancer but keen to know what others experiences are on this issue and what are the legal positions.

Blup!

Wondering quite how I got from Rhubarb Radio to here, I absolutely delight in having another opportunity to work with some of Birmingham’s leading creative’s to produce a true first; a fully unified ‘Software as a Service’ online live democracy platform to enable local government to share the stage.

A few years I had thought I would simply develop my career as a public sculptor rather than driving a niche cloud Software Company. Although I have gone on to furnish a few public spaces with what I hope passes for Art, I

The development of Civico to this point is by far the most exciting and meaningful venture I have ever applied myself to! As we finally prepare to reveal our service to the world and I am opening up myself to the InaFishbowl experience, I realise my journey to take forward the business of Civico software-as-a-service has only just began...