After some confusion about our room booking at the Copthorne hotel, we eventually gained access and the meeting began more-or-less on time. The meeting was chaired by Grace.
1. Brian Tailor of T.H.E group spoke about training grants available to Welsh SMEs. The situation is somewhat unsettled at the moment due to the demise of the Welsh Development Agency and ELWA and many whose funding came from those sources currently face an uncertain future. Under the circumstances, Brian was unable to give much specific advice, except that funding is available.
2. Requalifying for your Small Business Specialist competency. At the end of 2006 Microsoft plans to expire all ‘blue badges’ and make us all requalify. As yet, it has not been decided how to do that and Microsoft is seeking feedback from us – the partners – on how we want to be measured. A number of ideas were suggested, including a ‘mini-exam’ that could be taken online rather than in a formal test center. The general consensus was that customer references is probably the fairest approach. Generally it was felt that care needed to be taken not to disadvantage the start-up business or one-man shop who could foreseeably have only a single main customer in their early days. The suggestion was that the number of references required would be relaxed in the first years of membership, possibly starting with a single reference after one year, ramping up to three references after three years.
3. OnTrack Data Recovery Software. Mostyn Thomas of Astrix Integrated Systems was fortunate to win the data recovery software donated by Ontrack a few meetings ago. Mostyn gave a brief demonstration of the software and described what he thought of it. He also compared and contrasted to another data recovery product that his company uses.
4. Future meetings of SWSBSG. After the confusion over the hotel booking this subject became particularly relevant. It was stated that although Microsoft had not formally withdrawn funding, they were expected to do so imminently. Tony Smith of Computer Consult had investigated a number of venues in the Cardiff , Wenvoe and Penarth areas. The venues were in pubs and leisure centers. Mostyn Thomas of Astrix Integrated Systems said that he could book the training room in the Venture Wales offices in Abercynon at a reduced rate. The training room has full meeting facilities, a kitchen and internet access can be arranged. This seemed ideal so the meeting agreed that we would try the Venture Wales offices. Sincere thanks to both Tony and Mostyn for their respective initiatives.
5. Funding. Henceforth the group will need to pay its way. The Venture Wales meeting room will cost around £40 per meeting. Given the relatively small size of the group, it was felt appropriate to handle this informally for the time being. We’ll have a whip-round at each meeting to cover the costs of the room hire. This is likely to result in a cost of around the £5 per head per meeting.
As part of the venue/funding discussion, a concern was expressed that the group should think about becoming more formally organised and having a more well defined membership system, so that benefits of membership only go to those who actually pay membership fees.
That’s it for now, hope to see you all at the May meeting at the new venue (I’ll post details nearer the time).