Google Campus Warsaw interview on Project Kazimierz + call to action
I posted this on the OMGKRK group on Facebook, and thought it was worth sharing.
If you care about making University Education more entrepreneurial please listen to this interview with Richard Miller of Olin.
I am re thinking my approach - Olin is to Universities what the School in the Cloud is to schools. - maybe benchmarking against San Francisco and/or Cambridge is not ambitious enough. ...
here is the post I made 20 minutes ago.
Listen to the head of Google Campus Warsawhttp://projectkazimierz.com/rafal-plutecki/ in the latest episode
Several points to note
1 Focus not about brand Warsaw, or Poland instead of Brand Kraków but brand Central Eastern Europe,
2. Also note how Professional Service providers (lawyers, and esp bankers) in Warsaw are way ahead our our Kraków community. minute 19:00 in his response to my observation that we never see bankers and seldom lawyers, or accountants at startup community events. In Warsaw they have been showing up at Google Campus events.
With the honorable exception of Jan Marczyński Legal advisor and partner at JWMS law firm (jwms.pl) who is a regular at Open Coffee Krakówockrk.co/faq and is doing things the western way, offering pro bono advice to startup and Katarzyna Orzeł - who I met at an X Massive event (companies I am involved in are a client of both law firms ) we are not visited by many professional support services at events like Startup Stage, Hive, Krakspot, and Open Coffee... (If anyone reading this feels left out and offended, please post a link below, and apologies in advance) come tomorrow (this was posted on Wednesday 15th June) to Open Coffee Krakow and prove me wrong..
3. Rafal Plutecki was a successful entrepreneur, as Brad Feld says here and elsewhere https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXD5vt0xhyI the Start up Eco system must be led by entrepreneurs so it was a great hire by Google.
4 Hat tip the UMK (City) and UM (county) authorities and KPT - county and town and technology park officials do show up and are very welcome... The fact they join our meetings, rather than expect us to show up in their offices is fundamental to developing soft linkages, (other officials reading this please note)
An example of the government being ahead of the business community. :-)
5. It's great for Poland that we have Google Campus in our country. Of course it's a bit sad for Krakow that we no longer have more events than everyone else put together, but a thriving startup scene in Warsaw and Central Europe is good for us. Capitalism is not a zero sum game.
http://crossweb.pl/wydarzenia/?miasto=warszawa
http://crossweb.pl/wydarzenia/?miasto=krakow
6. I'm leading on AGH but if there are members of our community who can take responsibility for making sure we reach the new students in other disciplines, (teachers, music, actors, artists, geographers doctors sociologists linguists, farmers etc ) who will arrive in Krakow in Q4) get in touch, It's criminal that there is so little pro active outreach to promote startups and entrepreneurship in these communities, (and again if I am wrong post a link).
Call for action - essentially we need people who can clone what we are going to do in AGH, which is a series of regular networking events similar to Cambridge's Enterprise Tuesdays where current students interested in enterprise, meet alumni who have gone into business in an informal setting.
http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/entrepreneur…/…/enterprise-tuesday/
This is a leadership oppportunity - I can't organise events in every dept of the UJ & PK, but if anyone reading this wants to take responsibilty, let me know and I'll invite you to a meeting in September where you can find out what you need to do in your depts If you want to help with the AGH project, you are equally welcome. First and Foremost introductions to AGH Alumni who have started businesses of any description and who would be able and willing to join and contribute (time + energy - not money) to participant focussed events with students)