Tuesday 17 April 2012

Show me the money! ('cos I'm having to look all over the bloomin' place for it)

What becomes clear as you become another year older on this planet is that Welsh people are very intelligent, clever and innovative...but frankly hopeless at co-ordinating things.

For a nation that is renowned for having people that talk a lot, we are seemingly not very good at talking to (or working with) each other.

I cite my latest example -there are some wonderful people creating (or wanting to create) brilliant stuff on mobiles or which will help us all have better lives, and there are bodies and companies willing to provide seed funding for that or some money to get it off the ground.

But finding these people, my friend, is like trying to find a Cup winning medal in the Bridgend Town FC trophy cabinet. In other words, it's there..but it's getting too hard to find it.

In the past week, I have heard about two pots of funding (one worth half a million pounds, the other a more modest amount from Bridgend Council to develop hyperlocal mobile initiatives) by luck. One was a passiing comment on Facebook, the other retweeted by a friend on Twitter.

Why is it such a lottery to get a stab at this money? That is not the way it should be advertised. It seems the organisations handing out this money are not doing their best to promote that this support is available. Surely if the end game is to create something wonderful with this money, you would want as many talented Welsh digital types knowing about it, wouldn't you?

Now, in the olden days it was easy. You'd publicise it in the Western Mail and Bob's your uncle - everyone knew. Problem is, the geeks of Wales don't read the paper copy of the Western Mail these days. They are more likely to read blogs from various groups like Hacio'r Iaith in Welsh or find out through various meet ups like TEDXCDF or local User Groups.

So, if the people with the money want to get a product which will win them praise and help their tax payers, they need to spread the funding information further - to where the geeks are.

I am happy to be the conduit and create a list of funding opps if needs be. But someone needs to do it. There needs to be a central list of money available, otherwise it will be the ususal suspects picking up the cash and growth in innovation will vanish.

Before I finish, two disclaimers. 1) To start off by totally contradicting what I said above, I'm actually not a great believer in projects being reliant on funding like this.

I think any business needs to stand on its own two feet eventually and I would hate to see more funding like this because I think it could create a laissez-faire attitude to actually making money. However, I do understand the value of this money as a good way to kick start a potentially good business.

2)I'm not planning to bid for any of this money...but if you are and you need some help with the bid, you know where I am ;)

1 comment: