The Business

Inter-University Enterprise Competition was a roaring success, photos can be found at www.york.ac.uk/enterprise/club

The Pitch Competition

The Pitch is a new type of business competition. You pitch your idea in a 1-minute video. You don't need to know anything about business - all you need is an idea! It could be a new product, a service or a way of helping people. You submit the video (it's really easy, and you can use our PCs if you don't have a webcam), then the best ones are chosen by a panel of judges. After that comes the fun part - everyone votes for the winner, who gets £100. And if you choose the winner, you could win £10

Dragon seeks Apprentice

Business woman and start of the TV show "Dragons' Den" Rachel Elnaugh is on the hunt for a protege. Rachel, one of the UK's best known business women is looking for someone to take on the challenge of developing a series of franchises both locally and nationally. She is also interested in meeting entrepreneurs with ideas which she can invest in and assist with the development of. Could this be you? Contact Mike English on 01202 651322 for more information

Good Bye to Hugh

Hugh Fidgen has left the University of York to wander the earth for a year. Hugh's excellent work for the CETLE and the wider University is very much appreciated and we all wish him the best for his future plans. It is telling that as Hugh was always behind the camera at events there are no decent pictures of him to accompany this post. Send us a good one from China Hugh.

UK Events Database Launched

The White Rose CETLE has now launched the UK National Enterprise Events Database on the world. The database can be found at www.ukneed.co.uk. It allows event organisers to promote their event and for those with an interest in the sector to keep an eye on what's on. Populating the database with events will be an ongoing job and we've tried to make it easy for subscribers to automatically update the database with direct RSS feed.

University sponsors North Yorkshire's Young Entrepreneur Award

The University of York provided sponsorship and judging capacity to the Business Link, York & North Yorkshire Entrepreneur Awards 2007. Specifically supporting the 'Young Entrepreneur' Award, the University helped to select James Howell (23), founder of Stokesley technology firm IT-IS International, to receive his award at a ceremony held in the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall in York, hosted by modern day business guru, speaker and writer, Max McKeown. The University's PVC for External Relations, Dr Chris Henshall presented the prize.

James and his business partner formed IT-IS International to develop engineering and software products for the biotech industry. They currently employ a team of eight, and the business is going from strength to strength with a client base that is constantly expanding. James is dyslexic and suffered through the formal education system getting where he is today through self-motivation, ambition and drive.

Long Wet Summer

Now that the summer vacation is with us the CETLE no longer has a staffed reception. If you are a York student who is still here (and why would you want to leave?) you can still get access if you contact Hugh or Andrew in the Careers Service.

If you are interested in becoming a student intern for the CETLE in 2007-08, we will have three vacancies come the Autumn. Keep an eye on http://www.york.ac.uk/services/careers/unijobs.cfm near to the start of term.

In the meantime those of us left in York will enjoy the weather.

AmazeYourself Delivery started

Our first cohort is underway on the AmazeYourself Project. Training is every Wednesday evening from 6pm to 7:30pm, and covers Legal & Governance, Marketing, Selling & Finance in 4 sessions. We're using the CETLE teaching room to deliver the training, as it provides a good learning environment and comes with the AV equipment we need. It's also quite handy for the kitchen and cups of tea! (And slightly bizarrely some Honeynut Cornflakes, Cornish pasties and 2 bottles of wine - one feels someone has been living in there recently!)

Praise Indeed

Here is some feedback from students who took the Social Policy and Social Work module "Working in Organisations", which was created with funding from the CETLE. It makes good reading even if I do say so myself! Congratulations Robert Gunn for putting such a good module together.

"The Working in Organisations module has opened my eyes to the use of not-for-profit organisations with today's society. The module has taught me many valuable lessons concerning the establishment and co-ordination of such an organisation."

"Unlike most other modules, Working in Organisations enabled me to exercise an ability and interest that is often suppressed my many other assessment methods. The module has matured my patterns of thought, relative to my future."

"Before the working in organisations module I was unsure about what I would consider myself to be doing after graduating this coming summer. However the module has given me vision and belief in that I now know that my future lies within the management or even the creation of an organisational structure."

"Since handing in my dissertation my focus has been radically different than prior to attending the working in organisations module. I have also concentrated upon applications for summer internships and potential employment within both not-for-profit and profitable organisations."

Proms Mayhem

With only five days to go the CETLE is absolutely chock full of York Proms staff and volunteers beavering away in last minute preparations for the big day. It's great for the CETLE to be so full, and it's very satisfying to see that York Proms has gone from an idea being talked about round a table to a multi-thousand pound event which has captured the imagination of the City as a whole! We're getting calls from the council telling us how professional the team have been, and everywhere you go in town you can't help spot the white figures on the green background hanging from every surface. It's going to be a spectacular day.... if the preparations go to plan that is!

Library Satellite Zone up and running.

The Library satellite enterprise zone is now fully functioning. Previously the computers were unable to reach the university network, but computing services have now fixed this. The last things that need to be done are to load Sage Line 50 and a couple of other pieces of software onto the PC's.

Feel free to book the room using our online booking system!

CETLE Website goes hi-tech!

In an effort to allow the CETLE website to be kept up to date with the latest information, resources and news, the website has been completely rewritten to work with a custom built CMS, which allows authorised users (Staff and Interns so far) to edit pages on the fly and update them with new content.

We've even surprised ourselves at how well this is working, as it can cope with embedded YouTube clips, images, sounds, photos and more! Keep an eye on the website..

"The Apprentice" hits the CETLE

York Entrepreneurs latest competition - The Apprentice 2007 - hits the CETLE this morning. The exact format of the competition has been kept a closely guarded secret, and as I sit and type this teams of students are filtering into the CETLE resource room to find out their fate.

More coming soon...

Find us on Facebook!

As ever, we're trying to expand our web presence in new and useful ways, and given the explosion in Facebooks popularity on campus we've now got our own profile! Search and add "York Enterprise" if you feel like you can cope with the celebrity status it will bring. Either that, or simply check the profile for upcoming events and news.

http://yorkuk.facebook.com/profile.php?id=555747306

More Photos

Official Launch

Last Monday was the official CETLE opening, with an evening ceremony attended by the great and the good, not least: Prof Brian Cantor and Richard Harping (CEO Homeserve plc). The evening went extremely well and I'm happy to report that despite mystery-man-with-box who wandered through and set off the door alarm, everything went very well!

The main event was obviously the speeches and the opening ceremony, but we also had York Proms and The Yorker in to talk about their companies, and some of our interns on hand to talk about their activities and show off some of the IT equipment.

Check the CETLE website in the coming days for webcasts of the opening speeches, and the grand opening sequence!

Concept Wall Unveiled!

Last week we finally got the artwork installed on the big blank wall at the far end of the Resource Room. Dubbed the Concept Wall, the 4 A0 boards are there for any artwork, designs, concepts or otherwise which our tenants wish to display!

Have you got something you're proud of? Then print it out and stick it up! (Blue tack available at reception).

Derwent Satellite nearly up and running

The Derwent (D/C/009) satellite enterprise zone is nearly up and running. The IT equipment has been moved in, Universal AV are doing the final fit of the presentation & display equipment and all that's left is to get the network sockets live and the computers registered with Computing Services.

This week we've also figured out ways of hooking desktop PC's and Mac's to the main VideoConferencing unit in the Vanbrugh teaching room. This could make for some interesting workshops, and allow hundreds more people that could fit in the main room the chance to participate in an event! Should be interesting...

Videoconferencing system installed!

We've been waiting for this for about 4 months, but we finally had the technicians and experts from ASYSCO in our building installing the Videoconferencing system! The system was designed from the outset to enable the three White Rose Universities involved in the CETLE (York, Leeds, Sheffield) to hold meetings and joint lectures/seminars and now that both York and Leeds have their systems installed we'll finally be a postition to do this!



As you can see from the pictures, we've gone for a dual-screen setup so that the remote site can be displayed on one side, and the presentation or video displayed on the other simultaneously. It also comes with radio mics, the ability to control the movement of the various cameras and a raft of other features and buttons that we dare not touch yet.

The opportunities this system opens up for the CETLE are huge. We're already talking to the Kauffman Institute and several universities in the USA about joint sessions and events, and closer to home, there will be several White Rose events put on over video conferencing in the next term or two. If you have an idea how we could use this, or want to use it yourself then please feel free to get in touch as well!

York Enterprise Scheme 2007

Developing sales for a specially ergonomically designed table for use with lap top computers was the top business plan to emerge from the 2007 York Enterprise Scheme. The Scheme is run as an optional part of the University's personal development programme, the York Award and attracted 21 students from a range of degree subjects. Alua Amirova and Mikhail Sudakov, both studying Economics and Finance, developed up their idea for a portable and comfortable lap top computer table into a viable business plan with the support of the Scheme's mix of taught sessions, free materials and professional business advice from York Business Advisory Service. They secured a cash prize for their efforts.

Ideas from other groups ranged from the sale of branded wrist bands to opening a fully formed theme park on the outskirts of Moscow. The Enterprise Scheme can be used for those simply interested in the how of business plan development to those with a serious intention to launch a business or social enterprise.

Learn more about the York Enterprise Scheme at http://www.york.ac.uk/services/careers/ya_courses.cfm?ID=28

Blog and website linked!

It's great when things work, and i'm happy to announce that this blog is now interlinked with the main website! The site now reads the 4 latest stories and displays a truncated version, along with a link to the RSS feed. This should allow us to keep anyone who's interested up to date with our activities no matter where they look!

Library satellite zone up and running! (almost)

Some people have been commenting that the satellite zone in the Library (L128) was still not up and running properly. So having a few hours spare today, I took the time to walk the remaining kit up the hill and install everything which was needed! The room is now almost fully operational, with the 3 workstation tables (same as those in the incubator in Vanbrugh) sorted out. The last remaining task is the custom software load - Simventure, Sage etc.

Other than that though, the room is there to be used! So feel free to book yourselves in using the online room booking system on the CETLE website, and gain access from the Library front desk.

Now this is an enterprising student!

What every sports fan requires, although what happens if you're not paying attention and laying down I'm not sure!

Click here

Working in Organisations - SPSW module delivery completed

One of the CETLE's recent successes has been with Social Policy. Robert Gunn put a bid into the Curriculum Development fund to develop a module for SPSW entitled "Working in Organisations"

The focus of the module is to introduce students to the core skills required to develop and manage a welfare organisation. EG setting up, managing and funding a welfare organisation and how skills such as community profiling, social entrepreneurship, business planning, marketing, human resource development, and the like, can best be used to achieve these tasks.

The course ran for the 10 weeks of this term and we are waiting for the first set of student feedback forms to be processed! If you're interested you can log in using your York user name and have a poke around the course materials here.

Photos and panoramas

We're going to be putting out quite a lot of publicity soon, what with the official opening coming up on the 16th April, and our desire to get more students involved! With that in mind we've been organising some photo shoots - here's a taster!

You can see loads more images from CETLE activities in our Photo Gallery.
You should also check out the CETLE website for some rather nice spinny panorama things which allow you to view inside the CETLE rooms without leaving the comfort of your chair!

Welcome to the CETLE Blog

Welcome

The White Rose Centre for Excellence in the Teaching and Learning of Enterprise enables students to develop enterprise skills so that they are equipped to....

No wait. You can read all that stuff on our website, this is supposed to be a bit more personal! Here you can really get a feel for what we do, who we are and whats going on in our corner of campus. It's quite exciting really - the CETLE has been around (ie funded) for a couple of years now, but we've finally got our hands on our newly refurbished and rather swish rooms so we can start doing things in a very obvious and public way.

Doing things? What do you do? I hear you ask. Good question right now to be honest, as we're still very much in the process of setting everything up but we've made an excellent start: We've got a total of 21 top-spec PC's and 3 apple G5's loaded with some of the best creative and design software around. We've supported York Entrepreneurs Club in running several of their events from The Apprentice to VentureQuest. We've now got 2 high profile student companies using our facilities - York Proms and The Yorker. We're starting to put on some of the planned workshops and training programs - George has been training people to use the macs to publish material to the websites, and hopefully Sage accounts training will be on the way soon!

Thats the obvious and "fun" activities. On the more academic side we've also pumped money into a number of departments to enable them to develop and teach enterprise in their courses so that even more students get a feel for the skills and attitude we believe are vital for anyone to be able to succeed out there in the big wide world any more.

So.. here's the blog - what's going to be put on here? Well, photo's of the CETLE - a photo diary if you will, showing how the place develops with time and recording some of the changing faces as we progress. More posts like this - comments and reflections on activities that have gone on, or are being planned and hopefully some guest spots - perhaps some posts by entrepreneurs saying how they did things, and what they think about a particular topic.

To be honest, we're not sure - this is a bit of an experiment so we might end up a long way from where we think we're heading right now. It'll be a fun journey though so keep checking back!