QAASWW11 kicked off yesterday with a day of planning at IdeaSpace in Cambridge, UK. We had a meeting room for the day – kindly offered up by our new friends at Springboard – and plenty of instant whiteboard! As with the last work week I attended, it was organised UnCon style, which worked really well before. I will say that the first day is usually the most painful, as the entire team filled out their thoughts/needs for the week onto post-it notes, which gradually were organised into groups and ultimately sessions with agendas. Once this was finally done, the schedule for the week was set out. Although the schedule is incredibly flexible, it really helps to have this set of intentions outlined on the first day.
In the evening, the Springboard teams were kind enough to practice their investor pitches on us, and we saw 10 very promising ideas presented by an incredibly smart and enthusiastic bunch of people. I noticed a very strong lean towards mobile devices in the pitches, which really reflects the current state of the market and the direction things are heading.
After the pitches, everybody relaxed with will deserved beer and pizza, and we had an opportunity to talk with the Springboard guys, who are in their last week.
So ends the first day. Tomorrow we will be working from a cottage, which unfortunately we have already discovered has slow connection to the Internet. This won’t affect our work week sessions, but will be an obstacle during the time we have scheduled to get on with our day-to-day work activities, as well as communicating with our colleagues and community around the world! If you want to follow our activities for the week, we have created a Twitter hashtag of #mozautoqa.
Good luck to everyone at Springboard for the investor pitches on Friday, and thank you so much for inviting us to spend the day with you at IdeaSpace!