Hello visionaries!

We're back for our second meetup and this time, to coincide with JEEcamp, we're having an entrepreneurship special! It will take place at Urban Coffee Co on Church Street, Birmingham at 6pm on Thursday 20th May. Add it to your diary now!

The Entrepreneurial Special

If you believe the likes of Jeff Jarvis, Clay Shirkey and many journalism courses these days, the future of journalism is entrepreneurial.

Jarvis: "I see openings...to compete with the dying relics by starting highly targeted, ruthlessly relevant new news businesses at incredibly low cost and low risk.”

It paints a picture of a landscape of large organisations, surrounded by & supplemented by smaller, nimble and creative journalism businesses. Whether that's an online magazine, a multimedia studio, data mining or investigative journalism agency.

But how do you go about being entrepreneurial? What skills and info do you need to set up your own news business?

Well, lucky for you we have a special speaker to help answer those questions. Former Birmingham Post editor and now editor of The Business Desk West Midlands, Marc Reeves will talk about his experiences of taking the entrepreneurial plunge and answering those key questions.

Once Marc has talked about his experiences we'll open up for some questions and discussions so be having a think about what subjects you'd like to explore like; What makes a good business idea? How do you launch a startup? What are the pitfalls to watch out for?

JEEcamp fringe

With JEEcamp being so close we've teamed up with Paul Bradshaw's event to make this FoN event a 'fringe' event for the conference which takes place the following day. JEEcamp takes place on Friday 21st May from 10am to 4pm (after which we move to the pub) at The Bond in Digbeth, Birmingham.

You can find more details, including the agenda for the semi-unconference, on the JEEcamp website.

Urban Coffee Co

Our venue for this meetup will be Urban Coffee Co who are very kindly staying open late to accommodate us. They will be serving delightful tea and coffee as well as a selection of alcohol and, interestingly, Coftails!

Hope you can all make it!