Recently in Events Category

There are already a couple of regular social media events in Scotland (such as the New Media Breakfast or Craig McGill's Scottish Social Media Dinners).

The latest to step out onto the landscape is Media140 Scotland which kicks off in Glasgow on Thursday.

Keynote speaker Trey Pennington has drafted up a guest blog piece for us ahead of his arrival in Scotland.

The American, who has 85,000 followers on Twitter, is recognised as a big hitter when it comes to social media uses for business.

So here's what he had to say.

The Observer Book of Invention describes the difference between invention and innovation as this:

'Invention is turning money into ideas; innovation is turning ideas into money.'

When I went for my first surgery with Scottish Enterprise in 2009, they asked me whether we had considered licensing our idea to avoid the pain of both manufacturing and the commercialisation of a new product.

Whilst I understood the benefits of a grab-the-money-and-run method of getting Safetray produced and out into the marketplace, I did wonder what that said about our national psyche.

Are us Scots completely incapable of producing and commercialising products ourselves? Do we really want to define ourselves as a nation of consultants and service providers all selling to each other?

Rather than jump in with a kneejerk reaction I have taken a full 24 hours to consider my thoughts about the new logo for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

The background, reasoning and blurb about the £95,000 design can be found here.

From a patriotic point of view it was nice Marque Creative beat more than 60 other competitors to win the design brief.

It's not really a surprise the logo has sparked a reaction with grumbles about how people preferred the original bid design to just not being very convinced by the update.

The Insider business breakfast went extremely well with several members of Scotland's business community indulging in networking and debate at the Sheraton Hotel in Edinburgh.

We've done some live text coverage from the event here and sat down with a few guests for a podcast which you can listen to here.

But we also had the folks from the award winning Maverick Photo Agency providing us with video and picture coverage.

Photographer Michael Hughes took a selection of images over the morning and here are just a few.

What with holidays, snow, podcasts and magazine deadlines for Insider I didn't quite manage to round up 2009.

Rather than go through the big stories and events I want to do it a bit more personally and look back at the large profile interviews I did during the year.

Each chunk below has a link to the interview if you want to read a bit more.

The first one I did in 2009 was appropriately enough, given the current weather, in a snow covered Falkirk industrial estate with Jamie Rae of Redeem. He was extremely honest and open which for an interviewer is great.

Then I was off up to the Raploch to speak with Campbell Christie about the regeneration in Stirling, football and politics.

A slightly shorter journey saw me going downstairs from my office to spend an hour with Margaret Laidlaw from Tenon to discuss accountancy, entrepreneurs and the recession.

I was at the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants 90th anniversary President's Lunch this week.

Held in the Edinburgh International Conference Centre it was a mix of business people and members of the trade body.

Star draw was undoubtedly CIMA president Aubrey Joachim who flew in for a whistle stop engagement in Scotland.

After the event he took the time to sit down with me for a short interview.

I have mentioned I was a judge for the Entrepreneurial Exchange awards on my twitter and also in the paper's leader column but thought it was worthy of a bit more explanation.

For the sake of full disclosure Business7 is the media partner for the event.

To set the scene I dumped my car at Linlithgow Train Station on Wednesday and made my way through to Glasgow for an 8.30am kick off.

Deloitte's office on George Square was to be home for the day.

I was fortunate enough to be asked along to the Scottish Council for Development and Industry annual awards dinner on Friday.

It was a grand affair held in the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.

Dozens of policemen stationed outside the venue seemed an unusual addition as a skirling piper played to those hurrying in from the rain trying to protect ball gowns, black ties, tuxedos and kilts.

Inside a managing partner at a law firm believed security was beefed up because of G20 protests earlier in the day in Edinburgh.

Due to the pressures of work (ie having a paper and magazine to get out, blogs to do and a website to monitor) I can't get out for the day to go along to the GlobalScot conference.

Reluctantly I had to turn down the invite from Scottish Enterprise to attend as I am already out of the office for two afternoons this week.

There is a great line up of speakers and I have spent some of today watching the twitter feed (use #GlobalScot to access it) streaming from the event.

Which in a roundabout way brings me to my point.