The Cultural Marketplace

Tuesday, 26 June 2007

I feel Glastonburied...

Afternoon all.

In my muddy-field absence, Zerofee has completed the first draft of the profile template only to be seen by our exclusive community of creative young business professionals. In order to hit the ground running, we have decided to cut back on functionality at this pre-launch stage and follow in Google's footsteps - "to do one thing really well".

It has been an eye-opening trip since last July when we incorporated Mesh and the idea has morphed into an initiative worthy of press coverage. Now, we have decided simply to focus on providing our members tools for managing their contacts and creative lifestyles online. We will be allowing members to promote their own creative projects, those of their friends, and also suggesting new contacts to members who are looking for similar things.

Our motivation behind this is that we want to tackle the problems facing our target audience one by one - the first being that they need contacts and quick reference resources to help their creative projects. Let me give you an example:

Tom is a banker by day and a DJ by night. At the moment, he plays random friend's house parties occasionally. What he wants to do is find a regular monthly gig so that he can start to build a name for himself. He doesn't have the time to approach lots of different venues himself, but he does have the money to host or contribute to a monthly gig.

Dave is a lawyer. His friend, Adam, is an events manager at a small bar with a DJ booth in Islington. Keen to draw in a larger Thursday night crowd, he has started up an amateur DJ gig, but needs DJs. Adam needs DJs who are able to contribute to the cost of the night, either with cash or with equipment.

Both Dave and Tom will be able to post their or their friends' needs and wants on Mesh and Mesh will use profile-matching technology to suggest that they be friends and collaborate on a monthly gig together.

Mesh will use the collective intelligence of a time-deprived, cash-rich community to enhance the opportunities on collaborative projects. And that's just phase 1. Rock on.

Coming up in the next few weeks are the Connected Capital event and on the same night, Chinwag's Big Summer '07 Networking party - 5th July 2007 @ Imperial College, London. Both events should be excellent - a full rundown will be provided here in due course.

That's all for now. Back to nursing my Glastonbury hangover and determining the difference between left and right.