Journeyman PM

I went to Bizcamp Belgium today, loved it. This is the definition of the event from their website:

Bizcamp is an unconference that is organized by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, that is based on the idea of Barcamp.

Barcamps are unconferences where you go to network, learn and share knowledge. These events are free to go to but you’re expected to help out or give a presentation. Sales pitches are out of the question though, you can’t just come and advertise what you sell or do.

Quite a vehemently crowd, I must say, people talking about taking risks, creating value and finding the best way to get a business thriving. Met with a few other project managers too, and that wasn’t surprising. In the end, every phase of growing a business is a project.

I’ll share my take-aways after, saying thanks.

Thanks organisation:

emenka.be (@tjorvend), westartup.eu (@leoexter), essentialist.be,

tamaragielen.com (@tamaragielen), zeropoint.it.

And sponsors:

zenito.be, bardoffice.com, The Egg.

Totally not interconnected list of things I learned:

• The best thing you can do to fit more than 24 hours in a day is getting great partners.
• Differentiate on revenue streams.
• Business models based on subscriptions rock.
• People are afraid to be helped, so if you’re going to sell them something be very transparent on your intentions.
• Being dependent on one big client is really bad, and should be avoided, it’s not 20/80 if it’s only one client making up for 80 percent of your revenue.
• Don’t try funny stuff like selling a car back to yourself for 1 euro at the end of a lease, “tricks” like this will end you up with super high taxation.
• Failing hurts, but it’s still too much of a taboo, the risks entrepreneurs take are real and they don’t have many ways to turn if their business turns belly side up.
• The American model of “failed” entrepreneurs, are still doing good financially, didn’t really fail the whole way, their company just didn’t grow as exponentially as was set forward. Be careful with comparisons there.
• Whatever happens, if you ever end up in dept, and you owe the (Belgian) government, pay them back first.

I ended up doing an ad-hoc talk about the value of QR Codes, with mobile taking off the last year, it has become something of a peculiar interest to me. The larger then expected turnup at my talk kind of surprised me, I didn’t have slides or anything prepared, but it was fun. Might post about it over at Heymans.org some time, who knows.