What is the ipSWITCH entrepreneurship event all about, and what has happened previously there?
The ipSWITCH event is designed to bring students, graduates and non-Careers staff at the University together to explore the enterprise and entrepreneurship support that is available - such as upcoming events, funding that is available for your idea, or access to the University's ecosystem through the Innovation Labs!
As I have mentioned previously in my 23rd birthday post, I have made a passing mention of the ipSWITCH entrepreneurship event that took place on the 27th of March. The theme of the first event was significantly different in comparison to this one, as the topic of the morning's session was about exploring business ideas that would really fascinate each individual, and finding out our entrepreneurial strengths and weaknesses.
During the lunch break, I decided to take advantage of the fact that it was the first time that I was able to explain my idea to people outside the immediate network of the Enterprise team - before I went to the event, Amy was the only person that knew about my business idea. And I could remember the atmosphere being really pleasant, as I was chatting with a fellow University Alumni and one of the Bootcamp participants who took part in November last year - and they found my idea of creating fantasy maps to be really fascinating! Consequently, that experience has allowed me to continue exploring to see where else I could attract attention with my business idea.
Then, in the afternoon session, we were exploring the stories of three successful entrepreneurs who had utilised the support of Innovation Labs and the University to take their ideas further - one founder had a company whose turnover was set to reach £1 million next year, another was a story of two founders who started up an arts publication house (one of their engagements involved randomly meeting the editor-in-chief of the Vogue fashion magazine, Anna Wintour), as well as the story of Daniel Wiltshire of Alarming Ladders, who will also be the subject of this event experience.
It was also the first time that I got to discover the full range of business support opportunities that the University of Suffolk had to offer - at one point, I was introduced to Sunil Oberoi, who at the time, was running a series of online workshops on important business concepts that budding entrepreneurs should know - I would go on to attend his workshops over the course of April and May in the leadup to the Bootcamp, and actually, I found them to be quite interesting.
And in that same session, I was also introduced to Beth Sowersby (who now works for the organisation that runs the Creative East post-startup business support programme), and at the time, she was advising participants on the wide range of business support that was available from external organisations at the time of the event, such as the Suffolk Chamber of Commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses.
With that being said, let's get to October's experience then!
The ipSWITCH experience
It was coming up to 10:30am, when I was wandering out of the Hold to make my way to the University's Atrium building to wait outside the venue. When I got there, I only had to wait about 15 minutes outside before the University's Enterprise Manager, Amy Volkert came along with her helper, Hannah Page to greet me, with smiles and shines as is typically expected of such encounters. With Amy not wanting to leave me sitting in the cold outside, she led me to the area outside the Careers Zone, in the Student Union social space (at one point having to tail her through the gates in order to not get squished).
As I was sitting in the social area, I noticed that the doors into the Careers Zone (which was the subject of the last post on this blog) were decorated with several post-it notes, showing a list of services that the University's Careers team offer, as well as some inspirational words, one of the post-its saying "Your future starts here". I really wanted to take a picture of the decorations there, but with the surrounding area being full of people and photography being an unusual pastime in the breakout area during normal times, I decided not to be ballsy and just sat it out 'til the Volkert came back to take me away to the venue.
And right before 11:30... she came back to the Student Union breakout area with the capuera dancer in tow, to pick me up from the Library building and take me to where the event was held - unlike the previous event where we would be sat around the tables in the ideas room, this time, we would be sat in the Atrium glasshouse the entire time - but with the weather being fairly cold at this time of year, the environment and ambience in general was really pleasant and airy.
The event officially began with networking at 12 noon, but unlike previous events where the meeting area would suddenly fill up by the time the networking session began, the session initially started out relatively empty of people, and would gradually fill up until the event speakers were called up at 12:30pm.
During that time, I managed to speak to a few people that I haven't met before - one of them was a Computing lecturer who previously taught modules on programming at the University and was looking to branch out to setting up his own business, as well as a fellow staff member from the University's Student Life team who wanted to set up a wellness-related social enterprise that is targeted at students.
I even managed to have a conversation with some people behind a social enterprise that was set up to counter the stereotypes of Ipswich being riddled with all sorts of nasty things to bring about a positive image of the town - these image boxes show all the good things that can be found all over the town:
But on the other hand, you can't have the true Volkert experience without having a random discussion on online platforms where she could web host her next venture, as well as exploring ways to get off those screens (arrgh, Amy hates those things!).
And of course, you can't forget the refreshments that were on offer, which included some delicious cookies that I sadly didn't manage to capture on camera (although they can be difficult to get into your mouth at first, so do be warned if you choose to try them!).
But eventually, time was called on the first networking session, and Amy and Hannah took centre stage to welcome people to the event. Firstly, they started off by introducing themselves to who they were - at one point the presentation decks showed an emphasis on how Amy started up three successful fashion ventures and how she was still an active entrepreneur herself (although as I knew her well and has disclosed those facts to me in the past, I guess I knew them already - just like anything else she tells me.)
Nuff being said about who they were, it was time to dive into some basic facts about what enterprise was all about, before going on to announce the Enterprise and Entrepreneurship calendar for the lead-up to Christmas - the most fascinating events on offer being the market stall on the 14th of December (looking forward to seeing some Bootcamp participants setting up their own stalls!), as well as the Bootcamp pitching event - with the Grand Finale in July being absolute carnage, I am looking forward to seeing what the future Bootcampers have in store for their pitch decks!
But the biggest icing on the cake is the announcement for the dates of the next Make a Difference Boot Camp - the event will be starting on the 25th of October, and just like last time, will be divided into nine sessions! Future Bootcampers - if you want to see what it was like to attend the last Bootcamp that happened over the summer, why not go and check out my collection of posts at this link here?
And with that out of the way, it was time to hand over the stage to one of the members of the University's Business Development team, Sue Lawther-Brown to explain the University's ecosystem and relationships with the outside world.
It was quite interesting to hear the amount of progress that the Business Development team members have made in a short space of time - whether that is the provision of mock courtrooms to train aspiring lawyers, hospital ward spaces in the Health and Wellbeing Centre, working with BT to provide anechoic chambers to test sound equipment at Adastral Park.
At the other end of the spectrum, I was amazed to see that the University has received a huge amount of funding for Knowledge Exchange and Knowledge Transfer Programs, which has led to major breakthroughs such as their ability to secure business-academic collaborations on projects that involve DNA mapping to identify heart diseases - consequently highlighting the importance of academics needing to do more collaborations with businesses on important projects in general!
It is also a pleasure to hear that from November 2023, arts businesses in Cambridgeshire will be able to benefit from the Creative East programme that the University has built connections with in recent months - as it is set to expand its operations from its current offering to businesses in Suffolk, and the 20 businesses that it currently supports in the county.
At one point in the session, the guests were asking some questions about where their business ideas would fit with the scope of the Business Development team - one of the guests asked some questions on which person in the team could give advice on how to set up an international dropshipping business, as well as our programming lecturer asking a question on whether there might be any opportunities for his business to sell to the University in the future.
And of course, just to add to the fun, some random person from outside the event decided that it would be a good idea to set up a Microsoft Teams call with one of the Enterprise staff in the middle of Sue's speech - but it wasn't long before the caller vanished off the radar and went back to their business.
Eventually the session finished with the news that Sue was leaving the University to become a chief executive officer for a company located 5,000 miles (8,000km) away in Zambia - I would like to wish her the best of luck in pursuing her next adventure abroad!
With that being said, it was time to break out into the second networking session (which wasn't part of the original plan, by the way!), and at this point, I decided to write a note about the Waterfront being a very pleasant place to be in town, as well as my experiences of me wandering around the Orwell Country Park in the south of Ipswich (something that I had featured at the end of the last blogpost), and put it in the post box of the Ipswich love campaign that I had mentioned earlier in this post.
Also, Dan from Alarming Ladders decided to speak to me to see how I have been getting on with putting a portfolio together since last meeting him on the 16th of May - I was hoping to share some fantasy maps that I had posted on my phone, but the phone crashed and I wasn't able to show him the maps before the networking session finished. No worries, I will get in touch with him in the close future!
Once time was called on the second networking session at 1:30pm, the most fun part of the event began, as two groups of budding entrepreneurs came to the stage to share some success stories that the Enterprise and Entrepreneurship team had put together, firstly starting off with Dan from Alarming Ladders. I must say that I was really blown away with how he presented his business journey - whether that's presenting his games at major conferences such as EGX and GI Live, winning Tranzfuser funding for his business after going to Scotland to make some prototypes at the DunDev event, or his current role within the University advising Amy on how the Games Hub should be run.
Not to mention that he is planning to release some of his games for sale on Steam - I hope to try them out at some point in the future if they happen to tickle my fancy!
And of course, the most funny part about his speech was how he was comparing the dodgy side of NFTs and cryptocurrency to buying a Monalisa, but only getting the receipt for the purchase of the product and not the Monalisa that the customer has paid for. Just goes to show that it's best to be wary when signing business deals, huh?
Once Alarming Ladders got their turn to speak, and Dot-to-Dot founder Simon Pickering had his chance to speak about the Bootcamp offering (which included a trip-up on the television stand), it was time for Bootcamp winners Jason Green and Tom Gemmell of Gameify to come up to the stage.
After starting off their speech by making some jokes about the last Bootcamp being terrible, everyone got to find out how the pair were taking turns to collaborate on their business idea - they described a mixture of chaos and control, and that they would navigate left and right through an impasse to get to safety on the other end, with Jason putting things into an organised pile along the way. It was an interesting take on their business idea, and something that I didn't get to hear in their pitch deck at the Grand Finale.
Then the pair would go on to talk about what the Gameify app was about - a program that is designed to use the incentives seen in video games, such as achievements, levelling up and progress tree, a goal to w to build a network of friends along the way. And finally, before leaving the stage, they wanted to send out a message for Jason's dad - digital business ideas can branch out into multiple directions at one point and then merge back together at later stages in development!
Now that all the entrepreneurs had their turn to speak, the original plan was to bring in some speakers from the Business Growth Coach Network (BGCN) to discuss the "Start, Build, Grow" programme and what they offer, but the speakers didn't turn up and so the plan to have them at the event was foiled! (But as I found out the following day from Amy, just because the plan to have BGCN speakers was foiled doesn't mean that I can't access their program - in fact I have got a meeting with them on the 19th of October.)
And so after being given a rundown of the online business start-up workshops that Amy was planning to run in the new year, it was time for the participants to do some more mingling around, talking about different things. For me though, that didn't happen at all, as I had to run off to the Archives to do volunteer training - if it wasn't for that fact, I would have stayed around with the Volkert and the Bootcamp participants to have some more chatting fun. And so after exchanging my goodbyes with Amy...
...the adventure into the archives began!
The walk to the Hold only took a few minutes and it wasn't long before I was sitting in front of the Archives shop waiting to be called up for the training session. And then, I was called into the library at 2:30pm with a few other volunteers, where we were all given a basic introduction into how the Archives work - firstly starting off with how customers should be welcomed into the Archives, followed by an exploration of the index of topics for witchcraft and then going over to the archive shelves to see if we can find a witchcraft book.
Then it was time to move on to some of the most fun parts of the training session, as we were guided through the different map tanks that were being stored at the Archives - starting off with the Ordnance Survey maps of Suffolk, which happen to be the most requested types of maps by researchers.
The old 25-inch OS maps of Suffolk that are stored in the Archives are divided into 90 grid regions. These regions are further divided into 16 grids which cover specific villages in Suffolk, as laid out in this diagram here:
Once we have been given a briefing on how the maps work, we were given a task to pick out a random map of a village of Suffolk from the map tank. Now, Ipswich had some of the worst Ordnance Survey maps in the county, so we were all discouraged from choosing maps of Ipswich and instead asked to try other maps of Suffolk instead.
Some participants found searching the maps to be easier said than done, as not all physical maps of Suffolk were available in the map tank. However, in my case, I happened to pick out map 36/3, which turned out to be an 1884 map of the Suffolk village of Eye.
Most notably, there used to be a train station that was linked to the Great Eastern Main Line which closed down in 1931 (the nearest train station to Eye is now located in Diss), as well as some other landmarks that still exist to this day such as the castle.
Then we were given a tour of the other map cabinets, such as those containing maps for areas of Suffolk covered by the TM grid reference area and their associated indexes, as well as maps that are one-of-a-kind and very unique.
Once turns were taken by each of the volunteers to return the maps to the tank, we were all given a lowdown on how the news publishing industry in Ipswich was operating before the Ipswich Star and the East Anglian Daily Times came into existence - as we were going through the index cards for the Ipswich Journal covering different subjects. And because there were so many entries to sift through in those cabinets that had to be placed in a specific order, we were all given the most important word of advice - Don't. Take. Out. The. Journal. Index. Cards.
With the Journal now explained, it was time for the microfilm fun to begin! But before we could dive in to the newspapers that are stored on those tapes, we first had to learn how to operate the machines... which involved having to weave the film underneath and over (and again on the other side), before sliding it into the holding reel on the other side of the machine. Pretty cool once you get used to it, huh?
The microfilm tape that I chose from the cabinets date back from the period when I was born - it was interesting to see what Ipswich looked like the day I was born, and when I was not even in the UK to begin with. At one point, I was exploring the sports articles in the newspaper, where it turned out that the most notable news locally happened to be the events surrounding the start of the 2000-01 season, when Ipswich Town started the new season playing in the Premier League - little was it known at the time that they would go on to have their best season in several decades, having finished in fifth place at the end of the season.
But it wasn't long before it was time to stop looking at the football and rewind the film back to the very start, as it was time to do some microfiche exploration of marriage, death and baptism records from different parishes of Suffolk. As I had no Suffolk ancestry that would have tied me to a specific place in the county, I just decided to go for a random microfiche - in this case, I decided to go for a microfiche containing the records for Bury St Edmunds, Parish of St Mary.
And after being given a breakdown of how the volunteering schedules worked, it wasn't long before the training had come to an end, and we were all escorted out of the library. With that, I began to start making my way home along the waterfront, feeling ecstatic about the things that I had achieved that day and most certainly looking forward to volunteering at the Hold in the coming weeks (of course, keeping the Volkert updated along the way too).
Anyways, I hope you have enjoyed this twist of a post - the events that I went to had very different purposes attached to them, and yet the fun and charisma element remained every step of the way - whether it's getting sprayed down with Volkert shine and glitter in the ipSWITCH event, or taking a more exploratory approach with maps and microfilm material in the Archives.
I would like to wish everyone who went to the ipSWITCH entrepreneurship event the best of luck in their business adventures, and I hope that the Enterprise and Entrepreneurship team at the University will repeat their successes of the last Make a Difference Bootcamp in delivering a program that will keep everyone shining bright with their business ideas! 💫
Signing off now,
Jakub
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