The event's prelude
Now as is the usual theme, I could not come to a Bootcamp pitching event without something unexpected leading up to it - the theme of this Bootcamp's prelude is random encounters, and just to spice things up here, I am going to use the term "Volkerted" in a few paragraphs of this story. Here is a description of what the term means, Urban Dictionary style:
So the first random run-in took place on the 11th of July, when I was finished volunteering at Suffolk Archives, and whilst I was there, I was reading a copy of Young's Travels, an 18th-century journal from a local Suffolk traveller documenting his voyages around Europe. As I was getting ready to go home, I took the wrong turn to exit the Hold... and so I walked up the side path expecting to see nobody in front of University buildings (it was about 4:30pm on a summer holiday afternoon). Except, as I got near to the Atrium building, I came across Amy chatting with a fellow Bootcamper. I knew that I was going to get Volkerted any second now... and it did happen.
So it was a pretty brief conversation about what I was doing in the Hold, before taking the time getting to know each other and then having a chat about next steps for my fantasy mapping empire, before she went running off in the opposite direction to start her journey back to the Heartland.
And yes, you know that you have been Volkerted when Amy comes up to you and does a friendly pat on the shoulder - you can tell that people use different ways of communication to express approval with someone. And knowing from my experience that Amy's personality can be described as being very lively and down-to-earth, I was going to see much more of it in the coming days...
The next random run-in with Amy happened on the 17th of July, the day before the Grand Finale, when I was getting ready to have a Start, Build, Grow meeting with Alison (who just happened to be one of the judges). It was about 12:30pm, and I was sitting in the Hold hoping to have some lunch... except I flunked the packed lunch bit massively (my mum told me later that she ate all of it and left nothing unturned). And then I got Volkerted again, when Amy suddenly walked in to go and grab a coffee from the cafeteria, before (predictably) making her way over to me to have a brief chat about the following day's events and how she was going to come and see me at 2:00pm that day. As well as some talk about the Caribbean flags that were on display as part of the Windrush exhibition...
And then she had to run off home to work remotely, because something unexpected has happened back in the Volkert household - with Amy making it clear that the details of the random run-in was going to get circulated (although as the fantasy maps were already famous in the Volkert family, I kinda knew that that was going to happen anyway.)
Grand Finale event
The morning of the Grand Finale was mostly uneventful - I went back to the Hold to finish off the rest of Young's book, before deciding to go and have some packed lunch, with which my choices were much less interesting than the lunch that I had before going to last year's pitching event (at least I didn't flunk it this time and let my mum eat it to bits).
Eventually Amy and Hannah led me inside the Atrium building at 2:00pm, and whilst I was sitting outside in the glasshouse waiting to be let in to the pitching room, I had little idea that Amy had some old-school tricks up her sleeves - I was sat behind one of the panels screening me off from the door to the ideas room, and so I had no idea whether she would come out left-or-right and take me by complete surprise... eventually I spotted Amy messing about in the coffee machine cubbyhole, and so she ended up thinking that I was doing some undercover spy work.
And besides that, there were other unexpected things going on as well, like other members of the Careers team coming along to the glasshouse looking for various people, along with me going through some random news about a fraudulent property developer who forged building control certificates for a new build housing estate in Newmarket (ouch for the people living there!) and is waiting to be sentenced.
Eventually, I was invited to come into the pitching room at around 3:30pm, and at this point Amy and the food export bootcamper was going through some last minute adaptations for her export business pitch deck.
At one point, Amy decided to surprise her about my past on the Bootcamp and the fantasy map project, and so I started coming around to talk about how I managed to regain some motivation around the Youtubia project, where I was playing around with georeferencing the map in QGIS by plotting some points (or in tech jargon terms, group control points) at ten latitude and longitude intersections, using the WGS84 (EPSG 4326) information system. Pay attention to the Dest X and Dest Y figures - Dest X marks the longitude and Dest Y marks the latitude point (for instance 180, 45 refers to 180 degrees East, 45 degrees North):
So I decided to show Amy and the bootcamper some of my handicraft work from the QGIS georeferencing project, and they both appeared to be very wowed about how I managed to get hold of co-ordinates and time zones for each of the 16 provinces and their capitals, and even sunrises and sunsets for each of the capital cities. And of course, as we were going through the extreme points for the Fashion province, Amy had to repeat an old-time quote from over a year ago "I'd love to visit a Fashion province" - she loves vintage fashion, so of course why wouldn't she mention that?
Once that conversation was out of the way, I suddenly decided to go a bit spontaneous and come up with an astonishingly devious method to talk about the Volkert family. It all started when I was talking to her about how I was watching YouTube video of boats plying tourists down the Chao Phraya river in Bangkok, and then I started doing some explaining about why the capital of Thailand is called Krung Thep by the locals - before madam ended up catching me on the plot and went on to reveal some details about her partner who happens to be from there - including some never seen-before information about food smells that would be wafting out of Amy's house every week. Good times, good times...
By 4:00pm, the pitching room was flooded with over 35 people and besides the usual getting to know each other and talking about the fantasy map idea with them, there were also some interesting firsts that I had seen - one of the bootcampers happens to be a mum, and they have brought their child to a pitching event, so I ended up getting to see the full scale of Amy's parenting skills in action for the first time in over 18 months. And little did I know at the meet and greet as well is that we also had a famous MBE taking part in the Bootcamp - it is the first time that I had gotten to meet an MBE outside of University circles. More details on that later.
Eventually the meet and greet ended at approximately 4:30pm, and the two Amy's (big boss Carpenter tagging along for the ride) got together to introduce the event, along with some jokes about Dot-to-Dot founder Simon Pickering being the bad cop in the room when it comes to the 10 minute time limit for the pitches (which happens to be an astonishing coincidence for me, given that I have talked about prisons earlier, but again, more on where that has came from later).
And with that, it was time to get started with the show - there were eight pitches to go through, starting off with the first pitch called "Soap Box", a social enterprise that revolves all around poetry - and I was absolutely amazed to see that there were medical studies involving 23,000 people that proved that poetry helped with people's mental health, and to stay off drugs. And the presenter's plan to present the idea looked just as promising - two workshops planned for August, with a third one in September and a Poet Laureate session in January, along with future aspirations to expand the idea to other parts of the region.
Then it was time to move on to the second pitch, where we had a Ukrainian developer talking about Osvita and his PnP (Print and Play) games that were aimed at primary school students - and I must say that from listening to his pitch, I felt that his business idea would be an excellent opportunity to link up and host some PnP games that are based on some of my fantasy maps. Not to mention that the effort that he had put into his pitch was exemplar for someone who doesn't speak English as their first language.
The third pitch was about Ablard Websites, a website creation platform that is aimed at providing sustainable and accessible websites, whilst not skimping on the overall design element, based on a subscription model where higher priced plans provide access to more website functionality choices. And it was really fascinating to hear that 3.7% of the world's carbon emissions come from our use of the Internet, along with the presenter's personal background and motivation to start the idea (everybody in the room reacted with cheers and applauses when she talked about starting to become tired of working for others.)
With the sustainability talk over, it was on to the fourth pitch presenting "This is Ipswich", and I have to say that it is a very interesting fusion of ideas - for one, it's about coming together to celebrate the positives that Ipswich has to offer through content production, as well as providing employment opportunities through collaborations with 12 businesses and the DWP. To be quite frank, with the Ipswich high street mostly standing empty, the town receiving negative attention and other competitors not quite matching the presenter's offering (We Love Ipswich not posting YouTube material for over a year), I think that it is a much needed idea to help bring Ipswich back to life.
The idea that followed on after the five minute comfort break was the Joseph Prison Ministry, a social enterprise aimed at providing bespoke rehabilitation programmes to prisoners to keep them on the straight and narrow - the presenter's vision is for the ministry to reach out to 1,000 prisoners and free them from the effects that prison life is having on them; that is being convicted and put back in the prison van again and again.
But the presentation also served as a reminder about the very hard truth about the UK prison system nearing overcrowding, as well as hearing stories about individuals from minority backgrounds being treated unfairly in the UK justice system, particularly when it comes to men of African and Caribbean backgrounds being stopped by the police six times more frequently compared to men from white backgrounds - an issue demonstrated very vividly by the presenter's case study of "John", a 27 year old man who has experienced issues with anger management as a result of his treatment by the police.
Then we return to the world of marketing and advertising in the sixth pitch with Naomi Kate PR, a marketing service targeted at businesses in the leisure and tourism sector, with a specific focus on the east of England, racking up an impressive 80 million views as well as the presenter acquiring hundreds of LinkedIn connections.
Eventually we found ourselves sailing on to the seventh pitch, Damsel Afrimart. The objective - deliver food that is directly sourced from Nigeria to members of the diaspora in the Ipswich area, and at the highest quality possible, and it is also interesting to see delivery options that you might see in a typical online high street shop. Whilst I personally think that it is a revolutionary idea as far as transforming the cultural landscape in the town - most of the competitors in the Ipswich area are brick and mortar Afro-Caribbean shops that typically open until 6pm, it is also a reminder of the challenges that are facing the presenter of the pitch - import/export licences, shipping costs by air, among other things.
And then the pitching journey finished off with Angelina Quamina MBE talking about her wellness business, "Walking in Your Purpose", targeted at further education colleges and students who are thinking of going to university. Alongside the talk about the need to do something to stem the rise in students dropping out from university before the start of their studies, as well as the presenter's offering of bespoke workshops to achieve this, it was just pure heaven listening to the pitch with the background music...
After a brief talk about membership in the Federation for Small Businesses (FSB) and its benefits - sorry to say that there are no brownie points up for grabs, the pitching session was over, and it was time for the judges to go into the room next door to talk about who would be getting the prize money. In the meantime, we would be treated to some twister rolls, and so much more - and to be quite honest, the space got so crammed that most of the food was already eaten up by the time I took these photos!
What's more, this round of judge deliberations would be unlike any other I've seen - whilst the deliberations were going on, the door separating us from the judges felt a bit haunted with the doors constantly opening to reveal who was inside... in fact the door got so haunted that Amy had to keep wedging the door shut so that we couldn't overhear whatever was going on in the deliberation room.
Approximately 25 minutes later, the judges returned to the room, with Amy Carpenter giving away the call for everyone to return to their seats, and it was time for the anxious wait on who would be winning the share of £2,000 prize money.
And there we have it - the June 2024 Bootcamp winners were sustainable marketing company Ablard Websites, and the spoken word social enterprise Soap Box. Then it was time for the photoshoots - firstly with the winners, followed by the rest of the delegation, and of course I ended up jumping onto the stage when I was not supposed to - I mistakenly thought that the guests would join the Bootcampers later like the photos from last year would suggest, but that turned out not to be the case. Ouch.
After a brief after-party moment where Amy went to speak with each of the Bootcampers about next steps for their ideas, and then having a chat about my next showdown in August and agreeing to meet in the most exciting, energetic style that I had ever seen Amy speak to me, it was time to wind down the Bootcamp fun and start packing up - and of course, what better way to finish it off by teasing Amy with some Spanish - did you know that it's become a fairly common fixture recently for us to say goodbye to each other in this manner.
And from here on out, Amy has since vanished from public view... not to reappear until the 6th of August.
What do I make of the June 2024 Make a Difference Boot Camp?
To be quite honest, this summer's Grand Finale was utter carnage, in a positive way. When I talked about my experience of the last summer's bootcamp, I wrote this statement:
"The Enterprise Manager's passion and drive to run this event is incredibly high."
I have to say that this statement has withstood the test of time very well - I have to agree with the two Amy's statements at the start of the pitching session that the Bootcamp sessions were very well-organised, and this can be seen through how well the pitches were presented and the amount of preparation that was put in to set them up to succeed. And the biggest thing is that the atmosphere in the room was so lively and contagious - everyone was very supportive of one another and everyone was really lovely to speak to, particularly more so for me in the 30 minute build-up to the meet and greet.
And just like last time, there was no complaining in the crowd about not winning the prize money - at the end of the day, everyone came to the bootcamp to have fun with their ideas, not to fight over money!
I was also amazed to see that nearly all of the Bootcamp attendees consisted of women entrepreneurs - women remain significantly underrepresented in the world of entrepreneurship and particularly so in social enterprises, and generally, I am glad to see that the Enterprise Team are also taking some action in trying to get female business owners together with the Suffolk Women's Entrepreneur Network (SWEN) initiative - I hope that they will run more of those sessions in the near future.
And with that, it is now time to conclude this post, and I would like to wish the June 2024 Bootcampers the best of luck on their future business journeys.
I will leave the subject of the next post a surprise... because something big has happened in my life since coming to the Bootcamp pitching event.
Signing off now,
Jakub
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