Following our recent announcement of the 29 businesses shortlisted for the Shell LiveWIRE Young Entrerpeneur of the Year Award 2009, we are pleased to reveal that the following 8 have been chosen by our panel of judges to go through to the UK final taking place in London on 27th October...

Daniel Woolman (Bini Products Ltd), London
Binifresh™ is a compact hygiene device designed to securely fit a wheelie bin and automatically spray every 4 hours to ensure that the wheelie bin stays fresh and hygienic. Binifresh is unique in its market in that it automatically neutralizes and eliminates odours from rubbish, as well as killing bacteria on the surface of the bin. It easily attaches to the wheelie bin and always stays fixed in place, not interfering with any of the waste collection machinery. The product was accepted for sale in Lakeland in the autumn of 2009, is also listed with John Lewis and ASDA / Walmart and will be launched nationwide in all ASDA stores in early October 2009.

Gregor Mackintosh (Mackintosh of Glendaveny), Peterhead, Aberdeenshire
Mackintosh of Glendaveny produces 'Extra Virgin Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil' from home grown rapeseed. Basically a Scottish alternative to olive oil with fantastic cooking qualities and superior nutritional values, it's also believed to help reduce cholesterol and fight against the chances of developing cancer and without all the food miles of imported olive oil.

Jon Petrie (DS Music UK Ltd), Monmouth
DS Music ® is one of the most comprehensively stocked sheet music specialists in the UK, stocking over 8,550 different products; over 7,000 different sheet music books, and thousands of accessories, music gifts and musical instruments.

Michael Turner (TurnKey I.T. Solutions), Somerset
Turnkey I.T. Solutions provide business VoIP services, web development, IT Consultancy and managed IT Support services, to SME’s. They have developed a number of new applications including SMS Calendar - a web-based appointment scheduling, rota and diary system that enables staff to create appointments, book rooms/resources, as well as automatically remind their customers of appointments via text message, and Electronic Message Board - an In/Out board that enables staff to use their mobile phones to update staff on their location.

Robert Matthams (Shiply.com), London
Shiply.com has been likened to “eBay but for moving goods” by The Daily Telegraph, providing an online marketplace where everyday consumers and businesses list items they need to move and then receive bids in a reverse auction format from thousands of transport providers. These transport providers are all feedback rated (much like eBay) so the consumer gets a good idea of the level of service to be expected as well as a great price, saving users of our site over 3million since launch in June 2008. By making use of haulage firms spare capacity, Shiply.com helps the consumer save up to 75% on costs, the environment by keeping lorries full and reducing congestion and increases the efficiency and profits of haulier’s themselves especially important in these tough economic times and with high fuel prices.

Ross Fobian & Richard Hamnett (AdInsight Limited), Manchester
AdInsight allows businesses to track phone call conversions back to their original online or offline source. This allows businesses to identify exactly which advertisements are driving sales and which are simply not worth the marketing investment; helping them save money and increase profitability at the same time. AdInsight is the only call tracking solution in the UK that can track the entire journey of a customer from the initial source, to the sale, was the first UK company to integrate call tracking with Google Analytics and can now be integrated with any online analytics solution, as well as any other online platforms, like CRM’s, CMS and email systems.

Sam Rickett (Everlution Software Limited), London
Everlution Software specialises in complex software development projects, particularly large database-driven web applications. They design, develop, market and sell their own products, Vivomiles - a national school rewards system similar to Nectar points / AirMiles which replaces merit slips/gold stars with a modern web/mobile banking interface, and Street Consensus - a central database for Investor Relations information, replacing the inefficient practice of emailing spreadsheets.

Simon Darker & Harry Hunter (Think Pacific), Leeds
Think Pacific lead five-week and three-month guided expeditions to the outer islands of Fiji. Their expeditions involve teams of 18 ‘community tourists’ who assist with local building, youth and sports development projects, before sailing castaway islands, trekking jungle rainforests and rafting river canyons.

Congratulations to all 8 who will now be invited to an assessment day at Shell HQ, where a winner will be chosen and announced at our Shell LiveWIRE LIVE! event in London on 27th October 2009.

The overall winner will receive;

Thanks to everyone who applied this year, and don't forget you can still apply for our monthly £1,000 Shell LiveWIRE Grand Ideas Awards at www.shell-livewire.org/awards

What do a glamorous female banker, BUPA and the Environment Agency all have in common?

They all have a unique story to tell, about themselves, their organisations or the work they do. They just need to work out how to present it in the most interesting and easily digestible way for other people to take notice, and then share amongst their networks and communities.

Having just spent the day with a group of strangers that included the aforementioned glamorous female banker, a guy from BUPA, a couple from the Environment Agency, a PR/sales lady, and ladies from C S Group, SAS UK, The Bridgeman Art Library, the University of Wolverhampton on the excellent 'Viral Marketing' course with Jonathan Gabay & the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), it struck me yet again that for all the excitement surrounding digital marketing and specifically Web 2.0 technologies, they are simply the latest tools to enable humans to do what they have done for thousands of years – i.e. communicate with other like-minded (or not so like-minded people). However, the tools and medium will continue to evolve again and again over time. What’s most important is the willingness to collaborate, discuss and share your ideas and impart knowledge on others – a very human trait.

This was reinforced by a quick look around The British Library (www.bl.uk) before catching a train home to Newcastle, where I was amazed to take in the wonderful collection of ancient books which included the Lindisfarne Gospels and Magna Carta, and original items from Lewis Carroll, Shakespeare, Scott of Antarctic and The Beatles to name just a few. Made me realise just how beautiful books and the written word can be, and how lucky we are to have so much knowledge and information at our fingertips when in the past it was only the lucky few that could read and write.

We owe it to ourselves to provide compelling content that informs and inspires our readers, otherwise what’s the point in adding to the ‘noise’?

Technorati code frc3isy2zh

Our Shell LiveWIRE in Scotland event took place at the Apex International Hotel in Edinburgh on Thursday 17th September between 10am-6pm.

After travelling up the day before by train on National Express where the onboard wi-fi was so slow that I wasted half the journey waiting for websites to load up, I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only is the Apex a lovely contemporary hotel in a great location (2 mins walk from Edinburgh Waverley) but the room was spacious and comfy with free high speed wi-fi for all guests throughout the hotel.

After checking in around 5.45pm I plugged in to check my emails, the Shell LiveWIRE site and of course Twitter and saw that fomer Shell LiveWIRE Grand Ideas Awards winners SquidLondon were being interviewed by Chris Evans on BBC Radio 2 at 6.30pm that night. This is the sort of thing that I'm finding Twitter is increasingly good at, as not only could I listen in to the show, but I could reply to SquidLondon's tweet and text my colleague Alison so that she could listen in on her car radio. Viviane Jaeger came across really well on the show, and it was great to hear how their business seems to be going from strength to strength as they are now selling their rain-activated colour-changing umbrellas in the Museum Of Modern Art (MOMA) New York, as well as the Tate London and BALTIC art centre in Gateshead (I plan to buy one of these soon).

A little later on I met my colleague Anna Lawn-Thomas to go for some food and a couple of pre-event drinks and had a lovely rib-eyed steak and garlic fries at a cool little restaurant called 'The Outside' at 7-13 Barclay Place, Edinburgh (check it out if you're ever in the city).

After returning to the hotel room, I couldn't sleep so decided to clear a few more of my emails including one from our IT Manager which linked through to a great site called http://thisweekinstartups.com/ which contains videos featuring some of the most exciting and innovative new IT businesses to emerge from the US. The episode I watched was TWiST Episode 14 with Garry Tan which featured the founders of TechCrunch50 and Mr Tan who has started a neat little site called www.posterous.com which allows people to post content to multiple websites (Twitter, Facebook, Blog, Flickr, etc) by sending a single email in to the Posterous site . It's such a simple idea and ridiculously easy to set up. Try it yourself by emailing a photo or image to post@posterous.com.

Eventually, I switched the laptop off and went to bed, before getting up bright and early for the event the next day. There was the usual rushing around to make sure everything was set up and ready for the guests to arrive - which they did, and hats off to Anna for organising such a great event virtually single-handedly.

Around 65 enthusiastic young entrepreneurs turned up to the event to enjoy the following workshops / seminars;

• 'Flirting for Business Success & How to Do A Good Elevator Pitch' with Mel Harris (The Training Tree)
• 'What you need to know about Sales but are Hardly Ever Taught' with Lesley Heatherington (The Hunter Centre)
• 'How to Get Great PR' with Jonathon Kennedy (Wave PR)
• 'Something About The Beatles' by Mike Southon (Author of The Beermat Entrepreneur)

Unfortunately Mike Welch (Black Circles) was too unwell to appear so I was asked to give an impromptu demo of the Shell LiveWIRE website and how to get the most out of our Discussion Forum and Social Network which seemed to go down well. As soon as I was asked to deliver a presentation I sent a text to my Twitter profile asking any LiveWIRE members reading it to login to our Social Network Chat room between 3pm-4pm and big thanks to Adam Foster (D9ENTERTAINMENT) for logging in so I could give a live demo of the Chat room to our audience which helped bring the site to life!

The Shell LiveWIRE in Scotland event also featured an elevator pitch competition which saw some great new businesses pitching for a 1st prize of £1,000 and 2nd prize of £500. I was highly impressed by all of them, although some were obviously a bit more confident than others, but the overall winner was David Toy (www.haymapr.com) for his simple but effective site to help people search for niche products and services in their local area, with 2nd prize going to Steven Reynolds (Micro Gym) for his health and fitness training / services to help combat childhood obesity in schools throughout Scotland. Well done to them both.

Despite there only being 2 winners on the day, everyone was encouraged to apply for the Shell LiveWIRE 'Grand Ideas' Awards at www.shell-livewire.org/awards and I'm pleased to see that Morgan Carberry is one of the 29 people shortlisted for the Shell LiveWIRE Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2009 for her business El Dorado Cabaret (www.eldoradocabaret.com) and definitely deserved something for singing her way through the pitch!

Our keynote speaker Mike Southon was a little late to arrive but was well worth sticking around for. Having seen him deliver his 'Something About The Beatles' presentation at the NACUE conference earlier this year, I knew it would be good and it didn't disappoint. A definite showman, Mike is easily one of the most entertaining speakers I've had the pleasure of hearing / seeing and by comparing business and entrepreneurship with the qualities that made The Beatles such a hug success, he offers a visual and audio treat with the odd bit of air guitar thrown in. If you're looking for a great speaker for yoru event book this guy! You can read Mike's weekly column on business and enterprise every Saturday in the Financial Times, follow him via Twitter at http://twitter.com/MikeSouthon or find out more about his work at www.beermat.biz.

Overall, I think Shell LiveWIRE in Scotland was a great event, and one of the best things about these things is meeting real young entrepreneurs who are passionate and enthusiastic about what they do, and all have something interesting to say and offer to the world which helps make me feel proud to be British and part of Shell LiveWIRE.

Looking forward to meeting more LiveWIRE members and new businesses at our Shell LiveWIRE LIVE! event and Shell LiveWIRE Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2009 final in London on 27th October 2009.

Any comments or feedback on this blog post please login and reply below, send them to me via Twitter at http://twitter.com/lordlancaster or email me at paul.lancaster@shell-livewire.org

Thanks for reading :o)

Paul
Web Development Executive
www.shell-livewire.org

Anna Lawn-Thomas (aka ALT) and I will be hosting a Shell LiveWIRE stand at the Adult Skills London event @ Earls Court on Sunday 18th October (11am-5pm) and Monday 19th October (10am-4pm).

In association with Monster.co.uk, London First and Nextstep London, the event is free to attend, and will feature a range of great organisations offering free advice and seminars throughout both days.

To find out more and to register your place go to www.adultskills.co.uk, and if you do go please come along and say hello