OpenTrack just got back from a 2-day conference in Pamplona, Navarra, in northern Spain. We’re getting outstanding support from Finodex, our accelerator. 30 businesses attended talks and workshops on Open Data, business presentation skills, communications and a host of technical topics. We also had one-to-one meetings on data, technology and business planning, as well as with potential local customers. Not to mention a lot of pintxos.
Quote of the week (say it Borat style): Big data is any thing which is crash Excel
I’ve been involved in two previous startups, both doing well after lengthy efforts, but it was up to us to learn everything. Accelerator programmes didn’t exist then. It’s an amazing experience, with many young companies being given huge amounts of practical support to get off the ground and a structure to follow. Only ten will get to the next stage, but they will all have a minimum viable product and learn amazing lessons along the way. A great pity that more British small businesses are not taking advantage of this.
We also got to sit down with the Presidents of Pamplona Athletics Club and the Navarra regional athletics federation, to learn how the sport differs in Spain. Most things are just about the same, with a couple of significant differences that make it all a tad more manageable: a single entry system for national competitions, a unique ID for every athlete, and people having to be in one and only one club. They seem to have 2-3 races every weekend in most significant sized towns. As in the UK, at regional, local and school level, there’s a big gap for systems to manage events…
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A big, big thank you to Miguel and his team at Zabala, and all the others in the consortium: Ivan, Maurizio, Pasquale, Alberto, Rasmus, Youssef, Myrna, and Veronica.