Google gets into VC funding.

Now this could be interesting. Eager to grow new and emerging companies Google has set up Google Ventures.

Google Ventures seeks to discover and grow great companies - we believe in the power of entrepreneurs to do amazing things. We're studying a broad range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech and health care. We invest anywhere from seed to mezzanine stage and embrace the challenge of helping young companies grow from the garage to global relevance.

Could be an interesting proposition. More details from the website.

Reid Hoffman - “Every Individual Is Now An Entrepreneur.”

An interesting interview that I'm still wading my way through, the video is about an half an hour long. It's an interesting watch and listen, the social network roadmap for the next few years. Good stuff.

REID HOFFMAN: I actually think every individual is now an entrepreneur, whether they recognize it or not. . . . Average job length is two to four years. That makes you a small business. . . . You are the entrepreneur of your own small business. How do you get to your next gig? How do you do your career progression? All these things now fall on the individual shoulders. And so, they’re essentially an entrepreneur. . . . They’re entrepreneurs in terms of the business of themselves and how they drive that. So it’s how they get, like, their next job opportunity, how they get a promotion. All of that stuff comes from how they manage the network around them. Which is, by the way, what gave me the idea for LinkedIn.

Watch, digest and learn :) Full Techcrunch post here.

Awakening Creative Entrepreneurship Conference

Something interesting if you are a hitech sort of person and want to see where how the landscape is going to pan out. The Awakening Creative Entrepreneurship conference is being held in Londonderry from 25th-27th March, best of all the registration is free.

In sum: (or the blurb as I'd like to call it).

The Awakening Creative Entrepreneurism UnConference sets itself apart from the conventional conference with a facilitated participant-driven format. It combines peer-to-peer expertise sharing, networking, hands-on bootcamp learning, and demonstration labs, all underpinned with world class panels setting topics and angles to stew over before sessions begin. ACE condenses those activity threads and intensifies instruction by focusing sessions on creative business opportunity creation, and emphasizing interactivity by making it easy for people to participate through facilitation.

Unconferences may not have a set agenda, but they still posess a defined structure that provides attendees with a set of tools to navigate the events. And because everyone at the unconference participates in some fashion, networking and the exchange of ideas is a given. The biggest challenge is that unconferences can be unpolished and raw, because participants speak about topics they're passionate about, not ones they are necessarily experts in. The secret sauce of the ACE unconference is its coupling with instructional expert panels, which provide themes to guide the happenings of the day.

Awakening Creative Entrepreneurism is also hands-on learning opportunity bootcamps, demonstration labs, and PitchStop platforms for startups to develop and promote their businesses. World class speakers in creative and innovating industries promise timely insights for attendees navigating challenging economic waters. Virtual conference platforms, real-time streaming, online access and collaboration facilities deepen the participation levels, and extend creative audience reach nationally and internationally. Those unable to attend physically will be served virtually online through streams to the virtual conference platform, and encouraged to participate.

In his book The Rise of the Creative Class, sociologist Richard Florida describes the evolution of occupations such as designers, programmers, and creatives that drive the economy. According to Florida, the Creative Class is not only the catalyst for economic activity in the information age, but is actually reshaping the way our society is organized. The nature of work is changing: Creative occupations require longer hours, but also feature perks such as flexible schedules and increased mobility. This means that we require and demand a different set of support systems. The ACE unconference seems an obvious step in that direction.

This is all looks good, but to be brutally honest is three years late. I'm booked in already :)