OCC stands for Open Coffee Club.
Open Coffee Club was introduced in London with the idea to get professional people working together in a casual atmosphere. It inspires innovation, entrepreneurship, network building and helps people get a lot of professional benefits from within the community. Imagine it more as a big open lounge where people come and go, talk to others in their industry, showcase demo’s of what they are working on, save the world, and ultimately maybe get some work done and run a few small meetings.
Features:
We are not treating this as another social networking event. It’s not even an event - it’s a place where internet people come and go for coffee, chat, and a cake. Anyone missing a meet doesn't need to feel depressed. Usually, there’s one every week. Its not imperative to meet everyone at that meet. Sometimes it’s good to meet a few good people and a few in-depth discussions. The whole point is that Open Coffee should feel like a public office for people interested in startups. Sometimes people going to one of the tables and just show some new technology or even what they have been working on to-date. You never know, it might stir some ideas for business partnerships with people or they may be able to match you with people who can help and enhance your offering. Plus, it’s much more fun!
Creating the explosion needs spark and fuel:
There are two overall aspects to this: creating an interest in startup culture (the spark) and then ensuring the financial backing and support network is there (the fuel). I can see the spark slowly igniting – people are nowadays a lot more interested then they were 12 months ago. But, even then, everyone in Kolkata still seem very risk averse – perhaps because of the mentality, the way we generally grow up, what we are taught.. and social stigma ‘failure’ attracts here, not to mention the financial penalties.
I also think many people aren’t prepared for the commitment of working 25 hour days to get your start-up going. That’s not a bad thing, it’s not for everyone. There are OCCs worldwide, and as Ben Metcalfe says, anyone who attends one such meet, compares the effort, they might find people in SanFransisco work much harder and it amazing to know how much more hungry they are for success.
However I do think the lack of fuel is perhaps the more pressing issue. One of the things that needs to happen is for the creation of a better support network. And like any good network it needs good nodes (people, companies) and good connections (events, community, etc).
Journalists, VC’s, and Angels are more than welcome. These guys often have a good perspective on the industry as a whole and are definitely worth talking to in the non-pitch sense. One of the big points with OpenCoffee is to make investment more transparent to entrepreneurs. Investors can also give entrepreneurs really valuable feedback and hopefully in this environment this can happen in a pressure free way.
To sum up the long story, its a casual meet of professionals over coffee and cake, where one can take back home some experience which not only would he treasure throughout his life, but something that would keep pressing him to attend the next meets and be a part of this new global revolution.
Content credit also goes to Saul Klein and Ben Metcalfe.
