Video interview with Laura Rigney co-founder of MumpreneurUK
If you read our blog of yesterday you will know that we attended the very successful MumpreneurUK annual Conference and Awards over the weekend. While we were there, we caught up with co-founder Laura Rigney and asked her what MumpreneurUK is all about, why mumpreneurs are overcoming the current economic crisis and what it takes to be a successful mumpreneur. Don’t forget to check out the other videos on the 123-reg YouTube channel too.
Mumpreneurs are leading the way
If ever the politicians needed an example of how British resolve will pull the country clear of these sad ecomomic times, they needn’t look much further than the working mum (or dad). It sounds clichéd but most parents would do anything for their kids and whereas once that used to be taking on a couple of extra part-time jobs, many are now turning to starting up their own business, especially via the internet. 123-reg were lucky enough to be a sponsor at yesterday’s MumpreneurUK Annual Conference and Awards event and the creativity, positivity and passion in a room of 150 entrepreneurs (mainly mums, but a handful of dads too) was electrifying. The organisation set up by mums Laura Rigney and Amanda Farren in 2009 celebrates and supports mumpreneurs who they define as “a mum who juggles running a business with family life” and lets would be mumpreneurs know that starting a business is achievable, whatever your background. There were book publishers, book sellers, toy sellers, theatre groups, support organisations, PR gurus, keepsake producers and many, many more; all assembled to network, learn off inspirational speakers and seminar hosts but more importantly, they were there to celebrate each others success and support each other – there was a lot of love in the room. There was also a lot of positivity about how the internet has changed their lives and helped businesses compete and flourish. So many of those assembled were tweeting and connecting to the web that the in-house WiFi consistently crashing became a talking point of the day. There wasn’t one person there who didn’t already have a web presence and it was nice to meet with so many 123-reg customers with lots of positive stories of their dealings with us, but also to help solve some niggling issues about the next steps online for their business. It was a day of sharing knowledge and ideas all round. If you missed the event, have a look at the Twitter hashtag #mumpreneur11 to see what went on and we’ll be posting up our exclusive interview with MumpreneurUK founder Laura Rigney soon to, so watch this space. UPDATE 27/09/11: View the interview here. Finally, big congratulaions to Suzanne Dibble of Lawyers4mumpreneurs who won the Best Supporting Business Award sponsored by 123-reg and seemed a very popular winner.
Calling PHP Developers in the North West
That’s the north west of England (so apologies to our readers in Oregon or Wester Ross or the north west of any other country), more specifically Manchester. PHPNW08 is a PHP conference taking place in Manchester next week. We know that lots of you use PHP on your websites, so we thought it worth highlighting. It’s just one day, and on a Saturday so you don’t need your boss’s permission to go. The conference website describes it as being for “developers, designers, managers or anyone else with an interest in the PHP programming language”. Conferences are a great way of keeping up to date with what’s happening with a particular technology, and meeting others who work with it. Grass roots events like this one (those run by enthusiasts rather than professional conference organisers trying to make money) are particularly good, not least because they are so cheap ‒ tickets are just £60, a bargain compared to some commercial conferences which charge £800 a day. The talks at PHPNW08 are varied, both in their content and their level (beginners or advanced), and there are some on other technology which is often used with PHP, such as MySQL and HTML. Check out the full schedule, and maybe we’ll see you there?