Timeline of activities - click to enlarge

Inspiring the next generation of entrepreneurs…

Today we can confirm the seventh in our line-up of big name speakers.

Cloud9 presents a unique opportunity to inspire young people who are shaping their futures, considering their options and making significant decisions.

Many successful entrepreneurs ascribe their success, at least in part, to a “eureka moment”. Ajaz Ahmed’s was to completely revolutionise Internet use in Europe and make him a rich man.

Ajaz Ahmed is the Founder of Freeserve, the UK’s largest ISP now known as Orange. His eureka moment came when he bought a PC at PC World in Leeds and nobody in the store could tell him how to get onto the Internet. After much persuasion by him, Dixons launched Freeserve in September 1998 and became the UK’s largest ISP in just three short months. It floated just nine months later at a market cap of £1.5bn and entered the FT 100 soon after, in March 2000 it had a market cap of £9bn.

Ajaz was one of the three founding executives to launch the business, seeing it through flotation and the £1.6bn sale to Wanadoo. Ajaz held the position of Business Development Director until April 2001 when he left the company to pursue a variety of business interests. He now sits a number of boards and has a number of investments which he is actively involved in, he sits on the Governing Council at the University of Huddersfield, board of Yorkshire Forward and is an ambassador of Princes Trust.

Live Challenge at Cloud9!

We can reveal that Cloud9 will be holding a unique Live Challenge event to test the entrepreneurial spirit of the North East!

We’ve asked a selection of North East entrepreneurs to come up with problems facing enterprise in this current economic environment. We hope we can put you to the test to come up with answers, rise to the challenge and prove the worth of the entrepreneurs of tomorrow!

At Cloud9 everyone will be given a specific business problem to solve, with the answers to be posted before the lunch break, in one of our special ballot boxes around the arena.

So at the summit, either go and find some sharp-looking fellow attendees and form a group (but no mates please!) or just by yourself, and use your creativity and common-sense to provide a top-notch answer to our enterprise conundrum!

From a shortlist, winners will be decided by CLAP-O-METER on the stage, with some nifty prizes for the most ingenious solutions.

We will be pre-posting some of the questions and more information on the format closer to the event- so watch this space…

Enterprising.At Cloud9

Enterprising.At exists to inspire, support and promote young people in business.

Created by young entrepreneurs, for young entrepreneurs, it is a free-to-access community of like-minded peers.

The first member-led event (of many) will take place after Cloud9 at about 4pm.

Up to 40 young and aspiring entrepreneurs will join us to discuss the issues they face in getting their business off the ground and achieving their ambitions.

It's a valuable opportunity to meet other creative minds and hear the stories of successful young people. And because we're run by young entrepreneurs, we're dynamic and welcoming. So for us, there are no stupid questions.

If you'd like to book your place or you have students who you feel would benefit from being part of Enterprising.At Cloud9 please contact stephen@entrepreneursforum.net

(We'll provide transport to ensure that all those who stay on for Enterprising.At Cloud9 will get home safely)

We'll also provide briefing packs for all those involved with young and aspiring entrepreneurs to outline the vision for Enterprising.At and how future events will work across the region.

Film and Media Competition at Cloud 9

WIN A DAY WITH A PROFESSIONAL EDITOR

We want students who attend Cloud9 on 25th February to help us capture their experience and perspectives on the day as part of the official film of the conference (or encourage some who hadn't previously registered but have an interest in film to come along!)

Thanks to Northern Film and Media we have 30 'Flip' cameras available for schools, colleges and students to record up to an hour of footage on the day.

We'll provide a full briefing and guidance from leading North East film professionals on how to capture some great footage.

And we'll also have a professional camera set up for the whole day for those people who meet someone interesting and would like to interview them a bit more formally.

All we ask is that students, schools and colleges entering the competition provide us with their best minute of footage- don't worry too much about fancy editing!

We'll work with the director and editor to select up to three winners who can work with us to produce the Cloud9 official film.

Students can enter the competition as individuals or as part of a team from their school, college or university.

We can also provide film footage that we capture of the day, including the speakers, for students who want to produce their own film of the day.


Interested? For more information contact: stephen@entrepreneursforum.net

Come along and be inspired...

Today we are delighted to confirm the sixth in our line-up of incredible Cloud9 speakers- Imran Hakim.

Young entrepreneur Imran Hakim is best known as one of the most successful individuals to gain investment on BBC2’s Dragons’ Den show with his innovative iTeddy product. His successful sales pitch back in 2007 secured him a £140,000 investment after experts Peter Jones and Theo Paphitis agreed a joint 20 per cent share.

After securing investment on the programme, Imran has gone on to successfully launch the award-winning iTeddy and associated licence platform http://www.iteddy.com/, billed as the Teddy Bear brand for the 21st century. This year Imran has put together a distribution deal with Vivid Imaginations UK’s biggest toy company, and the product is now retailing in more than 40 countries world-wide, including every major UK toy retailer (including Tesco, Asda, Argos, Costco, Makro, John Lewis, Littlewoods, Harrods, Hamleys etc) with an extensive TV campaign planned for later in the year.

However his business experience goes far beyond the realm of television. An optometrist by profession, Imran runs a successful group of independent practices in and around his home town of Manchester. Having run his own business since he was 16, he has extensive first-hand experience of a huge range of business sectors.

Imran controls a diverse business portfolio ranging from restructuring existing loss-making businesses out of administration to become successful and profitable operations and successfully negotiating licensing arrangements with global brands including Reebok, Longines and Revlon in order to secure distribution rights within given territories.

He has won countless business awards over the years in recognition of his numerous endeavours including; North West Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2006, Fusion Entrepreneur of the Year 2007, Young Emerging Talent 2008 and most recently a Mosaic Award for Science and Technology awarded to him by HRH Prince of Wales. His work on the iTeddy brand has earned him further awards such as Toy Inventor of the Year 2007 and World Toy Innovation 2008, Start-up Business of the Year 2008 and
IoD’s Northwest Young Director of the Year 2008.

Imran’s interests include expanding his business portfolio whilst encouraging entrepreneurship through mentoring and acting as an inspirational role model for young entrepreneurs. In addition, during 2009 he will be working with UMIP as Director of Entrepreneurship.

Most recently, Imran has teamed up with fellow reality TV entrepreneur and Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire, Ben Way (a previous Entrepreneurs Forum Graduate Conference speaker) to incubate and invest in other start-up companies through their new project Rainmakers.

The Entrepreneurs’ Forum is delighted to welcome back the immense talent which is, Caspar Berry!

This day of inspirational achievements at Cloud9 will be introduced and facilitated by Caspar Berry, founder of 21st Century Media, actor, author and former professional poker player.

Caspar is the perfect choice to host Cloud 9, having worked with the Forum on our previous two incredibly successful Graduate Conferences (Start Local/ Think Global & Be1) he brings with him, a wealth of experience and understanding of the challenges facing those thinking about emerging into the world of enterprise; especially building a business as a graduate.

Indeed, it was following his attendance at the launch of The Entrepreneurs’ Forum, back in 2003 that Caspar cites as his defining moment to set up his own business venture. Speaking with keynote speaker Richard Branson at the launch, motivated and steered Caspar in a direction he hadn’t thought possible.

During the summit, Caspar will inspire and entertain delegates as he guides us through the full day, drawing out the crucial questions you want to hear from our incredible line-up of speakers, exploring radical themes and new ideas about business and life success, as well as investigating the art and science of making good decisions and taking calculated risks. Caspar takes an interesting look at risk takers from poker, business and life, giving examples of why embracing risk, in a calculated way is good; why it ensures genetic survival and why, the most enduring and successful people and organisations take calculated risks every day.

Career background:Caspar started life as an actor in Byker Grove, went via Cambridge University to write screenplays for Film Four and Columbia TriStar, before embarking on his own personal risk strategy, becoming a professional poker player living and working in Las Vegas. Caspar returned to England in 2002, co-founding Twenty First Century Media- building it into the fastest growing audio visual media company in the North of England. It was whilst still at the helm of Twenty First Century Media that he began his career as a consultant, working with organisations such as BP, Nestle, Nationwide, AXA, Barclays, Cisco, Citigroup, The Metropolitan Police and The Shaw Trust; relating the themes or risk in poker to the decisions we take every day in our business and personal lives. He is a poker expert for Poker Night Live and Sky Vegas, writes a regular column for Flush Magazine and was the poker advisor on the James bond film, Casino Royale.