Paul Hobden
Attending conferences and networking events, I am often struck by the insights and inspiration that can be drawn from speakers and, indeed, the participants.
As we move increasingly to an online world, there is significant inspiration to be found on the web.
Things that will leave you feeling ready to go out and conquer another challenge or give a help tip to overcome some tricky little problem.
Here are a few examples of online inspiration that I find useful.
TED TALKS
This site makes available, free of charge, over 1 700 talks by some of the most inspiring leader in the fields of technology, education and design as well as talks by scientists, philosophers, musicians, religious leaders, philanthropists and many others.
Various presentation under the theme “Ideas worth spreading “ have been shared by a variety of presenters.
The presenters include big names such as Bill Clinton, Malcolm Gladwell, Al Gore, Gordon Brown, Richard Dawkins, Bill Gates, Bono, Mike Rowe, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
- Go to www.ted.com for more information.
TOM PETERS
One of the world’s leading management gurus, Tom Peters, was the co-author of the hugely successful best-seller “In Search of Excellence”.
His site offers a daily dose of strong, no-nonsense, practical advice such as “Send ‘Thank you’ notes! Send ’em by the truckload! …
Send ’em every day.
Make this an ironclad… daily… ritual.”
The site also makes available the slide decks from Peters’ presentations and interviews with his cool friends.
- Go to www.tompeters.com for more information.
COURSERA
With over 650 courses from more than 109 partners, Coursera.org makes available a wealth of courses from some of the world’s leading universities for free.
Once you have registered registered as a user, you can take business, mathematics, science humanities or any number of areas.
An example of a course from the university of Maryland is “Developing Innovative Ideas for New Companies: The First Step in Entrepreneurship”.
- Go to www.coursera.org for more information.
MATT CUTTS
Google continues to play a central role for anyone who is trying to crack the online world for their business. As such, you can’t miss out on Matt Cutts. Cutts is currently the head of Google’s Webspam team. He is seen as a leading light on all things related to search engine optimisation.
- You can follow him at his blog www.mattcutts.com/blog or twitter account www.twitter.com/mattcutts and look out on YouTube for his video about the latest changes from Google.
ENTREPRENEUR ZONE
MWeb has put together a hub dedicated to entrepreneurs.
It contains a variety of content from case studies, to how-to guides and an interview series with South African entrepreneurs who share their experiences and some insights as to what it takes to be a successful small business owner.
The content both inspires and educates the small business owner.
- You can find all of this on www.mweb.co.za/entrepreneur.
These are just a few examples of sites on the web, but there are many more inspiring sites and people to follow online.
It is worth spending just a little time looking around for something that speaks to you and helps move your business forward.
Search for your inspiration online.
- Paul Hobden, head of small business at MWEB.