67 Bricks Blog

Early days - big decisions

It is exciting to be here now. Inigo and I have been discussing setting up a business for many months. We came up with an idea that utilised our skills, had revenue potential and most importantly we were both very excited about.

“Deriving value from existing information using the Semantic Web”

This ties together Inigo’s strengths in software development, my experience in running high performance teams and our joint interest in how people, information and technology come together. We believe that in certain industry sectors the key success factor is, and will become more so, the ability of a company to derive value from the knowledge its staff has access to. We want to help companies understand how to do this.

We decided that if we were planning to do this for others then we should also do this for ourselves. We are going to practice what we preach. We also plan to document this process as we go so that others can gain as much as possible from our journey.

One area we are looking into developing is a community of interest for colleagues and family and friends who are keen to support our new venture. Communities of practice and communities of interest are solutions we will be discussing with clients to support knowledge sharing.

Sam and I both feel that a company should be as open as possible - with its employees, with its clients, and with potential clients - which is everyone else! One of the advantages of working with a small company is that we’re able to enter into a proper dialogue with our customers, to benefit us and them. We’d also like to help out any other small companies by sharing our experiences, and there are plenty of friends and former colleagues that are interested in following our progress.

So, we’ll be using this blog to talk about our thoughts on the Semantic Web, knowledge managment and team performance, as well as some of the issues in running a small consultancy, and some technical advice on managing our websites, managing communication, and our software development.

67 Bricks is a consultancy and software development company that focusses on delivering value to companies from their existing information  using the Semantic Web; which Sam Herbert and myself, Inigo Surguy, have set up.

Sam and I have both had experience as consultants before, so we’re familiar with setting up a company, handling accounts, and so on. We’ve also both worked a lot with the Semantic Web, knowledge management and with helping teams be highly effective. I’m also very experienced with software development. However, setting up in business together and selling software products as well as consultancy is new to both of us, and I’m sure there’ll be plenty to learn!

So, we’re looking forward to having a great time building a successful company. The next few years are going to be very exciting.