Manoj Ranaweera is an interesting friend to have. The amount of time we seem to spend talking to each other confuses some people, but the reason is simple: I struggle to understand the World the way he sees it, and I suspect the opposite is true, and we both want to try and cross a little bit into the other’s to see what we can learn from it. For me, it’s been really beneficial. I hope the same is true the other way around.

I’m not at all that surprised though that he has aired some reservations about what I’m doing to OpenCoffee, by slotting it into a co-working day. We’re good enough friends that we can each sustain a little criticism from each other.

That said, I thought it might be an idea to clarify what I’m up to.

As I explained to him, my reasoning is pretty simple. There are two big problems with OpenCoffee Manchester as it has gone so far: regular, consistent attendance and grassroots innovation.

We get sporadic attendance because people are busy with other things, and often there are not enough “doers” in the room to make an idea like edocr (spawn of OpenCoffee) to happen. I wanted to try and change things so that more business people could meet more developers.

But I knew the developers wouldn’t come.

When I go out to the developer community and I say “come on, let’s go network in the middle of the day” I get a pretty solid response: no way. Businesses in this sector in Manchester are small, often micro-sized and are incredibly busy. They need some sort of guaranteed payoff to giving up 1-2 hours of their time in the middle of the day, and ideally one that results in cash in their hand. OpenCoffee was never meant to give that, so has traditionally attracted a more conservative business audience who want to get to know more people in the community. All good stuff, but not where I think it can reach its potential.

So, we give people who can’t justify a few hours a way of justifying a whole day. It’ll be like a little mini-Geek conference, where we discuss ideas and work out ways of making them happen. Or we just get on with some work if nothing appeals that day - if nothing is going on, no loss. There’s still good company, quiet space to work and a bit of a drink afterwards. Oh, and in the morning, some people who understand finance, marketing, execution, they’ll be around to talk to if you want to find out what that is all about.

It’s about giving two core audiences exactly what they need at the same in the same place but giving them different things. It’s almost like a magic trick - each side sees what they want to see, but in the middle is something else going on. The people who want an hour of networking get an hour of networking. The people who want co-working get co-working. A few will cross between the two, and that’s where the interesting stuff might happen.

Yes, it might work, it might not. For at least a month or two, let’s give it a go and we’ll see how it develops. If nobody is interested in OpenCoffee but is into Co-working three months from now, we still have a win. If it goes the other way, we still have a win. What I’d be really surprised is if in three months time we don’t have a group interested in doing either.