Does small business stop dead for August?

[Madelaine Kirke]

Or has everyone migrated to some other networking site?

I've been for my annual Edinburgh Fringe binge (27 shows in one week).

[Mike Evans]

Hi Madelaine,

No im here. This is my first time here so here goes.

I am not sure how this really how this works but i wanted to give it a go.

Where you working at the Edinburgh fringe?

I am working more and more from home and i am finding some very interestings things out about myself. I am not as good i thought at motivating myself at first, this has improved though. I do get more work done when i do get going though, which is great. The other is i really miss people. I am not much of a talker but i miss listening to peeps and their issues. I am working from home on Sundays, Mondays & Tuesdays. So when i go to site jobs on Wed to Thurs it is nice to talk.

Other than that i am finding thing pretty good so far.

Any way enough of my ramblings and tell us more about your fringe binge.

Mike

[Madelaine Kirke]

I am running my minute business starting from the other end - after children and 14 house moves married to a soldier had destroyed any hope of me getting a worthwhile job, I started to sell online. I, too, miss the office chat - even when I was teaching some classes were good company (secondary! believe it or not). August is all but dead online so going away then makes almost no difference to my turnover.

The Fringe - we saw Michael McIntyre, Russell Howard, Mark Watson (the last two sell-out shows which always makes one feel smug) - heard far too many foul words, which is the downside of the Fringe - Punt & Dennis and Norman Lovett (Holly from Red Dwarf) manage to be funny without any of that - mostly it is only "sentence enhancers" anyway - not the subject of the humour.

[Jo Ligas]

indeed - where is everybody?!

[Madelaine Kirke]

not here, that's for sure!

[Patricia Mata]

Hi Madeliane, Jo, and Mike,

well....I'm back here again.. and we all are.. so er.... but we are early methinks..

'smallbizpodnetwork school' don''t start till next week at least..we have supply staff till then if we wanna hang about in the playground..

hurry or else I will dish out ciggies to those that are easily influenced! lol

[Alex Bellinger]

Don't know about you guys, but I know when I go quiet on networking sites, it's usually because I'm horribly busy! Maybe August is a manic month for us all. Having said that August is indeed quiet for many of us online. I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees a seasonal dip in visits to websites at this time of the year.

Talking of other social networks, I'm really enjoying Facebook too at the moment. You have to log in to Facebook, but after that if any of you fancy joining the SmallBizPod group there too, that would be cool. Here's the link:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2370743429

It's not so much forum oriented, but as someone described it to me, it's a very handy electronic rollerdex of your friends and contacts (business or otherwise). It's also a very good way of connecting to people with six degrees of separation from yourself. The other good thing about it is, you can just 'be there' - no pressure to contribute. A handy resource.

As for the Fringe, you didn't notice a bearded, kilted Scotsman branding a microphone called Ewan Spence did you, Madelaine? He does a podcast on the Fringe http://edinburghfringe.thepodcastnetwork.com/

[Madelaine Kirke]

oh dear, facebook as well as ning and myspace and bttradespace... I'll never keep up. However, I have had a couple of invites from other contacts to join there so I probably should.

No, didn't see anyone fitting that description Alex - have you been there for the fringe? It is quite crazy and everyone becomes very un-British and talks to complete strangers in the inevitable queues. They are inevitable because the gap between shows in a venue is often around 20 minutes.

[Alex Bellinger]

Despite working at Royal Bank of Scotland for years and visiting Edinburgh every other week, I never got to go to the Fringe. It's on my list of things to do before I'm 50!

[Madelaine Kirke]

It's quite fun when you are over 50 too, Alex! We first went with 2 teenagers - concentrating on drama rather than stand-up to keep the foul language at a minimum. Now we can go to almost anything but, amazingly, our sons, 22 &26, came with us this year.. well, it's not so amazing when you know that we paid.