I heard Ruby McGregor-Smith talk at a recent UWE Distinguished Executive address and was very impressed with her vision and business ethic. This is another example of innovative funding mechanism to replace/augment the existing friends, family, fools, Banks, Angels & VCs.

Entrepreneurs seeking start-up capital for their business ideas are invited to pitch for a share of a £5 million investment fund from MITIE Group PLC at a live ‘MITIE Millions’ pitching afternoon on May 28th. The four hour session will see six entrepreneurs competing for a slice of the £5m fund in front of a panel of top business leaders, led by MITIE CEO Ruby McGregor-Smith. MITIE are particularly excited about the market opportunities in energy services, healthcare and technology, which have huge potential for outsourcers to provide new and innovative solutions. Applications to participate in the event are open until the 30 April 2012.

More information can be found at www.mitie.com/entrepreneurs.

Ok, we didn’t really go away, away. But over Christmas the domain was moved from GoDaddy to Vidahost, and a number of PEBKAC technical issues were identified.

Happily the subdomain path was finally renamed, along with various access rights and opencoffeebristol.jbsh.co.uk sprang back into life.

Thankfully, there was a backup so the website is largely ‘normal’, just as soon as we establish what normal is anyway.

There’s a new calendar (if it looks a bit blank, it’s because the next Open Coffee is in Feb: as of posting this), and all the Open Coffee Bristol events are scheduled in forever thanks to a recurring event feature that All-in-One Event Calendar has, it’s also in technicolor (well two colours at the moment, but more can be added).