Too many people have a great idea but don’t make anything out of it.

Some are afraid of failure, some are afraid of the pressures of success, and some just want to tell people about their ideas, just for the sake of doing so. Here is a general step-by-step guide to taking an idea and turning it into a business as detailed by Chuck of Foldees.com - the greeting card company with a web 2.0 model.

Once you get an Idea

1. Talk - Share your idea with your friends. Don’t worry about someone stealing your idea. Feedback will triumph over excessive paranoia. Take all feedback objectively, but consider them all.

2. Write it down – Putting things down on paper gets a lot of things out of your head and onto an initial plan. Don’t worry about structure, all the analysis just yet. Put down everything that comes to your head first. Getting this out of the way paves a much easier path to sit down in the future and do up a proper business plan.

3. Assemble a team – Pick your people based on motivation, communication, and skills. The lack of any one of these attributes will result in a higher likelihood of your team not reaching its full potential and morale being affected adversely. Having an especially cohesive team is essential, as a start-up will take a much longer time to reach a point of big rewards.

5. Find a deadline – Make your own deadlines and set your own lofty targets. Break things down into small tasks each which its own deadline so that you at least make baby steps towards the final goal. Failure of this will likely result in procrastination and unnecessary slowdown of the project

6. Manage the team - Be decisive. Insist on reasonable commitments on team members, and don’t be afraid to seek out new blood if they don’t reach expected levels of commitment.

7. Rinse and repeat steps 5 and 6 until you get into business – Constantly seek out new goals to meet, and manage your team based on those goals on deadlines.

Simplistic as it sounds, these are practical steps that will move you in the right direction in a timely manner.

Want to learn more? If you’re in Malaysia/Singapore, come to BarcampJB Day 2 (7th Dec), if you’re not in the area – find a barcamp in a location near you coming soon!

We don’t do too many interviews here at Friedbeef’s Tech, but social entrepreneurship on the web is something I’m passionate about.  Here are some quick insights on what drives a social entrepreneur, and the challenges they face, and for that we’re talking to Mike Tee from Elevyn.com.

Elevyn helps to connect poor artisans and villagers directly to customers around the world, and effectively cutting out middle men and ensuring higher returns to the poor craftsmen.   This also allows poor artisans to reach a worldwide market previously unattainable to them, and to create a sustainable income and raise themselves out of poverty.

You may have heard of Etsy.com, a community specialized in selling hand-made items directly on the Internet. Think of Elevyn as Etsy for the poor.

Meet the founders of Elevyn…

1. Why this cause?

Our work is largely inspired by the Gerai OA – a non-profit, volunteer-driven stall that sells crafts sourced from indigenous groups of Malaysia.  Gerai OA plays a very important role in connecting the poor rural artisans to the urban Malaysian market. Being tech geeks with interests in social issues, both Devan and myself constantly salivated at the thought of an online Gerai OA!

At the same time, we had Sze Ning who had, over the years, been volunteering with Gerai OA and involved in various indigenous group projects. In early 2008, one of the projects took her to a village deep inside rural Sabah, Malaysia.  The locals there were subsistence based, and had no electricity nor piped water supply. Imagine this in Malaysia! However – she was surprised that they had high speed Internet in their schools or clinics – powered by solar power and satellite! It immediate struck her that something could be done with connecting the artisans to the world via the web.

So a lot of it goes down to having things "coming together at the right time". Sze Ning shared with us her experience, we decided to try our luck with MDeC Pre-seed, and the ball really started rolling when we won the grant so a lot of credit goes to MDeC as well for making things possible. (MDec is a Malaysian Government linked VC).

2. What obstacles did you face getting this off the ground and what are you doing about it?

Very much like traditional IT projects – a major challenge is getting people to buy into the idea. In our case, it’s many parties:

A. Getting shops to come online – as our objective is really to empower communities in rural areas to start selling online, a lot of groundwork is needed to share with them the idea, and to gain the communities’ trust to join this new initiative. And then there’s the "capacity-building" work needed to get the artisans organized as a group, and producing quality crafts that the market demands. So in this, we work with various field partners who are already established on the ground, and have a few advisors who give us their thoughts on the many issues that we encounter.

B. Getting people like you and me to buy and contribute. One major challenge is how to get people to buy the crafts, and to learn more about the Causes.  It’s very hard to get people, especially the urban ones, to relate to the plight of a rural artisan like Aunt Imboi for instance, for her world is so far away from our every day lives.

So we’re thinking hard on how to bridge that gap – and one thing we’ll be doing is start a blog and start writing on specific themes that people can easily understand, such as Indigenous Peoples. On top of that we’ll also be embarking on traditional marketing methods like Google ads, etc.

3. Which other socially beneficial web sites are close to your heart?

The one that totally blew me away is KIVA.org. Many have heard of this – taking microloans online, but the scale at which it is being done, and in spite of the fact that it started out as a 1-programmer initiative – is amazing. There are few others, but none truly groundbreaking in terms of idea or execution that I’ve found so far. I like to follow the Springwise.com website – they sometimes showcase some truly great social business ideas.

Actually this is one issue that I’ll be addressing at BarcampJB (come to the event if you live in South East Asia). We’ve yet to see much exciting web projects come into place. Maybe the social entrepreneurship field is relatively new, and not many have even heard of it. So a lot of startup ideas are urban-targeted and profit-oriented.

Mike will be speaking at BarcampJB on ‘Web 2.0 & Social Entrepeneurship -  Changing the World’  at 12pm Dec 7th.  If you live in Singapore or Malaysia, come join in!  If you live elsewhere, find a barcamp happening in a location near you.

"An unconference is a facilitated, participant-driven conference centered around a theme or purpose. The term "unconference" has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations" – Wikipedia

I’ve attended two unconference style events this year (Startupcamp/Barcamp)- and I’ve become a true believer of this format.   Since I’ve seen a lot of what goes on behind the scenes – here are some tips to follow if you want to run a similar show in your location.

1. Get a team of kindred spirits together

This is possibly the most important aspect.  The purpose of these unconferences would be to bring together people of the same feather, and to begin – you will need a core of like-minded and driven people.  The volunteers who help run this show don’t usually look for recognition nor remuneration. 

Everything is fueled by passion.

2. Get sponsors – nice ones

Get people who really want to help, rather than take over your event.  BarCamp Kuala Lumpur had one rule about sponsors and it was that their donation limit would be capped.  This was to prevent any organizer from driving the agenda of the event.  To me, this is an excellent path for any unconference to take.   

3. Set up the venue right

In a nutshell, besides the basics like ease of access, amenities, etc.  You need to get a venue with 3 or more large rooms (for the sessions), and perhaps just as important – a large area to mingle.  For me, a lot of the value I gain from these events would be the relationships built, and the interesting mix of characters and conversations you will get into informally between sessions.  

Make sure all the rooms have an easy to use speaker system.  Some speakers will have video to show on their laptop, which fails badly if they have to play audio through the laptop sound system.

4. Set the ground rules

Due to its informal setting, there are very few rules for an unconference.  Common ground rules include staying on time, and being considerate as to not over-run into another session.

5. Trust

Don’t bother vetting speaker material and judge quality.  Unconference attendees vote with their feet – ie. They can move on to another room based on their own agenda.  (Speakers – don’t take this personally – people will walk in and out of of your talk – many attendees bounce around during sessions).   Trust the speakers will do their best to contribute to the event, and trust the crowd.

6. Spread the word

Unconferences typically run on a shoestring budget, but what it lacks in the wallet section, it makes up for in ability to generate goodwill.  Tap into your social networks (online and in real life), the bloggers, and local interest groups.  Local interest groups bring along their own set of people passionate about a particular topic, eg. photography, or Linux – this broadens your the breadth of your audience and their backgrounds.

7. Enjoy

Whatever happens, happens.  Don’t take things so seriously.  What you’ll find is that when things go wrong, there will be more people who will step up and help you fix the problem than people who sit back and complain.  At the end of the day, everyone who attends is there to share, participate, discuss, and learn. 

8.  Attend before you attempt

If you’re going to run an event, visit one first!   For those people living in Malaysia or Singapore – come to BarcampJB happening 6th and 7th December at MSC Cyberport JB  I’ll be speaking on "How to change the world with $25 – an introduction to Kiva" on the 6th at 3pm.  We have some pretty interesting sessions – full schedule here.

Check out the barcamp Malaysia blog for more details.  For those who live outside South East Asia, check out barcamp.org for a list of events happening near your area!

Do you have other unconference tips to share?  Let us know in the comments!