Damien asked for blurbs from the sponsors of the Irish Blog Awards as to what they actually do. After years of trying explain in our 3 minute elevator pitch, I think we’ve finally got the answer.

FirstPartners.net build the ugly bits of websites. Not the lovely front ends but the bits that do the heavy lifting - the bits that ensure your bank balance is correct, that your ticket is there when you arrive at the airport, or bits that capture your teams’ knowledge . We deliver using a combination of Enterprise Java Technology, our custom Red-Piranha framework and Agile project techniques.

More at www.FirstPartners.net

A good rule of thumb is : if it’s covered in the Economist Magazine, then it’s just about to go business mainstream. When you’re evaluating new technologies you neither want to be too early (with a high risk of betting on the wrong horse), or too late (and miss the boat). The economist = mainstream rule of thumb has been true for trivial things such the Internet, Open Software , Agile Project development, Web 2.0 and Blogging.

So , this article in the Dec 19th - Jan 2nd Edition (tagline ‘Consumer technologies are invading corporate computing’) should make you sit up and take notice.

Basically, it states that such Web 2 mainstays such as WebMail (from Google) as well as Google’s Office replacements (for Word and Excel) are ready for the corporate mainstream. Introduced by employees familarity with these tools in the consumer market, the reason for their adoption will be financial : by specialising in these areas , Google can provide what were formerly in house desktop applications quicker , faster , cheaper and more reliable than any other provider (e.g. Microsoft) and better than the in house IT teams.

The 2 points that I take from this are:

• ‘Software as a Service’ (i.e. something you get over the web , rather than in a shrink-wrapped box) has finally reached the tipping point. It’s a similar moment (with equal opportunities) to when the internet first arrived, or the move from Dos (text based computers) to Windows (Graphics and mouse).
• With the amount of Viruses in existence, it can be argued that web based applications are now more secure than anything running on a PC. Google is a bit like Ryanair , the low cost Irish Airline, in this regard. One major crash and the damage to their reputation would put them out of business. Do you get the same ‘paranoid about safety and security’ feeling when looking at the average consumer PC?

An example of this trend is FirstPartners.net email. We could manage it ourselves, but allowing Google Apps for Your Domain to do it for us allows us to get on with doing things that clients will pay us for.

It didn’t go down too well when an elderly relative asked me over Christmas ‘what exactly do you do?’. After fobbing him off with the usual ’something in computers’, he was shocked to find out that I spend most of my time ‘Grabbing people’s brains and shoving them into a PC’.

This kind of blog-related-violence is normally associated with Twenty-Major (Warning , Parential Guidance required , unless you’re over 80), so before you call the police , let me explain.

Look at your hands. Unless they’re scarred and calloused (from the weekend’s DIY) the chances are that you work in the knowledge economy. You could work for a Bank , Insurance company, Legal company or be a medical professional but most of your work consists of one thing:  You push pieces of paper around that have some magical value.
Or you would push pieces of paper around if it hadn’t all been computerised in the last 10 years. Now you swap files and emails to get things done.  And you swear on a regular basis when the computer can’t find the information you’re looking for, or someone doesn’t understand the email you sent them. But the important bit, the information processing,  still remains in your brain.

Which brings us to Red-Piranha (site update in progress) and the shoving of people’s brains into a computer. While we can copy an MP3 music file (with Adam’s and Bono’s imagination in it) and send it around the world, but we can’t photocopy your brain. We don’t want all of it, just the part that gets the magical value-added work done. The bits about drinking beer and playing volleyball on the beach we’ll quite happily leave with you.

So this is what Enterprise Web 2.0 is all about : getting the computer to take a load off your brain so that you’ll have more time to spend on the beach drinking beer. Chapter 3 (draft) of our Enerprise Web book has just been put online, which shows you exactly how to do this.

I’ve been following what Conor from Argolon’s blog for a while, so it’s good news that his startup Loudervoice is now going into (alpha? Beta1?) trails. Even better that the problem that he’s trying to solve is directly relevant:

Tired of having your knowledge and expertise under-exposed and unread? We aim to change that.

Having been through the ‘we’re-a-startup-going-to-change-the-world-oops-just-failed-miserably’ route, I’ll be interested in how his business model differs from the likes of Experts Exchange.

Update: For info , Experts Exchange business model is to allow people to post questions and pay for answers. The experts themselves receive nothing but ‘brownie points’. I can’t see why people would want to post and lose control of their information especially as you have to log in and pay to see the answer (not very Google-able), but lots of people do.

Update 2: Ok , this time, Loudervoice really is open for Beta. Really.

I don’t normally post as the result of a mass email, but this is one of the more useful ones.

Ken of Calmar has just sent out information on Irish Consultants .ie - it does exactly what it says on the tin.

It’s not just for Information Technology Consultants (where yours truly lives), but the site also covers:

• Advertising & Media
• Archaeological
• Design
• Environmental
• Financial
• General Management
• Health & Safety
• Human Resources
• Information Technology
• Legal
• Marketing
• Property Management
• Public Relations
• Research & Development
• Risk Management
• State & Semi State Agencies
• Training & Development

Basic listing is free, although a ‘premium’ listing costs around 300 Euro. That sounds a very ‘Web 2′ business model , even if the site (thankfully) doesn’t use those words!

… have a read of this instead. Ireland is probably unique in having , within the last 10 years , benefited hugely from offshoring (why do you think all the US Companies are here?), then benefited again from being about to offshore work itself.

Thanks to Bill for the link.