I’ve just been to the opening session of the Irish Web Technologies Conference 2008. The one at which Fergus Burns tore into Irish Govenment Support (or lack of it) for the Web startup sector.

To be fair, it’s probably nothing that he hasn’t already said face to face, but if the rest of the conference continues at this pace it’s going to be a do-not-miss event. A full listing of the speakers at the event are here. I’m hoping to see the presentations of Sean Hanley from Exoftware, John Ryan, CEO of SugarCRM, Bill de hOra of Newbay and Jason Barry of DeCare Systems Ireland.

Disclaimer: Barry from Irish Dev gave us complementary tickets to the evening event, on the basis that we spoke at the recent Irish Java Conference.

And apologies to Joe Drumgoole for having to walk out mid sentence. The words ‘Web 1 is about broadcast, Web 2 is about communication’ followed me out of the hall.

Did we mention that FirstPartners is sponsoring the Best Business Blog award? As a taster, here are the profiles of the 13 people short listed for the award. Who will we be giving the prize to? Come along on the 1st of March , Alexander Hotel, Dublin to find out.

		Brightspark Consulting Brightspark is a Dublin web design and internet marketing agency, run by Maryrose Lyons who has been blogging since 2003. So she probably knows what she is talking about. Maryrose doesn’t pull her punches (read her blog to find out who she called ‘a shambles’) and is recommended to people dipping their toes in the world of business blogging.
		Bubble Brothers The tagline to this blog pretty much sums it up : ‘Wine, Champagne , more’. These Cork Wine Merchants ooze sophistication, even when they branch out from wine to talk about pancakes, pizza and the Bridgestone pick of 2008. All on the one page. They’ll even sell you some of their stuff if you ask nicely.
		Pat Phelan Cork Based Giant Killer Pat Phelan is out to slay the telecoms monsters. Watch a blow by blow account on the roam4free blog. You’ll never look at your mobile phone bill in the same way again.
		Keith Bohanna Keith’s main job is as part of the Irish Internet Association and creative camp Kilkenny. Or maybe it’s as part of a startup , DB Twang, a site for Guitar enthusiasts Kilkenny Creative Camp. Or maybe it’s teaching other business people to blog. Whichever subject is, Keith covers them well on his site.
		Ice Cream Ireland Ice Cream. In a blog. From Kerry cows. What more do you need to know?
		BH Consulting Blog Brian Honan , one of Ireland’s top Security Consultants , will have you paranoid after reading his blog. And while everybody else except you gets hit by virus, phishing attempts and emails that knock over your PC, you’ll be glad that you listened to him.
		The Blacknight Blog Michele Neylon has been a supporter of the blogging community, since well , before they were called blogs. Michele runs Blacknight hosting based in Carlow. The Blacknight example shows how a company in a ‘commodity’ industry (web hosting) can stand out by showing a human face on their blog(s). At the very least , it shows faith in their quality of service.
		O’Conall Street Conall manages to make business and politics mix. A man who has journeyed from Dublin to Belfast via Spain, the SDLP and the Good Friday Agreement , he is currently head of PR Company Weber Shandwick in Northern Ireland. He’s also a Man United fan, but everybody has to have at least one flaw.
		McGarr Solicitors McGarr solicitors are the first point of call for bloggers in legal distress. The site is very much legal people who blog, rather than just bloggers with a passing interest in the law. The blog provides a lot of useful advice in areas such as Personal Injury, (accidents at work particularly) , Environmental , Planning and Employment Law. And they do the bread and butter buying and selling your house as well. .
		Interactions Annette Clancy is an organisational consultant, coach and psychotherapist. An unusal combination perhaps, but she helps people overcome their ’stuckness’ and solve business problems. The blog isn’t afraid to venture into uncharted areas such as the role of emotion in the work place.
		Worldwide Cycles One of europes few specialist bike stores run by people who are still competing regularly. Barry, based in Tipperary, explains what those infestations of cyclists are actually doing on our roads. And what cyclists get up to with cans of Lynx. It will make 4×4 drivers think twice before overtaking with only inches to spare.
		Fortify Your Oasis Thinking of changing your job? Read this blog first. Rowan explains how to give your life direction, how to pick , then land the job that fits in with this. And shows you how to preform a graceful exit from the role your are currently in and hate. And he’s written a book about it, showing that bloggers can do ‘real’ writing as well.
		Frank Fullard Mayo based Frank talks about entrepreneurs and the businesses they start. And he’s not afraid to think small, taking a different view from many of the ‘we’re a startup, we’re going to take over the world’ blogs that are out there.

I’ve been lucky enough to have been using Spring for just over 4 years. If you don’t know what Spring is, it solves a lot of problems in complex Enterprise Java Systems. And it makes those systems more configurable; Spring makes your code like Lego blocks. Blocks that you can take apart and use again and again (no matter what the underlying technology is). And because you can take it apart, it makes your code easier to test. And testing is a good thing - the earlier you find bugs , the cheaper they are to fix.

Get the feeling that I’m a bit of a Spring fanatic? Wasn’t always that way. It took me two projects where other people had choosen Spring to convince me. And did I mention that it’s one of the most in demand skills in the Java world?

Rod Johnson (aka ‘Mr Spring’) is speaking in Dublin at the Westin hotel Dublin on the 11st March. It’s fairly central, and it’s a breakfast briefing, so you don’t even to have to arrange the day off work. More details on the event are on the Kainos Website.

Update: The registration form to sign up for the event is here.

Lead developer from JBoss, coming to Dublin to talk about Hibernate on 15th October. What else could you be doing that evening? Full details on Developers.ie.

What is Hibernate? Java programs are like Lego blocks - very 3D with bumps on them to connect together. Database tables to store data are like flat sheets of paper. Hibernate is a bridge between these two very different worlds. In technical terms, it’s called Object-Relational-Mapping (ORM).

Why is it important? Hibernate is the defacto standard in the Java World, and has had huge influence on the most recent version of the EJB spec. There’s a .Net version and even competitors (such as Toplink from Oracle) are moving to the Hibernate way of doing things.

The meetup formerly known as ‘Dublin Java’ is now the ‘Dublin Java Users Group’. Check out their website here.

Related posts about meetups, Dublin, and Java events.

At a recent OpenCoffee Dublin event Brian Cleland of InterTrade Ireland mooted the idea of a Seedcamp Ireland. He’d love to see it be held in Newry or Dundalk (as cross-border networking is really his thing), but is realistic enough to consider other locations.

To quote the main Seedcamp website:

Seedcamp is where Europe’s top young founders can come together in one place.

From securing funding to developing the right network, young entrepreneurs in Europe face challenges in building globally competitive technology businesses. Through the provision of seed capital and a world class network of mentors, we want to provide a catalyst for Europe’s next generation of entrepreneurs.

We might need to use a different name, but would you be interested in an informal meetup of startups and investors? Given the turn in the property market, would investors be ooking to put their money into the startup technology sector? Where would you like to see it held?

Derek Organ left me a comment about the new Investnet site. Investnet run the successful (offline, Dublin based) Wireless Wednesday and First Tuesday networking events. In terms of cold financial payback, the latter is the most successful IT-Business networking event(s) that I’ve taken part in. Now all these networks are available online, in a Facebook / LinkedIn style site.

Good to see an Irish Organisation ‘get’ the networking possibilities that Web2.0 brings.

Also came up in conversation at Barcamp Belfast - Business Networking International (BNI). Great if you do lots of little sales - e.g. Accountants, Solicitors, IT shops , as the aim is do to cross referrals between close, but not competing , companies.

I’ll (finally) get to OpenCoffee Dublin tomorrow (Thurs 5th July). Will it be better for networking than Investnet, Barcamp or BNI?

It’s a co-incidence of timing , but a reminder that there are many more meetups than just Barcamp (Dublin Event is on this Saturday).

Plato North West (Louth - Newry and Mourne) launched last night - thanks to Coca-Cola concentrates in Drogheda for hosting.

Plato is a self help group for small business owners. (’Hello , my name is Paul and I’m self-employed’). All the people involved are looking to grow their business. What Plato offers includes:

• A support group of other people in similar situations that will meet regularly over the next months.
• Networking opportunties , both within the group, cross border , and with other Plato groups (e.g Dublin, Cork and South East).
• Clusters of companies in related sectors that would benefit from linking.
• A struture to plan business expansion and a peer review to ensure you execute the plan.

Most of the details of the meetings are confidential , but I’m (happily) surprised at the cross section of companies involved. External companies can be invited in by consensus of the group.

Related posts: How to network , people not computers.

Apologies to the Dublin Java Meetup. I was due to go tonight (event details). They even agreed to talk about Business Rules and Workflow in Java - a subject dear to my heart. And now I can’t go for family reasons (not as dramatic as it sounds, but enough to cancel).

Sorry Guys.

It seems like we’re handing out prizes every day of the week.

We’re (as in FirstPartners.net) sponsoring the Best Contribution to the Irish Blogosphere at the Irish Blog Awards. If this was Rock’n'roll, this award would be given for ‘lifetime achievement’ and Keith Richards, Bono or Burt Bacharach would be accepting it.

So who will we be handing the award to on Saturday night? Who is the blogging equivalent of Keith, Bono or Burt? Will it be ….

• Bernie Goldbach , from Irish Eyes. I want Bernie to win as he was generous with his time 2 years ago at Techcamp to a wet-behind the ears blogger.
• Donncha from Holy Schmoly. I want Donncha to win for his contribution to Wordpress - one of the best pieces of web software there is (and we use a lot of them , so we should know).
• Tom from Tom Raftery IT. I want Tom to win as like Bernie , he’s been very generous with his advice over the years. His new tagline is ‘Highest ranked blog in ireland’ so you can’t argue with that.
• Simon from Irish Election. Simon’s is the only blog that I wasn’t previously aware of. I still want him to win because anything that injects a bit more democracy to the current Irish political system is a good thing.
• Rick from the Breakfast blog. I want Rick to win as he’s one of the better 2FM DJ’s (damning with faint praise), but as one of the first mainstream bloggers, he’s done a lot to raise the profile of blogging in Ireland.

So good luck all , and I’ll be speaking to you on the night.

Update: Ok Ken ,congratulations on hitting 100 so soon - what are you having? Just noticed your ‘105 subscribers‘ post. Didn’t even get a chance to deploy my ’secret weapon’.

At the risk of having to shell out for a 2nd Pint (that’s the marketing budget blown then), anybody up for ‘Biggest increase in subscribers’ (%) between now and the blog awards? Same rules - no gouging , no biting , no photoshopping or double subscribing but everything else is fair game?

Round 2 is now online here

Original:I’ve just noticed that Ken McGuire has about the same number of subscribers on Feedburner (he has 86, I have 83 - it’s the number on the top right hand side of the blog) with both numbers increasing gradually over the weeks. No doubt Ken has the same ‘mad-take-over-the-world’ ambitions as me , or a least has a target of getting these into three-digit figures as soon as possible.

So , I’m proposing a race. First to get to 100 subscribers on any given day wins. No biting , no eye-gouging , no photo-shopping, no double-subscribing but otherwise anything goes. Loser buys the winner a beer at the Irish Blog Awards.

Anybody else feel like joining in? Same rules, but to make it fair , we may have to have some sort of handicap system for people with subscribers much higher or lower than us (i.e. we might need to give Tom Raftery a target of 1000).

From the ICS Newsletter:

Sales people or managers responsible for selling or marketing IT solutions at the “C” level are strongly encouraged to attend this wine and cheese evening event. IT buyers from  Ireland  ’s top organisations including Dunnes, AXA, AIB, and Vhi will provide insight into their decision-making criteria.

Date:                Thursday January 25th

Time:                6 pm

Venue:              ICS, Cresent Hall, Mount St. Crescent,Dublin 2

Cost:                Free to members of ICS and the Sales Institute

€25 to all others

To register:       Contact Edwina Fogarty, events@ics.ie or phone: 01 6447820

Attendees will:

• Listen to and meet IT buyers with a combined IT budget in excess of €1billion
• Understand what solutions these key decision making executives are really looking for.
• Get an insight into what decision criteria they will use before purchase.
• Learn how to get in front of these people and how they will look to you to add value to them.
• Meet other IT Sales people who may have a complimentary offering to your own, whom you can partner effectively with.

Format of the evening

1. 6.00pm - Each executive will speak for about 7 minutes on what they are looking to achieve with their IT purchases and what they are looking for from sales people.
2. 6.30pm - There will then be a question and answer session, chaired by Peter Lawless, where you can pose your questions directly to the speakers.
3. 7.00pm - The formal part of the evening will then be followed by a wine and cheese reception where you will have an opportunity to network and follow up on the advice you have just been given by the speakers.

Speakers

Vincent Nolan, CIO, Dunnes Stores

Padraic Mills, CIO, AXA

Paul Williams, Head of Procurement, AIB

Gerry Quinn, IT Director, Eircom

Mick Furlong, IT Director, VHI

Leo Lundy, Chief Technical Officer, Imagine Group

Peter Lawless, Chairman IT Sales Network and Founder 3R Sales & Marketing

Peter Lawless, is the founder of 3R Sales and Marketing, an Irish Business development consultancy. Peter Lawless is a proven business growth guru, with over 20 years in industry. Hundreds of owners of small and medium businesses, both national and international, have benefited from his advice and expertise.

Serving as a mentor of Enterprise Ireland and an external examiner for Dublin Insitutute of Technology,  Peter is also on the boards of a number of other companies. A fellow of the Sales Institute and The Irish Computer Society, Peter is a member of the Marketing Institute, the Irish Internet Association, the Irish Software Association and the Chamber of Commerce.

Update: It has just been pointed out to me that the Irish computer society do not have an RSS feed on their website.