Lets see if this Facebook thing can be better than LinkedIn for networking and getting new business.
As an experiment, we’ve just opened a Dublin IT Contractors Group on Facebook. No matter what the Technology is that you use, you’re welcome to come along and take part.
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?
Derek Organ is brave enough to ask the question below about the Barcamp Ireland unconference. He’s deeply involved with Web 2.0 startup 1time.ie, so we know he’s not thick! I’m writing this post, as Enterprise Ireland recently posted an invite to everybody that was at the Web 2 Ireland get together, and I can just picture the people there scratching their heads and wondering ‘What is this Barcamp thing anway?‘.
I’ve never been to one of these events but I’d love to go there and show off our own web 2.0 product and also see what other people are at in ireland. I’m struggling at the moment though to figure out exactly how the the day will be formated. As in who talks, organizes etc? I’m sure they work but i wonder could anyone share there experience if they have been to one. What usually happens?
So, below are the answers the top questions I had before attending. Yes, the answers are strange, but yes, the whole thing seems to work.
1) Where is the event going to be held? At the time of writing , it’s going to be in Dublin, Cork, Galway or Waterford. Yes, it makes it slightly difficult to book accomadation, but hopefully a consensus will be arrived at soon. In general , Barcamp is dependant on people ‘donating’ a place to meetup. For example , last Octobers Techcamp Ireland was held in the Northside Civic Centre , Dublin.
2) When is the event on? This appears to be a little clearer, with current opinion favouring Saturday the 23rd September.
3) Who should attend? Anybody with a passion for the uses of technology - not just geeks in the traditional sense of the word, but people who can string two sentences together and still get excited about new possibilities.
4) How do I get invited? You invite yourself. Go to this page on the Barcamp site , and add your name to the list (click on the ‘edit page’ button on the top left). Yes it’s one of those web pages that everybody and anybody can edit (a wiki). In exchange for you being trusted to change the page, please don’t go mad with it.
5) How do I get in touch with the organiser? The organiser is you. I understand this may come as a bit of a shock, but at least you have about 30 other people (at the last count) to help you out. The wiki (see point 4) is what makes it all come together - the more you put in, the more you get out of it.
6) What will people be talking about? Anything that interests you. The current list is on the wiki, and first timers are actively encouraged to sign up to speak - not as a sales pitch, but if you genuinely think you have something useful to share.
If you’re looking for more information, you could do worse than check out the people that have already blogged about the event:
And by way of apology to Derek for damning him with faint praise , here is his company logo - well worth checking out.
If you’re not quite sure what Barcamp is , some useful links:
By Paul Browne
So , for all you people who find it difficult to make it every month, we’re pleased to announce the Java Meetup in the Virtual Irish Pub at 7.30pm on Tuesday 25th July. We’ll be talking about ‘What technologies should I be learning in the next 12 months?‘. See the drama unfold - Will the server take the strain? Will there be more than one person there?
Stephen has already blogged about it , so that makes two. Thanks also to John for the original idea, Jakub for all the hard work in the getting the (real) Dublin Java Meetup to this stage, and Donal for the ‘try out everything before the day’ advice!
Seeing as we’re spreading our wings, we may even invite the .Net, PHP and Ruby guys (after all , enough of them turn up at the Java events !)
Update: The Virtual Pub is now live (here).
Can’t make it along in person? We’re going to do a 2nd Java meetup, but in a ‘virtual pub’ for people who find it hard to get to Dublin. We’ll still carry on with the existing (face to face) meetups. As an extra, at 7.30pm the last Tuesday of the month we’ll have an open chat session (We’ll setup chat software on this or another website).
So, for 7.30pm on Tuesday 25th July I’ll be online. We’ll start with ‘What technologies should I be learning in the next 12 months?’ and let things develop from there.
If you did study at the University of Ulster (in Magee, Coleraine, Jordanstown or Belfast), then the UU have a networking site to help you keep in touch with people from the time that you complained about having a lecture at 9.15am
Been reading the various posts by bloggers on the recent Web2Ireland event organised by Enterprise Ireland.
(Photo of Marc Canter Speaking , by Dermod)
Prize for one of the better (and concise) definitions of Web 2.0 goes to Kevin Sherry of Enterprise Ireland:
Web 2.0 is the Second Wave of Internet Business Activity.
Having said that , my view is Web 2.0 is almost , but not quite , going mainstream (in Ireland at least). Judging by the people I met (more below) and the dress standards I would judge the audience as 1/3rd Business-VC (suit and tie) 1/3rd Techie (Jeans and T-Shirt) and 1/3rd Professional Technologist (Suit but no tie). This contrasts with the last Web 2.0 event , where the audience was almost exclusively techie, despite dual business and technology marketing.
You can judge for yourself from the agenda at the Web2Ireland site, but my only gripe is that I’m not sure if Enterprise Ireland got the balance right. Aside from Marc Canter (who managed to successfuly quote Joyce in a techie presentation!) the main speakers - Judy Gibbons from Accel and Jeff Clavier (Software Only) - were either VC or Angel investors. That’s not to say that they didn’t have a lot of good, interesting and relevant things to say (more below), it just meant that you had to bear in mind their angle on things (we want to lend you money). Given the success of all the people mentioned this paragraph, I think they are well worth listening to. Adam Green , who despite being on a blogging break, hosted a very good lunchtime session (summary: ‘everything is XML’).
The key things I learned from the above speakers were (these are paraphrased , so excuse me if the quotes get lost in translation):
This last point is of particular interest, given that the stuff that FirstPartners build is increasingly Web 2.0 techniques and technologies applied to the problems of the Enterprise. That’s probably worth another , separate blog post.
There a lot of good people that I met on the day, but a lot of people that I either missed, or didn’t have enough time to complete our conversations. By way of an apology , I’ll use the power of Wordpress to trackback to them. Their blogs are well worth reading for further information / angles on the event.
Technorati Tags: web2ireland
And we’d like to welcome the Irish Internet Association to the Blogosphere.
Fair play to Fergal O’Byrne - 3 months ago at the IIA Web 2.0 Event that we presented at, he was honest enough to admit his ignorance of blogs. Now a short time later , he’s turned things around and is blogging himself. Congrats!
Well, apart from 30 Seconds early on in my life on RTE’s Wanderly Wagon, I’ve not had national media exposure before. Given what I write about (how to use technology in business), I doubt if I’m going to be on celebrity big-brother any time soon. So here’s the photo from the Irish Times. If you click on it, you’ll be able to buy it.
The story is that we (as in FirstPartners.net) were sponsoring an award (couple of quid back when Damien was trying to get the blog awards off the ground). On the night , I had to catch the last train for Belfast at about 8.30 , so the Irish Times photographer got a couple of us together earlier on to take the shot.
So , apologies to Roger Galligan of IrishBlogs.ie who I didn’t get to hand the award to on the night, and any of the blog award winners, all of whom deserve to be in the pic!
If you haven’t already read a post about the Irish Blog Awards, you’ve either been a coma for the last month, or lost your internet connection for a very long time. Either way , you missed a very good evening in the Alexender Hotel in Dublin. We (FirstPartners.net) were sponsoring one of the awards (Best Contribution to the Irish Bloggersphere). At least I can say ‘I was there’ , which will either seem very far sighted or as strange as sponsoring ‘The Irish email awards’ as blogging goes mainstream. Either way , I doubt if blogging will fall into the ‘no-one will care’ category.
Despite the lead-in , this is not a post about blogging. In fact despite the evidence in front of your very eyes, I (Paul Browne) am not really a blogger in the real, hip and trendy sense of the medium. Compared to some of the characters I met there, I’m just somebody how likes getting things done , and happy to talk about one of things that interests me (Technology). Blogging is (currently) the best way I find to do it.
Talking of the people that I met there , here are some (and I’m still playing the game of ‘connect the people to the blogs’). Apologies if I’ve missed you (leave a comment)
Just found out that I’ve also managed to get my picture in the Irish Times. Surreal - I’m writing this on the Train and have seen it by looking over a fellow passengers shoulder .. I’m the one standing in front of Bernie Goldbach on the right. What are the rules for linking to this picture online?
On my todo list after the events are 1) Get a Podcast out 2) Check out Odeo.com for hosting the content 3) Check out Tredia 4)Do a google for people writing about ‘The Irish Blog Awards’ 5) Check out Jeff’s Podcast for the people that I’ve missed.
Will update this with feedback from the ‘How to talk to your boss about agile’ event, but in the meantime, here is all the slides and links to articles used in the Agile presentation.
We’re giving a talk about ‘how to talk to your boss about agile‘ for the Irish .Net Developers Association next Tuesday in Buswells hotel Dublin.
More details (including the slides themselves, as a preview of what you are missing) are available here in powerpoint, openoffice, pdf and flash formats. The slides explain how 4 pictures of bridges can explain the difference between Ad-Hoc , Predictive, Agile and XP projects. No , really , you do want to check this out.
Links to a lot of the sites / articles / tools used in the presentation are here on Del.icio.us. More posts on this blog about using agile techniques on projects are here.
The Bridges are:
As a sample of some of the pictures (which include lego people showing everything that can go wrong on a team), check out the image below.
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Image from
TheBrickTestament.
Yesterday we presented the Irish Web 2.0 Event at the Morgan Hotel , Temple Bar , Dublin - the other half of ‘we’ being Fergal Breen of IrishDev. Being a Web 2.0 event, we made it a bit more interactive than your usual presentation, so I ended up learning a lot. Here are the top things that I didn’t know before yesterday:
1) In Ireland at least , awareness of Web 2.0 is highly concentrated in the tech , and not the business community. 90% of the audience described themselves as technical , despite the event being co-hosted by the Irish Internet Association (IIA), a business group. I expect this to change over the next 6 months following patterns elsewhere.
2) Walter (from Sxoop.com) described the recent Web 2.0 conference in London. One thing he said surprised me: He said that there was a feeling that developers in the area were doing it to ’scratch their own itch’ (a good thing) but were hostile to ‘Enterprise’ development (bad as somebody has to pay the bills!). A gap in the market for an ‘Enterprise Web 2.0′ conference perhaps?
3) 10% of the Audience were Johnny Cash fans. Johnny Cash is a perfect example of the ‘long tail’. 18 months ago (before his untimely demise and biopic starring Joaquin Phoenix) it was nearly impossible to get his records (in Ireland at least) - a classic case of ‘long tail’ demand. Now, he’s a blockbuster again, so mainstream shops are stocking his CD’s in high profile positions. In 18 months time , will be back on the long tail again?
4) Google has huge mindshare amoung Ajax developers and Web 2.0 people. Nearly every single person present had used Google maps (so much so that we didn’t need the demo video). Most were also aware of the awesome Ajax stuff coming out of the Googleplex such as the Ajax based XSLT transformation and image handling libraries.
5) People don’t want to do Javascript. While Ajax has rekindled their interest in this language, there was almost a relief that that frameworks such as DWR and Dojo do most of the work for you. To be fair, many people’s opinion are based on Javascirpt circa 1999, but there was a definate preference for using Atlas ,Ajax.net and Java Server Faces (JSF) / Oracle ADF.
6) There was a healthy representation of Microsoft people. Given that the consensus is that Web 2.0 and it’s Ajax capabilites are the most serious challenge to Redmond on the Desktop, it’s healthy to see such a strong interest. Healthy as in competition (from Firefox) has given us Internet Explorer 7 and will continue to drive innovation.
7) Nobody can agree what Web 2.0 is. This is not surprising considering that Web 2.0 is about individual experience. Big, shared, events like the Superbowl (or Champions League final , for us that prefer our football in other formats) are now the exeption rather than than norm. Even these events will be customised - choose your own camera angle, choose which sports blogs you read leading up to the game , choose the device (TV , PC, Mobile) that you want to watch on, and when you want to watch.
There is a healthy balance of Buzz and scepticism around Web 2.0. A lot of the companies (such as eats.ie) that are ‘doing’ Web 2.0 would not use the web 2.0 label. They’re doing the Ajax / online hosting / word of mouth marketing / self funding / continual updates thing , but they find that the label just gets in the way.
9) Some people were concerned about ‘how do you test Web 2.0 and Ajax apps?’. The answer - the same as before , only involve your users. While Ajax gives us incredible power (including the ability to ‘break’ the web browser), people have got used to certain conventions with Web and PC apps that will take time to evolve.
10) There was a lot of interest in using Agile techniques to deliver Web 2.0 apps (e.g. Flicker s update of code every half hour). Which is a nice lead in for the Agile event at the Irish .Net Developers Association.
Finally , if you are going to a joint presentation (with the two speakers stepping in and out as required), try to see the final version of the slides more than 10 minutes beforehand. You know who you are (Fergal!). Luckily , the feedback from the people so far has been good (e.g. Robert Burke. I think the word ’superb’ was used. Was Kieran at the same event ? !
If you’re looking for the slides / materials , they’re available at this blog post.
One rule of thumb : when the Economist Magazine (the one with the red square on the top right hand corner) writes about something, it is a sure sign that it is leaving the 10% of early adoptors and going mainstream. This has been true for Agile Projects , Java and even the rise of the Internet.
This weeks Economist has an article on Corporate Blogging. It gives a good explanation as to what blogging is about , for the 90% of the population that hasn’t heard about it yet. It also gives the case study of when Diebold bought Global Election Systems (GES). GES makes voting machines similar to those involved in the electronic voting debacle in Ireland. The GES machines have similar problems, but unfortunately Diebold only became aware of this after they bought they company. What is interesting is that these problems were well documented beforehand in the blogosphere - a good example of how the blogging community can save you a lot of money!
As part of this ‘Blogs going mainstream’ , the Irish Internet Assoication is hosting a Seminar on blogging. It’s at the Hilton hotel in Dublin on the 8th March. Worth checking out. Michele Neylon , who is giving the talk , is also looking for examples of Irish Business Blogs.
We’ve just been added to the Search.ie directory, so I thought I ‘d return the favour - the website is www.search.ie and is a pretty good (and human edited) summary of Irish Websites.
As an aside , they’re -sponsored by Black Knight Web Hosting, home of the perennial blogger, Michele Neylon.
Forthcoming Dublin events for the Irish Computer Society
http://www.ics-skills.ie/newsletters/jan-06-images/ICS%20Events-Small.pdf
Yes, form an orderly queue for autographs - the article in Business Plus magazine is finally available in the February edition (currently in Newsagents). It’s called ‘Everything you know about the Web is wrong’ and tries to introduce some of the concepts behind Ajax to a wider Audience.
Now, if you’re too tight to buy the magazine , or you’re living outside Ireland , this blog entry tells you how to download it. Mind you, you’ll miss out on the lovely photo of me. Want something more technical? Try this article I wrote for Sun’s Java website on for size.
While you’re at it, book your place to see me deliver a presentation on Web 2.0 - it’s part of the Irish Dev / Irish Internet Association Event on the 21st February at the Morgan Hotel in Dublin. All comments (especially giving a cold dose of reality amid all the hype) are welcome.
All shameless self publicity.
Probably the first of many posts about Tech Camp
A very good meeting in Dublin , loads of ideas from the people present.
Interesting though that the first blog I do about it is a piece of software call L(ego) Draw - no more boring Powerpoint presentations for me - Lego figures all the way!
Or at least put in the application form for ‘professional membership’.
Whether they’ll let me join after attending their meetings as an ‘associate’ on and off since 1998 is another matter!
Like the name suggests The Irish Internet Association is a grouping of companies and professionals who work with the Internet in Ireland. These range from Customer facing companies (e.g. Dell , Aer Lingus , An Post) , through to the companies that provide the technologies (Vision , Accenture etc).