New Tech Post

Cork Institute of Technology: Two New Graduate Conversion Programmes in Cloud Computing

Tom Murphy — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:20:59 +0000

With its promise of unlimited storage and the possibility to create seamless bridges between various devices it is hard to argue that cloud computing is not going to play a large and significant part in our digital futures. Ireland, by the great good fortune of its geography and climate, is well positioned to be play a key part in the physical storage and management of cloud based data.

According to a report in April, 2011, from Forrester, "Sizing the Cloud." The global cloud computing market, which was valued at just over $40 billion in 2010, will be worth $240 billion in 2020.

There are many businesses who wish to be part of that growth and in this new technological frontier they need people with the appropriate training to help them move forward. More importantly, they need people with more than generic expertise in a given field. Businesses need people whose education matches the roles that they need filling and the tasks that they need doing.

For that to happen industry has to tell education what it needs. Similarly, colleges and universities need to create new courses or adapt existing ones, as much as is reasonable, to ensure that local businesses are able to benefit and students are appropriately skilled for a new, dynamic, ever-changing job market.

Responding to the shifting technological and business landscape, the Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) has launched two new graduate conversion programmes which are for graduates from non-computing disciplines to gain an academic qualification in cloud computing.

The Higher Diploma in Science in Cloud Computing and the Higher Diploma in Science in Cloud and Mobile Software Development will provide conversion pathways for graduates from non-computing disciplines so they can more closely match the needs of the current IT market.

Tim Horgan is the Head of the Cloud Computing Centre of Excellence at Cork Institute of Technology. He says, “We have a need for [these courses.] We have consulted widely with industry in the region and they told us they have a requirement for people with the skillsets that are contained in these programs.

This collaboration between industry and the CIT took place over a period of time. Tim says they went; “Through feedback, through consultation, through meetings on the campus, through online surveys. We have captured the desired skillsets and designed a program around them.

“The companies are telling us, “We need people with these skillsets.””

The first semester is focused on general computing. The second semester is a deep-dive down into the three components that underline cloud infrastructures; virtualizaton, data storage and the workings of the internet.

The next part of the course focuses on applications that work in the cloud. CIT has invested €1.5 million on its own private cloud infrastructure which the students can use in their coursework to practice and test their acquired knowledge.

It would seem obvious that the ideal participant would be someone with an engineering or science background who can understand problems and be able to solve them with logical thought processes.

But Tim and his colleagues are casting their net wider, “This is not the only type of person we need. Companies have told us they need language skills. They need native Irish speakers who can speak German and have a technical competence.

Above all, Tim says, “Interest is key.”

By taking on course participants with a different academic background then one would normally expect for a subject like cloud computing it is hoped to solve a common problem amongst businesses which they say needs to be addressed.

For a long time companies have had to bring people from outside Ireland who have had the broader base of required language and technical skills. But as Tim points out, “The problem is that not being Irish, sooner or later, many of them want to return home.”

This creates problems of continuity in the organizations and incurs extra expense in training replacements.

Another piece of good news is that these programmes are supported by the Higher Education Authority and Department of Education and Skills and the tuition fees normally associated with these programmes are waived.

The Upside and Downside of Privacy on the Web

Tom Murphy — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:26:12 +0000

In many ways being on the internet is like living in a small village where everyone seems to know your business. This can be a good thing and a bad thing depending on the context.

In villages or provincial towns and cities like Galway or Dublin, the possibility of being able go about one’s activities with any degree of anonymity is a forlorn hope. To get lost in the crowd and be just another face, another digit on some statistical sheet, you have to live in one of the major metropolises of the world such as London, New York or Los Angeles.

You won’t disappear unless you want to and have some determination and guile but unless you do something exceptional, either good or bad, it is very unlikely that you will be noticed at all.

The upside is that since nobody knows — or cares — what you get up to, there is definitely more scope for expression and play than otherwise would be possible in the closed communities of ‘social tyranny’ that exist outside the metropolitan life.

The downside is that because nobody cares enough to watch out for us or protect us then behaviour of a purely self-indulgent nature can often end in catastrophe. One bad choice, even for the most self-disciplined of us, is often all it takes for a cascade of disastrous consequences to ensue.

Once the joys and whatnot of 'Big City' life have been explored and experienced there is very often a return to one’s roots. To the safe, the known and the predictable.

As large as the internet is and as large as the social networks are the majority of most people’s online social interactions are amongst just a few people. This is true even if the individual’s profile has large counts associated with it.

Although we live on the doorstep of the largest metropolis ever — the World Wide Web — most of us conduct our business in the parochial manner of small village-like tribes. This makes sense as we have lived in small groups congregating around camp fires at tribal gatherings for warmth and company, and coming to live to together in villages for mutual protection for most of humanities existence. Cities are a very recent blip in the historical timeline of humans.

Despite this history of close association many people want to apply metropolitan values of privacy, i.e. anonymous unless otherwise, to this blatantly parochial digital existence.

Certainly, here in Europe, we are protected by Article 8 of European Convention on Human Rights under which have a right to have our private and family life, our home and our correspondence respected.

Our medical records and our tax records, which our very existence in a civil society calls into being, are (I really hope) extremely well protected. Certainly, up until now breaches of police and military security have been down to rogue individuals that have been granted access to the system.

Whether online or out here in ‘real life’ these very vital aspects of our privacy are protected as much as we can reasonably hope.

But securing this sort of private data is not the same as the kind of thing as having a private life.

Whether we like it or not, we have no choice about the existence medical and tax records that concern themselves with fundamental aspects of our lives such as our health and financial affairs. The same for our entries on other public service databases. Alternatively, we do have a choice about what we do in online social space and who we share things with.

Although, not perfect and always with the need for practical, good sense, we can more or less control, to levels greater than just a year or two ago, how much of our online activities the people in our online village can monitor. A little bit of social media savviness can make life very difficult for the digital curtain twitchers.

The problem is that the behemoths of the internet such as Google, Facebook, etc., run on a couple of false assumptions that run contrary to how we have lived our lives for millennia.

In our daily lives we conduct our activities as individuals in a finely crafted, framework of social give and take. Our brains have evolved excellent stratagems for engaging, negotiating and coping with the nature and structure of a dynamic, constantly shifting set of behaviours and relationships.

In contrast to this, now natural for us, way of going about our lives, the first assumption regarding the handling of data that seems to be used by the large scale web operations is based on the Stewart Brand's much misunderstood concept that information wants to be free.

This slogan seems to offer the philosophical justification for the seemingly constant and irritating violations of privacy and outright gaffes that beset the management of our accounts on the various social networks from time to time.

The second assumption follows on from the first and seems to be based on the false corollary that because we can access data easily we should share it easily too. Regardless of our preference on the matter.

This assumption fails to take into account that we, as humans, don't share everything with everyone. For the most part, we are mostly very careful about what we share and with whom.

But what if all this data is aggregated and anonymized, what is the harm in that?

First of all, as you will probably be able to ascertain from this Google patent application, it is extremely hard to anonymize data. Once you know something, you know something.

The other argument appears to be that collecting our data and aggregating it is a good thing because it will results in a better, more enhanced online experience as the bushels of information gathered about us will be used to give us more of what we want. (As if that is a de facto good thing.)

Marketers and other interested parties can use the collected statistics generated from this collection exercise to improve their offerings for us. We are reassured that we should not worry as our data is anonymized and cannot be tracked back to us.

But this argument totally falls apart when I start receiving ads particularly targeted at me based on my online browsing activity. The opposing ideas that serve as a background to these two activities — anonymized data gathering and personal targeting — can’t possibly be true at the same time.

What is much worse is that when the data is gathered, if the Google Ads Preference page is anything to go by, it is wrong. Certainly in my case it is far from wholly right which amounts to the same thing.

This morning I went to Google Ads Preferences (you have to be signed into your own Google account) and discovered what Google thinks I like based on the sites I visit on the net.

Rather alarmingly, I signed out of my Google account in Safari to check the link and it still brought me back to the page with the above information on it. Google doesn't seem to be giving me the basic respect of allowing me to completely sign out of its service — "Don't be Evil." Evil, perhaps not, but ill-mannered, certainly.

We all live in a village that is established in one social domain or another; work, home, online, etc. At the same time we can also all appreciate the wide range of good things that a major metropolis and its digital parallel, the World Wide Web, can offer.

However, this Big Brotherish attention to the minutiae of our online lives, whose only possible ultimate goal is to line shareholder’s pockets, is unnatural in terms of how humans really behave.

As well as being disrespectful, as regards people’s privacy, it is fundamentally misinformed through distortions in its own information gathering techniques and goodness knows what awfulness that will produce.

In the meantime, watch out for the curtain twitchers — they will always be with us.

NewsWhip: A Democratic Way of Tracking News

Conor Harrington — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:00:21 +0000

For Paul Quigley, news has always been his, “first love”. When he left a career as a lawyer in New York, he revisited his days of college journalism and started a satirical news site called NewsWhip.

However, he soon began to look beyond the traditional model of news distribution, and after meeting EasyDeals.ie co-founder Andrew Mullaney, the pair reinvented NewsWhip as a social news aggregator, which tracks the speed and volume at which stories are spread globally through social media, and lets the reader know what stories are piquing people’s interest around the world in real time.

“News was always distributed in a one to many model; one place producing the news and distributing it individually to everyone," says Paul.

“How we look at it is before newspapers, people just told news to each other. It was kind of social activity rather than a product, and we’re we’re returning to that model again because people are increasingly discovering news socially and sharing that news socially through the web."

While sites such as Google News do a similar job in aggregating news, what makes NewsWhip different is that it measures the interest in a news story in real-time, continuing to track the speed at which it is being shared on Facebook or Twitter.

“When a story gets published, that’s when we get to work. We detect about 60,000 new stories each day as they’re published and we see how fast they’re spreading at that point," explains Paul.

“What we do differently to what other people are doing with social data, is we keep checking in again and again, so when a story is first published we check and see how many shares and tweets it gets in the first ten minutes, and then we go back again ten minutes later and check again and again.

“Because we know the difference in between each time that we check, and because we know the difference in time between each time we checked, we’re able to work out a speed as a rate of change."

Users can also tailor their news experience by selecting news feeds from different countries or different news areas such as tech, politics, or sports.

“The key thing is really about the speed at which things are moving through the social web. That is what we’re trying to capture.”

The most exciting thing about NewsWhip according to Paul (and I’m inclined to agree) is that, “It’s like we’ve got a billion editors, so you get to see what the news would look like if everyone was the editor, so it’s very democratic in that way."

By way of an illustration, Paul tells me that the fastest spreading international the previous day had been an article from U.S. tech site Slashdot about opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act.

Other news organisations such as News Corp, for instance, have not granted this story such prominence in recent days. A site like NewsWipe tells us what everyone is reading, not what they are being told to read, taking a degree of power from media moguls.

NewsWhip was a participant in the NDRC’s LaunchPad programme last year, and the experience was an extremely positive one for Paul, “I can’t speak highly enough of it."

This month the he and Andrew have moved into Dogpatch Labs’ European offices in Dublin, a place he likens to “Willy Wonka’s factory."

“Being in Launchpad was really good for focus and mentoring, and now we’ve moved along, we’re here in a place where there’s a golf-putting green and a pool table and a fridge of beer.

“While we’re generally too busy to enjoy those things, the fact that they’re there makes us really happy.”

The main benefit of both these programmes seems to have been the presence of other startups to bounce ideas off.

“We face common problems as startups, so I’d be a big advocate of the open, shared space, whether it’s LaunchPad or Dogpatch or any of the other accelerator programmes.”

The next move for NewsWipe is to develop its range of products further. Plans are in the pipeline for introducing a service for media organisations that will allow them to track what stories are becoming popular as well as an email alert service for the public which will allow them to keep track of what news story is trending in their chosen topic.

Digital Jet: A One-stop Shop for Consumer Content

Lisa Jackson — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:36:23 +0000

A new multi-channel consumer service based in Dublin providing music, movies, books and more is set to go live this year with the aim of taking on established giants like iTunes, Netflix and Amazon.

This service will operate under the consumer brand ‘Digital Jet’ and will sell streamed or downloaded content to users for a subscription or pay per download fee. It will initially operate online and on mobile devices with a digital television service also being planned for the future.

Digital Jet CEO Niall O'Neill has previously used the expression creating a ‘media buffet’ to describe what the company hopes to achieve.

“What we’re trying to do is take the best of what’s available in technology and the best of what’s available in content and facilitate the consumer deciding what content they want and how they want to engage with it.”

According to Niall, one of the unique features of Digital Jet compared to digital media players like iTunes is that it will be available to use on any device regardless of brand.

“That’s one of the key elements of our service. Our business is about facilitating the end user. I’m a big Apple fan but I also love what’s happening in the Android market so our business is focused on the content and because it’s content focused the platform is irrelevant.”

The Dublin-based company currently employs 10 people and has plans to expand this to 80 in the next three years. It just opened a second office in Newry, County Down and expects to open a Silicon Valley office in February. The service will begin closed testing shortly with the aim of launching publically in the summer.

Niall describes the venture as “ambitious” and recognises the difficulties the new brand will face entering into a market dominated by existing giants.

“There are huge challenges to going into the market and some of the biggest ones for us are getting the right team and being able to deliver the same level of quality of service and meet consumer expectations.”

Despite this, he believes Digital Jet has spotted a gap for consumers. Although US-based online film and TV streaming service Netflix has recently entered the Irish and UK market Niall thinks the brand has yet to “capture the consumer imagination” in Europe. On Apple, he points out that if you’re not an Apple user then you can’t access their services. For Amazon, he views the company as “efficient” but not an “exciting brand."

He sees Digital Jet as providing one complete package that is attractive to the consumer. “A lot of the younger generation are really tech-savvy and they know where to get content but the majority of users are not that tech-savvy and it’s a big challenge for them the find the types of content they want and there are only a few sources available.

“What we’re trying to do is something broader. We want something that is fun, exciting, sexy and that gives a bit of a wow factor.”

Netflix is currently under pressure in Ireland following its launch as many consumers view its catalogue as outdated.

What steps is Niall taking to avoid this happening with Digital Jet?

“There are limitations and restrictions. A lot of the deals that we have on the table and that we have concluded have very exciting products and I think it’s a combination of mixing the new with the old. Our pockets aren’t as deep as the other players but I think we’re equally as creative in what we do and how we’re going to present it.”

A conversation about a new online consumer service selling music and movies will invariably turn to the toughest challenge facing those industries: piracy. Digital Jet not only aims to drive value back to the copyright owners but plans to tackle the problems piracy causes for consumers, something that can be overlooked.

Niall explains, “About 70% or 80% of pirate sites are actually paid sites. There are people out there pirating content but paying to do it. The real issue is a supply and demand one and people will pay for content if you give them the right content at the right price.”

Ultimately, Niall believes that if Digital Jet delivers what it has currently planned on paper, “It’s going to blow people away." His faith is shared by the funding world and the company has been offered its full funding of €5 million by a US-based investor and is considering this along with a number of other opportunities.

A New Adventure in Cloud Computing

Tom Murphy — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 07:38:49 +0000

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of The Future

Through my association with New Tech Post and John Breslin a lot of my attention over recent years has been drawn to the promise that cloud computing holds. Ireland for geographic and meteorological reasons is developing enormous server hosting facilities for cloud services with Microsoft, in particular, leading the way.

Up until now it has all been rather academic. Most cloud services work for me the way my web hosting service or remoter server — as information to be accessed from my device or from some other remote terminal. Most of the time I blithely interact with that information and it is only when I lack wireless access do I really have to contemplate that all that information is one step removed from my direct manipulation.

This week I upgraded to OS X Lion. It came out at the beginning of last summer and having been caught out before by diving in immediately and downloading new software releases and ending up in early adopter hell — A place where everything has great promise but doesn't really work — I thought I would wait a while and see what the reports were like from the front line.

I was pleased I did because the upgrade broke a good few programs that I have come to rely on. But after six months I decided it was finally time to make my move.

This isn’t a review of OS X Lion except to say one thing: it seems that an overwhelming amount of criticism of the system seems to have come from people who want something new and different but still want things to be familiar and samey.

I would say that 90% of the complaints come from people who didn’t have the gumption or wit to spend a bit of time in the settings to figure out how things really worked and then customize the command and control processes for themselves.

But so much for those who employ the keyboard first, think later strategy.

(Not that I don't have my own gripes. Whoever decided to remove the Save as... function in Preview is a &^%*. And no, natural scrolling isn't natural at all. Logical — yes, natural — afraid not.)

I spent a little time setting up the system just-so for myself and then went for a walk by the beach. A bitingly cold walk along the Atlantic shore is a remarkably effective method for cleaning the cobwebs from the brain — highly recommended.

It was beautiful in the sunshine.

After years spent fiddling with professional camera equipment I have come to love smartphone cameras. Getting the picture is the only real point of photography and these little gadgets really do capture help me capture moments that would have been otherwise lost to faffing about.

So, I took a few snaps of the low-hanging, winter sun over the hills of Clare and tried to capture how its reflection shimmered and glowed on the surface of the sea in Galway Bay.

When I returned home I was absolutely delighted to find that the pictures, through the magic of Photostream, were already available on my computer and the iPad.

I had played with Photostream while setting the system up that morning and hadn’t seen the point but now I did—I am now hosting myself across my devices.

I know that this has been possible for a long time. I use Dropbox and Google Docs for keeping tabs on documents that are being updated by myself and others. But the difference here is the ‘seamlessness’ of the experience. I now have a system that works for me rather than for me having to make work.

I think this ease, which is akin to the frictionless experience they are striving for at Facebook but is definitely not the same, takes us one step closer to Arthur C. Clarke’s vision of the future.

More and more of us have more than one computer with wireless access (I include smartphones here,) but our use is compartmentalized. We have tended to use these devices in a manner dictated by their onboard capability.cc

With the inevitable advent of cloud computing we have come to a key stage in our journey along the digital highway. Or, a major ‘strategic inflection point' as Andy Grove would say. How information is handled is now becoming independent, to a greater and greater extent, of the tools that we use for processing it.

With my devices interlinked in this manner my only consideration now is their form, pocket-sized, bag-sized, desk-sized etc., and their performance.

Apart from releasing us from sync-slavery, it frees up designers and engineers to do new and different things with our devices and be able to take advantage of the ongoing unshackling process that cloud computing represents.

Our devices become access points to our digital lives. But along with this decentralization of our information could there be concurrent decentralizaton of our own lives?

Our information is no longer in orbit around us. Technically, we may be nodes in the system but we are no longer geocentric bodies somehow different distinct from the information we access and produce.

Because of cloud computing we now exist in a continuum of information availability, where in a real as well as a philosophical sense, it is going to be harder to tell where we end and information begins and vice versa.

Kernel Capital Facilitates Zolk C Expansion into North American Market

Tom Murphy — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:19:05 +0000

Zolk C, a Waterford based company specializes in using innovative technology to enhance the experience of visitors at tourist sites and museum exhibitions, has just received €500,000 in new investment from the Bank of Ireland Seed and Early Stage Equity Fund which is managed by Kernel Capital.

Paul Savage, the Managing Director of Zolk C, explains what the company intends to do with the money, “Because we are primarily export focused we are not quite in as difficult circumstances as others. We have been able to meet all our commercial targets and have grown the company over the last few years.

“We really have developed in the UK and Irish market since 2007 and we are trying to enter the North American market at the moment.

“We have done research on this over the last eighteen months and we have realized that we would need to have substantially more resources than we now have. We couldn’t organically grow into the North American market. We needed to get investment to be able to make that jump.”

Zolk C's technological solutions have been used by over half a million visitors at sites ranging from the Culloden Battlefield Guide in Scotland to the Dunbrody Famine Ship in New Ross. They have just been awarded a contract by Waterford City Council to provide a handheld multimedia interpretation of the historic ‘Viking Triangle’ quarter.

At the Saint Patrick Centre in Downpatrick, Paul says that Zolk C, “Worked on a tour for the visitor’s centre. The information is displayed over a number of large screens. Using our hand held technology we can intelligently synchronize the information available to the visitor according to where they are on the tour. Also, people are able to enjoy the presentations in their own language as they walk around.”

Zolk C makes much use of the research and development being done on pervasive technologies taking place at the TSSG. (They are both based on campus at the Waterford Institute of Technology.) Pervasive technology allows data services to be seamlessly available anywhere at anytime and in any format.

Through a combination of sensors in the environment and the capabilities of modern hand-held devices to generate and be tagged by geo-location data, audio and video information can be presented to the visitor at the appropriate point on their tour of the exhibit. They are always in a position to access the most relevant and pertinent information.

Not only does it enhance the visitors enjoyment of the site or exhibition but it returns vital information to the site owners and managers about how the visitors are interacting with what is on show.

Through analysis of how visitors pass through the system and use the devices it is possible to collect data on what they find interesting and what they don’t. For example, being able to note when people press stop on their video presentations and the frequency that occurs, information can be derived as to how compelling that particular item may or may not be.

The technology allows almost endless fine tuning by the operators of the site to improve their presentations to create a more engaging story for the visitor and enhance their experience as much as possible.

Zolk C's ability to take cutting edge Irish research and adapt it into a commercial product suitable for export also acts as a boost to the economy. They have shown themselves to be a worthwhile business for investment and that leads the way for the possibility of more money to be made available for other Irish innovation companies.

The activities of companies like Zolk C and can only increase confidence in the capabilities of Irish companies to adapt academic research for commercial purposes and develop its potential market value.

Donal Duffy, Head of Enterprise Ireland Relations at the Bank of Ireland commenting on this investment said, “Supporting sustainable businesses like Zolk C in the context of a challenging market enables these companies to grow, recruit and realise their long term strategic ambitions which is critical for the company and contributes to Ireland’s recovery."

FeedHenry: Cloud Based Mobile Application System

Tom Murphy — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:18:07 +0000

Any organisation, large or small, has to deal with the management, coordination and updating of numerous applications on a myriad of platforms. Not only does this involve a great many hours of monitoring and maintenance which is costly enough but the inherent insecurity of handling data in this manner can lead to catastrophic consequences should confidential information and data vital to secure operation of the system be mishandled.

A solution to this problem would be a single source code base which developers and client alike can work with and on. It would be a single cross-platform development environment thus voiding the need to write and update their app a multiplicity of times for multiple platforms.

FeedHenry based in Waterford and with offices in Massachusetts, USA, has just such a solution with its Mobile Application Platform. Apps can now be developed using standard web technologies such as HTML5, JavaScript and CSS. A file is then generated which can be downloaded in the appropriate format for the various operating systems and devices.

Cathal McGloin CEO of FeedHenry, says that, “Demand for mobile application development and management solutions has exploded as businesses of all types and sizes recognize the importance of mobile apps in driving business success.”

Organizations are now starting to realise that it is both possible and advantageous to build their own apps for its own employees and clients that could work along the lines of something like the Apple’s iTunes store.

FeedHenry already has over 2,000 customers (including developers) and just recently they announced an exclusive partnership with Telefónica Digital — one of the top five telecommunications companies in the world which has itself, almost 300 million customers.

FeedHenry have come a long way since our first interview with them just under a year ago. There are at present 30 employees and that is expected to grow to between 50 and 55 over the course of this year. According to Cathal, “We see quite a bit of growth this year. We plan to increase our revenues by 3x to 4x over last year.”

There are also moves underway to expand into the American market. “In the US we have launched an offering to the healthcare sector in the form of a compliance solution. That means the data sits encrypted in the cloud itself as opposed to being in a data compliant data-centre.

“That has been very well-received. We have a number of hospital organizations, insurance providers building app solutions today. We are also working with some of the cloud technology vendors to partner with them so they can bring our solution to market."

FeedHenry has emerged from of one of Ireland’s most successful research facilities. The original research was done at ArcLabs Research & Innovation Centre, part of the Waterford Institute of Technology and also home to the TSSG. Cathal says that, “The people who came with us from the research centre have been amazing. They know their subject inside out.”

But he also observes that good ideas are not enough by themselves, “The research is all about the ideas but it is ultimately about how you apply them — then you need to start dealing with business problems. As a research project it was a cloud-based delivery service that we then applied to the mobile world.”

There is more to be heard from FeedHenry shortly. At the upcoming NodeJam in San Francisco. FeedHenry’s CTO, Mícheál Ó Foghlú, will be speaking and the intention at the conference is to release new code which they will then be open sourcing.

Online Marketing Galway: A Community Resource

Tom Murphy — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 06:40:45 +0000

"Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two — and only two — basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business." —Peter Drucker

If we leave innovation aside for the purposes of this article it is clear that a business lives or dies on its ability to create customers and make a profit from that activity. Since this is so apparently the case then a very important question arises: If marketing is so crucial to the existence of a business then why do so many businesses fail to give it the attention it deserves?

We mostly write about tech companies which are largely led by those trained in one or more of the engineering disciplines or have either a computer science or computer programming background. Most of these people have been trained and are equipped with mindsets that centre around incremental, iterative, step by step, logical and quantifiable processes.

Marketing, looked at from the angle of the tech-entrepreneur, can seem like a a quilted tapestry of guess work, exhortations and mysterious incantations that are conspicuously lacking in anything substantive, either conceptually or physically, to grab on to and manipulate in any useful way.

Marketers, in too many cases, don’t help themselves very much by seeming to speak fluent jargon and making far too free and liberal use of the all-time mass murderer of meaning - bizspeak.

What is a business owner to do? Huge amounts of effort and time and have gone into innovating and developing a product but they still have to find an efficient way to get their product into the hands of a paying customer.

Many small businesses and startups, with their restricted budgets, choose to run counter to Drucker’s dictum in viewing marketing as a cost and a liability rather than an essential and core part of the business process.

However, help may be at hand. A new initiative to help inform businesses about marketing and the processes involved has just been started by Maricka Keogh Burke with the assistance of Eimear O'Brien.

They have setup Online Marketing Galway (OMG.) Maricka says her objective is to gather, "...a group of people with similar interests within the West of Ireland and Galway area for online marketing.

Maricka is an Ex-Googler who now works in Galway as a Senior Online Marketing Executive with a local company. She started OMG as she wanted a place, "Where we can share online knowledge.

"I would love to meet more people who are involved with the mobile side of things. I would love to meet more people with the email side of things as well. I see online marketing as an umbrella and there are so many segments underneath that.

"The more and more people get involved, the more and more we can share and take advantage of each other’s knowledge (without giving away competitive information.")

There are a great many small businesses in the Galway area operating in the conventional consumer areas as well as tech. Most have little or no marketing experience nor do they have easy access to trusted sources for information on strategy and tactics. This leaves them in a postion where their only option is to react to opportunities and challenges on an ad hoc basis. This is not a tenable way of doing business over the medium or long term.

Maricka's solution for these companies lies in the answer to the question, "Why not have a place they can come to?"

In the process they will inevitably engage with some of the fundamental preconceptions that many have about marketing.

"People think we do very fluffy work but the online side of marketing is very analytical. What I work with is hard stats and we make decisions based on those stats.

"Marketing is about promoting awareness of the company but there’s no point in having a brilliant website, absolutely stunning ads and everything that goes along with it if the product isn’t great."

OMG offers the opportunity for users and contributors to gain more knowledge which they will be able to apply to their own circumstances. According to Maricka, OMG, "...is a place to share your experiences. It is a place where if you are keeping up to date with online marketing.

"My ideal scenario is that I’d love to get someone involved in every section [of the site.] They can show how good they are. They can show their expertise. They can promote their own businesses as well but only if they do something good for community."

Although OMG and Maricka are Galway based, through the magic of the internet people can come share and contribute from wherever they maybe. They can do so by following these links:

Main site: Online Marketing Galway
Facebook: Online Marketing in Galway
Linkedin: Online Marketing in Galway

Ex Ordo: Event Organising for Academic Conferences

Tom Murphy — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:34:38 +0000

Attendees at BlogTalk 2010, held at NUI Galway

In all of Ireland there are over 50 universities, colleges and institutes of higher education that function as independent bodies. Although, technically, some of these are federated under the National University of Ireland or otherwise constituted. This amounts to almost 300,000 students in full or part time tertiary education.

Ideally, there would be a commensurate amount of teaching staff to cater to this desire for learning but with a reduction of almost five thousand educators at all levels between 2009 and 2011 due to a hiring freeze and ‘natural wastage’ this is not the case at the moment. It can be argued that this constantly increasing ratio between student and staff ratios explains the almost free-fall nature of the descent of Irish Universities in global league tables such as the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2011-2012.

However, for many of those career academics that remain and who are in pursuit of professorship and perhaps tenure, certain accomplishments are required. For many, one such requirement to be fulfilled is the organisation of a conference or symposium on a related subject to their own discipline.

With an increased workload, academics are clearly busy people and anything that does not distract them from the exercising of their core competencies and responsibilities has to be seen as a good thing.

In this case, the good thing comes in the shape of Ex Ordo. Its inception began when Paul Killoran was at NUI Galway studying for his engineering degree. Paul saw that one of his lecturers needed a better way of being able to put together a conference that he was organising. Thinking it would be a week’s work Paul began programming away...six months later it was completed.

“I thought I would just park it but then someone came to me and said. “Can I use it?” Then someone else came to me and said, “Hey, can I use that as well?” After Ex Ordo was used in over twenty conferences in Ireland, the UK and in Europe Paul realized, “We have something here.”

Paul explains further, "Ex Ordo is about academic conferences. Every academic, in their career will have to run these things if they are serious about becoming a professor. Most of these academics have never run an event in their life.

“What we sell them is a platform or a framework within which they can design [their event] without having to worry about the ins and outs of how the mechanics work. What we have done is packaged all the tools that they are going to need to run that conference.”

Another bonus for the aspiring academic nervous about over commitment is in the way Ex Ordo charges for its service.

“The organisers aren’t charged for this service as Ex Ordo earns its money from a percentage of the delegate fee.”

Higher education is a global multi-trillion dollar industry and Ex Ordo has, just recently, made its first US sale. To aid with expansion Paul and his team are now looking for more investment.

Paul says, “We have three main sales channels — We have enterprise partners, resellers and the individual conferences. We are looking to partner with these large societies that run thousands of conferences and becoming their preferred supplier. In order to do that we need to get in front of those people and that is a costly exercise.”

Enerit Enables UCC to be First University in World to Reach ISO 50001

Conor Harrington — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:45:37 +0000

University College, Cork (UCC) has become the first university worldwide to reach the international ISO 50001 standard for systematic energy management, and it did so using software developed by Irish company Enerit.

“We’re very proud," says UCC energy manager Maurice Ahern. “We’re also happy to be the first public sector body in Ireland [to reach the ISO standard.]

“We had made a decision to pursue ISO50001 and went out to the marketplace. A lot of these things are paper-based, but the online system seems very good.

“We see it as a tool for saving energy. It makes it very easy, if there’s an energy saving opportunity, it’s accessible very easily," continued Mr. Ahern.

Paul Monaghan, co-founder and CEO of Enerit, acknowledges that while industry in Ireland has “strongly taken up” the ISO standard, introduced in June 2011, implementing it in a university environment presented a unique set of challenges.

“Groups like universities do need more external support from energy management consultants.

“When UCC tendered for the energy management consultant to help them get ISO50001, it turned out that they were offered two alternatives; one was to do the consultancy in the conventional way and the other was to do the consulting in conjunction with our software, and the university was prepared to go with the software approach.

“Basically, what happened in the case of UCC is that they had a top-class international consultant called Liam McLoughlin, who is from the Cork area but also works for ISO globally. Basically he used our software and his own experiences in ISO50001 to help UCC implement it.”

In a situation like a university, with multiple campuses and buildings, it can be difficult to identify whose responsibility it is to identify and implement energy-saving opportunities.

This can lead to spreadsheets being bandied about between various departments, with no overriding support structure to track changes and progress.

“Typical of what would happen is that all the organisation would use a spreadsheet, but the difficulty with that is then you don’t have all the information visible in one place, and what happens is the spreadsheet starts getting emailed around and different people can edit that spreadsheet so no-one knows exactly which version of the plan is the right one”, says Mr. Monaghan.

“The benefit of having the software in a situation like this is everything is in the one place, there is very careful control of who can edit the plan.

“In a place like a university or any multi-building operation, to have spreadsheets is just not viable.”

Having implemented the ISO standard, UCC can now hope to achieve energy savings of between ten and twenty percent.

No Monolithic Social Media Solution

Tom Murphy — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:51:44 +0000

In this rather quiet inter holiday week while preparing for our last New Tech Post newsletter of the year I have been reflecting on my use of social media. More precisely, how social media, has perhaps, been using me.

I have been a subscriber to the excellent For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report (FIR) podcast since its earliest days. I was first attracted to their offering, not by their consistently illuminating and wide ranging commentaries on issues concerning communications, social media and PR, but in their pioneering work of producing audio programmes for the internet.

As my interest in social media was slow to develop it wasn’t until I was turned on to FriendFeed by a colleague that I started making comments and having the odd mini-discussion with other subscribers to the FIR friend room. FIR was my means to becoming involved in social media.

Shortly after came the rise of Facebook (which purchased FriendFeed in the summer of 2009) and I switched over to using it because, quite simply, so many people were there. At one point I had over 300 ‘friends’ but over time I have now culled that figure back to under a 100 — all of whom I know.

One reason that I did this paring down is that although there are a lot of controls on Facebook as to who can and can’t see your status updates I just couldn’t be bothered to set them. All my friends on Facebook see the same thing. (Although not everything is public. Precise travel plans, etc.)

I found this to be quite limiting. There is a world of people out there (I would like to think or maybe just hope) who would love to know what catches my eye or my attention and that as a consequence I find interesting enough to share along with my occasional musings on this and that. And, as at times, I am semi-prolific in this matter, publishing everything to Facebook would probably place an undue burden on the patience of some friends that I know there.

So after experimenting with Tumblr, Posterous, and Typepad I was really quiet pleased that Google had bounced back from the stalled launches of Wave and Buzz with Google+.

But I still find myself operating within the same constraints concerning the content of posts and updates, albeit according to the channel I am using they differ in nature. Like Facebook, I still find that in all the other outlets what I upload is dictated by the nature of that medium.

There are things that I post on Tumblr that will never see the light of day in my Facebook or Google+ accounts and vice versa. This limitation to broadcast updates universally exists all across my channels.

At first I thought, like in the Facebook instance above, that the audience — my followers or friends — were the limiting factor. But I have only forty followers on Tumblr where I post quite a bit, about a thousand on Twitter where I am a fairly regular contributor and just under two hundred on Google+. Unlike Facebook, I hardly know any of the audience for these other updates. Leaving my familiar Facebook friends aside the only thing that differentiates what I broadcast to Twitter, Tumblr and Google+ is the technology itself.

By technology I refer to the means of making entries and the display of that material as content.

Marshall McLuhan said that the "message is the medium." (I have linked to the Twitter feed as I find it apt for this article and entertaining in itself, if not always edifying. However, the lecture in the video below is well worth the time.) I was never very sure about what McLuhan meant but now that I can see that the content of my communications is parsed by the technology that I use I understand his point.

The good news is that there is no one-stop shop for communication on the internet. Just because Facebook is big it doesn’t mean it can be everything to everyone.

We all express ourselves in different ways at different times on different subjects to different audiences. The creative development of technology means that we have more and more opportunities to get our message out to the world in different ways.

What we have to say will be revealed by the constraints of the technology with which we have to say it. If we better able to express ourselves through better technologies and their associated mediums then we have a lot to look forward to over the coming years.

StreamGlider: More Control Over Managing Content Streams

Tom Murphy — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:16:41 +0000

John Breslin, one of the owners of New Tech Post, along with Nova Spivack and Bill McDaniel launched a new app for the iPad today — StreamGlider. It is a next-generation, multimedia newsreader that sets its stall out in the same corner of the marketplace as the likes of Pulse and Flipboard, but with a difference.

According to John, “We believe that we have something unique here that no other newsreader offers. At the moment you can have a rugby stream or a Formula 1 stream but you can’t mix and match them together. A lot of the readers only allow you to see those streams as single entities. With StreamGlider you can view your content whatever way you want to view it.

"You could compose a sports stream from feeds about GAA, Formula 1 and rugby, and have that gliding alongside a stream made up of computer games, technology and movie content. But you can then share your stream mixes with friends, a bit like the way people shared mix tapes of their favourite songs in the 80’s.”

The team behind StreamGlider, which has been in development for over a year-and-a-half, have also adopted a different philosophy concerning user interaction with the application than is commonly found in other content readers.

“With StreamGlider you can view your content in a grid mode or in a magazine mode,” says John. “Applications like Pulse or Flipboard are very much ‘lean forward.’ You have to interact with them. But StreamGlider can work well in a ‘lean back’ mode. In the grid mode you have a series of streams that are constantly being updated and gliding by in real time. Hence, the name StreamGlider.

“If you want to do the lean forward thing where you want to read the articles, there is a preview and you can tap on that. If you want to have it running on your desk or in your kitchen you can have that mode as well.”

StreamGlider is just for the iPad at the moment, but there are plans for iPhone and Android versions in the near future.

Christmas may turn out to be a very good time to release an app like this. John is hoping that since, “many people are buying iPads for presents we want to be ready to be downloaded on to all those new devices.”

StreamGlider is available in two versions, Lite and Pro, and can be downloaded from the App Store on the iPad, or via www.streamglider.com/download

Year in Review: Our Top Five Most Popular Articles

Tom Murphy — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:51:47 +0000

It is not our usual way at New Tech Post to predict winners and losers in the uses and exploitation of technology and innovation. We see our task as being to find out what is new, relevant and interesting and tell others about it. About 40% of 'these others' are readers who come from the business world matched by a roughly equal amount that come from the world of academia, particularly in the areas of reserach. Many of our readers are from Ireland but a significant amount also come from overseas.

However, from our position as observers on the sidelines we can’t help but notice trends and patterns in both the marketplace and research laboratories. These trends are reflected almost isomorphically in the relative popularity of our articles.

As is customary at the end of the year we shall round up with a list of our top five most popular articles. It can be seen that their relevance to our readers acts as commentary and reflection on activities in the tech world in the last year.

It is clear from this selection that networking technologies of all sorts are of predominant interest.

The most useful metric for determining relevance that we have at our disposal is the popularity of a given article or blog measured in direct hits on the relevant article's page. But we should offer caution here that we know, but cannot quantify to any degree of accuracy, that our articles circulate out across the digital landscape in ways that cannot be easily counted or assessed. So, the following list is based on a first order of popularity that we were able to quantify ourselves.

(Finding a way to accurately track the dissemination of URLs would bring the inventor untold wealth from the world at large and eternal gratitude from me.)

Tapmap: Navigating Offline Store Inventory With Online Technology This is the business article that drew the most interest this year. So, congratulations to Philip McNamara.

TapMap matches a request for a product through a mobile device with the products availability from a given supplier. This saves the customer from having to traipse around from place to place or even site to site.

TapMap also helps smaller retailers fight agains the default shopping mode that a lot us have which is the tendency to just go to a larger merchandiser on the assumption that 'they will just have it.'

Starfish: A User-Controlled Network

With the massive coverage of Wikileaks and the activities of Anonymous this was an article that seemed to touch the current zeitgeist. The opportunity to move to a decentralized method of distributing information using currently available technologies offers us an opportunity to slip the shackles of Big Brother and the Telcos.

Of course, our communications technology, both hardware and software, comes from somewhere and that somewhere has to remunerated in some way but the flatter more egalitarian distribution system put forward here has a lot to offer in terms of efficiency and robustness.

It seems almost inevitable that this sort of networking will be implemented in some fashion.

Data Mining: Using Predictive Analysis And Social Network Analysis

Although Herculean, the movement and storage of petaflops of data across the planet and occasionally beyond has been managed with relatively little obtrusiveness to our daily lives. The internet could double in size over the very short term and those of us who weren’t equipment manufacturers would barely notice.

But the value of data lies in its relevance and usefulness to a given purpose. It has to have meaning to someone or something. Discerning the meaning of data and its significance to other bits of data is the work of Eric Robson who leads the Data Mining and Social Networks Analysis Group at the TSSG which is based at the Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland.

Without doubt the TSSG is one of Ireland’s gems and with its focus on the commercialization of research we will be hearing much more from and about them over the coming years.

Data mining is relevant in every area of life where it is important to match seeming disparately bits of information not only to tell us what is going on but provide us with predictive ability as to what may happen over some future period of time. Applications range across the whole supply management and distribution of services and to areas such as law enforcement.

Bio-Inspired: Electronic Chips Emulate Workings Of Neuron

Our second most popular story of 2011 was from, in all places, just across the NUI Galway campus from our office.

Dr. Fearghal Morgan, Dr. Jim Harkin and Dr. Liam McDaid have used the natural architecture of the brain to create an electronic system that emulates some of the workings of a neuron.

I am particularly pleased about this one as I have had a long-standing interest in the work of Jeff Hawkins, formerly of Palm and Handspring, and his development of software architecture and processes that parallel the working of the brain at Numenta.

While ‘brain as a computer’ is a limited metaphor there is no question that there are processes in the various parts of the cortex that lend themselves very well to emulation on a micro-processor.

Our brains are the most complex data handlers that we know of but the ability to utilise technology that has been worked on for hundreds of millions of years offers us a wonderful opportunity to find new, better and more efficient ways of doing things.

Crowdgather

By far our most popular post ever and is indicative of the difference between the hyped web and the ‘real web.’

Facebook deserves to be written about both as a cultural phenomena and as a constantly evolving technology that through trial and error - whatever happend to Deals and email? But it also provides us with a great opportunity to discover how users participate and communicate with each other by digital means. (Let’s leave the walled garden argument to one side for the moment. With nearly 800 million users it is moot now as to whether it is a barrier in the cultural sense rather than the technical sense.)

However, the web is expanding faster than Facebook is. As a thought experiment if you were to somehow be able to stand at the edge of the expanding web, due to the different speeds of growth, if you were to look at the space that Facebook occupies it would seem to be getting smaller in a relative way.

Stumbleupon has amazing growth and activity figures which parallel Facebook’s but have not incurred the massive press coverage that Facebook has. Most people, even those not on the web, could tell you that Mark Zuckerberg is the main man at Facebook. Try a pop-quiz with friends and relatives over the holidays and see how many could name his counterpart at Stumbleupon.

But this focus on Facebook is distorted and is not an accurate reflection of what is really happening in the field of online communications.

Bigger than these two in terms of activity and sharing is the world of online forums. Our interview with Sanjay Sabnani illustrates some key points and here are a number of quotes from the article:

“What matters on a forum is the worth of your intellect, the merit of your thoughts and your ability to communicate them.”

"Forums are designed for a multiplicity of people to communicate with a multiplicity of people and they are done in an organized fashion with a taxonomy that makes sense.”

"What forums allow you to do is the sum total of everything you can do on the internet.”

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our regular contributors; Conor Harrington, Lisa Jackson, Ina O' Murchu and John Conroy for the help they have given us this year.

We would also like to thank Tom McEnery, Rich Moran and Aoife Connelly for their valuable contributions which we are very grateful to have received.

Abair Leat! Irish Speakers have their say on Social Media

Conor Harrington — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 07:17:48 +0000

When I first heard of Abair Leat! a few weeks back, my initial reaction was a cynical one. “Not another attempt to create a niche Facebook," I thought. However, after only a few moments speaking with Mícheál Ó Foighil, the man behind the Irish-language social network, it becomes immediately evident that this is no Zuckerberg wannabe, but a forward-thinking educator using the medium of our time to share his passion for his native tongue.

The Irish summer college, Coláiste Lurgan, in Indreabhán, Conamara, where Mícheál is principal, had initially developed Abair Leat with Block 5 Design as an interactive learning platform for students but, according to Mícheál they, “Always wanted to take it a step further, from learning Gaeilge, to using Gaeilge."

This led to them approaching digital agency Fantasy Interactive, whose CEO, David Martin, is “one of our own," and agreed to help.

The people at F.I. have, acknowledges Mícheál, “been more than generous” with their time and expertise in integrating the language-specific features required for an exclusively 'as Gaeilge' social network. The result is Abair Leat “Beo”, or 'live' while the educational platform remains as Abair Leat 'Oide.'

The site is currently in beta at the moment, and is “ninety-one, ninety-two percent there." Rather than simply encouraging the use of Irish, it incorporates software which monitors the use of Irish on the site, and only permits posts which are seventy percent or more Irish-language in their content.

“It’s the first [social network] of its type that deals exclusively with the requirements of a minority language, so it is quite exciting."

The thirty percent leeway allows for the inclusion of some English, or any other language, and also for the use of different regional dialects. “Most native speakers would spell things in an unconventional manner," says Mícheál.

This will also allow for the “text-speak” and abbreviations which have appeared in the English language in recent years. While some traditionalists have lamented this development in other languages, Mícheál would welcome such modifications. “It would be quite cool really.”

It seems the aim of Abair Leat is not to impose rigid grammatical standards, but to encourage and facilitate the use of Irish, with inbuilt spell-check and translate functions, and plans for a thesaurus function to follow.

“It’s really for people who would like to learn the language for its own sake more than to prepare for exams, but I suppose the more you normalise the social aspect of it, the more it’s going to benefit your academic endeavours as well.”

With a full launch planned for February 2012, Mícheál hopes that Abair Leat! will have 50,000 users by the end of its first year. He predicts a few sleepless nights between now and then, but you get the impression that he’s loving every minute of it.

Ireland's Martin Hynes Appointed as Chief Executive of the European Science Foundation

John Breslin — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 14:27:28 +0000

Martin Hynes with Prof. Paddy Cunningham, Chief Science Adviser to the Taoiseach, earlier this year.

The European Science Foundation (ESF), an independent, non-governmental organisation dedicated to European scientific networking and collaboration, announced this morning that Martin Hynes has been appointed as Chief Executive of the ESF for a three-year term.

The Chief Executive manages the office of the Foundation along with a team of international staff, and the post is held by Prof. Marja Makarow until the end of the year. Mr. Hynes is currently the Executive Director of the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET). Commenting on his appointment, Mr. Hynes said: "The values held by the European Science Foundation are very close to my heart, from research excellence and openness, to ethical awareness and a pan-European approach."

Established in 1974, the ESF consists of 87 member organisations (responsible for about €25 billion of funding annually) across 30 countries, and has its headquarters in Strasbourg. ESF coordinates a variety of efforts including: COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) which facilitates members of the European scientific community to cooperate on common research projects; the Latsis Prize for outstanding and innovative contributions in a selected field of European research; EUROCORES (European Collaborative Research Scheme) which enables researchers in different European countries to develop collaboration in areas where European scale and scope are required; Research Networking Programmes that allow networking and international collaboration between nationally-funded research groups; and a series of ESF sponsored research conferences.

Mr. Hynes has been the Director of IRCSET since 2002, and previously worked as a senior policy analyst with Forfás and Enterprise Ireland. IRCSET funds early-stage graduate and postgraduate research in Ireland, and runs an Enterprise Partnership Scheme where research is co-funded by the Council and an industry partner. Its annual resources are around €26 million. As reported in an article in today's Irish Times, IRCSET is due to merge with the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences in due course to form a single Irish Research Council.

Irish-Based Pricing Intelligence Startup Profitero wins IBM SmartCamp London

Conor Harrington — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:58:09 +0000

Fresh from having received €750,000 in funding from Enterprise Ireland and the Bank of Ireland Start-Up and Emerging Sectors Equity Fund, managed by Delta Partners, Irish-based pricing intelligence startup Profitero has won the London leg of IBM’s Global Entrepreneur SmartCamp competition.

Profitero beat off competition from four other startups, including Visible Light Communications, a University of Edinburgh LiFi spin-out, to claim the award, which acknowledges startups who are in line with IBM’s Smarter Planet vision.

At the end of a busy week for the company, Volodymyr Pigrukh, CEO and one of Profitero’s three Belarusian founders, took the time out to pause and reflect on the road that brought them to this stage, and their future prospects.

“We provide competitive pricing information to our clients, and clients can make informed pricing decisions”, explains Volodymyr, or Vol.

This pricing information is gleaned from up to thirty million different price points across the globe, a figure expected to at least treble over the coming year.

“We saw that retailers have a problem with basically managing their prices without much external input, and external input is the prices of their competitors.

“Retailers are constantly worried about their competitors; “will they undercut the price, will they steal my customers?” They didn’t have much quantitative input on the pricing, so this is where we saw the potential to jump in as a service.”

Despite having a strong connection with Ireland (co-founder and CTO Dmitry Vysotski spent his early summers here as part of the Chernobyl Children’s Appeal), early on in its development, Profitero was presented with opportunities to move elsewhere.

“We had the choice to stay in Ireland or move elsewhere, for example, London was one of the opportunities, but we decided to stay in Ireland.

“We’ve found a lot of support around here from Enterprise Ireland, from local enterprise boards. Essentially, to open a company was very fast and easy in Ireland.

“We see Ireland increasingly becoming a very good location for startup businesses. It’s startup friendly, it has good access to feasibility grants or other grants from Enterprise Ireland and similar government bodies that support entrepreneurs. So that was the big factor behind us staying in Ireland, and we’re very happy that we did.”

This support has manifested itself in €750,000 in investment, managed by Irish venture capital firm, Delta Partners. Vol says that the company plans to use the majority of the funding to further develop the technology behind the business and ensure top quality support to its customers, which currently includes high-profile retailers such as Tesco and Halford’s.

“Basically, it’s quality assurance, sustainability of the service, tier two support to our large customers, insuring that we deliver perfect service on the contracts that we have already and that we’re going to be receiving in the near future. So it’s expanding from the technical side.”

Also included in Profitero’s roadmap are plans to offer sales impact tracking and price optimisation to retailers, allowing them to make the most of the price information that they receive, combined with data on transactions to develop price suggestions to increase sales.

“Some retailers want to be the cheapest on the market, some of them they want to stay in the middle, but we help them to make this an informed decision, and by providing up-to-date pricing information, they can react quickly to the competitors’ promotions.

“They can plan their own promotions better, they can do price audits across categories of products to make sure that they stay competitive, and that by being competitive they don’t lose customers, and then when there is opportunity to increase the margin, they can increase it and essentially increase their profit straight away.”

As Profitero’s technology is “agnostic”. Vol doesn’t rule out the possibility of branching out into consumer pricing intelligence in the future, but for now the business sector will remain its primary focus.

“We have chosen the B2B area because one of our founders used to be an online retailer and this is the area that we are most familiar with, and basically we see ourselves adding the most value here.”

Tom McEnery on Steve Jobs

Tom McEnery — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:58:47 +0000

In his famous challenge to John Sculley, Steve Jobs asked if he wanted to spend his life selling sugared water to kids, or did he want to change the world?

Jobs was quite a salesman. About a year after that famous quote, I saw much of that legendary asset when I met him to discuss the new Apple headquarters that he wanted to build in the southern reaches of San Jose. He had I.M. Pei to design it, bundles of cash, more cachet, and a plan that was "awesome." And he made me an offer that was tough to refuse: He'd make San Jose a great city. Jobs even talked about living in a loft downtown. Wow. You could really see that glimmer of greatness.

But within a year, the man he seduced to lead Apple would send Jobs on his way, and with him went much of the spark that so enlivened that company. Gone but not forgotten. Like many other parents, I made sure a Mac was on my daughters' desks, part of their kit like a pencil.

There was a sign in my grammar school library at old St. Joseph's — now under the Adobe Towers — that said, "you can travel the world over in your library." Now it was possible in your own room. It was a gift to education and a boon to Luddites like me as well.

The word "great" is nowadays used in the most casual way. I prefer it for those who have transcending ideas or real courage. Jobs surely did. Some of the reason for his unique cult status was his straight talk. It was as legendary as his ability to turn the inventions of others into cash. As the "Woz" has noted, "he sells all the stuff I made."

In my conversation with Jobs about the "insanely great" headquarters that he would build, he disparaged a prominent Silicon Valley developer and philanthropist as a "sleaze ball" and ranted about how Jacob Rothschild had changed a deal at the last minute to buy a New York apartment.

He only savaged the important and dropped only the best names. He was brash and a bit annoying. And remember, he was still in his mid-20s.

Others have written how he changed the world, and I will let others more qualified expand on it.

But I do know this, because I have seen it clearly in my children and grandchildren, and in classrooms from Costa Rica to Ireland. Steve Jobs helped us all to dream a little more and to make those dreams easier to see. He may have been the supreme visionary in this special valley.

Perhaps most remarkable was that as a young man, he wrote his own epitaph when he said to another: "Do you want to change the world?"

Steve Jobs surely did and we are all the better for it.

This article originally appeared in the San Jose Mercury News.

Galway Demobar

Tom Murphy — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 09:33:16 +0000

Writing software, in practice if not by definition, can involve long hours sitting in front of a computer screen and the opportunity to socialise with contemporaries who have shared interests and concerns is limited. In response to this need to have real world face time with others in the same field, a Demobar was organised in Galway.

Last month, developers and entrepreneurs gathered at a seafront bar to show each other products and projects that they have been working on.

Over 20 different companies were present at Demobar Galway including: Pocket Anatomy, Ex Ordo, OnePageCRM, Seevl, tunepresto and the yet-to-be-launched StreamGlider from our very own John Breslin.

On the evening about a hundred people turned out for an informal showcase of online product demos. According to John Breslin, "Having these people come together is great because there's a network effect when you get all these products being demoed. One or two people on their own couldn't hope to get such a crowd but when there are ten or more products being shown you get all kinds of people showing up."

As well as the social aspect there is real value in putting one's work on public display. In many cases this was the first opportunity for a product to be given a wider airing.

"It is good to put the product out there for a live showing because when you are working in semi-isolation with your product team you tend to miss what early adopters (with similar expectations to developers) or general users (often coming to a product with less background knowledge) will either latch on to or loathe. The early adopters get bogged down in 'can you do this; why didn't you do that' whereas the others tend to say 'hey, look what this can do!'"

Mick FitzGerald of OnePageCRM was one of the organisers of the event along with Dave Kelly, Paul Killoran, Mark Campbell, Siún Ní Raghallaigh and Ronan O'Malley. Mick says that he was surprised by the huge amount of energy present in the room.

"For a small city there seems to be a lot of very good technologies around. All the digital entrepreneurs have a great deal of optimism.

"There are some really good things happening in the West."

Citizen Sensors: Individuals' Mobile Updates Contribute to a Bigger Picture

John Breslin — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 08:50:19 +0000

Citizen sensing applications range from public health to disaster relief.

In 1999, before the advent of Foursquare, mobile Twitter clients or sensor-enabled phones, a somewhat prescient Neil Gross in Bloomberg Business Week said: "In the next century, planet earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the Internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations." A new area of research called "citizen sensing" has emerged since then that aims to derive collective knowledge from the actions and reactions of individuals armed with internet-enabled mobile devices.

In the past ten years, we have seen the growth of online social networks, but there has been a parallel surge in sensor networks, many of which are also connected to the Internet. These usually consist of multiple static or inert sensors that capture certain readings from their environment whenever they are programmed to do so. Also, many people are now carrying some form of sensor-laden device - a mobile phone, a tablet, a fitness device - from which sensor readings can also be retrieved. This is sometimes called 'human-in-the-loop sensing', but sensors are also being carried by cars, animals and other moving entities.

There are various advantages for human-in-the-loop sensing. For collecting data in large urban areas - for example, for environmental or traffic monitoring purposes - it can be both expensive and time consuming to build large networks of sensors in these areas. Having people walking around with sensor-enabled devices makes sense due to the high population densities in urban areas and the willingness of people to contribute sensor data if it will have an eventual positive impact on their lives.

Five years ago, a team in UCLA wrote a research paper on 'participatory sensing', which uses, "mobile devices to form interactive, participatory sensor networks that enable public and professional users to gather, analyze and share local knowledge." Applications were described in the areas of public health, urban planning and even creative expression. In 2007, Michael Goodchild described citizens as sensors in the field of volunteered geography, when he talked about, "[humans] equipped with some working subset of the five senses and with the intelligence to compile and interpret what they sense, and each free to rove the surface of the planet."

More recently, a professor in Ohio's Wright State University, Amit Sheth, outlined the notion of 'citizen sensing' whereby people are, "Acting as sensors and sharing their observations and views using mobile devices and Web 2.0 services." A citizen sensor network is "an interconnected network of people who actively observe, report, collect, analyze, and disseminate information via text, audio or video messages." In particular, Sheth presented work in which semantic annotations were applied to Twitter microblog posts from 'citizen sensors' in order to provide situational awareness, e.g. in the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

If interpreted correctly, the data that is available from citizen sensor networks can have a wide variety of applications. Some of these include: earthquake sensing (people interested in acting as citizen seismologists can apply to Stanford for a tiny seismic sensor for their computer); disaster relief (there are various platforms available from Ushahidi for disaster response); traffic monitoring (Dr. Liam Kilmartin at NUI Galway is leading a project that uses mobile apps to monitor and reduce traffic congestion in Galway); and environmental data analysis (UC Berkeley and Intel provided personal air quality sensors to community members in California as part of their Common Sense project).

In a previous article ("What If Your Car Could Tweet?"), we briefly talked about how sensor readings could be attached to microblog posts through the Twitter Annotations extension. Twitter Annotations will allow arbitrary metadata to be attached to any tweet. There is an overall limit of 512 bytes for this metadata 'payload', and each metadata item is expressed in the form of "type":{"attribute":"value"}, e.g. "movie":{"title":"Planet of the Apes"}. Inspired by Twitter Annotations, work is ongoing with David Crowley at DERI, NUI Galway to attach mobile sensor data to Social Web content, to develop mobile sensor-specific extensions to the SIOC de-facto standard developed in DERI, and to build Android apps that use this data model. The next step is then to provide novel methods for interpreting and visualising the data for different domains.

At the moment, you can attach geolocation information to a tweet, and every tweet is timestamped, but what if you could append temperatures, air pressures or other contextual information to a tweet? When combined with the actual texts of the tweets themselves, this combination of human-contributed and machine-contributed data could potentially be very useful.

Ireland Reaching Out

Tom Murphy — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:18:24 +0000

At the Lough Rea Hotel in East Galway last week, people from all over Ireland gathered to meet with each other, share notes and find out the latest developments in the Ireland Reaching Out (Ireland XO) project. The idea behind this is to utilize information stored in parish registries across the land to identify members of the Irish Diaspora and reach out to them.

Mike Feerick, Chairman of Ireland XO and an organiser of the event last week, says that one of the beauties of this massively distributed project is that, "Instead of trying to research the entire Irish Diaspora as one big ephemeral entity, what we are doing is breaking it down to two-and-a-half thousand parishes. Because if there are 60-70 million around the world that are connected to Ireland, every one of them has at least one connection to a parish in Ireland."

Although it has some support from the Irish government, Ireland XO is very much a grass roots project. At the event last week, attendees came from as far away as Donegal in the north west and Waterford in the south east.

The keynote speaker was the economist, broadcaster and author David McWilliams. As well as increased tourism and the chance to harness other helpful aspects of the Diaspora such as global business experience and the possibility of investment, David suggests that there might be greater, more immediate benefits closer to home in terms of self-empowerment for the people of Ireland themselves:

"One of the big problems in Ireland at the moment is that people do feel a little bit helpless. They feel that power is remote and there is very little we can do for themselves. I think if you galvanize the community with a goal such as this you can create all sorts of possible ramifications which are very hard to quantify. But there is an enormous, uplifting sense of being in control or even being in a tiny bit of control of your own destiny."

If you want to get involved, you can visit the the Ireland XO website.

John Hartnett of the ITLG interviewed by RTE

Tom Murphy — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:27:35 +0000

On the first day of the Global Irish Economic Forum John Hartnett of the Irish Technology Leadership Group was interviewed by RTE. Here are some excerpts from the conversation. Click on the image to see the original video.

Q: How have things changed in Silicon Valley when it comes to Irish companies trying to get their projects up and running over the past two years?

JH: Over the last two years, what I've seen is more Irish companies coming out [there].

Silicon Valley is a well-known brand but what it's known for is technology. It is the centre of the world for the big companies: the Googles, the Intels, the Apples. The combined market capital of those companies is about 2 trillion dollars.

But it's also where venture capital is raised. Over 40% of all venture capital across the United States is in Silicon Valley. From an Irish perspective we need to take some of that cash and invest it into Irish companies.

We've got 30 Irish companies in the Innovation Center [San Jose, California] that we set up last year. That's 30 more companies that weren't in Silicon Valley two years ago.

Q: How important are forums like these?

JH: I think they are critically important. They are important for a number of reasons. First and foremost the global Irish are not all in Ireland.

[It is also about] being able to have a public/private partnership where you can have a conversation with the government [and] with the agencies about what's good, what's bad, what do we need to do differently.

But now we need to move more into execution of these ideas. For me, what I would love to get out of this is, 'What's the game plan now?'

Q: How significant is Dublin as a place for technology companies?

JH: I have been in technology for 25 years both here and in the US and [Ireland] has a phenomenal track record.

You talk about the likes of the Twitters and the Facebooks and Googles who have had phenomenal success over the last few years but Microsoft have been here 25 years. Apple has been here 25 years. Intel has been here 20 years. This [represents] decades of experience that are not going to get minimized by the current challenges that are there.

So we have a very good reputation. For now, we need to look forward and project where we are going and how we are going to invest in innovation.

Our success in the 21st Century - the Innovation Century - is going to be [based] on our ability to be leaders in innovation.

Q: Are there companies that can lead to more jobs being created here in Ireland?

JH: I think this issue of early exit is core to the challenge we have.

We need to get that confidence where young Irish companies are starting with the end in mind - being a public company, being a multi-billion dollar company. That will create long-term jobs, long-term security [and] long-term value.

Q: Does Ireland have the infrastructure to support those companies in the later stages?

JH: The important things for companies is basically; access to capital, access to customers and access to talent. Customers are outside of Ireland. We are too small a nation to create huge businesses here.

From an Ireland perspective: we're small, we've got minimal resources. So we've got to do a few things and [those] few things really, really well. We've got to be excellent and the place to be excellent is in education.

Global Diaspora Strategies Toolkit “Harnessing the Power of the Irish Diaspora” – Review

Aoife Connelly — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 09:07:11 +0000

Everyone needs to get their hands on a copy of this book, Global Diaspora Strategies Toolkit which is available from the Diaspora Matters website, if for no other reason than the fact that these authors have taken the time and effort to implement for Ireland a plan of action against the potential of downfall.

Putting together an assembly of high achievers with Irish roots and global connections could mean Ireland's economic recovery could be more than a slow uphill struggle; it could accelerate us back to where we were before the Celtic Tiger's roar was silenced.

Putting a plan in action of any shape or form has the benefit of planting in fertile minds the notion of survival and allowing like-minded people to come together and consider how they can help themselves. If this plan were completely moot, I would still say it is an idea worthwhile for this reason alone.

As the recent global recession has proven, “No nation is an island.” We are all interconnected. Kingsley Aikins and Nicola White believe that by harnessing the power of the global diaspora and implementing a diaspora strategy, we can aim to extend our networks and by default reclaim some of our lost power in our time of greatest need.

Quotes from Hilary Clinton and JF Kennedy are cited that support the authors' feelings on the importance of global relationships. One is reminded of the presence in Ireland this year of Barack Obama and The Queen, following a hundred-year absence of any royal monarch on Irish soil, that the authors might be onto something. Gaining a global presence and striving for a leading role on the world stage and important allies can only stand to improve matters for us.

What is clear from this strategy toolkit is that Kingsley and his group are committed to improving Ireland and its communities through philanthropy, access to global markets and the advocacy of brand 'Ireland'. This strategy is based on collation and analysis of the experience of Diaspora organisations from around the world.

Kingsley emphasises that, “Networking with the diaspora is going to be a key piece in Ireland’s economic recovery.”

The discussion topics at the recent Global Irish Economic Forum touch on a lot of the themes in the book; philanthropy, trade, investment, tourism, culture, education and sport were all discussed.

“In all of those areas there were initiatives suggested and now the key is execution," Kingsley comments, "But the government seems determined and they have set themselves a hundred-day target that they will have a whole series of initiatives in place by.”

How can we make all this networking possible? Technology is the key and the most outright way of opening up the endless connections that stand to be made with the overseas diaspora.

“The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow” – Bill Gates.

The good news is that we don't have to start from scratch. Groups such as the Irish Technology Leadership Group, that encourage and support entrepreneurship and innovation in the Irish Innovation Center, are a prime example of the benefits that can be reaped by engaging with the larger Irish diaspora.

F.lux releases iOS app

Conor Harrington — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 11:19:36 +0000

Earlier this year, we featured f.lux, a free program which adjusts the warmth of your computer’s display to correlate with the light conditions outside.

The program has been widely hailed as a Godsend by millions of users who stare into their computer screens long after the sun has set, which according to medical studies, can have a disruptive effect on sleep patterns.

One question we asked Lorna Herf at the time was, “When can we expect to see an iPhone or iPad app?” A question echoed by many of the million-plus users of the desktop application. Unfortunately, the app store prohibits certain apps, such as those which make use of background processing, one of f.lux’s key features.

Although iPhones and iPads can adjust their brightness automatically using their ambient light sensors, this does not adjust the warmth of the light, and this warmer, bluer light can still delay the production of melatonin, vital to inducing sleepiness.

“We'd love to be in the Apple app store, but because we run automatically in the background, with the current app restrictions, we'd never be able to. Here's hoping one day," says Lorna.

“It unfortunately requires jailbreaking to install for the time being, but if you do have a jailbroken device, it's so nice.

“We're really excited to be saving people from glowing blue inside dark pubs or restaurants!”

The reaction from users so far has been very positive, and Lorna and Michael have even been contacted by users who have jailbroken their iPhones just to install the app.

Anyone with a jailbroken iOS device can download f.lux for free through Cydia.

rNews to Combine with schema.org for more Accurate Data Identification

Tom Murphy — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:30:59 +0000

At the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) Autumn meeting in Vienna this week the rNews version 1.0 standard will be voted on and hopefully approved. rNews uses RDFa to annotate web pages and embed metadata in these pages, particularly in the field of news publishing.

The IPTC has existed since 1965 and now promulgates digital standards that can be helpful in the exchange of news information. Its list of voting members includes such organisations as Getty Images, Press Association Ltd., the Associated Press and the Xinhua News Agency to name just a few.

The New York Times Company is also a member and just prior to the Autumn meeting we spoke to Evan Sandhaus, Lead Architect of Semantic Platforms in the New York Times Research and Development Department about the development of rNews and its forthcoming integration with schema.org.

We asked Evan how the initiative began: “The impetus came for the most recent work came at the 2010 Semantic Technology Conference when I went to a session (Semantic Tools for More Profitable Online Commerce) given by Best Buy’s Jay Myers. His organisation was able to leverage RDFa and the Good Relations ontology to mark up Best Buy data in such a way that it made it more helpful to the search engines, social sites and aggregators.

“I got to thinking that’s really cool that you can do that. I got to thinking is there anything we could do in my sector that would let us do this kind of markup. I realized immediately that it was going to be a standardizations effort.”

So Evan began work on rNews in collaboration with Stuart Myles from the Associated Press, Andreas Gebhard of Getty Images and Michael Steidl, Managing Director of IPTC amongst others.

“As we worked on rNews we originally started with the idea that an RDFa only standard. But we quickly realized that there were competing formats for expressing semantic markup in html documents.

“We thought that the interesting thing was that the data model and the vocabulary that we developed was not tied to a particular implementation but rather as a data model that could have multiple implementations.”

A parallel effort was taking place with Bing, Google and Yahoo who came together to create Schema.org, a vocabulary that people can use to semantically mark up their content. The hope is that if webmasters adopted the vocabulary there would be a much more consistent return on search results for web users amongst other things.

“What we didn’t want to have happen was to release a standard that was competing with schema.org.” Evan says, “We didn’t want the publishers to be faced with a choice between supporting an IPTC standard and a standard that was supported by three major search engines.

“We immediately realised that half of our standard existed in some form already in schema.org. Some of the ideas are so obvious about what you want to mark up that multiple people, working independently, would arrive at them.

“Through this process we were able to integrate many features of rNews into the vocabulary that is published at schema.org”

What that now means is that publishers can use schema.org to implement the rNews data model. We see the schema.org collaboration with IPTC as a commercially supported implementation of the rNews data model.

rNews offers three major benefits:

Better Machine Generated Links: Oftentimes the links that are created to your content are not created by people but by machines. Social sites may have instructions to link to your content and search engines may have crawled to your content and they have display a link to it. Humans would find it easy to identify the content and mark it up accordingly as a headline or as a picture but machines find this sort of identification problematical.

Evan says, “We anticipate rNews empowering machines with the information they need to create attractive links to our content.”

Superior Analytics for Publishers: Because rNews can express whether content is about or mentions a concept it becomes possible to create analytics around the meaning of content rather than just the number of page views. A concept can be an idea like war or terrorism; a person like Barack Obama or a place like New York City.

Better Ad Placement: The possibility exists for ad targeting algorithms to benefit from high fidelity information about the content. “We believe that there is an opportunity to provide these platforms with higher quality metadata about the content that they are targeting.”

“All three of these benefits are contingent on the adoption of the standard and the support that the broader web eco-system provides to the standard. But we see these three reasons as why publishers might want to seriously consider rNews for their publishing stack.”

SFI Prize Winners Gain Experience in Silicon Valley

Tom Murphy — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 07:43:28 +0000

Patricia McGowan and Jerry Reen at the Irish Innovation Center, San Jose

Patricia McGowan, from Roscommon, and Jerry Reen, from Kerry were joint winners of a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) competition specifically designed to encourage and enable post-doc researchers to commercialize their work.

The SFI, in conjunction with DCU Ryan Academy, recruited researchers to undertake an intensive course in business and marketing basics that lasted over two months. The course culminated in a demo day in which the participants pitched their projects to an especially convened panel.

The prize was a trip to Silicon Valley hosted by the Irish Technology Leadership Group based in the Irish Innovation Center in San Jose where this interview took place.

Patricia McGowan’s research is in the area of breast cancer therapeutics - looking for new targeted therapies for specific sub-types of breast cancer where there are currently no targeted therapies available for those patients suffering from the disease.

Patricia explains, “The SFI advertised for a course to bring SFI funded post docs on a course and open them up to entrepreneurship, technology startups; with lawyers, venture capitalists, people who had started their own companies and market researchers.

“Basically they showed us what what was out there. If you want to take and exploit your basic research - this is where you have got to go."

Jerry Reen whose work focuses on cystic fibrosis pathogen - pseudomonas aeruginosa - the primary bacterium that kills those who have the disease.

“We are looking for strategies to stop that happening. We are also doing a lot of work with metagenomics which is a new area and is based on the idea that maybe we can see or work with only about 10% of bacteria that exists. The ocean has another 90% of bacteria that we cannot get our hands on.”

The metagenomic technique, “Allows us to get their genetic blueprint. We can’t grow them, we can’t see them but we can get their genetic information. That gives us access to new antibiotics, new signals, new chemicals that can control the bacteria that we want to target.

“Instead of going in there and trying to kill something like MRSA or E. coli you look for these new chemical messages, new antibiotics that would target those bacteria.”

Both Jerry and Patricia saw from their trip that there was a very real difference in the way a researcher regards their work to that of a person attempting to commercialize that research.

Jerry adds, “Yesterday we met with four startup companies at various levels of their progression. We met with the CEOs, the people who are heading up these companies. It was fantastic.

"A lot of this is about a mind change, having a different mind set. Basic research and commercializing basic research are two completely different mindsets."

There is also the issue of pivoting. “A lot of the guys out here just want to know what our thing does. There are all these other applications that you may never even have thought of. So where you [go with it] is not where you thought. It’s worth its weight in gold to have access to that type of information."

Another benefit from winning the prize was being able to plug into a whole new network of contacts; entrepreneurs, mentors and their associated networks.

According to Patricia, “If we want to take the next step we now have the connections ask questions, “Do I need to do this? Do I need to speak to a lawyer? Market research for the US - how do I do that?

“The idea is to think about our work and how we are going to commercialize it in the future and to have all our armoury in place early on.

“We are scientists by qualification. We don’t have a business background at all. We’ve been told all along not to go into this on our own so we would definitely get the right partners."

While both Patricia and Jerry’s projects are still in their initial stages they have been given vital pointers in the right direction.

“At this point in time what we have is things that are not yet products.” Jerry says, “They are not yet ready to launch. What this is has done is that it has given us a roadmap. We’ve now got an insight into how do go from an idea to something that you can approach a company with.”

Kingsley Aikins on the Global Diaspora Strategies Toolkit [VIDEO]

Ina O Murchu — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:30:27 +0000

Kingsley Aikins is interviewed by Ina O' Murchu about the importance of the Irish Diaspora and how it can be driven by innovation and creativity.

A full report can be found here: Official Launch: Global Diaspora Strategies Toolkit

Ryan Tubridy at launch of Global Diaspora Strategies Toolkit [VIDEO]

Ina O Murchu — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:05:24 +0000

Broadcaster Ryan Tubridy talks to Ina O' Murchu at the launch of the Global Diaspora Strategies Toolkit.

A full report can be found here: Official Launch: Global Diaspora Strategies Toolkit

Taoiseach Enda Kenny at the Global Diaspora Strategies Toolkit Launch [VIDEO]

Ina O Murchu — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 10:57:03 +0000

Taoiseach of Ireland, Enda Kenny is interviewed by Ina O' Murchu at the launch of the Global Diaspora Strategies Toolkit on Wednesday, 27 September in Dublin.

A full report can be found here: Official Launch: Global Diaspora Strategies Toolkit

Official Launch: Global Diaspora Strategies Toolkit

Tom Murphy — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 09:17:16 +0000

These are very busy times in Ireland for determining key strategies for the future economic development of the country. Next week we have the Silicon Valley Comes to Ireland event organised by the Irish Technology Leadership Group (ITLG). Key business leaders, investors, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists will be coming to these shores to provide advice, mentoring, investment and a vision of what could be — the possibility, in these dark economic times that, that through innovation and endeavour we may well emerge stronger than before.

Following hard on the heels of that event is the Global Irish Economic Forum at Dublin Castle on the 7th and 8th of October which has three main purposes:

Engage fully with the Irish Diaspora in developing Ireland’s global business and trade relations.
Discuss face-to-face the Government’s priorities for economic renewal with key members of the international business community.
Strengthen ties with the Irish Diaspora as a key part of the Government’s efforts to restore Ireland’s international reputation abroad.

Kicking off this mini-season of reaching out was the launch of the Global Diaspora Strategies Toolkit at the Shelbourne Hotel last Wednesday.

Over 350 people gathered to hear the endorsement of the project by the Taoiseach of Ireland, Enda Kenny, in a keynote speech.

Kingsley Aikins of Diaspora Matters, a consultancy company established to advise individuals, companies and governments on strategic methods for engaging with diaspora communities, viewed the launch as a "national call to arms in this space. That is to say: every institution, corporation, organisation; every town, village and every individual actually has a role to play."

While we at New Tech Post are primarily concerned about covering innovation and technology, there is no doubt that there is an inextricable link between the growth of the tech sector and the economic health of the country as a whole.

With the largest dispersed population of any nation it can only make sense to utilize the experience and knowledge that has been acquired by our compatriots and those of Irish descent so successfully over many years across the globe.

This is especially important when capable and deeply networked organisations such as the ITLG and Diaspora Matters are devoting themselves to making vital and productive connections within as well as beyond our geographic border.

To keep track of what is going on in this area in the following days and months please use:

Diaspora Matters: #diasporamatters @dmatters2011

Global Irish Economic Forum: #globalirlforum @gief2011

Silicon Valley Comes to Ireland: #svcti2011 @itlgorg

Tom McEnery on the Possibilities of the Role of the President of Ireland

Tom Murphy — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:56:47 +0000

While all hats have now been thrown into the ring for the directly elected office of President of Ireland, we thought at New Tech Post of the possibilities if certain other candidates had stepped forward to offer public service at the highest level to their country of origin. The Irish, like Ireland itself, can no longer be thought of as the inhabitants of a tiny Ireland off the north west coast of Europe. The myriad forms of the Irish Diaspora reflect in many ways modern Ireland as a global state. If only our leaders could see that.

The role of President of Ireland can in many respects be regarded as a ceremonial position as there are few absolute powers that come with the job, but to the world outside of Ireland the individual who holds this post has far greater recognition than even the Taoiseach itself.

What lies outside of Ireland - particularly in the form of the Diaspora - is as important as what is inside Ireland. Ireland, as small at it is and despite its recent and ongoing financial troubles, is a player in the global markets. The recently announced opening of an overseas office for Twitter in the Dublin area testifies to Ireland's geographical importance and reflects wonderfully on the highly educated, well skilled population that inhabits these shores.

Internally, the tech sector has been growing at 6% a year and is creating jobs. Technological breakthroughs in the agricultural sector have the potential to have Ireland become a lead player in the food supply chain business. (New Tech Post will be covering this area in greater depth over the coming months.)

However, many of the current candidates and much of the politicking around selecting a leader for this unique role remains insular and dwells on a sense of a role that Ireland plays in the world which can only be viewed as outdated.

One possible contender for the role, should he be asked to step forward, is Tom McEnery, ex-Mayor of San Jose and occasional contributor to New Tech Post. We spoke to him last week in the offices of the Irish Innovation Center, a facility that Irish businesses can base themselves in and use as a springboard into Silicon Valley - the knowledge workshop of the world.

Apart from his many distinctions in public service he was instrumental in helping the IDA to open an office in California. In 1990 he joined the elite company of those who have received the "Lord Mayor of Dublin's Award." He has been honored in Belfast, with the assistance of Apple, for the award-winning Bytes for Belfast.

Our first question to him was how he viewed high profile roles such as being head of state of Ireland.

“What I think is important is how do you perceive these jobs? Are they just meaningless baubles? Are they merely symbolic? Are they relics of another time? Or, are they something that can play an active role in moving the people of the country forward? In Ireland there never has been a more important time to have sound leadership since the founding of the Republic. If it was inspirational too, even better.

“What Ireland needs now is not only to show a positive and entrepreneurial side to the world, Ireland needs to show it to the people of Ireland who have been so shaken in the last few years.

“You have got six million people in the island of Ireland which is just what you have here in the San Jose / San Francisco Bay area, and I think there has always been much in common. That is the basis of our San Jose and Dublin Sister City program. Although there were many differences between the two areas, there was one very important thing in common — the entrepreneurial, visionary aspects of the types of the people who live on that island and the people who have come to this area that has become known as Silicon Valley. There is much to learn and emulate.

“There never has been a more important time for a face that is hopeful, optimistic and has a plan. One to be implemented now, not through rhetoric but through action.

“You need a symbol of what Ireland is going to be, her hopes and dreams — what fueled both the Celtic Tiger's good points and Irish Diaspora historically. What are the aspirations of the Irish people that the President can nurture and support? To me, it is all about quality of life. It is all about jobs and opportunity. Maybe, most importantly, it is all about preventing people from going to immigrant ships and leaving, as has been the bane of Ireland in the past.

“Right now, as I look at the situation, it seems like a truer honor for people like myself in America, Australia, England or wherever the Diaspora is located is to make sure that no other people like my grandmother ever have to emigrate.”

Nobody asked Tom to run for Presidency although many who know him and know of his strong ties to Ireland think it would be a very good idea. On closer questioning he revealed a track record that would have made him a very interesting and suitable candidate.

“I’ve always looked a politics a little differently than other people do. It's a job to do. I don't look on it as, ‘Gee, what I can I run for?’ but, ‘Where is there a role that I can make a difference in?’ I found one in San Jose for nearly a decade. I found it first as chairman of the local planning commission. First when we tried to encourage and nurture Silicon Valley in all its various incarnations to come here.

"I tried to fill another role in my economic work in Ireland with inward investment, Intel et al., and Belfast with the young people there who needed to know that they could change the world easier with a computer than with a gun.

“For those two terms and eight years as Mayor I had a rare opportunity to build a tax-base and create a vibrant, thriving center city. The accomplishment I feel most proud of is to make people feel good about being a citizen of San Jose.

“Apart from North Kerry and a few places in Dublin, I am far from a household name in Ireland. As I look at the different policies and programs that I have worked on here with the Irish Technology Leadership Group, (ITLG), along with the small venture capital fund that I am involved with and the 30 businesses that we have here at the Irish Innovation Center, I think we have done more than any other group coming out of the Farmleigh discussions two years ago.

"I particularly want to credit John Hartnett, founder of the ITLG and great entrepreneurs like John Ryan, founder of Rovi who was born in Tipperary. Also, Craig Barrett, former CEO of Intel and second generation Irish American. These are doers; people who follow the dream. It is still alive in Ireland but must be nurtured.

"In the most positive sense we are the great Irish dreamers, now we must implement those dreams.

“I think what is going on here in San Jose and with the Silicon Valley Diaspora is exactly the sort of policies that the next President and the government of Ireland ought to inspire to build upon — I plan on playing a role.

What policies are they?

“The policies basically are:

You support and nurture creative people in Ireland.
You support an eco-system of venture capital. You don’t worry about creating reports - you worry about creating companies.
You nurture the infrastructure. Not only the roads and systems like that but broadband as well.
Education is first and foremost — It is what built Silicon Valley.
Public Private Partnerships between government, private institutions and individual companies. This is the backbone of what really is the engine of the world today, and that is Silicon Valley.

“It is a program where you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You have to look at what has been tremendously effective here in this valley and in the city of San Jose and understand that if you nurture those very creative aspects of a knowledge economy you can make some wonderful things happen.”

Although Tom, an Irish citizen of some years, takes a deep interest in Irish history and Irish current affairs and has worked tirelessly to build a bridge between Ireland and Silicon Valley, he remains an American who has lived all his life outside of Ireland. Could this be a handicap to him being President despite meeting the criteria for candidature?

“I think it is intriguing that someone from the vast Diaspora could play a role in setting a course for Ireland in a world now that is so clearly globalized. This is the proper time to call home the wild geese and see how they can participate. Many of the Craig Barretts and Hartnetts and McEnerys are ripe for that task — we owe it to our grandparents and the young dreamers of Ireland.

At this date, no person from the Diaspora will be introduced into the Presidential race, but the idea of a Craig Barrett or a John Hartnett, is not only fascinating, but could be one of the most significant movements to revitalize the Irish economy and once again restore the dream for young Irish men and women.