New Blog Header
We have a lovely new custom Cork OpenCoffee blog header courtesy of Brian Clayton. Thanks Brian and thanks to Joe Scanlon for organising!
Now to fix the headers in the sub-pages. Anyone, anyone?
UPDATE: Big thanks to Ann Donnelly for sorting out the header for us.
Videos from OCC Today
Ciara from FindaConferenceVenue got some amazing feedback from the OCC crew today. Whilst I used an external mic, I’m not sure it was any better than the built-in one for volume.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Demo tomorrow at OCC is FindaConferenceVenue.com
Ciara Feely is an expert on venues in Ireland, she established FindaConferenceVenue.com in 2007 and launched this as a venue-finding website. It is the largest and most detailed database of venues in Ireland with over 500 listed.
Ciara would like to do a short demo in order to gain feedback on the site. She is about to introduce changes to the site and would like to get an idea of usability of these.
Kilkenny’s First OCC
Delighted to hear that the KK crew are finally having an OpenCoffee at 11.30 this morning in the Kilkenny Cafe located downstairs in Market Cross Shopping Centre.
They join Cork, Limerick, Dublin, Waterford, Belfast and Galway as an OCC location.
If you are based anywhere in the South-East, it’ll be worth checking out. Hopefully they’ll have attendees from Wexford, Waterford, Carlow, Tipperary, Offaly etc.
First set of dates for Cork OCC in 2009
Our first OpenCoffee is Friday 9th in the Rubicon Centre in CIT, this gives us the following dates for the next few months. I’ll put these on Upcoming.org too so you can add them to your calendar and auto-monitor for changes.
If you’d like to host any of the TBD locations or even replace any Luigi one, just let us know on corkopencoffee AT gmail DOT com
- 09/01: Location = Rubicon. Organiser = Ciara Crossan
- 23/01: Location = Luigi Malone’s. Organiser = Conor O’Neill
- 06/02: Location = Rubicon. Organiser = Gordon Murray
- 20/02: Location = TBD. Organiser = Ciara Crossan
- 06/03: Location = Rubicon. Organiser = Conor O’Neill
- 20/03:Location = Luigi Malone’s. Organiser = Gordon Murray
- 03/04: Location = Rubicon. Organiser = Ciara Crossan
- 17/04: Location = TBD. Organiser = Conor O’Neill
- 01/05: Location = Rubicon. Organiser = Gordon Murray
- 15/05: Location = Luigi Malone’s. Organiser = Ciara Crossan
- 29/05: Location = Rubicon. Organiser = Conor O’Neill
Cork OpenCoffee in 2009
We’ve just had a fantastic 2008 in OCC and I think we can make it even better in 2009. A few quick thoughts as we race towards the end of the year.
- OCC only works because of the attendees. Thanks to everyone who even attended one session this year.
- Ciara and Gordon are doing a fantastic job re-invigorating OCC. I should have asked for their help earlier!
- I’ll post at least three months of dates for 2009 shortly. The Rubicon ones will obviously be fixed location. The other ones will continue to rotate between locations like Luigi’s and NSC etc.
- We’ll run one brainstorming OCC soon where everyone’s ideas for improving OCC can be discussed
- Phoebe Bright has come up with the great idea of collecting a list of common challenges (e.g. SEO) and running group self-help sessions on them.
- We’ll have more one-off special OCCs like the Tom Keane one during the year. Details TBA. Thanks again to John Fitzgerald for arranging the Tom one.
- Thanks to everyone who sponsored coffee and hosted events during the year.
- An extra special thanks to the Rubicon Centre for being our base. That’s Paul, Margaret, Maeve and Felix.
- Don’t forget the Demo Slots. They can be used to propose product/business ideas too, you don’t have to have anything to show.
- Have a great New Year.
OCC on 19th?
Gordon is proposing an OCC on the 19th. Vote in the poll if your are interested.
Spreading the load
I’d very happy to announce that the organisation of each Cork OpenCoffee session will be split between me, Gordon Murray and Ciara Crossan from now on. I really appreciate them both agreeing to help out and each of us will organise every third event.
You’ll see no major difference in OCC except that the person deciding the demos, doing the intros and sending the reminder emails will rotate.
To kick if off, Gordon will be arranging this Friday.
Nomos Software at OpenCoffee
Tricia and David from Nomos Software demoed their software on Friday. Whilst it was a highly technical topic, we had an excellent QA session about the business side of things. From their own site: “Nomos Software applies model driven engineering, code generation and declarative rules-based techniques to the management and control of data”.
This was the first OCC session where we aimed for tight time control and it worked very well. 15+ people introduced themselves quickly and the demo was 30 minutes long including Q&A.
It was great to have Tom Doherty from Waterford OCC visit us too. We will have to do a few outward bound visits in the coming months to Waterford and Limerick.
Some video of the demo here:
Questions for Tom Keane?
As Tom had to fly off the other day, many people didn’t get a chance to ask him a question. Head on over to the eWrite Blog and Gordon will pass on any questions you have there.
