A Few Small Changes to Cork OCC
Based on feedback from attendees we’re making two small changes to the way we do things at OpenCoffee.
The first concerns the round-table introductions which many feel are taking up far too much time. So from Oct 24th onwards you have 30 seconds or less to introduce yourself. I recommend three sentences: [1] Your name and your company name [2] What you do (one sentence!) [3] Your current challenge in your business.
It is generally felt that I am being too easy-going with keeping things tight time-wise so we’ll be doing a hard cut-off on people from now on. The same applies to demos. 15 minutes max presentation followed by 5 mins Q&A. If people wish to continue discussing the demo, they can of course keep doing so, just not with the whole group involved.
The second issue is to do with Luigi Malone’s where they are now insisting we pay as a group rather than individually. Can you all please make sure to leave enough money on the table to cover your coffee/scone etc as soon as you order it. Some of the OCCers have very kindly covered our shortfall on a few occasions.
Cork OCC’s Monday talk and next two events
Monday’s special OCC in the NSC was exactly that, special. The boardroom was jammed full of people, many of them new faces to hear Tom Keane talk about Nitrosell, his history and his advice on growing a business. I was completely riveted by what he had to say since so much of it applied directly to what we are doing in LouderVoice. The questions at the end told me that he had affected many of the attendees in the same way. A big big thank you to Tom and I hope we can convince him to visit again so we can pick his brain even more!
That event was another successful co-host with SohoSolo/CorkBIC. Thanks to Jackie and Eileen for facilitating. Of course it wouldn’t have happened without John Fitzgerald getting Tom in the first place. Watch out for some more talks in the coming months.
The next OCC is back to the Rubicon in CIT on October 24th at 10am. The one after that is in Luigi Malone’s on November 7th.
We’ll have a demo on the 24th from Tricia Balfe of Nomos Software. She describes it as follows:
Nomos Software has built a tool for validating XML data against a set of user-defined business rules. The tool allows you to perform the type of validation that is not possible using XML schemas. We allow users to express rules about the interdependencies between the data in XML files, and turn these rules into executable java code.
it@cork Annual Conference Announced
The it@cork annual conference has just been announced. Its title is “GREEN IT: Reduce CO2, Raise Profits” and it’s on November 26 in the lovely Radisson SAS Hotel in Cork.
The line-up looks like an excellent mix with the focus being clearly on Green as it relates to IT and Business. I particularly like the profit angle given the turmoil the world is going through right now
The is an Early Bird Discount available – Book on or before October 31 and it’s €250 for members, €350 for non members.
The agenda is as follows:
07.30 Heads of IT breakfast sponsored by Certification Europe
08.00 Arrival coffee & registration
08.45 Welcome from Donal Manning, Chairman, it@cork
08.55 SETTING THE SCENE George Lee, Economics Editor, RTE
09.35 – Green IT: Moving Beyond the 2% Solution, Douglas Neal, Research Fellow, Leading Edge Programme
10.05 – SMART2020: ICT and climate change. Opportunities or Threat? Chris Tuppen, Director Sustainable Development, BT
10.35 Q&A Moderated by Tom Raftery. Lead analyst, energy and sustainability practice, Redmonk
10.50 Coffee sponsored by Complete Telecom
11 20 – Virtual Worlds: making organizations greener, Pierre-Olivier Carles, Co-Chief Stonfield InWorld
11.40 – Measuring the energy footprint of everything on Earth, Gavin Starks, Director, AMEE
12.00 – The Electric Grid 2.0, Fergus Wheatly, General Manager, Allied Solar Ltd
12.20 – Q&A Moderated by Damien Mulley, Mulley Communications
12.35 LUNCH sponsored by Lenovo
13.45 – Situation normal, everything must change, Simon Wardley, Independent Consultant
14.35 The Business Challenges of the Future Low Carbon Economy, Niall Brady, Green Sigma Technical Development Manager, IBM
14. 55 Green IT @ STRATO, Rene Weinholtz, Executive Director for IT & Innovation, STRATO
15.15 Q&A Moderated by Dan Barry, Enterprise Ireland
15.30 Coffee Sponsored by Premiere Global Services
16.00 Green Computing – A leadership role, Tom Moriarty, EMEA Regulatory and Environmental Manager, DELL
16.30 Green ICT – How ICT will help deliver ESB’s Sustainability Strategy, Padraig McManus, CEO, ESB
17.00 Q&A Moderated by Tom Raftery followed by drinks reception sponsored by Smart Telecom
After October 31st, the rate is €300 for members and €400 for non members.
See you there!
Special OpenCoffee on Monday 13th (Not Friday!)
We’re running a special one-off OpenCoffee this coming Monday (13th) instead of the usual Friday. It’s a bit unusual in that we’ve invited a speaker to come in and talk about how he grew his business and raised funding. That person is Tom Keane, President of Nitrosell. He has a long history in the software biz and I know I’m not the only one who has a ton of questions to ask him.
This OpenCoffee is a joint one with SohoSolo and is on in the NSC at 9am. Coffee and buns sponsored by CorkBIC and SohoSolo. Thanks to John Fitzgerald for arranging this with Tom.
Here’s some background on Tom and Nitrosell:
Tom Keane is an engineering graduate of University College Cork and Trinity College Dublin and has over twenty five years experience at a senior level in the software business. Before co-founding NitroSell, Tom worked as a Software Engineer and ICT architect for leading software companies, including Motorola, Ericsson, Compaq, and Accenture. During 2007 and 2008 Tom was a member of the prestigious Microsoft S+S (Software plus Services) Partner Advisory Council, which met regularly in Seattle to discuss and advise on Microsoft’s strategic new cloud computing products, campaigns, competitive positioning and go-to-market strategies. Fellow council members included CEOs and Presidents of companies including BT Tradespaces, Best Buy, Siemens, EMC/Conchango, Mamut, WebTrends, and Telus. Tom is an experienced presenter and regularly gets invited to speak on emerging technology and entrepreneurial matters.
NitroSell “makes it easy for Retailers to increase their profits by extending their business with online multi-channel sales solutionsâ€. NitroSell customer numbers are increasing every month and currently just under 400 retailers are running NitroSell eCommerce that web-enable 900 retail businesses across the US, Europe and beyond. The number of NitroSell registered end-user accounts broke the 2 million mark in Sept 2008 and over 600,000 individual products are for sale across the NitroSell WebStore base which attract over almost 2.5 million unique visits per month.
BarCamp Cork II on November 1st
It has been over two years since the last one, but BarCamp is finally coming back to Cork. It’s soon, very soon, only four weeks away. The venue is the lovely Webworks building in the City Centre, just like the last time.
We have a strong vision for this event and we need your help to make it happen on the day. Please read the first set of posts and give us your feedback. If you think you’ll be attending, please register. As always with BarCamps, it is completely free with the costs being taken care of by our kind sponsors.
If you wish to sponsor or help, please read the “what we need” post.
We have two mottos for BarCampCork II “talking with, not talking at” and “less talking, more doing”.
If you don’t know what a BarCamp/Unconference is or have never attended one, here is a simple description from the main BarCamp site:
BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.
Every attendee of BarCamp is expected to contribute in some way. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to give a talk. But at the very least, you should take part in lots of the discussions that occur and share the knowledge you have in your area of expertise.
We’d love to see you down in Cork and we encourage anyone based outside of Ireland who reads this blog to consider flying in for the day.
Today’s OpenCoffee in The Rubicon
The next OCC is today in the Rubicon Centre in CITÂ at our usual time of 10am-12. We’ll have one informal demo from a new attendee.
I was also contacted by Brian O’Flaherty from UCC who will be there. The directors of the Masters in Business Information Systems (MBIS) programme at UCC are looking to work with Cork companies in the development of products and services for business. For more details see http://afis.ucc.ie/boflaherty/invitation2008.htm
A fun Friday in Luigi’s
Friday’s OpenCoffee was a very lighthearted occasion with 15+ attendees and plenty of technology being passed around. I was pleased to see some new faces too.
A few badly taken pictures:
A video of all the tiny laptops and PDAs that were on display:
The next session is in the Rubicon in CIT on Sep 26th from 10-12.
This week’s Cork OCC in Luigi Malones
This week’s Cork OpenCoffee is back to our old haunt of Luigi Malones from 10-12 on Friday.
As always with Luigi’s, we have no formal demos. However we may have Diarmuid Wrenne and Gordon Murray doing a head2head between their Medion and Asus teeny-tiny laptops. Hopefully we’ll broadcast that live on Qik.com. I’ll also be showing an early version of LouderVoice for Business if anyone wants a look.
If you have anything you want to show off and would like a mention here on the blog, just drop me a line.
Next OCC in Rubicon Centre in CIT
Well that was a fantastic event today in the NSC. We easily had more than 30 people between OCC regulars and SohoSolo people and some new faces to both.
Thanks again to CorkBIC for hosting and sponsoring.
The networking seemed to work particularly well and I was thrilled to meet some new faces whose products and services were very impressive.
The next OCC is in two weeks on Aug 29th in the Rubicon back to our usual time of 10am.
Next OpenCoffee in NSC on Friday
The next Cork OCC is on this Friday in the board room of the NSC in Mahon. It is a bit different from our normal get-together for two reasons. The first is that it starts at 9am instead of the usual 10. The second is that it’s a joint event with SohoSolo. This means we’ll have a bigger group that usual. There won’t be a formal demo but we will hear a short intro about SohoSolo and the other services of CorkBIC who have been strong supporters of OpenCoffee since it started. They are also kindly are sponsoring the refreshments.
