This Friday's Meetup is in Webworks

The next Cork OpenCoffee is on this Friday 8th at 10am in the Webworks building on Eglinton Street opposite the entrance to the City Hall Car Park. Many thanks to Pat Phelan for arranging it and to Kay Wright in Webworks for facilitating.

The speaker session this week is not a demo but a short talk by Phoebe Bright on some future energy scenarios and how they might impact the IT business locally. In her words:

Whatever the future holds with increasing energy prices, increasingly scarce resources and the pressure to address climate change, it is not likely to look like Business As Usual. I worked as part of a team developing energy scenarios as part of an EPA project. Scenarios are not projects, but explorations of what possible futures under different conditions. The four scenarios we looked at were based on two conditions - the timing of peak oil and our reaction to it.

  * Business As Usual - a scenario where peak oil does not happen until 2025 and we do little in the meantime to prepare for it. - more details here: http://info.energyscenariosireland.com/BAU_1Page
  * Enlightened Transition - peak oil is a long way off be we prepare proactively.  details here: http://info.energyscenariosireland.com/Enlightened_1Page
  * Localisation - peak oil happening now and we react badly - world recession etc. details here http://info.energyscenariosireland.com/Localisation_1Page
  * Fair Shares - peak oil now and we make the best of it.  details here: http://info.energyscenariosireland.com/FairShares_1Page

I would like to look at two scenarios and ask two questions.

What are the threats and what are the opportunities for the IT in Cork in:

  1. Enlightened Transition - plenty of money and enthusiasm for moving towards a more sustainable economy - though energy prices are relatively high.
  2. Fair Shares - struggling economy, little money but plenty of ingenuity to use IT to make life better in difficult times.

With a successful session I hope we can make Webworks one of our regular destinations as it really is a superb venue.