Bytes 'n Pieces

-- Joe Drumgoole and Eoghan McCabe came up with another interesting idea at OpenCoffee Dublin - "a Paddy's Valley trip to London primarily to attend a London Open Coffee event but also to meet business partners, VCs  etc.". Mike Butcher of TechCrunch UK & Ireland jumped right in to offer promotion and connections.

-- Jason Roe gave a great presentation on CoWorking at CreativeCamp Kilkenny last weekend where I learned a lot about the different setups, working with landlords and how spaces in the this country tend to operate differently to elsewhere. It's interesting to hear Matt Johnston recount that he originally investigated the setting up of a co-working facility in Belfast as far back as 2006 -

"We were looking at a 3 storey building within half a mile of Queen’s University as a potential location for this nascent business. We worked out cash flows based on a café, with pay-for workspace ranging from shared desks to enclosed, secured offices. We even drew maps and applied for funding but, being asset-free, I was kinda buggered when it came to financing it."

But Matt goes on to point out that he met a few more people interested in coworking at a recent OpenCoffee Belfast - "David is working on a CoWorking business plan, Andy spends his days camping out in a coffee shop. Belfast needs co-working facilities." I tell ya, this OpenCoffee thing is a sure fire was to meet industrious people.

 

-- And you don't even have to wait around for the next OpenCoffee, TechLudd, Tweetup or Barcamp to socialize with interesting folks, just propose something anytime you feel like it... like Elly just did for a random drinks meetup in Dublin on 22nd March [hat tip to Alexia].

-- Born out of his experiences in setting up a 'hyper energy effienct' data center in Cork tech blogger Tom Raftery has started a new green blog called Lower (Carbon) Footprint. A nice addition to the growing list of Irish green blogs.

-- Speaking of tech bloggers I wish Robin Blandford would just stop blogging and give one of us other tech-heads a chance to win at the Irish Blogging Awards next year. He's on such a roll at the moment that he's heading for two in a row!