Web2Ireland conference mini review

Photos and blogs posts pertaining to last Thursday's conference at The Helix in Dublin have begun to trickle through on Technorati including some great photos from Dermod Moore and others. Derek Organ took some great notes from the event and Dermod has a list of some of the the blogheads who were and weren't there.

It was the first conference of this kind that I've been to so I've little to compare and contrast it with but I definitely got alot out of it and the networking alone was worth the trip to the capital. Marc Canter was, of course, the star of the show but I also found Judy Gibbons particularly informative. Adam Green moderated the technology roundtable which really warmed up when it broached the subject of cross server AJAX issues. The VC and M&A presentations were of course equally relevant to all entrepreneurs in the audience and Jeff Clavier had a number of interesting cross Atlantic insights on the subject.

One question for the organizers - were the company presentations designed as sales pitches? Because one or two of the entrepreneurs hardly looked at the audience at all, instead choosing to deliver their messages directly to the panel. Hard to blame them I suppose but my gratitude goes to the ones who concentrated more on sharing business insights than pitching their wares.

Thanks to Brian O'Malley of Enterprise Ireland, Fergus Burns and everyone else who put their time into organizing a very worthwhile event. Let's have more of them.


Technorati Tags: web2ireland

Comments

[Walter]

Hi James,

Each company only had a 5-8 minute slot so if my presentation came across as a sales pitch ...that's by design. I can't say I've much business insight to share and I was advised not to get too technical (my natural tendency) . At least at Under-The-Radar I won't have to pitch (not my strong point) - just give a convincing demo.
It was good to meet up - did you leave early ?

[Dermod Moore]

Hi James

Thanks for the links James and like Walter I wondered where you disappeared to after the meeting. I notice that for a few of us above, you are linking to our blogs using our feed uri rather than the permalink of the blog post - which means that our blog posts don't register the fact that you've been commenting on them. I guess this is because you are so feed-crazy everything you read is in grazr or something similar, which doesn't show the permalink - but it does pose a bigger question considering that where you go, others will follow. How can we ensure trackback/backlinks function properly when everything is in a feed grazer, and people aren't reading blog posts on the actual blogs?

[James Corbett]

Walter your's was one of the better presentations - *you* addressed the audience! As I said though I don't really blame the couple of others for using the opportunity to make a pitch, just that it was a bit of a waste of time for many in the audience who would have already known what these products were about.

Dermod, sorry about that, I usually do link to permalinks but sometimes I'm too lazy and just link to the domain from memory. You pose an interesting question about grazing though and one which deserves more thought. When I come across something of interest in a grazr I usually click through to the webpage for greater context but I take your point.

Apologies for the disappearing act after the conference but Adam Green and myself decided on an early dinner to discuss developments in Grazr - we're both acting in a voluntary advisory capacity to Mike Kowalchik so there was lots to talk about and my plane was leaving at 10.10 so it wasn't easy to squeeze it all in.

Looking forward though to many more events of this type.

[Jonathan Hill]

Walter - I think I'm one of the guilty ones here. It wasn't that I was trying to sell it James - I just lost it and it was a lot easier speaking to the 4 people sitting beside me that the 145 staring at me from the dark recesses of the Helix. Basically I blew it.

[James Corbett]

Jonathan, please don't take what I said too seriously - you guys did what any entrepreneur in your shoes would do - you took the opportunity given and used it to the best of your abilities. I thought your presentation was quite good actually. You were clearly rather nervous (I would have been much worse) but you handled it very well.

I just look forward to having a company/product some day which is equally deserving of similar air time :)

[Jonathan Hill]

That's very kind of your James - cheers

[walter]

heheh.
I was really nervous a couple of days beforehand. I had gotten past the point of nervousness by rehearsing the thing to death but then couldn't sleep the night before so on the day I ended up nervous + over-tired + over-rehearsed : not a good combination for an engaging presentation. And actually I thought Fergus, Jonathon's and Julian's presentations were great. (I missed the afternoon presentations).