EirePreneur

Enterprise Ireland interested in Facebook apps

It's great to see Benjamin Mosse at Enterprise Ireland using the Web2Ireland.org blog to find out what Irish companies are doing as regards Facebook application development. Grazr have already done one Ben but we're a Boston based company ;-)

Lessons learned from Dublin Open Coffee live video stream

Eoghan McCabe, Paul Campbell and Olivier Ansaldi were among the many faces I recognized at today OpenCoffee Club in Dublin's Morrison Hotel from where the participants kindly streamed a live video feed using Ustream.tv.

Having been in the thick of the action (though thankfully out of camera) at Limerick OpenCoffee Club last week, when Conn O'Muineachain filmed the session from the AbsoluteHotel.com, it was great this time to sit back and take it all in as it was happening.

At first the signs were ominous. I felt every bit of my physical 150 miles away from the conversation as I gazed out through the laptop mounted camera, perched somewhere in front of the fragmented group of attendees. I could only catch snippets of conversation among the three of four people in the immediate foreground, a few of whom were out of shot.

But, about a half an hour into the session things started to change dramatically. As Niall Larkin observed, Dublin OpenCoffee organically found focus as a panel discussion among those physically present while taking questions from the remote viewers.

I think this is a very important point to remember for future Ustreaming of OpenCoffee Clubs. In fact here's how I would wrap that observation in a few action points -

1. Use the first half of OpenCoffee Club for meet and greet - individual chat among those physically present. Do not turn the camera on during this as it interferes with the informal nature of the chit-chat and makes some people uncomfortable
2. During the 2nd half get participants who are not camera shy to huddle around the camera/mic and engage in round-table discussion between themselves and with the remote viewers, taking questions from the Ustream chat room as well as holding their own conversations. The round-table format is very important. Because of lack of directional queues it is much easier for remote viewers to follow the conversation when people aren't talking over each other. Not that people should be too conscious of this proviso either - we don't want a stilted conversation. But it's worth adhering to if possible.
   
3. Ignore the trolls!! (ie. encourage the remote viewers to login and ignore some of the trollish questions asked by the odd inquisitive and anonymous onlooker).
4. Having said that do pay attention to the chat room and the questions being asked. Try to engage the panel in answering them if possible.
   

In fact I felt the chat room added a lot to the session today. Not everyone logged in but at various points people like Ken McGuire, Conn O'Muineachain, Conor O'Neill, Aidan Finn, Fergus Burns and Niall Larkin were asking great questions.

Conor made the point that interviews are the way to go but I think that was before the more focussed second half of the session got underway. And, as Ken McGuire said, while the interview with the Collison brothers in Limerick gave great focus to the session, fly-on-the-wall coverage is still welcome. To add to that Adian Finn said it's good to see experimentation and we can all learn from it what works and doesn't work.

Aidan was also one of the people who thought today's introductions (to the attendees) were good but all too brief. So another suggestion I might make is for a format somewhere between the informal round-table of today and the formal 'interview' format last week in Limerick. That is, a 5 minute informal Q&A session with anybody in the group willing to participate.

And when I say 'willing' I mean willing! Because, another big lesson for me today is that some people are comfortable on camera and some (like me) are not. And forcing a camera in front of the latter group disrupts the flow for those physically present. Aidan wondered if the live broadcast was affecting the participants and felt he'd be a lot more guarded about what he'd say in the knowledge that it was being broadcast. Conn made a similar point - while he intends recording future OCCs in Cork he doesn't want to interfere with the format they've established there.

Anyway, these are just my personal observations and should be taken with a grain of salt as I really don't know much about video production, etc. All in all I thought today's session was another wonderful success and I eagerly look forward to tuning in next time.


Technorati Tags: dublin, opencoffe, occ, ustream, live video

OpenCoffee Club Dublin to give legal advice

From Tweetups to Open Coffee Clubs it's all happening in Dublin this week. Tomorrow's DOCC looks like being a particularly good one - "Simon McGarr (of tuppenceworth.ie and McGarr Solicitors fame) will be our special guest who’s kindly offered to chat to attendees about any business- or web-related legal issues they may be curious about."

At the risk of sounding totally obsessed with live video I'd love to see them live streaming this and taking relaying questions for Simon from the remote viewers around the country (like me).


Technorati Tags: DOCC, opencoffeeclub, dublin

Tweetups come to Dublin

Only a few days ago I was reading for the first time about a phenomenon called Tweetups, in the guise of a BBQ in Boston, and now this morning I read that Tweetups are coming to Dublin. Alexia has the details -

"So, at the last Dublin OCC [OpenCoffee Club] after enjoying all of the shop talk, Olivier and I agreed that organising a small Tweetup of Dublin Twitter users would be a great idea. We were enthused by the lively conversation of OCC contributers and excited at the prospect of being able to meet some of the interesting voices of Irish Twitheads we hear (or rather read) on a daily basis. The Irish web habitat is very small indeed and the more avenues open to the free exchange of ideas from fresh voices, the better."

Absolutely, and great idea! Olivier has more details.

The 3-year-old inventor

Another in my regular "now why didn't I think of that?" series brought to you by the ever inspiring Springwise. This time it's the story of a mother who was inspired by her three-year-old kid to invent Treasure Dough.

A predictable refrain to follow, yes but nevertheless pertinent - we've all observed children doing novel and inventive things with basic toys but how many of us ever stop to think about what we're seeing and spot the potential to exploit the idea commercially?

Don't bitch about lack of coverage...

... if you're an Irish startup that hasn't submitted your profile to Damien Mulley - remember, that guy who writes for the Sunday Tribune, has the no. 1 Irish blog and isn't charging a cent to give your company extra exposure! Funny how nearly all of the 15 companies he's already listed are well familiar to me through participation on the blogosphere, twittersphere and..... oh, the internet!

Flickr Tag Explorer, a brilliant hack for navigating flickr

When I wrote last year about Progressive Feed Filtering through Hierarchical Tag Grazing I was thinking more in terms of social bookmarking services like del.icio.us. But Alto Maltés has gone and created a brilliant hack for doing so in Flickr with Tag Explorer, which he describes as, "A simple Flickr + Grazr + XSLT hack to start from a tag and explore related tags". Very sweet.

Technorati Tags: flickr, tags, hack

The future of Business TV, and nurturing the transformation

Well before any of us attending yesterday's OpenCoffee Club in Limerick had made our way home from the event Conor O'Neill in Rosslare had penned a terrific tribute to the occasion -

I’ve just listened to an absolutely riveting interview with the [Collison brothers from Auctomatic]. Conn recorded the whole thing so you can play it back. This is pure gold - a deep inside view into moving to the Valley and making something happen.

I’ve been quite dismissive of the whole PodTech/Scoble thing, finding it boring and echo-chambery, but what happened this morning is genuine new-media. Useful, informative, entertaining, interactive, fun!

I read Conor's blog post on Conn's mobile phone while munching a New Yorker panini at the Refuel Cafe and trying to digest what I'd just witnessed, both first hand in the Brainbox boardroom and virtually through the video stream. While sitting across the table from John and Patrick Collison I was also among the group of us interacting with a slew of remote viewers from all around Ireland and internationally from places like Boston via Twitter, Jaiku and Conn's Ustream chat room.

Eoghan McCabe said it was it was, "spine-tinglingly good. I felt genuinely connected from a couple hundred miles away."

Niall Larkin thought it was, "A perfect demo of how you can capture lightning in a bottle. Better than Live TV at its best."

Walter Higgins simply got a weakness after entering a virtual hall of mirrors but today he's still buzzing from what he saw and determined to make the next session in person.

Critt Jarvis who was looking in from Massachusetts thought it was over the top too cool but had difficulty understanding the funny accents

The video stream made Ken McGuire's cup of tea more interesting.

Damien Mulley said, "Looks like live Tech TV happened in Ireland today. Mark calendars for the end of Irish broadcast TV as we know it."

Conor O'Neill added to his blog post when calling it "game changing" and the "future of Business 'TV'".

That opinion was echoed by Aidan Finn who came down from Galway to attend in person and said afterwards, "This was an excellent event - congratulations to all involved. Patrick and John gave an excellent talk. But more than that there was the feeling that this was a new kind of event within the Irish tech community."

Bernie Goldbach says it was Ireland's first Live TechTV event and gives much deserved kudos to John Kennedy for arraning the excellent location.

Regular attendee Jan Blanchard of Tourist Republic thinks - "Today, Limerick Opencoffee hit another milestone. Live Upstream TV, video interviews, Brainbox room and good coffee… What else? Well two energetic Irish entrepreneurs who operate from San Francisco and brought back some of the great energy of the valley."

But last word goes to first time visitor Liam Noonan - "Listening to these startup companies reminds me of mid 90's when my friends and I had ideas and the time and energy to bring them to fruition but the one thing we lacked was the get up and go / confidence. Ireland is slowly changing and forums such as open coffee will help to nurture this transformation."

Six Degrees of Robert Scoble

Wikipedia: "The trivia game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is based on a variation of the concept of the small world phenomenon and states that any actor can be linked, through their film roles, to actor Kevin Bacon."

Well move over Mr. Bacon there's a new game in town and it's called Six Degrees of Robert Scoble. Using the all new Grazr Twitter Reader (GTR) you can now drill down through the Socializer's... er, I mean the Scobleizer's Social Graph and easily discover how many hops you are away from from the gravitational center of the twittersphere.

You can also use the GTR to -

• Find new people to follow. As you navigate through various networks of Twittter friends you can easily visit their Twitter page and add them to your own list of people to follow. It's a great way to build up your own Twitter network.
• Search for any Twitter user. The Grazr Twitter Reader has a built-in search function that lets you browse the social graph of any user. Just enter a Twitter username and an entire network appears.
• Listen to Twittergrams from within the Reader. If a user has an account on Twittergram.com, their audio posts will automatically be added as an extra feed. The Grazr Twitter Reader includes a built-in MP3 player, so you can listen right away without having to load another tool or Web page.

Precognition of deja vu

I'm travelling on the PaddysValley tour of Silicon Valley in December and right now I'm using Google Maps Street View to familiarize myself with downtown Palo Alto where we'll be staying in the Cardinal Hotel. Google have done it again, Street View is incredibly useful. Starting at our hotel I can walk a few steps north east along Hamilton Avenue, turn left onto Ramona Street, past the Osteria, another few steps and voila, Coupa Cafe where all the VCs hang out.

At this stage I've 'walked' a few miles around the neighboring blocks to visually memorize my way to the Facebook office, Junnoon, Rudy's Pub, the HP Garage, the Ning office, the Miyake Restuarant and the Caltrain Station. I'm sure when I get to the real place in December it will be a most unusual case of deja vu.

---

Related: Bernie Goldbach wants Street View for Irish boreens.