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."

3 Comments

We think you're much too humble in accepting the appreciation of the group for recommending and then coalescing the OpenCoffee energy in AbsoluteHotel.com because the venue and the extra-special handling offered gratis by the staff is simply five-star business facilitation.

Posted by: Bernie Goldbach | August 10, 2007 at 12:33 PM