EirePreneur

Fax Your TD - a successful pledge drive

Congratulations to John Handelaar on a successful pledge drive for his Fax Your TD initiative. These are the kind of DIY projects we need to see more of in Ireland.

How to plot your street on an Irish map

John Handelaar says he's found the holy grail of Irish mapping. And that might just be no exaggeration! I tested it by throwing a number of Limerick streets at it and it worked every time.

Hopefully John will explain more about how we could use this clever hack over on the OpenEir mapping project.

Matching startup job positions with candidates

When I asked if there was any central list of Irish startups who are hiring, and suggested I'd start one if not, an interesting conversation ensued. Paul Sweeney of VoiceSage thought it was a great idea (with provisos) while Alan O'Rourke of SpoiltChild felt that regular jobs sites, like Monster.ie are the best option.

On the other hand Conor O'Neill of Argolon felt he'd wasted €200 in advertising with Monster.ie and not done much better in spending €800 with the Irish Examiner -

"This may be a reflection of almost total employment of people in our technical area in Cork but we were deeply disappointed with the response.  We could not afford to be doing this on a regular basis..."

Conor feels that its actually a two-way problem and a simple free aggregation system would be ideal for small companies like his. Therefore I've created a new sub-node called Startup Jobs & Applicants under the Business & Economy -> Employment & Recruitment node of the Open Irish Directory. I hope this will serve double duty in providing a 'reading list' (dynamic OPML file) of bloggers who seek startup employment, along with a reading list of Irish startups seeking to fill positions. I've also setup a QuickTopic messge board to which any startup company can post positions. Those with blogs can alternatively filter postings to those blogs about new positions to an aggregate feed by Technorati tagging them OIDsjp. I'll splice the QuickTopic and Technorati feeds together using a service like Feeddigest as soon as we've got a few in there. And jobseekers can then subscribe to that feed or give a quick scan by browing the OID through Taskable.

I posted previously that I won't vote in the next election except for a candidate who blogs. I'm a startup founder myself and though we're not currently looking to take on employees, I'll take the same hardline approach when we are - unless you blog we won't be employing you. If a picture is worth a thousand words a blog is worth a thosand resume pages. You might say that beggars can't be choosers but I'd be very disappointed if I had to look outside of active bloggers to fill a position.

And to put the shoe on the other foot - if I were a jobseeker looking to join a dynamic young startup I'd certainly want to get to know what it might be like to work there by following their blog.

In summary, while the OID is not going to replace other jobsites it might help to solve two problems -

• How do people like Des Corbett, who specifically want to experience the buzz of working for a startup company, easily scan the positions available and learn about startup life within those companies? And...
• How do companies like Argolon who only have a startup's budget to work with easily find the entrepreneurial jobseekers and get to know more about them than a CV could convey, before interviewing them?

Technorati tag: OIDsjp

Dave you lucky bastard - the begrudgers love you!

Excuse my french but that's what I thought when I came across this parody of Dave Winer by way of trackback to my post about the man himself a few days ago. Employing a wicked caricature of the blogfather and offering "If Dave Winer says it, it must be true!" t-shirts for sale, its an ironic monument to the man's achievements. What I wouldn't give to have someone go to so much trouble to make a mockery of me. Then I'd know I'd really made it. Dave you lucky bastard ;-)

What's this got to do with entrepreneurship? Well it reminded me of the Sunday Times article I read about the apparent gloom descending over Scotland and its economic and social woes. Says one reluctant-to-return-home expat -

“People generally celebrate success in the US but I don’t think we are very good at doing that in Scotland. We have all been brought up to not be boastful and blow your own trumpet. We should be ready to shout about what’s great about Scotland.

“In the business world you have to stand up and be counted and talk about what you do well, which doesn’t sit very comfortably with the Scottish psyche.”

The same article contrasts the relative success of the Irish government -

"UNLIKELY as it might seem, it is possible for a cold, wet country on the edge of Europe to entice back expats from warmer, more exotic climes. Look at Ireland. In 1999, its national employment agency launched the Jobs Ireland campaign aimed at the Irish diaspora. It has proved a phenomenal success."

Ironic really as the Irish used to be world class begrudgers. I remember Bono once describing us thus (I think on Oprah) -

In the States you look at the millionaire in the mansion on the hill and say to yourself, "One day I'm gonna be that guy". In Ireland, you look at the millionaire in the mansion on the hill and say to yourself, "One day I'm gonna get that bastard"

Bono might want to update that opinion now that begrudgery is thankfully dying a slow death in Ireland..... and ironically alive and well in some parts of the States.

Strong Irish presence at Les Blogs

Its great to hear that a Irish Web2.0 company Nooked is speaking at Les Blogs. Antoin has the details. And Tom Raftery continues to chronicle the lighter side of things. Not since the days of Jack Charlton have the Irish travelled in such numbers!

Building a new web - the lessons learned

Last week I suggested that the World Live Web will surely eclipse the World Wide Web (in significance if not bytes). And Doc Searls clarified that it was in fact his son Allen who coined the term World Live Web.

Yesterday Doc notified us that "The World Live Web" is the subject of his column in the December issue of Linux Journal. Its a terrific read elucidating many of the notions I've been grappling with.

One effect of the search engines' success has been to concretize our understanding of the Web as a static kind of place, not unlike a public library. In the midst of that library, however, there are forms of activity that are too new, too volatile, too unpredictable for conventional Web search to understand fully. These compose the live Web that's now branching off the static one.

The live Web is defined by standards and practices that were nowhere in sight when Tim Berners-Lee was thinking up the Web, when the "browser war" broke out between Netscape and Microsoft, or even when Google began its march toward Web search domination. The standards include XML, RSS, OPML and a growing pile of others, most of which are coming from small and independent developers, rather than from big companies. The practices are blogging and syndication. Lately podcasting (with OPML-organized directories) has come into the mix as well.

Using those insights as a lense to look back at my own experiences of freelance web development is quite an enlightening exercise. When I started out, during the height of the dotcom boom, it was extraordinary how many of my customers, especially the local community councils, had no idea really of why they needed a website. They just knew that they wanted one. And you could sum up what they thought they wanted thus -

• A domain: a private, fenced off plot of their own on the new frontier
• A homepage: a manuscript, a monument to the people, their history, their past.
• A webmaster: a scribe to shield them from the complexity of publication.

Whereas, what they actually needed was -

• An address: Which is easier to find - a ranch in the desert or an appartment in the middle of town? A top level domain is an unnecessary conceit in most cases.
• An online community hall:  A virtual meeting place, a means of communicating the present and the future.
• An editor: the software, not the person!

With those lessons in mind I'm setting out to get my local communities back on the web - the new web, the live web. They'll take up virtual residence at blog subdomains, located by directory 'signposts'. Their editors will be the text messaging facility on their mobile phones and they'll communicate news, schedules and updates through live feeds.

A test version for my local town of Newcastlewest is reachable through the Open Irish Directory via the Community, Home & Family -> # By Region -> Munster -> Limerick hierarchy. Here's how it looks using Taskable (click for larger version).

The World Wide Web documents the past, the World Live Web broadcasts the present and the future.

Irish Net Visionary doesn't own a mobile phone! Huh?

Damien Mulley continues his series of interviews with Irish entrepreneurs, in a fascinating chat with John Breslin who I only met for the first time last week at the Geek Dinner in Cork. John came across as a very down to earth guy for someone who had just won a Net Visionary award, the latest in a host of other achievements.

The most surprising thing for me was to learn that someone who is helping to build the semantic web doesn't even have a mobile phone! My God John, you need to read more of Yahoo's Russell Beattie. As he points out, the interface to the internet for the vast majority of the world will soon be the mobile phone.

[Note to self: Maybe I'm just jealous that John's got so many other cool gadgets] ;-)

IT@Cork conference being live blogged

Tom Raftery is currently live blogging the IT@Cork conference where Robert Scoble is headlining. I know this kind of thing is standard fare for 'Valley' conferences but its great to see the Irish bloggers getting into the spirit. I'd like to see some photos though!

I find it incredible to learn that so few of the delegates responded when Robert asked for a blogger's show of hands and isn't it kind of pathetic that Tom and Scoble are about the only two there with laptops. Sheesh, what kind of impression is the Scobleizer getting of the so called 'high tech' Irish economy now :(

Its a pity I couldn't make it to the conference but I'm looking forward to meeting up with everyone at the Irish Geek Dinner in a few hours time. And I'll bring along my cameraphone for some live photo blogging!

"Web 2.0 Ireland" reviews innovative new Irish web browser

Emmet Connolly reviews Tablane on Web2.0 Ireland.

"Tablane’s most innovative feature, however, is it’s use of ‘Collections’, or bookmark management. Somewhat like bookmarks in that sites or search results can be saved for future reference, the difference is that all data is saved as XML, allowing much more to be done with the information. Groups of bookmarks can be automatically exported to a web pages complete with thumbnail images and shared via email or online. Plans are already underway to use Microsoft’s hot-off-the-presses SSE format to enable two-way synchronisation of Collections.

Wow! I'm still trying to get my head around what SSE really means and these guys are already implementing it in their software. This surely is one to watch.

Irish in Spain - The podcast continues...

Parts 7 & 8 of the podcast "A Diary of Something or Other - An Irishman's adventure in Spain" have now been published on the Irish In Spain blog. I think this is the best episode yet.