EirePreneur

22% of the Irish population now covered...

... in 5 local authority areas by John Handelaar's Vocal Voter. And his Geocoder utility is also back in action. Keep up the great work John!

Replace Noel Dempsey with Damien Blake... now!

Councillor Damien Blake, 23 year old, blogging Mayor of Letterkenny and member of Fianna Fail regrets that he can't make it to the Web 2.0 meetup in Dublin on March 11 and adds -

I'm not just a politician; I'm currently working on an MSc by Research in Mobile Web Application Development and start as a part-time lecturer/tutor tmrw.

For the love and honour of God would Bertie Ahern please instate Damien as Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, like, today!

Disclosure: I normally vote Fianna Fail but that could be changing if broadband doesn't reach my neck of the woods tomorrow!

If you don't blog you're not getting my vote!

Tom Morris points out that, in the UK -

The Tories now have RSS  feeds and links to blogs by  MPs, Councillors and other chunks of the Conservative movement. The Lib Dems  also have RSS feeds but they don't really advertise them too well.

At the same time Tuppenceworth notes that Liz McManus has started blogging. Isn't it high time that more Irish politicians followed her lead and that of Damien Blake, Ciaran Cuffe and Aidan Culhane, and started blogging? I'm not going to vote in the next election unless for a candidate who blogs. Do you hear that west Limerick TDs? You're not getting my vote again unless you blog!

I've added the 3 politicians above to a new subnode of the Open Irish Directory under Government & Law -> Dail -> Political Candidates.

Startup? Why bother!

While building a new Enterprise node for the Open Irish Directory (tentative name) I came across a semi-state body called Startup -

"Startup.ie was established by Shannon Development to provide a comprehensive information and referral service for Start-ups and established Small-Medium Enterprises within the Shannon Region. The focus is on knowledge intensive and Information Technology related enterprises, which have significant growth potential."

Well they're so incredibly 'comprehensive' and 'knowledge intensive' that their Events Calendar for the next 3 months and previous 12 months is utterly empty. Sheesh, why the hell bother! Here's a clue for all semi-state agencies - brochureware website died out about 10 years ago, get with the program for goodness sake! :(

By the way, please feel free to include/transclue my Enterprise node in your own OPML directory.

The relevance of Shannon Development

Bernie Goldbach asks -

"WHY IS THE IRISH Minister for Enterprise killing Shannon Development's initiative for the Atlantic Economic Zone?"

Living in the Shannon Development area myself it was natural that the regional development body would be one of my first ports of call a few years ago when I left my last job to setup my own business. Eventhough they set aside time for two meetings with me, I found them totally uninterested in my business start-up plans. Fair enough if they just didn't like the idea but I found them really unhelpful and lacking in enthusiasm. Unlike Enterprise Ireland who were very helpful during my time on the Enterprise Platform Program in Galway.

So while I accept Bernie's point that Shannon Development has served an important role I can't personally support their claim "to place particular emphasis on the development of high potential firms within the knowledge economy."

Doing macrobusiness on Earth

Eirepreneur is focused on the topic of "doing microbusiness in Ireland". Changemakers on the other hand is a very interesting "initiative that connects the insights of Ashoka's social entrepreneurs with the best work in the citizen sector to spark action on a global scale".

They're running a competition with cash prizes of up to US$5,000 awarded to the winners who are chosen by voting in their online community. At time of writing there are 57 competition entries from 24 countries but sadly no Irish entry as yet. Got an idea?