Anton’s Hat

Hi there folks I’ve been very quiet for a while around here but that’s because I’ve been running around like a maniac with things for benchd. We have some BIG announcements to make regarding people coming on board and our development plans but I’ll have to leave you hanging on that for the moment.

Anyway, if you know me, you know that I am passionate about helping other irish businesses and I’m a huge believer in the value of networking, which is why I decided to start TechLudd in January this year and it’s exceeded all my expectations.

So I’m delighted to announce that, as of yesterday (21 Apr), I’ll be workingwith the guys at the Digital Media Forum to help develop an All-island Digital Media Network. Neil Leyden chairman of the Digital media Forum introduced me thus.

I am happy to introduce our new Project Manager, Anton Mannering, who has joined the companies in San Francisco. Anton will be looking after the All-Island Digital Media Network, a collaboration between the Digital Media Forum and the Northern Ireland Digital Content Panel and kindly funded through Intertrade Ireland. Anton is going to help us build the network North and South and hopefully become a key dynamo in our continuing efforts to build and strengthen the digital media industry on the Island of Ireland.

So apparently I’m a “key dynamo”!! Never been described as such before but it’s appreciated all the same.

There are some very interesting things in the works at the moment so watch out for that and if you’d like to chat with me about it please get in touch.

Edit: I’ll be blogging about the Web2expo Tour and other things for the Digital Media Forum and the Network project here 

Over the last while I’ve spoken to quite a few people such as Bernie Goldbach and James Corbett (it may have been lost in the blur when I cornered James at Creative Camp Kilkenny and burned his ear about social search, Google and a few other things) as well as quite a few others, about the idea of creating a central list of events that might be of use to startup companies here in Ireland. This is a pain point for me personally as finding out what’s on around the country and even beyond our shores, that might be of use to my business is often a matter of combining luck and knowing where to look. Quite a few of people I talked to about this felt the same way so I commited a while ago to developing the idea. Then during the “beyond open coffee” organised by Bernie, I decided to reveal that it was something we were working on.

I am a great believer in the Nike mantra of “Just do it”, so over the last week I decided to build a version of Ireland Startup Events. It’s not complex or wonderful and not a lot of design work has been done, but what it does do is “what it says on the tin”. It will be kept as up to date and accurate as possible, we may occasionally not know about an event so anyone can register and enter events themselves if they like.

Why?

The idea is to have a list of events which is actively managed, to ensure that it is relatively complete. I feel that is also important that it be quite broad in it’s scope as there are many things which are relevant to startup companies besides technology.

The service is an “alpha” and therefore is not particularly well resourced right now, it will be improved in future iterations if people find it useful. I’d love your thoughts…

http://irelandstartupevents.com

Via TechCrunch. The Israeli Web tour is rolling into Silicon Valley in the next while. This is the second Israel Web Tour the first one being in December 2006. I think that perhaps we have some stuff to learn from these guys. Future Paddy’s Valley tours and others connecting with the organisers to share experiences and resources could be a great resource for both groups, especially as we share largely the same goals when traveling to Silicon Valley. As we are both essentially in Europe (before anyone starts up I know Israel technically isn’t in Europe, but it is a de facto part of the EU) building links with these guys might not be too difficult. Obviously they would also have to be interested in such an idea but extending the hand of friendship would cost little and could achieve much. Although this may have been done already, if it has I’d love to hear about it.

Here’s a video from the last Israel Web Tour.