Web 2 Ireland

Congratulations to Niall and team at Macalla on acquisition by Roamware

Check recent video of Niall explaining Macalla

Macalla from dhtv on Vimeo.

Sligo is home to many up-and-coming tech startups along with the awesome PollDaddy.

If you are interested in becoming part of that cluster then you should attend the free Information Evening being held at the Business Innovation Centre in IT Sligo. It’s on Monday 21st September 2009 from 6.30 p.m. 8.30 p.m. and will hopefully answer some of the questions you might have about forming a tech startup.

Contact mary.boyle AT enterprise-ireland DOT com or + 353 (0) 71 9159700 if you wish to attend.

Way back in October 2007, I asked if it was time for api.gov.ie. We were unfortunately too busy building the tenements and ghettos of the future at that time to be concerned with such things. However in the U.S. some real momentum began around the idea of Government 2.0 and their CIO is really buying into it.

Tim O’Reilly, the Irishman who coined Web 2.0, has a superb piece in Techcrunch on this topic and has announced the Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase and Gov 2.0 Summit.

Anyone in senior positions in Government, Civil Service or Public Sector interested in engaging with us on this in Ireland? All the skills are here. web2ireland.editor AT gmail DOT com if you have the ability to make something happen here.

Here are some simple examples of what has already been done without any public sector or semi-state support, imagine what we could do _with_ official support. Dammit, forget support, this should be a Government mandate.

• Tracking your Public Representatives’ activity on KildareStreet.com
• Bus Route Planner on Just Routes
• Scraping the CRO Database by Joe Drumgoole
• Planning Permission Search by Planning Buddy

If you have built anything which uses public sector data, via APIs, scraping or whatever, let us know and we’ll update this post.

UPDATE: Just look at this fabulous tool.

DataMasher is a map-based mash up site just took the Sunlight Foundation’s $10,000 grand prize in theApps for America 2: The Data.gov Challenge. This site offers an easy-to-use interface that allows regular citizens to combine and mix data sets without any programming knowledge. From here, data is displayed on a State-by-State basis in map format. Compare cancer hot spots to CO2 emissions, SAT scores to crime rates and even political contributions to State spending.

Could you imagine what we could do with that here? Starting with FAS budgets.

Last year at the IWTC keynote event – the view was that all investment monies were going to commercial properties in the likes of Berlin – and where was our “Ron Conway” – who actually sold his first business to CBT – and then went onto to make hundreds of angel investments including the likes of Google, etc.

On twitter recently we asked “Who are the top 10 Irish Angel investors ?”

Response – 3 names so far. Ray Nolan, Paddy Holohan and Pat Lynch. [we welcome any more names/suggestions]

Related to Angel investing in Ireland, cmypitch.ie is hosting an event Dublin on 22nd September 2009. The “Dragons” are Pat Brazel, Brian Caulfield, Eamonn Fallon and Maurice Roche.

The uber-connected Irish Opportunist, Paul Walsh, has recently joined forces with Angels Den, and Paul will soon be announcing some exciting new initiatives for the Irish market.

To cap it off, Chris Horn, in today’s Irish Times, has an excellent piece on the Smart Economy – Strategy

Quote

In what sectors can Ireland win? Digital media, renewable energy and novel telecommunications come to mind. But whatever sector, civil servants should not guess what is going to be hot in the years ahead; rather the State agencies should follow and endorse those angels and founders who put their own money, business experience and commitment to work.

Any suggestions on how to grow the Angel investing scene in Ireland ? please comment….