Web 2 Ireland

Yesterday I spoke at the ICT Ireland conference on Marketing in a Total Access World. The keynote was legendary Marketeer Regis McKenna who had a gem of insight for everyone in the audience. Michael Platt from Microsoft also gave a great whirlwind tour of business and technology with an MSFT twist.

My talk was a very simple personal potted history called d'internet, Being Social 1990-2007?. My basic proposal was that we've been social networking since the days of Usenet, but the tools and possibilities improve with each new generation. I also made the prediction that 2008 would be the year of Mobile. It's probably been said by someone every year since 1997 but the progress in 2007 with Twitter, Jaiku, iPhone, N95, GPS, cheaper mobile data etc has me convinced we have finally got there.

I was asked if that was realistic given the seeming inability of the mobile operators to build new sticky value-added services. As long as they are in control, is it just a pipe-dream? I replied that they are improving and those I've talked to in the telcos know that things have to change. I also thought that Android could be a way for Google to get apps like Jaiku onto many phones and potentially bypass the operator veto.

Michael Platt agreed wholeheartedly and clearly Microsoft sees mobile as a critical part of their strategy. I then ran into a person from one of the mobile operators who confirmed both the positive and negative aspects – yes they know they have to change; no, they don't know how to do that. I suggested that (for example with LBS) they take the Google approach of building APIs and releasing them into the wild to see what people do with them. He admitted that such an approach would be very difficult for them with their current target driven organisational structure.

Today I woke up to find that Google have added My Location to their Mobile Maps application. Using community generated location information which relates mobile tower IDs to GPS locations, you can now get some sense of where you are using your phone even if it does not have GPS. An simple elegant solution to a problem.

Perhaps that is the future for the mobile operators? They spend their time trying to figure out what the next big thing is and everyone else just finds ways around their roadblocks.

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The fifth BlogTalk conference is happening in Cork on March 3rd and 4th 2008. This event is all about social software with the aim to bring together developers, academics, administrators in corporate and educational settings and others working in this space.

There is an impressive line-up of invited speakers and I'm particularly looking forward to hearing Nova Spivack, CEO of Radar Networks who writes with greath depth and insight about the Semantic web on his blog.

Sean McGrath of Propylon has announced that he will be speaking and chairing a panel on Mashups, microformats and syndication. That's one I won't be missing along with the workshop on Social Network Portability.

Whilst there does seem to be a distinct academic flavour to this conference, the topics are of great importance to many working on the web and it should be a rewarding two days. I was very impressed to see names like Stowe Boyd, Jyri Engeström and Kevin Marks on the various commitees.

Final deadline for proposals is December 7th.

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Comment posted by Conor O’Neill
at 11/30/2007 4:06:50 AM

Yeah, I like that mix that you are looking for. Some of the more commercial ones can just end up being a litany of product pitches. Looking forward to it.

Comment posted by John Breslin
at 11/30/2007 3:20:04 AM

Hi Conor – thanks for the mention!

BlogTalk is less formal than academic conferences but a bit more academic-ey than events like Reboot, LeWeb, etc. What I think is good is that BlogTalk provides a nice mix, in that it allows practitioners to see what academics or developers are doing, and shows academics and developers what practitioners need. There aren't that many events like it I think, and I'd hope that this mix can be sustained this year (going on the proposals we've received so far, I think it will be).

John.

Damien has the details on the Eircom Web Innovation Fund – see eircom announce their own €100k Web 2.0/tech seed fund

Eircom are to be complimented on reaching out to the Web2Ireland community – and this is a very welcome initiative.

The best news I've heard in a long time in the Irish funding space happened last night at the Eircom Golden Spiders Awards when they announced a fund to bootstrap web start-ups. This amount is small but very much in the Y Combinator or SeedCamp model. A stodgy old telco has done something which is frankly stunning.

The key is not really the money, it is the opportunities presented by partnering with the most trafficked Irish web-site out there and getting mentoring, support and access to the right people. The areas they are interested in are Web2 generally, Micro-blogging, Embedded Voice Applications, Mashups and Social Networking.

The fund is worth approximately €100k annually and up to four concepts will be selected each year. They will take proposals that range from paper specs to alpha-level code but the applicants really have to show a capability to build what they are suggesting. The funding can then be used to build the webapp through to production and, if appropriate, initially launch on the eircom.net platform. Once launched, eircom will continue to provide small levels of operational funding for the app/site.

The real shocker comes with the announcement on equity stake. Zero! I don't want to sound like a starry eyed fanboy, but well bloody done Eircom! Finally someone here gets it and realises that handing over €175m to VCs is not the way to build incredible new companies. When I heard the zero equity line I was speechless. Of course successful applications are likely to result in content deals and I can't imagine anyone having an issue if there were first-refusal clauses on future equity stakes (I have no idea if there are).

Details and applications are available here and submissions must be in by February 2008. The details of the areas they are interested in are:

• Discovery (domain specific search; indexing, ranking, querying techniques; personalisation, recommendations, information aggregation)
• Messaging (IM; new / open messaging frameworks; email, alerts)
• Voice (VoIP telephony; mashups; asynchronous and embedded voice applications)
• Location (mapping; location-based services; geospacial web, location-based content aggregation)
• Publishing (blogging and microblogging, syndication; microformats; widgets)
• Communities (social networks, open standards, mashups, visualisations, aggregators)
• Content creation (music, video, film & TV, gaming, sport, lifestyle)
• Advertising (formats, platforms, technologies, networks, targeting, syndication, widgets)
  * Identity (presence, capabilities management; lightweight identity platforms, cross-platform solutions, social identity management)

The injection of new blood like Mark Taylor and others into Eircom really is shaking things up. There is a realisation by many large companies that it is difficult to innovate internally. So rather than trying to invent the next big thing, they seed money to startups that have the flexibility and vision to do it and make sure they are there to reap benefits if it works out. If only there were more companies in Ireland willing to try this model. I'll say it again, well done Eircom.

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Comment posted by Robert Shedd Blog Archive The Y Combinator Model: Duplication and Limitation
at 12/3/2007 10:43:31 PM

[] also another look-alike program emerging across the pond in Ireland. The Eircom Web Innovation Fund will take approximately four ventures []

Comment posted by Conor O’Neill
at 11/29/2007 8:36:11 AM

Testing to see if comments fixed.

Congratulations to all the winners – Irish Internet Association – Net Visionary Awards – great event organized by Fergal and his team at the Irish Internet Association

ps. I’m both honored and shocked with the netvisionary award – it’s an acknowledgment for all who are involved in the growing Irish web2.0 cluster.

Last night's Net Visionary awards not only showed how much activity is happening outside of Dublin but scored a perfect result by giving the overall award to Fergus Burns of Nooked and the tech journalist award to Damien Mulley.

I have heard it said in the past that the Irish Internet Association had somewhat of a Dublin bias. The recent election of fellow bog warrior Keith Bohanna to their board was just the first sign that this is changing. As ever with recent events, all the breaking news came via Jaiku and Twitter and I was delighted to see many of the names that popped up.

Damien Mulley winning best Technology Journalist shows the maturity of the those who voted. Whilst he is not a full time journo, his technology column in The Sunday Tribune and his blog are both must-reads for anyone in this business. Whilst many are happy to re-publish press releases, Damien's analysis is where his true value lies. Most recently he saw through the smoke and mirrors of OpenSocial early when he realised it was little more than a widget strategy at this stage.

His relentless work on Ireland Offline, the Blog Awards, Profile Ireland, BarCamp, Paddy's Valley and a million other things tells you quite simply that Damien cares. His forthright opinions cause many fights online but they are always driven by a desire for things to be better. His contrariness is an absolutely necessary balance to a large about of the bullshit that floats around. I would not be typing this at the end of a DSL line if it was not for the work and vision of Damien.

Many of us in web start-ups would have gotten nowhere without Fergus Burns. To my mind he is the most important person in the Irish tech start-up community. The key word is community because Fergus believes deeply that we cannot grow great businesses in a vacuum, we must do it as part of a supportive environment.

From Web2Ireland to BarCamp to DemoBar to his tireless helping, cajoling, introducing and supporting, he is the dynamo that powers the web start-up community here. He follows the American model where openness leads to opportunity rather than the old-school Irish model of cards pinned close to the chest. The fact that I've had more introductions to potential partners in Dublin from a guy based in Sligo and Glasgow than I have from any Dublin start-up tells me that others need to learn that lesson too.

That is just one part of Fergus deserving the Visionary award. The other is Nooked and the incredible foresight that Fergus and the team have shown over the years. They nailed RSS when most in the business didn't even know it existed. When I first encountered them I couldn't even get to grips with what they were doing. You can read blog posts from Fergus in 2005 that show his thinking was far beyond most in 2007.

Nooked's recent FeedCommerce launch has the potential for enormous growth. I've watched the concepts behind it develop and mature whilst the presentation was simplified so that anyone can understand the benefits. Others talk a good story in this area, Fergus and the crew are actually building it.

There were many other deserving winners last night (thanks to Keith for this list and the photo) including:

• Best Blogger denise cox, Newsweaver
• Best Podcaster Colm Hanratty, Hostelworld
• Educational Contribution Sr Mary Corr, St Raphael Primary School
• e-Government Gerry O'Malley, Motor Tax
• Innovation Kevin Gill, Newaddress.ie
• Internet Entrepreneur Lulu O'Sullivan, 4GiftsDirect.com
• Internet Marketer Martin O'Leary, RaboDirect
• Mobile Internet Emer Conlon, RTE Aertel Mobile
• Online Trader Alan Stapleton, WhatCar.ie
• Social Contribution Niall O'Connor, Ireland.com
• Web Designer Excellence Gillian McAuliffe, IrishJobs.ie
• Web Developer Excellence Ronan Smith, Pigsback.com

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Comment posted by Aehso's Output Fergus, Irish Net Visionary of the Year, 2007.
at 11/16/2007 10:10:50 AM

[] worth mentioning that I think Nooked are not the only beneficiaries of his efforts. Fergus does a ton of work within the Irish startup industry and I think everyone else in the web start-up community is better []

Comment posted by PaulSweeney
at 11/16/2007 7:36:18 AM

Yip. Great choices. Well done all.

Comment posted by Conor O’Neill
at 11/16/2007 5:02:27 AM

Fair point Michele. An insightful move by the IIA voters then.

Comment posted by Michele
at 11/16/2007 4:47:33 AM

I don't see how Damien winning can be an insightful move by the IIA. The IIA don't choose the winners. The public do.

Marie has a great piece on PaddysValley – see Silicon Republic Firms seeking funds venture into the valley

Conor, James and Damien have done an awesome job in making this happen.

Just a quick post to find out if anyone from Ireland is heading over to LeWeb 3 in Paris on the 11th and 12th of December?

I know nooked, PollDaddy and LouderVoice will be there. Are there any other Irish companies traveling over to this event?

Some folks have asked when will the next DemoBar happen – so a quick poll for interest levels.

From a private-beta social network to a VC to a just-bought company, the ISA awards were certainly not predictable on Friday night.

New company of the year was Ammado. This is a semi-stealth social networking start-up co-founded by serial entrepreneur Peter Conlon. Its focus is on connecting charities and non-profits to people. I've seen the private-beta in action and I expect the full launch to get a lot of attention. Obviously the ISA guys got a good look at it too.

Brian Caulfield, ex Trinity Venture Capital, won Technology Person of the Year. Brian is one of the few VCs here who really gets it, having built and sold his own tech start-ups in the past. He really reaches out to the tech community here and has had several successful exits in Trinity.

The partnership award went to Allfinanz for their insurance underwriting automation software. This award proved timely as they announced today that they have been acquired for €48m by Munich Re!

The still uber-cool Havok won the technical innovation award as unfortunately there wasn't an award for Most Kick-ass Exit to Intel given their sale recently for $110m.

Finally, company of the year was Arantech which recently got a €3.5m investment from T-Mobile. They make 'customer experience management' software, which they say allows mobile operators to monitor all customer interactions with the network.

It's great to see such a wide spread of winners and an awards process which is all about the companies and not about the organisers. I'm looking forward to next year already.

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