New Tech Post - Business

Open Ireland: Opening the Doors to Talent

Tom Murphy — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 14:21:25 +0000

On March 23rd this year Sean O’ Sullivan an Irish/American entrepreneur, was asked to give a keynote speech at a technology leaders conference. He gave a talk entitled “Re-inventing Ireland: Making Ireland the Silicon Valley of Europe” which was inspired by his need to address the biggest challenge to the growth of his own business — the lack of properly qualified, engineering talent presently available in Ireland.

This is a problem that faces the entire Irish tech sector. Many companies are being held back by the inability to find and hire enough people with the requisite technical skillset.

As a result of that speech the Open Ireland initiative was born. New Tech Post spoke with Sean recently to find out why Open Ireland isn’t just another earnest, well-meaning, flag-waving, talking shop.

“We have to recognize that Ireland with a population of 4.2 million can’t produce enough engineers to produce the products required by the [7 billion] people on the planet.” Says Sean, "We have to acknowledge that there is a short-term problem with economy here that was caused by an errant banking sector and an errant property development sector. This has nothing to do with the success that we have had in technology.

“Quarter after quarter* there is a widening trade surplus. Ireland has a two-track economy. There is the high tech sector where we are continuing to grow jobs and continuing to drive the rest of the economy and the over-heated sector which had a bubble and burst.”

The question that naturally arises from this evidence of Irish strengths is, “Why don’t we trade on our advantages in our world-leading position in that market to help us get out of trouble?”

The answer, Sean suggests, comes in three parts:

“The first goal is to create Ireland as a vibrant economy where people are coming to rather than leaving. To double the population over the next 20 years and to have people accept that the goal is to have Ireland become more cosmopolitan and for Ireland to become more open to immigration rather than emigration.

“The second goal is to really blow open the doors for all tech talent across the world to come to Ireland and allow them to fill the vacancies we currently have in our vibrant tech sector and to enable startup companies to startup more readily.”

That would involve enabling over 70,000 work visas to become available for suitably qualified people.

The third proposed goal would be to, “Become a gateway for China to Europe in the same that we were a gateway for US companies to Europe.”

Unlike a lot of government initiatives these suggestions require little or no money to make happen. “These are things that can be done without spending any tax-payer dollars yet these are things that will increase the flow of funds to the exchequer and help us to recover our economic vibrancy.

“There are about 20,000 jobs available in the IT sector alone. And these are positions that cannot be filled. There is not enough oxygen in the room right now. We can’t grow all the talent that is needed by long-term educational planning alone.”

There is also an enormous opportunity for Ireland to take the legislative lead in rewriting in some its laws around the issuing of work permits.

Silicon Valley has exactly the same problem as the US government is not providing enough visas for IT professionals with highly desired skillsets. But due to this being an election year, taking place at the end of a long and deep recession, it is extremely unlikely that have immigration quotas and restrictions will be eased.

Sean is very aware of this opportunity for Ireland, “If Ireland is going to become the first country in the English speaking world to open its borders to high-tech talent then we’ll have huge inward investment by any company that is facing this type of shortage.

“I think it would be a huge relief to Silicon Valley if they could come and open new plants and operations in Ireland— if they could get access to the workers in Ireland.

“Why don’t we trade on our advantages in our world-leading position in that market to help us get out of trouble?

“It is only stating the blindingly obvious that if we take advantages of our strengths our weaknesses can go away and it wouldn’t cost the taxpayer anything.”

You can pledge your support for this initiative by visiting the Open Ireland site.

*A full breakdown of export categories can be downloaded from the CSO website.

Oddsfutures: Wagering on the Zeitgeist

Tom Murphy — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:39:39 +0000

It is one thing to bet on horses, or whatever else that may take one's fancy, but it is a somewhat different thing to bet on those bets. In the former, the money is wagered against a given set of odds and that money is either returned as part of the winnings or is lost forever. The bet itself has no value outside of the predicted outcome.

In the latter, the speculation takes place around the nature of the betting activity itself. As information and mood changes in the betting market, injuries, jockey changes and so on, the odds shift. The individual bets have been commoditized and form a market that can be represented by an index in which people can now wager on whether the odds will get better or worse and it now becomes possible to buy or sell those predictions.

As betting activities become a market in themselves it becomes possible to profit from forecasting market activity rather than forecasting a winner. Taking positions on these possible outcomes allows for a number of very important things to happen.

As you are speculating on a change in the market rather than the outcome of a given race then because values tend to change over time the value of a given wager will also change. This allows for the possibility of being able to buy and sell your position according to the specific terms of the market you are on and not be stuck with a bet on a horse, or whatever, which has no transferable value once the money has been laid down.

Since the wagers in this system have inherent value and can be transferred by buying or selling then some sort of mechanism is needed to manage the transactions. This is where Oddsfutures comes into action.

“CEO, Marc Butterly, along with his brother and CTO, Andrew have created an exchange where these sort of speculative transactions can take place.

Marc explains the genesis of Oddsfutures, “We’d seen the direction of the online Forex and financial spread-betting business. We didn’t think there was a lot of product innovation there. We saw that the betting industry is ripe for the opportunity to use a new product like this.”

Customers pick the direction that the market is going to go, “That the price of a given horse or team is going to go. If they think the price will contract they will buy it and if they think it will 'drift out,' in odds speak, they sell the price.

If you think a horse is going to drift out, i.e., it’s going to be less favoured in the market then the market will put up the potential return for a bet on that horse and you sell it. If the market’s perceptions of its chances of winning increase then you buy it. You profit from forecasting market activity rather than forecasting a winner.

“Effectively, you are speculating on an index so it is basically a zeitgeist punt. ‘Do you think the zeitgeist is right or wrong? Which way do think it is going to go?’ It is for anyone who has an opinion about value in sports or in sports markets.”

An important aspect for the future growth of Oddsfutures is that bets are seen as an underlying commodity like coffee or wheat. Therefore, Oddsfutures are providing a commodity trading service in a derivatives market which is not seen by the relevant U.S. authorities as gambling.

This allows for a wider geographical set of clientele, “We are not classed as gaming so can take American customers. In the UK and Ireland we would have people who were trading in exchanges already and are looking at it as a hedging instrument. But it’s also for informed sources on a given sport who already use some of the betting sites.”

Marc says users have trebled since last November but it has taken some time to reach this point. “It took us about a year and a half to build it. We’re fortunate that we have a strong CTO in my brother Andrew. It took a while to get things right.

“We have added an API recently which allows other people to develop trading platforms on top of our exchange. I’d say that within two months we would see a new generation of API driven products.”

A future hope is that Oddsfutures will end up being the reference index for pricing.

According to Marc, “That’s what happens when futures markets are successful. People go to them to look at what the prices might be because that is where the early money is and where the smart money would go.”

Home Page picture: Racehorses by Degas

Peracton: A Smart Search for Investments

Conor Harrington — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 08:44:17 +0000

Trading in stocks and financial markets can be a complicated process. A cursory glance at the news at any time over the last five years would tell you that even the so-called experts have a tendency to get it wrong more often than not.

Laurentiu Vasiliu, a researcher at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), at NUI Galway, founded Peracton to help both individuals and corporate multinationals negotiate the complicated and volatile stock markets.

Laurentiu was not initially motivated by any desire to enter the financial sector, though. Rather, he was led to the markets by his team at DERI’s research, which lent itself particularly well to the complexity of financial investing.

“We initially started our research looking at complex decisions and negotiations. So it was more a kind of theoretical approach,” says Laurentiu, who originally hails from Romania.

“We started an R&D project with Enterprise Ireland initially. We always knew that this could have multiple applications, and finance was one of them.”

The research project with Enterprise Ireland yielded MAARS, which stands for Multi Attribute Analysis Ranking System.

The MAARS platform algorithms can analyse the hundreds of parameters, across thousands of stocks, to show any would-be investors what options most closely mirror their desired investment portfolio.

If you are looking at US stocks on the main exchanges like NASDAQ, or the New York Stock Exchange,” explains Laurentiu, “Altogether there are maybe 4,000 stocks, and each stock describes up to 200 financial parameters.”

For an investor who wishes to exercise due diligence in their financial dealings, the sheer level of detail involved in analyzing hundreds of stock options, renders it impossible to do so, “The human brain just can’t work in this way” he says.

The tools which currently exist to help investors analyse stocks are, says Laurentiu, “Quite primitive," in only flagging as suitable stocks which exactly match your investment criteria.

“With this approach, an investor would lose many good stocks. Even if they have a very good strategy they could get only 60 percent of the eligible stocks that are out there. They would miss 40 percent. And who knows? Maybe there are really good stocks they just can’t see.

“So, this is what our algorithm does, it’s able to trawl the mass of equities and extract the closest fit and they are received in a ranked order.”

There have been attempts, he says, by the big financial houses to design similar programs, but there is no room for error in the world of finance.

“This is not trivial research. For somebody who wants to choose between ten types of apples, you don’t need a complex algorithm, but if you want to spend a half million dollars in one go for a particular set of stocks, then proper research and due diligence have to be exercised.

“There are many things to be taken into account as algorithm stability and algorithm flexibility. To add as many parameters as you want and go for as many stocks as you want, and at the same time to be safe and consistent,” he says.

For this reason, Peracton’s MAARS platform is not suitable for amateur investors, and some experience of finance and stock markets is necessary.

“This is a professional tool for traders but also we are looking at investment clubs, who know more about investments,” says Laurentiu.

Peracton currently employs three people in Galway, and one in Dublin. Two employees are based in Oxford, England, while three employees are based in the United States, divided between Boston and Silicon Valley.

There is currently some revenue coming in from deal with a major financial house, details of which Laurentiu is keeping firmly under wraps, and the plan is to develop the Irish, UK and US markets, before moving on to Asia and the Middle East.

For now, the focus is on constantly improving the product. “Every six months we are releasing new versions of our equity selectors.

“We are addressing stocks, mutual funds, bonds, ETFs, so we have modules for different types of equities. And we are improving and adding more and more functionality also for the user.”

Polecat: Mining for Meaning with MeaningMine

Tom Murphy — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 07:38:30 +0000

People now know that if you don’t want the world to know about something than don’t post it on the internet. (Sometimes sadly, but sometimes entertainingly, that particular message hasn’t quite reached everyone yet.)

For individuals it is quite possible to disappear from view online for most businesses this is neither a desirable or worthwhile option. After all, online is where the customers are. However, while a company can control its own postings it has no control over what others may say in response.

Leaving libel issues aside, these comments, whether they are hurtful or not, are a mine of invaluable data that, if thought about and acted upon correctly, could help the company shape a profitable future or enable a non-profit to have a more effective presence in ways that could not have been anticipated otherwise.

Data mining is a set of tools and techniques that enable individuals and organizations to find out how the data that they themselves are generating is being received, reacted to and given meaning by others. Correctly interpreted the results can show how a given activity or series of activities are being perceived by others.

This technology deployed in the fields of Business Information and Analytics is being found to be particularly useful and powerful. It can find the answers to the questions that any organisation that has an online presence has to ask itself on a consistent and regular basis. Such as:

Is what we are doing working?
Do people know we exist? One reason for the absence of sales may be the absence of knowledge about your product.
Do people care that we exist? Are customers seeing our product story as being relevant to them?
Is our offer appealing? Would people appreciate a bit more taste in the design and presentation?
Do people like or dislike dealing with us?
Are people interested but just not quite enough? What woud it take to make that sale?

These are just a few of the thousands of questions to which a new breed of specialist companies coming into existence in the big data space are able to retrieve meaningful answers. They have the technological capability to measure customer sentiment from many sources including the social media channels and be able to provide long-form analytics for business insights.

One such company is Polecat who are based in Dublin, Ireland. They have an R&D team in Bristol, in the UK, and an analytics team San Francisco, in the US.

According to John Peavoy, the Head of Sales at Polecat, “The company has done a lot of research into linguistics, machine learning and search algorithms. The team out of Bristol have created an engine that provides very relevant results to any search terms that you provide.”

The information acquisition platform is a program called MeaningMine which provides visualizations and graphs that can describe the health of a conversation: Key topics, key phrases, sentiment, magic quadrants around influencers and their key roles in a conversation.

“These are tools that enterprise will, typically, find very valuable as a briefing mechanism for the broader organization by informing decisions on how to engage with stakeholders on any particular subject.

"MeaningMine is a browser-based tool that allows you to enter various search terms, manage them, filter them and iterate and immediately see the results of any term you include in the research."

John goes on to describe the MeaningMine interface, (screenshot above,) "You have a Google-like interface on the left. You have six standard visualizations or graphs, which are all customizable, on the right sid of the browser page. As you enter more terms into your search you can see the effect it has on either increasing or reducing your results. It makes the results more representative of what you are trying to find out.

"We have done a lot of work with some industry specific taxonomies around the energy sector, the financial services sector and some of the government sectors such as tourism."

But this just the start. According to John, "We are also continuing to add visualizations. At the moment we have visualization around; top number of citations, the health of a particular conversation which is like an advanced sentiment analysis, top organizations, top people and top phrases and words.

"The next level of visualization, the more advanced visualizations which we will be introducing over the next quarter will include a force by sentiment chart — a graph that shows both positive and negative sentiment along a time axis. It provides a very strong snap shot of how a conversation is evolving or has evolved. It allows you to identify where you may need to engage with the stakeholders."

Gartner estimated the business intelligence and analyis market to be worth over $10 billion in 2010. This is data derived from the software sales of big players such as SAP, Oracle, IBM etc. Another guesstimate, based on a broader base of platforms and tools, suggests the market could already have been worth as much as $50 billion two years ago.

Either way, the indicators show that the business intelligence, analytics and data-mining market is very much in the boom stage at the moment.

"The Irish organization has grown from two people at the end of last year to nine right now. We may be up to fifteen by the end of 2012. We are well on target to hitting thirty people in the Dublin office within three years if not sooner."

ISA: Global Scaling in the Digital Technology Sector

Tom Murphy — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:31:29 +0000

Those who have been reading our articles for any length of time will know that we have taken a consistently positive and optimistic view on the prospects of the Irish economy. In particular, we strongly hold the view that the digital technology sector will be in the vanguard of bringing Ireland into a more prosperous economic era. In fact, we can't see how it can be otherwise.

To make a serious business impact and generate real wealth over the short and medium terms there is no valid alternative. With the exception of the farming sector, (and even there, the advances being made are largely technology based) no other Irish industry or endeavour promises anything like the same return on investment in either human effort or investment capital.

The OECD's Economic Survey of Ireland, 2011, while not necessarily sharing our rose-tinted view of the future, shows strong indications that the worst may be over and that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

However, one important distinction is made very clear in the report. Foreign investment in Ireland is not the same as money earned from original Irish export capability.

One of the conclusions from the overview:

"It is essential that Ireland remains attractive for FDI [Foreign Direct Investment.] These firms account for over two-thirds of Irish exports and of business sector R&D, and have far higher productivity levels than their Irish-owned counterparts.

Ouch.

Since Ireland is neither short on talent or intellectual capability the wherewithal to respond to this challenge must lie in business operating factors such as experience in the global marketplace and knowledge on how to best present products and services.

One solution to this evident gap in performance and delivery is to have a place where leaders and decision-makers from multi-national corporations and Irish small to medium sized enterprises as well as native larger enterprises, can come and exchange ideas and knowledge.

The Irish Software Association (ISA), with over 170 member companies from across the digital technology landscape, is an organisation that has the potential to answer this need to create the necessary communication channels for the transfer of knowledge gained by experience and information.

It is an organization that is able to bring the leaders and decision-makers within the digital technology sector together.

Karl Flannery is the current Chair of the ISA. He originally joined the organization for the networking opportunities:

"Based in Galway, I didn’t have much connection with the business community and technology community in Dublin. So, I used it as a mechanism to gain access. Also, they were running some good courses like 'Sales STAR' and then later on, the 'Leadership 4 Growth' program.

According to Karl, the ISA wants to, "Bring together companies that have ambition to scale and to go global with their companies.

"We are focusing very much on the global scaling agenda and looking at how we build an eco-system of category winning, globally-scaling businesses."

"We have built out what I call a ‘results chain,’ Which is specifically looking at what we want to do and how do we get there. The agenda is — global scaling for the member companies, and that’s it. We align that to what is unique to the ISA and on what we think the ISA can deliver."

Networking, along with knowledge sharing and advocacy through influence are the three major parts of the work that the ISA does.

As Karl explains, "We are not focused on technology problems. It is about the long-term development of the company and getting the right competencies and skills within a company — the right connections. The value that we are offering is to the leadership within the company. We are not looking at the ISA as an organization for IT professionals.

"We are looking at it as an organization that brings the leadership together within the digital technology sector."

One important area for the cross-pollination of ideas is the ISA's CEO Forum.

Karl emphasizes how important it is for leaders to share thoughts in a space in an atmosphere of confidentiality. "Leaders in the digital technology centre have a mechanism to get together and have a closed door conversations. You can hear from other CEOs about what really happens on the ground when you try to do something. It is a sounding board on how to do things."

Opportunities also exist to share ideas and knowledge and various other networking events and meetups.

The possibility for structured learning is also offered. According to Karl, the training programmes that the ISA has available are, "Extremely powerful interventions."

One distinct advantage that an organisation with a self-selecting, paying membership, such as the ISA has, over many other initiatives to provide support to the digital technology sector, is the rapid movement of accurate, highly relevant information through the system.

Karl says this information, "Is the voice of the industry itself coming back and saying, ‘this is what we need.’ It provides a much clearer focus. It is much more action orientated.

"The ISA is the industry itself, providing input as regards what we have to do to scale the digital technology industry in Ireland. That is what we are very focused on."

Knowing what is going on in the front lines and having a membership representative of the leadership in the digital technology sector informs another aspect of the ISA's work. This lies in its ability to influence the government and its agencies.

A key area of activity, Karl says is, "Having the government understand the importance of the digital technology sector to the Irish economy.

"We make no apology. That is what we are trying to do."

But it is not just government that is a target for influence.

"The banking sector, I would argue, needs to have division within it that is focused on the ICT sector. In Ireland we should see that one of the banks develops a focus on the digital technology sector and that can read and understand a profit and loss statement from that sector and one that is not just from property development."

The dynamic character of the company leaders that makes up the membership serves to ensure that the ISA remains effective and relevant:

"The ISA is over 30 years old and has evolved several times. It is a journey about building on what we have done to date. Each Chairperson builds on what has been done to date and tries to shape it and make it relevant to the period that they are Chairperson for and looks to the longer term and where to take the ISA."

Digital Jet: A One-stop Shop for Consumer Content

Lisa Jackson — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:36:23 +0000

A new multi-channel consumer service based in Dublin providing music, movies, books and more is set to go live this year with the aim of taking on established giants like iTunes, Netflix and Amazon.

This service will operate under the consumer brand ‘Digital Jet’ and will sell streamed or downloaded content to users for a subscription or pay per download fee. It will initially operate online and on mobile devices with a digital television service also being planned for the future.

Digital Jet CEO Niall O'Neill has previously used the expression creating a ‘media buffet’ to describe what the company hopes to achieve.

“What we’re trying to do is take the best of what’s available in technology and the best of what’s available in content and facilitate the consumer deciding what content they want and how they want to engage with it.”

According to Niall, one of the unique features of Digital Jet compared to digital media players like iTunes is that it will be available to use on any device regardless of brand.

“That’s one of the key elements of our service. Our business is about facilitating the end user. I’m a big Apple fan but I also love what’s happening in the Android market so our business is focused on the content and because it’s content focused the platform is irrelevant.”

The Dublin-based company currently employs 10 people and has plans to expand this to 80 in the next three years. It just opened a second office in Newry, County Down and expects to open a Silicon Valley office in February. The service will begin closed testing shortly with the aim of launching publically in the summer.

Niall describes the venture as “ambitious” and recognises the difficulties the new brand will face entering into a market dominated by existing giants.

“There are huge challenges to going into the market and some of the biggest ones for us are getting the right team and being able to deliver the same level of quality of service and meet consumer expectations.”

Despite this, he believes Digital Jet has spotted a gap for consumers. Although US-based online film and TV streaming service Netflix has recently entered the Irish and UK market Niall thinks the brand has yet to “capture the consumer imagination” in Europe. On Apple, he points out that if you’re not an Apple user then you can’t access their services. For Amazon, he views the company as “efficient” but not an “exciting brand."

He sees Digital Jet as providing one complete package that is attractive to the consumer. “A lot of the younger generation are really tech-savvy and they know where to get content but the majority of users are not that tech-savvy and it’s a big challenge for them the find the types of content they want and there are only a few sources available.

“What we’re trying to do is something broader. We want something that is fun, exciting, sexy and that gives a bit of a wow factor.”

Netflix is currently under pressure in Ireland following its launch as many consumers view its catalogue as outdated.

What steps is Niall taking to avoid this happening with Digital Jet?

“There are limitations and restrictions. A lot of the deals that we have on the table and that we have concluded have very exciting products and I think it’s a combination of mixing the new with the old. Our pockets aren’t as deep as the other players but I think we’re equally as creative in what we do and how we’re going to present it.”

A conversation about a new online consumer service selling music and movies will invariably turn to the toughest challenge facing those industries: piracy. Digital Jet not only aims to drive value back to the copyright owners but plans to tackle the problems piracy causes for consumers, something that can be overlooked.

Niall explains, “About 70% or 80% of pirate sites are actually paid sites. There are people out there pirating content but paying to do it. The real issue is a supply and demand one and people will pay for content if you give them the right content at the right price.”

Ultimately, Niall believes that if Digital Jet delivers what it has currently planned on paper, “It’s going to blow people away." His faith is shared by the funding world and the company has been offered its full funding of €5 million by a US-based investor and is considering this along with a number of other opportunities.

Kernel Capital Facilitates Zolk C Expansion into North American Market

Tom Murphy — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:19:05 +0000

Zolk C, a Waterford based company specializes in using innovative technology to enhance the experience of visitors at tourist sites and museum exhibitions, has just received €500,000 in new investment from the Bank of Ireland Seed and Early Stage Equity Fund which is managed by Kernel Capital.

Paul Savage, the Managing Director of Zolk C, explains what the company intends to do with the money, “Because we are primarily export focused we are not quite in as difficult circumstances as others. We have been able to meet all our commercial targets and have grown the company over the last few years.

“We really have developed in the UK and Irish market since 2007 and we are trying to enter the North American market at the moment.

“We have done research on this over the last eighteen months and we have realized that we would need to have substantially more resources than we now have. We couldn’t organically grow into the North American market. We needed to get investment to be able to make that jump.”

Zolk C's technological solutions have been used by over half a million visitors at sites ranging from the Culloden Battlefield Guide in Scotland to the Dunbrody Famine Ship in New Ross. They have just been awarded a contract by Waterford City Council to provide a handheld multimedia interpretation of the historic ‘Viking Triangle’ quarter.

At the Saint Patrick Centre in Downpatrick, Paul says that Zolk C, “Worked on a tour for the visitor’s centre. The information is displayed over a number of large screens. Using our hand held technology we can intelligently synchronize the information available to the visitor according to where they are on the tour. Also, people are able to enjoy the presentations in their own language as they walk around.”

Zolk C makes much use of the research and development being done on pervasive technologies taking place at the TSSG. (They are both based on campus at the Waterford Institute of Technology.) Pervasive technology allows data services to be seamlessly available anywhere at anytime and in any format.

Through a combination of sensors in the environment and the capabilities of modern hand-held devices to generate and be tagged by geo-location data, audio and video information can be presented to the visitor at the appropriate point on their tour of the exhibit. They are always in a position to access the most relevant and pertinent information.

Not only does it enhance the visitors enjoyment of the site or exhibition but it returns vital information to the site owners and managers about how the visitors are interacting with what is on show.

Through analysis of how visitors pass through the system and use the devices it is possible to collect data on what they find interesting and what they don’t. For example, being able to note when people press stop on their video presentations and the frequency that occurs, information can be derived as to how compelling that particular item may or may not be.

The technology allows almost endless fine tuning by the operators of the site to improve their presentations to create a more engaging story for the visitor and enhance their experience as much as possible.

Zolk C's ability to take cutting edge Irish research and adapt it into a commercial product suitable for export also acts as a boost to the economy. They have shown themselves to be a worthwhile business for investment and that leads the way for the possibility of more money to be made available for other Irish innovation companies.

The activities of companies like Zolk C and can only increase confidence in the capabilities of Irish companies to adapt academic research for commercial purposes and develop its potential market value.

Donal Duffy, Head of Enterprise Ireland Relations at the Bank of Ireland commenting on this investment said, “Supporting sustainable businesses like Zolk C in the context of a challenging market enables these companies to grow, recruit and realise their long term strategic ambitions which is critical for the company and contributes to Ireland’s recovery."

FeedHenry: Cloud Based Mobile Application System

Tom Murphy — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:18:07 +0000

Any organisation, large or small, has to deal with the management, coordination and updating of numerous applications on a myriad of platforms. Not only does this involve a great many hours of monitoring and maintenance which is costly enough but the inherent insecurity of handling data in this manner can lead to catastrophic consequences should confidential information and data vital to secure operation of the system be mishandled.

A solution to this problem would be a single source code base which developers and client alike can work with and on. It would be a single cross-platform development environment thus voiding the need to write and update their app a multiplicity of times for multiple platforms.

FeedHenry based in Waterford and with offices in Massachusetts, USA, has just such a solution with its Mobile Application Platform. Apps can now be developed using standard web technologies such as HTML5, JavaScript and CSS. A file is then generated which can be downloaded in the appropriate format for the various operating systems and devices.

Cathal McGloin CEO of FeedHenry, says that, “Demand for mobile application development and management solutions has exploded as businesses of all types and sizes recognize the importance of mobile apps in driving business success.”

Organizations are now starting to realise that it is both possible and advantageous to build their own apps for its own employees and clients that could work along the lines of something like the Apple’s iTunes store.

FeedHenry already has over 2,000 customers (including developers) and just recently they announced an exclusive partnership with Telefónica Digital — one of the top five telecommunications companies in the world which has itself, almost 300 million customers.

FeedHenry have come a long way since our first interview with them just under a year ago. There are at present 30 employees and that is expected to grow to between 50 and 55 over the course of this year. According to Cathal, “We see quite a bit of growth this year. We plan to increase our revenues by 3x to 4x over last year.”

There are also moves underway to expand into the American market. “In the US we have launched an offering to the healthcare sector in the form of a compliance solution. That means the data sits encrypted in the cloud itself as opposed to being in a data compliant data-centre.

“That has been very well-received. We have a number of hospital organizations, insurance providers building app solutions today. We are also working with some of the cloud technology vendors to partner with them so they can bring our solution to market."

FeedHenry has emerged from of one of Ireland’s most successful research facilities. The original research was done at ArcLabs Research & Innovation Centre, part of the Waterford Institute of Technology and also home to the TSSG. Cathal says that, “The people who came with us from the research centre have been amazing. They know their subject inside out.”

But he also observes that good ideas are not enough by themselves, “The research is all about the ideas but it is ultimately about how you apply them — then you need to start dealing with business problems. As a research project it was a cloud-based delivery service that we then applied to the mobile world.”

There is more to be heard from FeedHenry shortly. At the upcoming NodeJam in San Francisco. FeedHenry’s CTO, Mícheál Ó Foghlú, will be speaking and the intention at the conference is to release new code which they will then be open sourcing.

Online Marketing Galway: A Community Resource

Tom Murphy — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 06:40:45 +0000

"Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two — and only two — basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business." —Peter Drucker

If we leave innovation aside for the purposes of this article it is clear that a business lives or dies on its ability to create customers and make a profit from that activity. Since this is so apparently the case then a very important question arises: If marketing is so crucial to the existence of a business then why do so many businesses fail to give it the attention it deserves?

We mostly write about tech companies which are largely led by those trained in one or more of the engineering disciplines or have either a computer science or computer programming background. Most of these people have been trained and are equipped with mindsets that centre around incremental, iterative, step by step, logical and quantifiable processes.

Marketing, looked at from the angle of the tech-entrepreneur, can seem like a a quilted tapestry of guess work, exhortations and mysterious incantations that are conspicuously lacking in anything substantive, either conceptually or physically, to grab on to and manipulate in any useful way.

Marketers, in too many cases, don’t help themselves very much by seeming to speak fluent jargon and making far too free and liberal use of the all-time mass murderer of meaning - bizspeak.

What is a business owner to do? Huge amounts of effort and time and have gone into innovating and developing a product but they still have to find an efficient way to get their product into the hands of a paying customer.

Many small businesses and startups, with their restricted budgets, choose to run counter to Drucker’s dictum in viewing marketing as a cost and a liability rather than an essential and core part of the business process.

However, help may be at hand. A new initiative to help inform businesses about marketing and the processes involved has just been started by Maricka Keogh Burke with the assistance of Eimear O'Brien.

They have setup Online Marketing Galway (OMG.) Maricka says her objective is to gather, "...a group of people with similar interests within the West of Ireland and Galway area for online marketing.

Maricka is an Ex-Googler who now works in Galway as a Senior Online Marketing Executive with a local company. She started OMG as she wanted a place, "Where we can share online knowledge.

"I would love to meet more people who are involved with the mobile side of things. I would love to meet more people with the email side of things as well. I see online marketing as an umbrella and there are so many segments underneath that.

"The more and more people get involved, the more and more we can share and take advantage of each other’s knowledge (without giving away competitive information.")

There are a great many small businesses in the Galway area operating in the conventional consumer areas as well as tech. Most have little or no marketing experience nor do they have easy access to trusted sources for information on strategy and tactics. This leaves them in a postion where their only option is to react to opportunities and challenges on an ad hoc basis. This is not a tenable way of doing business over the medium or long term.

Maricka's solution for these companies lies in the answer to the question, "Why not have a place they can come to?"

In the process they will inevitably engage with some of the fundamental preconceptions that many have about marketing.

"People think we do very fluffy work but the online side of marketing is very analytical. What I work with is hard stats and we make decisions based on those stats.

"Marketing is about promoting awareness of the company but there’s no point in having a brilliant website, absolutely stunning ads and everything that goes along with it if the product isn’t great."

OMG offers the opportunity for users and contributors to gain more knowledge which they will be able to apply to their own circumstances. According to Maricka, OMG, "...is a place to share your experiences. It is a place where if you are keeping up to date with online marketing.

"My ideal scenario is that I’d love to get someone involved in every section [of the site.] They can show how good they are. They can show their expertise. They can promote their own businesses as well but only if they do something good for community."

Although OMG and Maricka are Galway based, through the magic of the internet people can come share and contribute from wherever they maybe. They can do so by following these links:

Main site: Online Marketing Galway
Facebook: Online Marketing in Galway
Linkedin: Online Marketing in Galway

Ex Ordo: Event Organising for Academic Conferences

Tom Murphy — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:34:38 +0000

Attendees at BlogTalk 2010, held at NUI Galway

In all of Ireland there are over 50 universities, colleges and institutes of higher education that function as independent bodies. Although, technically, some of these are federated under the National University of Ireland or otherwise constituted. This amounts to almost 300,000 students in full or part time tertiary education.

Ideally, there would be a commensurate amount of teaching staff to cater to this desire for learning but with a reduction of almost five thousand educators at all levels between 2009 and 2011 due to a hiring freeze and ‘natural wastage’ this is not the case at the moment. It can be argued that this constantly increasing ratio between student and staff ratios explains the almost free-fall nature of the descent of Irish Universities in global league tables such as the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2011-2012.

However, for many of those career academics that remain and who are in pursuit of professorship and perhaps tenure, certain accomplishments are required. For many, one such requirement to be fulfilled is the organisation of a conference or symposium on a related subject to their own discipline.

With an increased workload, academics are clearly busy people and anything that does not distract them from the exercising of their core competencies and responsibilities has to be seen as a good thing.

In this case, the good thing comes in the shape of Ex Ordo. Its inception began when Paul Killoran was at NUI Galway studying for his engineering degree. Paul saw that one of his lecturers needed a better way of being able to put together a conference that he was organising. Thinking it would be a week’s work Paul began programming away...six months later it was completed.

“I thought I would just park it but then someone came to me and said. “Can I use it?” Then someone else came to me and said, “Hey, can I use that as well?” After Ex Ordo was used in over twenty conferences in Ireland, the UK and in Europe Paul realized, “We have something here.”

Paul explains further, "Ex Ordo is about academic conferences. Every academic, in their career will have to run these things if they are serious about becoming a professor. Most of these academics have never run an event in their life.

“What we sell them is a platform or a framework within which they can design [their event] without having to worry about the ins and outs of how the mechanics work. What we have done is packaged all the tools that they are going to need to run that conference.”

Another bonus for the aspiring academic nervous about over commitment is in the way Ex Ordo charges for its service.

“The organisers aren’t charged for this service as Ex Ordo earns its money from a percentage of the delegate fee.”

Higher education is a global multi-trillion dollar industry and Ex Ordo has, just recently, made its first US sale. To aid with expansion Paul and his team are now looking for more investment.

Paul says, “We have three main sales channels — We have enterprise partners, resellers and the individual conferences. We are looking to partner with these large societies that run thousands of conferences and becoming their preferred supplier. In order to do that we need to get in front of those people and that is a costly exercise.”

Irish-Based Pricing Intelligence Startup Profitero wins IBM SmartCamp London

Conor Harrington — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:58:09 +0000

Fresh from having received €750,000 in funding from Enterprise Ireland and the Bank of Ireland Start-Up and Emerging Sectors Equity Fund, managed by Delta Partners, Irish-based pricing intelligence startup Profitero has won the London leg of IBM’s Global Entrepreneur SmartCamp competition.

Profitero beat off competition from four other startups, including Visible Light Communications, a University of Edinburgh LiFi spin-out, to claim the award, which acknowledges startups who are in line with IBM’s Smarter Planet vision.

At the end of a busy week for the company, Volodymyr Pigrukh, CEO and one of Profitero’s three Belarusian founders, took the time out to pause and reflect on the road that brought them to this stage, and their future prospects.

“We provide competitive pricing information to our clients, and clients can make informed pricing decisions”, explains Volodymyr, or Vol.

This pricing information is gleaned from up to thirty million different price points across the globe, a figure expected to at least treble over the coming year.

“We saw that retailers have a problem with basically managing their prices without much external input, and external input is the prices of their competitors.

“Retailers are constantly worried about their competitors; “will they undercut the price, will they steal my customers?” They didn’t have much quantitative input on the pricing, so this is where we saw the potential to jump in as a service.”

Despite having a strong connection with Ireland (co-founder and CTO Dmitry Vysotski spent his early summers here as part of the Chernobyl Children’s Appeal), early on in its development, Profitero was presented with opportunities to move elsewhere.

“We had the choice to stay in Ireland or move elsewhere, for example, London was one of the opportunities, but we decided to stay in Ireland.

“We’ve found a lot of support around here from Enterprise Ireland, from local enterprise boards. Essentially, to open a company was very fast and easy in Ireland.

“We see Ireland increasingly becoming a very good location for startup businesses. It’s startup friendly, it has good access to feasibility grants or other grants from Enterprise Ireland and similar government bodies that support entrepreneurs. So that was the big factor behind us staying in Ireland, and we’re very happy that we did.”

This support has manifested itself in €750,000 in investment, managed by Irish venture capital firm, Delta Partners. Vol says that the company plans to use the majority of the funding to further develop the technology behind the business and ensure top quality support to its customers, which currently includes high-profile retailers such as Tesco and Halford’s.

“Basically, it’s quality assurance, sustainability of the service, tier two support to our large customers, insuring that we deliver perfect service on the contracts that we have already and that we’re going to be receiving in the near future. So it’s expanding from the technical side.”

Also included in Profitero’s roadmap are plans to offer sales impact tracking and price optimisation to retailers, allowing them to make the most of the price information that they receive, combined with data on transactions to develop price suggestions to increase sales.

“Some retailers want to be the cheapest on the market, some of them they want to stay in the middle, but we help them to make this an informed decision, and by providing up-to-date pricing information, they can react quickly to the competitors’ promotions.

“They can plan their own promotions better, they can do price audits across categories of products to make sure that they stay competitive, and that by being competitive they don’t lose customers, and then when there is opportunity to increase the margin, they can increase it and essentially increase their profit straight away.”

As Profitero’s technology is “agnostic”. Vol doesn’t rule out the possibility of branching out into consumer pricing intelligence in the future, but for now the business sector will remain its primary focus.

“We have chosen the B2B area because one of our founders used to be an online retailer and this is the area that we are most familiar with, and basically we see ourselves adding the most value here.”

SFI Prize Winners Gain Experience in Silicon Valley

Tom Murphy — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 07:43:28 +0000

Patricia McGowan and Jerry Reen at the Irish Innovation Center, San Jose

Patricia McGowan, from Roscommon, and Jerry Reen, from Kerry were joint winners of a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) competition specifically designed to encourage and enable post-doc researchers to commercialize their work.

The SFI, in conjunction with DCU Ryan Academy, recruited researchers to undertake an intensive course in business and marketing basics that lasted over two months. The course culminated in a demo day in which the participants pitched their projects to an especially convened panel.

The prize was a trip to Silicon Valley hosted by the Irish Technology Leadership Group based in the Irish Innovation Center in San Jose where this interview took place.

Patricia McGowan’s research is in the area of breast cancer therapeutics - looking for new targeted therapies for specific sub-types of breast cancer where there are currently no targeted therapies available for those patients suffering from the disease.

Patricia explains, “The SFI advertised for a course to bring SFI funded post docs on a course and open them up to entrepreneurship, technology startups; with lawyers, venture capitalists, people who had started their own companies and market researchers.

“Basically they showed us what what was out there. If you want to take and exploit your basic research - this is where you have got to go."

Jerry Reen whose work focuses on cystic fibrosis pathogen - pseudomonas aeruginosa - the primary bacterium that kills those who have the disease.

“We are looking for strategies to stop that happening. We are also doing a lot of work with metagenomics which is a new area and is based on the idea that maybe we can see or work with only about 10% of bacteria that exists. The ocean has another 90% of bacteria that we cannot get our hands on.”

The metagenomic technique, “Allows us to get their genetic blueprint. We can’t grow them, we can’t see them but we can get their genetic information. That gives us access to new antibiotics, new signals, new chemicals that can control the bacteria that we want to target.

“Instead of going in there and trying to kill something like MRSA or E. coli you look for these new chemical messages, new antibiotics that would target those bacteria.”

Both Jerry and Patricia saw from their trip that there was a very real difference in the way a researcher regards their work to that of a person attempting to commercialize that research.

Jerry adds, “Yesterday we met with four startup companies at various levels of their progression. We met with the CEOs, the people who are heading up these companies. It was fantastic.

"A lot of this is about a mind change, having a different mind set. Basic research and commercializing basic research are two completely different mindsets."

There is also the issue of pivoting. “A lot of the guys out here just want to know what our thing does. There are all these other applications that you may never even have thought of. So where you [go with it] is not where you thought. It’s worth its weight in gold to have access to that type of information."

Another benefit from winning the prize was being able to plug into a whole new network of contacts; entrepreneurs, mentors and their associated networks.

According to Patricia, “If we want to take the next step we now have the connections ask questions, “Do I need to do this? Do I need to speak to a lawyer? Market research for the US - how do I do that?

“The idea is to think about our work and how we are going to commercialize it in the future and to have all our armoury in place early on.

“We are scientists by qualification. We don’t have a business background at all. We’ve been told all along not to go into this on our own so we would definitely get the right partners."

While both Patricia and Jerry’s projects are still in their initial stages they have been given vital pointers in the right direction.

“At this point in time what we have is things that are not yet products.” Jerry says, “They are not yet ready to launch. What this is has done is that it has given us a roadmap. We’ve now got an insight into how do go from an idea to something that you can approach a company with.”

Official Launch: Global Diaspora Strategies Toolkit

Tom Murphy — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 09:17:16 +0000

These are very busy times in Ireland for determining key strategies for the future economic development of the country. Next week we have the Silicon Valley Comes to Ireland event organised by the Irish Technology Leadership Group (ITLG). Key business leaders, investors, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists will be coming to these shores to provide advice, mentoring, investment and a vision of what could be — the possibility, in these dark economic times that, that through innovation and endeavour we may well emerge stronger than before.

Following hard on the heels of that event is the Global Irish Economic Forum at Dublin Castle on the 7th and 8th of October which has three main purposes:

Engage fully with the Irish Diaspora in developing Ireland’s global business and trade relations.
Discuss face-to-face the Government’s priorities for economic renewal with key members of the international business community.
Strengthen ties with the Irish Diaspora as a key part of the Government’s efforts to restore Ireland’s international reputation abroad.

Kicking off this mini-season of reaching out was the launch of the Global Diaspora Strategies Toolkit at the Shelbourne Hotel last Wednesday.

Over 350 people gathered to hear the endorsement of the project by the Taoiseach of Ireland, Enda Kenny, in a keynote speech.

Kingsley Aikins of Diaspora Matters, a consultancy company established to advise individuals, companies and governments on strategic methods for engaging with diaspora communities, viewed the launch as a "national call to arms in this space. That is to say: every institution, corporation, organisation; every town, village and every individual actually has a role to play."

While we at New Tech Post are primarily concerned about covering innovation and technology, there is no doubt that there is an inextricable link between the growth of the tech sector and the economic health of the country as a whole.

With the largest dispersed population of any nation it can only make sense to utilize the experience and knowledge that has been acquired by our compatriots and those of Irish descent so successfully over many years across the globe.

This is especially important when capable and deeply networked organisations such as the ITLG and Diaspora Matters are devoting themselves to making vital and productive connections within as well as beyond our geographic border.

To keep track of what is going on in this area in the following days and months please use:

Diaspora Matters: #diasporamatters @dmatters2011

Global Irish Economic Forum: #globalirlforum @gief2011

Silicon Valley Comes to Ireland: #svcti2011 @itlgorg

Tom McEnery on the Possibilities of the Role of the President of Ireland

Tom Murphy — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:56:47 +0000

While all hats have now been thrown into the ring for the directly elected office of President of Ireland, we thought at New Tech Post of the possibilities if certain other candidates had stepped forward to offer public service at the highest level to their country of origin. The Irish, like Ireland itself, can no longer be thought of as the inhabitants of a tiny Ireland off the north west coast of Europe. The myriad forms of the Irish Diaspora reflect in many ways modern Ireland as a global state. If only our leaders could see that.

The role of President of Ireland can in many respects be regarded as a ceremonial position as there are few absolute powers that come with the job, but to the world outside of Ireland the individual who holds this post has far greater recognition than even the Taoiseach itself.

What lies outside of Ireland - particularly in the form of the Diaspora - is as important as what is inside Ireland. Ireland, as small at it is and despite its recent and ongoing financial troubles, is a player in the global markets. The recently announced opening of an overseas office for Twitter in the Dublin area testifies to Ireland's geographical importance and reflects wonderfully on the highly educated, well skilled population that inhabits these shores.

Internally, the tech sector has been growing at 6% a year and is creating jobs. Technological breakthroughs in the agricultural sector have the potential to have Ireland become a lead player in the food supply chain business. (New Tech Post will be covering this area in greater depth over the coming months.)

However, many of the current candidates and much of the politicking around selecting a leader for this unique role remains insular and dwells on a sense of a role that Ireland plays in the world which can only be viewed as outdated.

One possible contender for the role, should he be asked to step forward, is Tom McEnery, ex-Mayor of San Jose and occasional contributor to New Tech Post. We spoke to him last week in the offices of the Irish Innovation Center, a facility that Irish businesses can base themselves in and use as a springboard into Silicon Valley - the knowledge workshop of the world.

Apart from his many distinctions in public service he was instrumental in helping the IDA to open an office in California. In 1990 he joined the elite company of those who have received the "Lord Mayor of Dublin's Award." He has been honored in Belfast, with the assistance of Apple, for the award-winning Bytes for Belfast.

Our first question to him was how he viewed high profile roles such as being head of state of Ireland.

“What I think is important is how do you perceive these jobs? Are they just meaningless baubles? Are they merely symbolic? Are they relics of another time? Or, are they something that can play an active role in moving the people of the country forward? In Ireland there never has been a more important time to have sound leadership since the founding of the Republic. If it was inspirational too, even better.

“What Ireland needs now is not only to show a positive and entrepreneurial side to the world, Ireland needs to show it to the people of Ireland who have been so shaken in the last few years.

“You have got six million people in the island of Ireland which is just what you have here in the San Jose / San Francisco Bay area, and I think there has always been much in common. That is the basis of our San Jose and Dublin Sister City program. Although there were many differences between the two areas, there was one very important thing in common — the entrepreneurial, visionary aspects of the types of the people who live on that island and the people who have come to this area that has become known as Silicon Valley. There is much to learn and emulate.

“There never has been a more important time for a face that is hopeful, optimistic and has a plan. One to be implemented now, not through rhetoric but through action.

“You need a symbol of what Ireland is going to be, her hopes and dreams — what fueled both the Celtic Tiger's good points and Irish Diaspora historically. What are the aspirations of the Irish people that the President can nurture and support? To me, it is all about quality of life. It is all about jobs and opportunity. Maybe, most importantly, it is all about preventing people from going to immigrant ships and leaving, as has been the bane of Ireland in the past.

“Right now, as I look at the situation, it seems like a truer honor for people like myself in America, Australia, England or wherever the Diaspora is located is to make sure that no other people like my grandmother ever have to emigrate.”

Nobody asked Tom to run for Presidency although many who know him and know of his strong ties to Ireland think it would be a very good idea. On closer questioning he revealed a track record that would have made him a very interesting and suitable candidate.

“I’ve always looked a politics a little differently than other people do. It's a job to do. I don't look on it as, ‘Gee, what I can I run for?’ but, ‘Where is there a role that I can make a difference in?’ I found one in San Jose for nearly a decade. I found it first as chairman of the local planning commission. First when we tried to encourage and nurture Silicon Valley in all its various incarnations to come here.

"I tried to fill another role in my economic work in Ireland with inward investment, Intel et al., and Belfast with the young people there who needed to know that they could change the world easier with a computer than with a gun.

“For those two terms and eight years as Mayor I had a rare opportunity to build a tax-base and create a vibrant, thriving center city. The accomplishment I feel most proud of is to make people feel good about being a citizen of San Jose.

“Apart from North Kerry and a few places in Dublin, I am far from a household name in Ireland. As I look at the different policies and programs that I have worked on here with the Irish Technology Leadership Group, (ITLG), along with the small venture capital fund that I am involved with and the 30 businesses that we have here at the Irish Innovation Center, I think we have done more than any other group coming out of the Farmleigh discussions two years ago.

"I particularly want to credit John Hartnett, founder of the ITLG and great entrepreneurs like John Ryan, founder of Rovi who was born in Tipperary. Also, Craig Barrett, former CEO of Intel and second generation Irish American. These are doers; people who follow the dream. It is still alive in Ireland but must be nurtured.

"In the most positive sense we are the great Irish dreamers, now we must implement those dreams.

“I think what is going on here in San Jose and with the Silicon Valley Diaspora is exactly the sort of policies that the next President and the government of Ireland ought to inspire to build upon — I plan on playing a role.

What policies are they?

“The policies basically are:

You support and nurture creative people in Ireland.
You support an eco-system of venture capital. You don’t worry about creating reports - you worry about creating companies.
You nurture the infrastructure. Not only the roads and systems like that but broadband as well.
Education is first and foremost — It is what built Silicon Valley.
Public Private Partnerships between government, private institutions and individual companies. This is the backbone of what really is the engine of the world today, and that is Silicon Valley.

“It is a program where you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You have to look at what has been tremendously effective here in this valley and in the city of San Jose and understand that if you nurture those very creative aspects of a knowledge economy you can make some wonderful things happen.”

Although Tom, an Irish citizen of some years, takes a deep interest in Irish history and Irish current affairs and has worked tirelessly to build a bridge between Ireland and Silicon Valley, he remains an American who has lived all his life outside of Ireland. Could this be a handicap to him being President despite meeting the criteria for candidature?

“I think it is intriguing that someone from the vast Diaspora could play a role in setting a course for Ireland in a world now that is so clearly globalized. This is the proper time to call home the wild geese and see how they can participate. Many of the Craig Barretts and Hartnetts and McEnerys are ripe for that task — we owe it to our grandparents and the young dreamers of Ireland.

At this date, no person from the Diaspora will be introduced into the Presidential race, but the idea of a Craig Barrett or a John Hartnett, is not only fascinating, but could be one of the most significant movements to revitalize the Irish economy and once again restore the dream for young Irish men and women.

The Sweet Joy of Doing

Tom McEnery and Rich Moran — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 09:11:31 +0000

Never wait for perfect. Pretty good might be as good as it gets.

How many of us have written something as a first draft. After a later review, with a satisfied sigh we say, “That’s pretty good.” How many of us try something and wonder, “Why didn’t I do this years ago?” Which is better, the knowledge that a project is complete or the guilt of waiting to start the project? Closure is a very good feeling but even the start of something that will lead to implementation is a good feeling. We call it VSOP, Visible Signs of Progress.

Now is a time for Ireland to stop talking and begin implementing.

Many have noted that we lost generations of entrepreneurs and builders in the past. And the spirit and talent all went abroad or into property and professions. Now another generation can well be lost during this economic crises.

Ireland’s crisis is testing the very confidence in government and the mettle of the people. Everyone agrees that Ireland needs to create jobs and to rebuild the economy, but the only way to build companies is through a sustained effort to create them by investing in jobs and nurturing entrepreneurs.

No doubt, the US is not short on agencies or bureaucracies. But when there was a crisis at the time of the 9/11 attack, there were twenty-two agencies entrusted with American security - it had now been changed to one - The Department of Homeland Security. Although not without problems, it has the virtue of singularity, thus accountability.

We see things from Silicon Valley in terms of accountability and action.

In the last three years we have visited Ireland many times with the Irish Technology Leadership Group, composed of Irish-American CEOs and Irish-born success stories of great merit. Former Intel CEO, Craig Barrett, is our Chairman, John Hartnett from Limerick, our founder. We have met with ministers, spoken to Taoiseachs, held symposia, visited all the major universities, given speeches, held panel discussions, honored start-up companies, and talked until we feel our points were made. We probably added to global warming with our hot air. Then we acted.

We have opened an Innovation Center in San Jose, and have 30 Irish-bred companies that we are mentoring and assisting with our own venture capital fund. The young entrepreneurs that we have encountered from Belfast to Dublin to Kerry are uniformly smart and full of hope. Many of them have sprung from the Intels and Apples of the early Celtic Tiger years; more will come from the Facebook and Twitter of today. Yet we worry that the simplest acts to encourage and build a true innovation economy are not happening - events should make no one sanguine.

Radical thinking is needed and here’s a start:

Begin counting companies created as well as jobs created. Google came from Stanford, but surely needed the job base of our valley to hire the best; companies from Trinity and the UC system will likewise need such a base of talent from new inward investment. “How many companies have been created?” must be a critical question.
Create a venture capital eco-system. In the past, the banks lent their money for real estate schemes. Has nothing been learned? The Irish Innovation Fund must target monies and encourage venture firms that are both expert in the field and will create wealth in Ireland, not Silicon Valley or New York.
Good work has been done by IDA, EI and others, but merge the bureaucracy and curtail the process. Consolidate the Government agencies that are charged with creating, funding, exporting or inspiring wealth creation and training - if America can trust the safety of our nation to one, can the Irish do less. Then measure the results.
Stop talking about taxes: the corporate rate is 12.5% and must remain so to build jobs and expertise for the emerging Irish-bred companies of the future. Creating companies that will eventually pay taxes is the real metric to watch, only then will Ireland have them. Remember when Oscar Wilde chastised Queen Victoria that “if this is the way she treats her convicts, she doesn’t deserve to have any!”

The entire island of Ireland is six million people, about the size of the greater San Francisco-San Jose-Silicon Valley area. Push networks of funding, mentoring and creativity in all areas at home and throughout the Diaspora. Avoid the incestuous thinking that was synonymous with the events that lead to the collapse of the Irish economy and the premature death of the Celtic Tiger. Accountability, consolidation, and innovation must be the hallmark of the new economic epoch. If Ireland is to prosper once again, she must avoid holding seminars, walking in the New York St. Patrick’s Parade, and following the antediluvian policies that brought her low. Simply, she must think and act anew, and in that implementation lies her salvation.

Tom McEnery is an a businessman and former mayor of San Jose. Richard Moran is an author, Partner in Irish Technology Capital and the CEO of Accretive Solutions.

"The Irish are Coming" Southern California Chapter of the ITLG is Launched

Tom Murphy — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 14:26:18 +0000

Last night over 300 tech and entertainment executives and their guests gathered at Sony Picture Entertainment studios in Los Angeles, California. The event was to launch the Southern California Chapter of the Irish Technology Leadership Group (ITLG). One guest, Dennis Donahue, Agriculturalist and Mayor of Salinas, believes very strongly the ITLG has, "Arguably, the best economic development program in the world. It is a very distinct market based approach with experienced executives, venture capital funds, terrific leadership and a network that can't be beat."

Guests of honor were First Minister Peter Robinson of Northern Ireland and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness. Considering their personal history and the centuries of conflict that Ireland has had to endure it was a wonderful testament to the desire for peace and progress to see both men on a platform together in front of some of the most powerful and successful Irish and Irish-American executives of the Diaspora.

A main theme of the evening was the enormous contribution that Irish led technology companies have made in the past, are making now and will to do so in the future to the entertainment industry.

John Hartnett, President and Founder of the ITLG credited JonMichael Bukosky and Kieran Hannon for presenting the case for having a Southern California Chapter. They clearly saw the potential in bringing together the ITLG's extensive network of technology executives with significant figures in the entertainment business such as Bill Daly, Senior Vice President of Post Production at Warner Brothers and George Bailey, Sony's Chief Transformation officer.

After dinner there followed a panel discussion hosted very effectively by Norah Zimmett of Bloomberg Television who were a media partner to the event. The theme of the discussion was 'technology and entertainment.' It was interesting to hear the different opinions from Fred Amoroso of Rovi, Robert Nashak, Executive Vice President of Digital Entertainment BBC Worldwide, Jay Roewe SVP of West Coast Production for HBO and Richard Moran, Venture Capitalist, CEO of Accretive Solutions and regular contributor to New Tech Post.

There was much discussion on how new innovations can affect and enhance the production process while possibly reducing costs. It was clear by the end that the panel was united in the view that Silicon Valley technologies would have a continuing and significant effect on the entertainment industry.

To ensure momentum and that the gains from the evening are not lost, JonMichael Bukosky said in a post event interview, that meetings between the technology executives of Silicon Valley and their Hollywood counterparts will continue, facilitated by the Southern Californian Chapter of the ITLG, on a bi-monthly basis with the next one taking place in November.

As Craig Barrett, Chairman of the ITLG and ex-CEO of Intel, announced in his opening remarks which were relayed by video due to previous commitments, "The Irish are coming."

ITLG: ‘Innovation in Entertainment’

Tom Murphy — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:14:17 +0000

The Irish Technology Leadership Group (ITLG) is opening its Southern California Chapter in the heart of the entertainment business today. Entitled ‘Innovation in Entertainment’ the event which will take place at Sony Pictures Studios, in Los Angeles, marks the impact of technology on entertainment and recognize the major advances made by Irish entrepreneurs and technologists.

“Without question, technology advancements are radically impacting the process of Innovation in Entertainment,” says Nora Zimmett from Bloomberg Television — media partner for the night. “With the launch of ITLG’s Southern California Chapter comes validation from Silicon Valley that Hollywood is fast becoming an influential center of technology advancement.”

Top entertainment executives speakers will take the stage on the night to explain how innovation will shape the future of their industry and will include Sony’s Chief Transformation Officer, George Bailey, Warner Bros SVP Post Production, Bill Daly and Rovi’s CEO, Fred Amoroso.

Included in the 300 attending are top leaders, founders, producers, presidents and CEOs from leading companies including Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios, Sony Pictures Studios, Intel, Motorola, Bloomberg, Dreamworks, HBO, Google, AT&T, NBC Universal, Paramount Studios, Nokia, and The Jim Henson Company.

The event’s technology showcase and media lounge will be featuring the latest innovation in film/TV, music, video games, mobile applications, social media and 3D Printing.

“The theme of Innovation in Entertainment rose out of the recognition that there is growing convergence between all areas of technology and entertainment and massive race to own the consumer’s screen.

"With so much relevant technology coming out of Ireland and Northern Ireland, there is no doubt that we have the resources and talent to make a demonstrable impact in the global entertainment and technology industries. We just need the public and private sector to continue a forward-thinking policy of strategic investment,” says John Hartnett, ITLG President and Founder.

The event is sold out but we will have a reporter on the ground so you can expect regular updates via our Twitter account, @newtechpost.

Global Business Register: Irish Online Verification Company Expanding

Aoife Connelly — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 08:53:23 +0000

In a recent press release by Minister for Enterprise Richard Bruton, he named a number of High Potential Start ups in Ireland that are generating income for the economy and creating employment in Ireland, among these was Global Business Register (GBR) who plan to hire 34 people by the end of 2011.

GBR is an online company founded in 2007 by Robert Leslie and his business partner Ben Cronin. The initial plan for the company was to connect in a single network all the company registers of European countries into one portal, “if you wanted to get information on a company in Germany you could come to our portal and do the same for companies in Italy or Spain.”

GBR began with 12 countries connected to the network and have expanded to include businesses in 24 European countries and 44 US states, making a total of 55 million companies that you can access official government information on directly, “If a company wants to do due diligence or know their customer they can come to our website and check this.”

With more and more companies now crossing the frontier of doing business online, it is important to be able to show that your company is trusted and has a good reputation. “We take all the available information about this company and aggregate it in a way that people can easily assimilate it.

Coca Cola have built up a brand and a reputation over the years, people automatically put trust in it but for a small company who have never traded outside of their locality it may be difficult to sell to France, Germany or Italy, they need a way to show they are a genuine company and have a good reputation.”

“A company like GBR can enhance general trustworthiness by 86%. Studies show that 70% of online shoppers abandon their carts before check out due to a lack of confidence in the website they’re using.

"Our job is to confirm that online businesses have a physical presence, if they have a registered office unit we will independently find a way to contact them at that address. By sending a letter or making a phone call, we’ve now tied a virtual identity to a real identity which really is a key to trust.”

With the variety and number of customers they have, from small solicitor firms to HSBC banks, GBR realised that having access to this much data could do much more than what they were utilising it for. “We created an API that allowed a company who would be quite a large user to integrate search and retrieval capability into their own system, meaning huge time savings in terms of their client process. Users may just want to check that your company is genuine, not fraudulent, up to date with it’s taxes and does all it’s filing, all of this can be done in an automated way without having to get a person involved.”

Systems like this API have huge implications for PayPal and Amazon; ecommerce companies doing business online who need to ensure that sources and receivers of funds are genuine. This was when GBR began to tailor specific products to solve specific problems.

“Take for example an SSL certificate, used to encrypt credit card information when purchasing online. Issuers of SSL certificates have to make sure they are issuing certificates to genuine businesses, that they are able to confirm in the real world you are who they are, research has shown that the more you can show how trusted you are, the more likely it is someone is going to deal with you.”

GBR has now evolved from a company that was once a purveyor of information to one which now creates software solutions that revolve around trust identity. “When we see an opportunity we’ll go after it, we move really fast in terms of making changes when we need to, we’re not going to flog a dead horse.”

ITLG to Host Innovation in Entertainment Showcase in Hollywood

Conor Harrington — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 07:06:02 +0000

The Irish Technology Leadership Group is to host an Innovation in Entertainment showcase in Sony Pictures Studios in Hollywood, to mark the launch of the ITLG’s Southern California Chapter next month.

The showcase event, to be held on September 13th, will feature keynote speakers and panelists from top Hollywood studios such as Sony, Warner Bros and HBO, as well as Bloomberg Television, and some of the top technology companies involved in the entertainment sector, including Gamestop Ventures and Logitech.

The event’s main sponsor will be Invest Northern Ireland, and keynote speeches will be delivered by Northern Ireland’s First and Deputy First Ministers, Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness, as well as the Mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio R. Villaraigosa.

John Hartnett, President and founder of the ITLG says the event’s theme of Innovation in Entertainment arose out of a growing convergence between the fields of technology and entertainment, citing special effects in film, the games industry, mobile applications and social media as examples of this blurring of the lines between the two disciplines.

“You look at all of this convergence happening, and you start to say, “How do we make sure that Ireland is well-positioned to take advantage of this?

“It’s a phenomenal opportunity for Ireland to showcase what it has to offer to the entertainment industry, both North and South.”

John Hartnett points to the success of Emmy-nominated HBO series Game of Thrones as a prime example of how Ireland can be an attractive target for the entertainment industry.

The event will give a number of high-potential Irish companies the opportunity to showcase their products in front of influential business leaders in the US, including confirmed attendees from companies like Apple, Google, Intel, Nokia, Dreamworks, Disney, and Twentieth Century Fox.

The ITLG President is hopeful that with such a cast of business luminaries in attendance, these companies will demonstrate the range of technological innovation to be found in Ireland.

“It’s really like bringing a young actor to Hollywood; we’re bringing young companies to Hollywood and hopefully they will make their breakthrough based on the platform that we’ve created."

As well as demonstrations from major players in the entertainment technology sector like Logitech, Irish companies such as 3D Printing startup MCOR Technologies, and iPad app developer StreamGlider will showcase their breakthrough technologies at the event.

Other companies showcasing include web event-guide Live Matrix, and anti-piracy technology company Pirate Eye. Many of the companies showcasing are resident at the ITLG’s partner incubation centre for launching Irish startups in Silicon Valley, the Irish Innovation Centre, of which John Hartnett is also Chairman.

Together with the IIC, the ITLG is committed to fostering and cementing the links between Irish business and Silicon Valley, and having opened a New York Chapter in May of this year, the opening of the Southern California Chapter will see the 3,000-strong organisation with a foothold close to the three strongholds of American business, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Wall Street.

“If you think of the three powerhouses of the US, it’s Hollywood for entertainment, Silicon Valley for technology, and Wall Street for finance, and we want to be positioned in all three areas. They’re effectively the biggest locations and biggest brands in the world and that’s where we want to have a very strong centre of positioning," says the Limerick-born ITLG founder.

“What we’re doing is strengthening the links between Ireland and both Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and networking is an important aspect of building the relationships between key executives in the entertainment industry with key young companies in Ireland.”

Due to strong demand for tickets for the event, registration will close on August 31st.

Lyra McKee: TechFluff Making PR Accessible for Startups

Conor Harrington — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 11:13:21 +0000

“Our big mission is to get the best stories and to get them out there, so really it’s all about connecting startups with journalists, not just Irish startups, but startups across the world.”

Belfast entrepreneur and former journalist Lyra Mc Kee set up public relations firm TechFluff and Co in May of this year to cater specifically for the marketing and PR needs of startups, who she felt had not been receiving adequate attention from larger PR companies.

Lyra is determined that TechFluff and Co, which is based in Belfast, and is shortly opening a New York office, will not be just another PR company, “In a lot of ways we’re trying to change the face of the PR industry."

“The big issue startups have with the traditional PR and marketing agencies is that they’re competing with much bigger clients, and they’re not getting the time. Only the big companies tend to fare well at these big [PR] giants.

“If you go to a PR company and they charge £500 a month, but then they go and get a contract from, say, Tesco, and Tesco is paying them a £10,000 a month retainer, the startup doesn’t get a look in.

“So that’s why we started TechFluff and Co, which was really as a way of using my skills in PR ad journalism exclusively for startups and help them build their brand and PR.”

Having worked in startups in the past, Lyra is aware that many startups cannot afford the services of a PR company, but also that they have great stories that need to be told.

With this in mind, she has set up Techfluff Newswire, @tfnewswire, a news feed designed to put startups in touch with journalists, a service which will help both disciplines. The startups get much-needed exposure, while journalists get access to interesting stories, which might otherwise go untold.

“I’ve always been of the belief that great stories should be told, and that’s really what we want to do with Techfluff Newswire, we want to tell those stories, we want to get them out there”, says Lyra.

“If you’re in a startup, it is hard, especially if you don’t have PR or marketing skills. Some of them just have really, really good stories and they just don’t know which journalist to go to to tell the story. For us it’s a way of connecting those stories with the journalists, and then getting the startups exposure.”

A former Sky News Young Journalist of the Year, Lyra has freelanced with Private Eye Magazine, Channel Four, and the BBC, and is aware of the value of a good story. She sees the role of Techfluff Newswire as, “the funnel” for these stories, and views the fact that this is helping journalists at the same time as something which, “can only be a good thing."

Lyra believes there is a funding problem in the startup ecosystem, which leaves startups in Ireland at a competitive disadvantage compared to their compatriots in Europe and the United States. Often times the marketing budget simply does not exist for these fledgling companies.

While these problems need to be addressed, Lyra maintains that, “in the meantime we’ve got to do other stuff”. In this case, “other stuff”, is promoting startups, from Ireland and abroad, and making sure that their stories get told, while the bigger picture of why they cannot fund their own marketing is hopefully resolved.

For now, Lyra will try to help these startups, “scream and shout in other ways, and Techfluff Newswire is one way we can do that.”

Lean Startup Machine: It's Not About the Logo

Conor Harrington — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:06:33 +0000

Lean Startup Machine, (LSM) a startup weekend concentrating on lean startup methodologies, is coming to the United Kingdom, with weekends scheduled for Edinburgh and London and Berlin over the coming month.

Kelley Boyd, one of the Machine’s advisors and mentors is heading up the european events, and describes LSM as similar in design to the traditional startup weekend layout, but differs greatly in its emphasis from other events.

“These teams want to say, “OK, here’s what I’m going to build. I need to design a logo, I need to set up a website”.”

Kelley explains that according to lean startup methodologies, there are many more important questions to be considered than websites and logos, and if these concerns are not addressed, the startup is, “hosed”.

“At LSM we really do focus on, “What is the problem that you’re solving? What is your solution hypothesis? What does the market look like?”

“A really important part of figuring out what your solutions should look like is, “What have people already done? If they are successful, how do you differentiate yourself? And if they fail, why did they fail, and why are you different?””

The process of taking an idea, deconstructing it, analysing it for flaws, and then having to face the prospect that it may need alteration or may not be workable at all, is not one that entrepreneurs warm to, but this is one of the core methodologies of the lean startup.

“They [entrepreneurs] don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to look at their baby and think that maybe their baby is a little bit ugly.

“An LSM weekend is an exercise that really opens your eyes. You can bring an new idea, or you can pitch your existing startup, particularly if you are struggling to get from the early adopter to early market phase and want to really focus on applying the techniques and methodologies in a very concentrated way. Teams are amazed at what they learn!"

"Sometimes the very first thing they [entrepreneurs] want to do is design a logo. Seriously, sketch something out and put it on your forehead because it doesn’t matter, a logo doesn’t matter. What does matter is who is your customer and what is the problem that you are solving for them."

Kelley describes her role as mentor as, “The grown up that asks the tough questions that need to be asked of entrepreneurs at the startup stage, “You need somebody else’s brain on it, and you really need someone who’s not drinking your Kool-Aid, that’s going to be objective, that’s going to hold you accountable”.

“This is a boot camp for knowing how to recognise the places you can tighten up the business, ways that you can either tighten up the technology, tighten up the marketing or tighten up the customer segment.

“There are lots of different things you can do to tweak and tweak and tweak before finally you’ve got smooth sailing to get your target market to move from, “Hey that’s a good idea”, to “Wait, we have customers”, to, “Wait, we’re making money”. It’s a process.”

Lean Startup Machine’s visit to Edinburgh later this month is coinciding with Edinburgh’s Turing International Technology Festival, and anyone wishing to travel to the Edinburgh event can avail of accommodation through an, “adopt a hacker” scheme organised by Gordon Guthrie.

LEAP: The Business of Producing Businesses

Tom Murphy — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 11:30:14 +0000

“There’s a thought process that we’re a small country, we can’t really produce a Fortune 500 company, we won’t produce a Facebook, we won’t produce a Twitter. There’s a mentality that says we can’t do it, and I don’t know why. If you look at the heads at some of the biggest corporates around the world, they’re Irish. 39% of directors in the UK are first generation Irish. You have to turn around and say, “Why do we not have our own cluster of home grown Fortune 500 companies?””

These are the words of Graham Royce, Limerick Enterprise Acceleration Platform (LEAP) Programme Manager. He goes on to say, “We don’t have any indigenous Fortune 500 companies here, because a company gets to a certain size and traditionally, they’ve sold out.

“They’ve sold to America or Europe and so on and so forth. Because nobody has sat down and said, “Hang on a second. Instead of selling these companies out, if we’d have hung on to some of those, they’d have gone from the €14m companies to the €400m companies quite quickly and we had one recently, which came out of UL (University of Limierick) which was sold for €40m. Quite frankly had they not sold it and hung on to it, they could have turned it into a Fortune 500 company, whereas it got lost to America and is creating employment elsewhere."

Graham’s remit is to find high potential startups which he defines as companies that have ideas that can grow from nothing to €1m by year three and potentially employ ten people. He has mentored over 200 companies since 1995 and since 2007 from his ground floor office at the Hartnett Enterprise Acceleration Centre at the Limerick Institute of Technology he has been putting between 20 and 30 startup companies through their paces as part of the LEAP programme.

The LEAP programme exists because, “Ireland Inc needs to create and develop new businesses to continue its economic growth.”

“It’s a year long programme so basically you get me for a year, and in that one year, if a business is not trading, we want it commercialized and training within the year, so it’s a really intense year."

A basic quality that is deemed necessary for acceptance on the LEAP programme lies in the character of the candidate. "Does that individual have an ambition? Ambition — not passion. There’s a difference between ambition and passion. Ambition has been knocked out of people. It’s all very well educating somebody, but if you knock that ambition out of them, you can educate them as much as you like, but it isn’t going to work."

Closely following on ambition is determination. According to Graham, “You have to be determined. You have to be clear about what you want to do in your mind. You have to be clear that there’s a market there. You have to go out and ask the question. "If I do this, will you buy this?" You have to go out and talk physically to the people. You have to get a really clear definition of what you’re doing, a really clear definition of the market.

Implied in the process of investigating the market for a product is having the necessary willingness to change and adapt as new information becomes available. Graham explains, "To me it’s the individuals, not the project. there are very few projects that come in here which are right first time. All of the projects that have come in here have changed at some time during the course of their journey within the LEAP programme.

“Money does not make a business work, this common mistake of thinking, "Give me the funding, I’ll make the business work," is rubbish. You do need funds to get the business going. You need to fund yourself correctly at the right time. However, if you don’t have the other things in place, all the money in the world won’t make it work.

“Do we need the government to help us? Yes, and that’s not by giving us money. It’s by clearing some of the red tape that’s around the place in terms of getting things done."

LEAP is not purely concerned with getting startups off the ground. There is a much bigger picture to take into consideration which concerns Ireland's economic growth as a whole. “To my mind, I have the tools to take someone to 20, 30, 40 million, [but] we also need to put the tools in place that helps a company grow to 400m.

"There’s a whole different set of tools required for that level which we’re trying to put into place. We’re going for it. We want a Facebook, we want a Twitter, and we’ll find one. I am of a complete belief that before I finish my work we’ll have at least half a dozen Fortune 500 companies here in Ireland.”

If you are interested in enrolling on the LEAP programme you can visit the website for more information.

Footbridge Interactive: Helping Dyslexic Children through Games

Tom Murphy — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 15:28:00 +0000

Up to 10% of all children can be placed somewhere along the dyslexic spectrum. Linda O’ Sullivan first became concerned when her own son, Oisín, was seen to be having difficulties at school. He was having problems with with reading fluency and comprehension and was beginning to fall behind his classmates

Oisín was diagnosed as having dyslexia and Linda took him along to the Dyslexic Support Centre in Limerick.

The Centre was founded by Marie Stubbings who works with evidence based teaching and intervention methods for children who are dyslexic. Using a number of different teaching intervention methods she worked with Oisin on a number of different levels and according to Linda, “His reading improved quite a lot during that time.”

It occurred to Linda that, “These exercises would work very well in a game based environment driven by an animated story.” When she looked around she found there was nothing available.

“Children... need something where their attitudes towards reading and learning become more positive. Kids in that situation can often develop negative attitudes towards learning whereas in a games environment kids can become more positive and use that positive energy for learning.”

Linda initially thought about using her ideas as the basis for a possible PhD research project. However, after speaking to the University of Limerick and NUI Galway she realised that her ideas were more suited to a business project.

“I really felt because I was on my own I needed the structure of some business support and the business development expertise of pulling the finance together.” So she enrolled on the Limerick Enterprise Acceleration Platform (LEAP) which is housed in the Hartnett Enterprise Acceleration Centre in the grounds of the Limerick Institute of Technology.

“I picked up a lot of knowledge and also because a lot of the businesses in there are technical there are a lot of techies in the building. That was helpful to me to get up and running in the business. It was in there as well that I met Jennifer Keane who became my partner in the business. The program suited my needs exceptionally well.”

The 12 months that Linda spent on the program allowed her to put together a business plan, to market research and bring together an educational advisory panel. The prototype of the product was developed and testing was done with dyslexic children.

To round the year off, Footbridge Interactive (as Linda’s company was now called) won first prize in the LEAP Business Awards. The prize of €50,000 in investment funding came from sponsors AIB Seed Capital Fund.

“What our product does is it allows the child to play in a fun environment while reinforcing the skills necessary for fluent reading. The program also tracks the areas of the child’s strength and weakness.

“Our real motivation is for this to be a home based product. Even with the schools working with us we need the kids to be allowed to do this at home so this can reinforce the learning support they’re getting at school.

“The idea is for it to be in game-time or leisure time, when the child is relaxed and we believe this is where this product will have most benefit.

“Our first export market we’re concentrating on for the first 12 months is the UK. From the very beginning we have been speaking with the British Dyslexia Association. We have someone from their tech committee on our board of advisors.

“Breaking into the online space and becoming known brand will be our biggest challenge. It will take a huge amount of intensive labour at making that breakthrough online to become a known port of call where parents and teachers looking for extra learning material will go.

“I have to keep reminding myself the whole reason I have this project is because of my children. While in some ways it may be a handicap in other ways it gives me the edge as well. I understand my market, parents and mothers in particular, and the worries and stresses they have about their children's future.”

Additional contributions from Ina O' Murchu and Aoife Connelly.

Rich Moran: A California Plan for Ireland

Rich Moran — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 07:36:55 +0000

California just developed an economic growth plan. According to Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom (a proud Irish American), it is the first one that has ever existed. Remember, California has only been a state in the Union since 1849 so it hasn’t been around all that long, but 162 years is still considerable.

The Plan was immediately criticized, not for what it said, but for the fact that he was stating the obvious. The Plan is focused on the creation of jobs as the trigger to reinvigorate the economy. Some might say, WTF, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

Although the devil is in the execution, the plan offers 38 specific ideas including strategies to expand exports, reinvigorate manufacturing, promote innovation, accelerate the green economy, improve education of the workforce, rebuild the infrastructure, focus on regional strengths and consolidate the clutter of duplicative government agencies dealing incoherently with economic development.

A few specifics it calls for: reestablish overseas trade offices, rationalize the regulatory system and make it easier to navigate, reinstate a manufacturers' sales tax credit for equipment purchases, expand career tech education and establish a single Cabinet-level office to deal with economic development.

As one reporter said, “Chalk one up for Newsom, It may not be new, but at least it exists. His head was exactly in the right place, focused on California's most important issue: how we can compete with other states and nations in a sophisticated, cutthroat global economy.”

What's desperately needed is a comprehensive strategy to create jobs across a broad spectrum of California's economy.

There are lessons here for Ireland. Even a plan that states the obvious is better than no plan. There might be a plan put forward by any one of the groups vested with improving the economy in Ireland, I just haven’t seen it. If my guess is right, there are a lot of plans and not all that coordinated. I hope there is one.

A plan may state the obvious, but I do know one thing from my years in big organization change: Without a plan with dates and measures and thresholds and specific responsibilities, nothing changes.

And, someone’s job should be at stake based on whether or not the plan is implemented well.
If someone was really smart, he or she would get the California Plan, replace Ireland for California where it fits, and present it as if delivered by the Saints.

The full report can be found at the Office of Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom

Rich Moran: How to Create Irish Entrepreneurs pt 3 — Tell me a Story

Rich Moran — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 07:38:57 +0000

The Irish know how to tell a story. It’s a big reason why the country “punches above its weight”. Stories about snakes and princesses and Vikings and everything green, we have built a country that is beloved because we know how to tell stories in writing or at the pub. The gift of gab, the blarney is real. Tell me another country who is renowned for storytelling… Russia? Germany? Iceland?

The saw can cut both ways. Depending on who is listening, the stories are charming and magical or dark and morose or just plain bullshit. Either way, there are plenty of stories and plenty of story tellers.

My favorite times in Ireland are spent listening to stories and when I return to the US I always have my own stories to tell.

Why is it then, that entrepreneurs in Ireland have a hard time telling their story? Why is it that so many get tongue tied when trying to describe what they are trying to create and the opportunity that is so important to fulfill?

The important ingredient in story telling that entrepreneurs need to capture is not different than any children’s book. There is a beginning, a middle and an end and the parts go something like this:

Beginning: “Once upon a time.” Instead of talking about castles, the entrepreneur’s story should be about the opportunity and the market.

Critical moment: “One day…” Usually when the witch shows up or the duckling turns into a swan. Instead of wicked wolves, the entrepreneur needs to discuss what the new company will do, will fix, will solve, and most of all, will disrupt.

Finally: “And they lived happily everafter.” Instead of a rainbow, the entrepreneur needs to show dollar signs.

Remember too that good stories can be short.

It’s that simple and already part of the DNA. Irish entrepreneurs need to build on the story telling ability and weave it into the fabric of creating and building companies.

You can read more about the The Combat of Ferdiad and Cuchulain by clicking on the image above.
Banner image is a close up of the entrance stone at Newgrange.

The Irish Executives Conference 2011

Tom Murphy — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:40:58 +0000

Three years ago John Keogh, a former CIO and former supply chain executive and now Senior Vice President & Advisor at GS1 Global Office was asked to look at a project in the United States that would help to save lives of people in the area of food traceability and food recall. About a million and a half people around the world die every year from food that has been contaminated.

“When I was looking at that I very quickly decided that we needed a cloud-based computing platform to go global.” John explains, “The company that I work for, GS1, is a global not—for—profit in the supply chain standards area so we don’t build solutions as such because we work on the behalf of the industry.”

John reached out to big companies around the world that he thought could provide a cloud-based solution for GS1 and ultimately the business was awarded to HP in Galway.

“Since then HP in Galway has supported GS1 in Canada, Australia and with sales presentations all around the world. Canada has fully deployed. Australia is being deployed next month; New Zealand shortly after. Countries like Germany, South Africa and so on. So HP in Galway has been doing a fantastic job.”

Just after that successful episode John had the thought, “How can other Irish executives like myself connect up and then connect back up into Irish businesses?” That was really the start of developing the Irish Executives Group on Linkedin.

What John heard that the members of the Irish Executive Group were saying was, “We need more help, we need help. So can we take the Linkedin forum off-line and create a conference.”

"When I heard that I thought, “Here’s a great opportunity to build on what I have done with Hewlett-Packard.” But to bring that back to Irish indigenous business. That’s really key for me. The big guys are OK. The big players know how to do business. They are all over the world. They are not up at night waiting for Ireland to be key to their business; financially at least."

The event will cover four areas:

Cloud Computing: “When I reached out to Irish executives around the world they said to me, “...Let’s help us understand this thing called cloud computing.”

This is what the event is really about. It’s about helping Irish businesses understand what cloud computing is about and how it can help them to grow bigger — to punch above their weight class, as it were, in Ireland.”

A primary use of the cloud computing discourse will be to show how Irish companies can have a platform that gives them access to the global market.
Social Media: “With social media it was the same thing. “How do we tap into it? But, first of all, what is it?” Demystify the myths that are out there. There is a lot of confusion around social media right now about how it can be used appropriately.

“We want to debunk the myths of social media and then explore through case studies how companies can effectively use social media to tap into their customers needs and wants and also to explore new products, new services and new markets.”

John also wants to discuss innovation through what he calls ‘sense and act.’ Sensing and acting on what markets want and what they are saying.
Networking: “This is not hardware networking. This is people networking. It’s about company networking. We have Kingsley Aikins, who is often called ‘Mr. Diaspora,’ and he will give a presentation first and then lead a workshop on networking — the art and science of networking.

“Another thing we want to achieve for the event is to help Irish individuals, Irish professionals, Irish executives and Irish companies understand the dynamics and some of the leading edge thinking about building your personal network. Building your professional network and also taking a step back and looking at your company and how does your company build its network.”
Leadership: ”We want people at the conference to listen to some of the leading-edge thinking on leadership. Especially as it relates to developing people. Then look at how developed people with the organisation benefit the organisation from a financial return perspective.”

These are the four areas that John wants the attendees to study and explore. As he says, “It is very much case-study driven, not a sales event as such. Nor is it a high tech event. Whether you are an artist or a food producer from West Clare to a relatively big mid-size company in Ireland there will be something in this for everybody.”

The Irish Executives Summit 2011 will be taking place at the Radisson Blu Hotel & Spa in Galway, Ireland on the 14th and 15th of September.

Arekibo Ventures: Time for Irish Business to Invest in Itself

Conor Harrington — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 07:13:49 +0000

Martin Casey co-founded digital media company Arekibo in 1999, and despite its success, he feels that the availability of a private investor fund to help Arekibo’s development would have been a great help, and something that is lacking in the Irish startup community.

Twelve years later, he doesn’t think that much has changed in that respect, and Arekibo has launched Arekibo Ventures, an angel seed investor fund for Irish startups.

“There’s no use waiting for someone else to do it, we just felt that it was the right thing to do," says the South-African born entrepreneur, “It’s no good talking about it and saying, “wouldn’t it be great if it happens”, we just have to do it."

Having built much of its business around developing online strategies and branding for businesses, Martin feels the time is right for Arekibo to, “put our money where our mouth is."

By Arekibo having a “vested interest in making sure that it has the best chance of becoming successful," the startup is getting the most utility possible out of the resources available to them.

“I think it is a very odd thing for a digital agency to open up a seed fund, but at the end of the day we want to see companies succeed, we’re startup people. To me it just makes sense, we want to make things happen.”

While Martin insists that he will not be seeking a place at the boardroom table of any funding recipients, he wants Arekibo Ventures to utilise the full array of skills available in the Arekibo stable to ensure the success of any relationships.

“We have funds to invest plus we have very important expertise that we believe these companies need. So it’s a kind of added piece that we can bring; we’re not just a guy who’s going to introduce you to two or three people, we’re actually going to be the people who roll up our sleeves and actually get involved, but we’re not trying to take over at all.

“Today funding is difficult. It takes a long time, it takes a special skillset, it can take away from the core idea, because you get caught up in business plans and the mind is screwed with questions.

“We think that we can help people with that because we’ve been there, done that, and we can fit into a specific area where we can get some of these companies ready to go to the big guys.”

As regards what type of company Arekibo might view as suitable for investment, Martin is open to different approaches, not just from companies in the digital space, “it’s kind of horse for courses, it’s trying to find a good fit."

“You can tell very quickly if someone’s going to fit in, or if it’s too early or if someone’s too brash. At the end of the day, we don’t want to mess anybody around, we want to be someone who can look at someone in the eye and say right we’re interested we want to do stuff with you, let’s make it happen.

“Obviously as a seed fund, that’s what it is, you have to plant a seed and you have to water it and nurture it and that’s where we want to be.

“It’s not just about you trying to win us over, we have to win you over, because ultimately this is about a long term partnership, we obviously want this to work. It’s a case of if you like the look of us and vice-versa, and we think that we could do stuff together then, hey, let’s do it.”

Martin believes that there is a, “very healthy environment” in Ireland at the moment and there is, “a lot of goodwill about people wanting to make things happen, particularly in the digital space," however he also thinks that there is a reluctance amongst Irish entrepreneurs to promote themselves, an endemic modesty which can negate much of the good work being done here.

“I don’t think we say enough, I don’t think we promote ourselves enough. I think we’re quite happy to keep under the radar, whereas I think we’re got to learn how to promote ourselves, we’ve got to learn how to speak about how we’ve done stuff, we’ve got to be prouder of what we’ve achieved because there’s some very, very smart people, there’s some wonderful ideas here.

“Why do we always have to look over the water for these things? It is happening here, and we’ve just got to tell people, show people that we’re achieving.”

“The reason that I wanted to do it fundamentally is because I believe that people like myself have to step up, and make it happen. There are lots of guys at it and who have been at it longer, I suppose this is just our small part and hopefully the companies that we are involved with and who choose to work with us can become successful. You never know, it happens all around us and we are where we want to be, we are the silicon valley of Europe. Why not?”

How to Create Irish Entrepreneurs - Do the Irish Lack The Entrepreneur's Most Important Asset?

Rich Moran — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 07:15:24 +0000

Optimism is not a trait I hear coming out of Ireland right now. As I talk to people in Ireland, the words “negativity and depressed” comes up way more than the words optimism or fearless. It could be a problem and one that we need to address quickly.

Many of the Irish entrepreneurs I meet have lots of optimism but they are also nagged by a fear of failure which diminishes the optimism. There is a sense that a failure in a new venture will haunt them and continue to show up on the “permanent record”. If that is true, we need to change that mind set. Failure in a new venture could mean that the market wasn’t ready or that the technology wasn’t quite right or any number of variables dictated by the phases of the moon and international events.

The attitude of an entrepreneur and the culture that fosters them is more like, “what’s the worst that can happen to me if this idea/company doesn’t fly? I’ll just learn from it and do it again.”

Friends and family can be your worst enemy when it comes to maintaining entrepreneurial optimism. They will question all decisions and suggest you get a “real job”. Entrepreneurs must embrace the belief of success, ignore the negative, and never give up. Any feelings that failure is inevitable and my life is over are to be ignored.

They say that it is possible for an entrepreneur to be successful without capital - just use your credit card. They say you can find success without a plan - every day makes for a new plan. Who cares about marketing, HR, finance and all the other staff functions? An entrepreneur doesn’t pay attention to those things. But there is a secret sauce that is critical to success – optimism. An entrepreneur needs to believe, without equivocation, that the company will be successful. The optimism could be irrational, but without it, chances of success are diminished.

There are lots of optimistic companies with operations in Ireland. Maybe it will rub off. The Irish do not lack that most critical arrow in the entrepreneur’s quiver – optimism. We just need to exercise it more and kill the fear of failure.

Once, when I was having an entrepreneurial crisis of self doubt, my good friend (who is not Irish) once told me to “Get your Irish up”. He meant get mad, be optimistic, take a risk and get something done.

Come on Ireland, get your Irish up. Get optimistic.

This is the second in a series of articles by Rich Moran. The first article was entitled "Entrepreneurship Is About Action".

JLizard's Logentries: Reducing the Time Taken to Analyse Log Files via the Cloud

Conor Harrington — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 08:31:20 +0000

JLizard is a Dublin startup that provides cloud-based log management as a service for large enterprise systems. Its product, Logentries, collects, stores, analyses, and visualises the log entries from these large software systems, ensuring that the customer can monitor the functioning of their system, and quickly identify and eradicate any flaws that may be present.

JLizard is a spin-out from UCD, where company founder Trevor Parsons completed his PhD in the area of, “detecting design flaws in large enterprise applications from a performance perspective."

Having initially considered this space to be one that was overcrowded, Trevor refrained from commercialising his PhD research at the time and took up a research position in conjunction with IBM and UCD building lab management technologies, especially for pre-production test environments.

“The systems, during the test would produce massive amounts of log data, and at the end of the test run management would come and knock on the door of the test team and say “has this test passed or failed?”, and the test team would turn around and say, “give us three days or five days to look at the log data and we’ll tell you."

“So we developed a technology that would allow them to instantly understand, as soon as the tests were completed, whether the test data was clean or not. And if it wasn’t clean, they could figure out within minutes what type of events had occurred that were problematic, so were there errors in the system, were there warnings in the system, when did they occur and what was the distribution of those events?”

Following on from this project, Trevor and his co-founder Viliam Holub developed JLizard’s Logentries log management service.

“Essentially it’s useful for any company that has a customer-facing critical system, a system that is critical for the business," explains Trevor.

“Any company with a website that they’re doing high volume transactions on, any company that has internal systems that are running their business, loses a lot of money when that system goes down.

“While we had developed the original technology for test environments, it can be applied, and is very much applicable, for live systems. So that’s what we’re focusing on right now, and really where we’re focusing is on day to day operations of these systems.”

As an illustration of the problem that JLizard aims to fix, Trevor gives a simple example of a large company with a critical IT infrastructure trying to manage log data manually, a daunting prospect.

“Any large organisation, say with over 1,000 employees, is producing terabytes of log data per month. That equates to about 100,000 events per second in your logs, so if someone has to manually open a log file of that size, they can’t because they’re so big. Then they have to gather them, correlate them, and trace through them, so it’s almost impossible to identify trends or particular events in that data unless you’re actually using a log management solution.”

The technology has three main identifiable use cases. The first is the predictive element, whereby through close, and real-time monitoring of a system’s logs, the technology can predict a potential crash before it happens, preventing system downtime, which Trevor describes as, “a huge cost saver for companies."

“If you’re Amazon.com and you’ve a huge amount of online transactions, as soon as your system goes down, your shopfront is closed, you’re losing money.”

The other main use case is for situations where something does go wrong with the system. If it is not possible to predict and prevent downtime, the next priority is to resolve the problem as soon as it arises. In a large enterprise system, the collation and analysis of all the data across many different software elements presents a significant barrier to a swift diagnosis and resolution of the problem. Logentries will, says Trevor, speed up this process.

“Instead of having to grab log data from different systems across their whole IT infrastructure, they can simply use a real time monitoring solution and actually visualise in real time. So if there is a problem they can go immediately to their log data and they have a much more coherent view of that so they can very quickly diagnose the issue.”

The final area in which Logentries can be used is one that the JLizard team, “didn’t really design it for."

“A lot of people are using it from a business perspective, where they’re trying to understand what’s happening in their system rather than just trying to just keep their system up. They’re trying to understand how many transactions they did today, or how many failed registrations did this system have today? So they’re using it from an almost business operations perspective to try and understand the types of activity happening in their system as well.”

JLizard is currently resident in NovaUCD’s incubation centre and has previously participated in the National Digital Research Centre’s LaunchPad programme, which Trevor describes as, “really, really useful”.

As JLizard takes Logentries out of private beta, and launches to market, the connections made through NovaUCD have proven invaluable.

“[At NovaUCD] you’re opening yourself up to a community in terms of customers, and even by talking to the different guys in here, you usually find a lot of leads out there, rather than being stuck in an office somewhere where you’re removed from that sort of environment.”

Having trialled the product with a number of large multinationals over the past twelve months, and gotten, “some really good feedback from some really big companies," JLizard has begun to convert some of these trials into customers. Logentries is now available under a software as a service model, bringing years of research to commercial fruition.

18 Hour Open Data Challenge at Digital Hub

Ina O Murchu — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 14:47:00 +0000

Since the EU adopted the directive concerning the Reuse of Public Sector Information, local authorities across Europe have attempted with varying degrees of success to comply with rules that are intended to allow companies to exploit the value of public sector data to contribute to economic growth.

An undoubted leader in this field is Fingal Council in Ireland.

Since the fall of 2010 alone, they have released over 70 datasets.

Many of these were made available for the Open Data Challenge. This was an 18-hour event instigated by the Irish Internet Association and organised by the NDRC. It took place at the Digital Hub in Dublin.

Dr. Teresa Dillon and her team created an environment for over 120 people to come together and assemble themselves into ad-hoc teams to take on the challenge.

In her opening remarks Teresa said that, "There is an essential need for transparency and accountability from our governments. We also have the right to know how and where our tax money is spent.

"We think this area is so exciting because there is the potential for products and services that can draw on and use this data."

Participants were distributed across tables according to their skillsets.

After briefings from the organizers, the teams discussed the potential ideas that could be had from the datasets that had been provided. These included such areas as water, environment and waste data information.

As evening approached, good ideas were voted in, and bad ideas were voted out and were unceremoniously removed from the workspace walls.

On the second day the focus was on creating a commercially-valid product.

The ultimate winner of the competition was a team called Bizfit consisting of (L-R) Mark Kearns, judging panel, NDRC, Conor Calahane, Robb Mitchell, Annette Farrell, Gary Leeson, Udo Reubach and Sandra Garcia. (Main banner pic by Ian Pearse.)

The idea was for a website that uses demographic and other open source data to match
a business with its optimum location.

Dr. Teresa Dillon commented, “It's clear that with the right tools and freer access to data, there is the potential for ideas-led business growth. We hope an initiative such as this, sends a message to other Councils and Government bodies that open data is a resource and as such it has economic potential."