Damien Mulley

A few weeks back I got a call from a researcher in a radio station, one which I won’t name because I’m nice like that. (Yes, I laughed at that bit too.) They were doing a piece on gay marriage and had read my blog and wanted to know would I come on as someone opposed to gay marriage, like I had written on my blog.
“Er, I did?” says a puzzled me.
“Yes, you listed reasons why gay people should not marry.”
I thought for a few microseconds and then an energy saving light bulb went off in my head. He had read my post listing 12 reasons why gay people should not be allowed to marry. This is the one that starts off by saying “1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control.”

I asked the nice researcher “Have you read it? You do realise that it was, you know, satire?”
“Oh, er, it was? Oh, I should really read these things.”
“Uhm, yeah, might be a good idea.”
“So, you’re not against gay marriage then?”
“No.”
“Ok, so would you be for it?”
“I’m all for equality. ”
“Would you come on for that then?”
“I’d rather not, because I’m on your station on a regular basis talking about broadband or sometimes blogs. I get enough air-time as it is.”
“Oh right.”

See how easy it is to get on-air when you have a blog? As it happened I was on the station the following afternoon talking about broadband.

They thought they knew each other but on a journey to find new business, they found themselves.

You need to read the above in the voice of that guy that does all the voiceovers of all those movie trailers. I actually tried to photoshop up a Thelma and Louise movie poster with the lads faces but the bloody photo editing application died on me. Also I’m useless at anything creative. Getting to the point though:

Rick Segal and Shel Israel are going on a world trip of a sort and want to meet up with people and businesses along the way. Rick wants to go looking at investment opportunities and Shel wants to research his next book. Doc Searls gives a good summary. David Weinberger gives a nod to road movie summaries too.

I think this could be a good opportunity for Irish business people to meet with two very clever and influential people. There’s a chance to bring them to Ireland (Shel is already coming to Cork soon) or else the eirepreneurs could hop on some cheap Ryanair flights for a meetup in London. Additionally why not come along to the latest Geek Dinner on the 7th of June and bend Shel’s ear about this World Tour.

Ooops, what a fuck up.

Before the June 8th IT@Cork conference there’ll be a geek dinner on the evening of June 7th. Anyone wish to go? It’s a Wednesday evening. Shel Israel, his wife and Salim Ismail should hopefully be about too for this. Nothing too formal. Location and time will fit into place as we get more exact numbers. By the way, the Radisson Hotel has a health spa so bring along the spouse to the day event and treat them to the spa. If any semi-loaded company wants to pay for the meal, or a round or two of drinks then let me know.

I should get some kind of pink background with feathery borders for these:

Really clever advertising on ATMs, drinks machines and photo ID Machines.

American Govt gives advice to “pre-pregnant women.” Very odd.

Pictures, lots of em where the word “Ooops” gives a good summary of them.

100s of links to music videos from the 80s.

Nice screen casting app for the Mac.

Multipurpose apps that have RSS feed reading capabilities don’t appear to be used much.

Top 10 social network sites and their growth. MySpace is exploding in usage but bebo isn’t anwyhere in the list. Maybe next year.

Tom Coates gives a summary of the main points from a keynote from Paul Graham called “How American are startups?” and described his views on how SiliconValley breeds success and whether it can be replicated. The main points are below, but I wonder how many of these Ireland has already and do we need to adopt the rest to allow for better entreprenurship?

1. Allows immigration
2. Isn’t a poor country
3. Not a police state
4. High quality universities
5. You can fire people
6. Attitudes that don’t associate ‘working’ with being employed
7. Not anal about business regulations
8. Huge domestic market
9. High levels of funding
10. People comfortable with career switching

Read the comments though. Some very interesting ones including:

Cory Doctorow:

And if there’s one giant difference between the Bay Area and London that accounts for the differing startup climates, I’d say that it was cynicism. People in the Bay Area are optimistic about technology to the point of being starry-eyed and they possess a completely unabashed sense of ambition. In the years since I moved to London, I’ve felt a palpable cynicism about technology and about ambition: anyone who says anything grandiose about technology and what you might do with it is apt to be greeted with eye-rolling and pedantic, picky objections.

…

By contrast, the mantra of the San Francisco geek is more like, “Technology kicks so much fucking ass I am about to explode. Soon everyone will realize this.”
…

One other major contributor to California’s technology success (especially as compared to Route 128) is that noncompete agreements aren’t enforceable in Cali. That has led to a culture of aggressive poaching and promiscuous job-hopping through which the best and the brightest go from company to company, spreading the best ideas from each. That’s kept things growing very fast in California indeed.

Julian Bond:

Some of the biggest Web 2.0 success stories have started with no VC, no backing and people working in their spare time to create something “because it’s cool”. In at least some of them, they went live (or at least beta) for months before they ever needed to talk to rich people. Bootstrapping is the new burn rate.

So where do you find people who no longer have to spend their entire life trying to survive? Because isn’t it that which always acts as the trigger for civilisation to move forwards?

Tim Mansfield:

Silicon Valley seems to me to have an incredibly interesting social environment – I don’t mean pubs and parties, I mean that you’re surrounded by other people “making a go of it”, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, but trying.

…

The financial and general business-helping ecology seems a lot more diverse in California than it is here. More kinds of venture capital, from the risk-friendly to the risk averse, more places to partner with, more ways to set up, more ways to do business.

15 Irish companies were in the Top 100 companies to work for in Europe list.

Two of these Irish companies, DePuy and O2 Ireland were in the top 10, with 02 coming tops for Irish entrants.

Special awards included:

Best practices in creating a fun place to work went toGoogle Ireland.
Best Practices for Internal Communication went to Brightwater.
Best Practices for Work-Life Balance to Intel Ireland.
Best Practices for Diversity Management to Abbott Laboratories Ireland Ltd.
Best Practices for employee involvement in Corporate Social Responsibility to GE Commercial Aviation Services.

Other companies in the Top 100 were:
Aitricity.
Children’s University Hospital, Temple Street, Ireland.
Clontarf Castle Hotel, Ireland.
Deloitte Ireland.
Diageo, Ireland.
PEI, Ireland.
Tourism Ireland.

Additional link: The top 100 Irish companies to work for.

Thing is, this is another one of thos pay to play awards. 100 companies entered it in total.