Wow. Day 4 of Paddy’s Valley was again amazing. Diego from Ning was most welcoming and then Marc Andreessen entertained us with this thoughts on business, social networks and the mobile space. There is no way in hell the first Paddy’s Valley will ever be bettered. 2am here and still wide awake buzzing from today. Microsoft were great too. Would you believe I skipped lunch at the Googleplex? 🙂
Author Archive
What first attracted you to billionaire Marc Andreessen?
Thursday, December 6th, 2007Ross Mayfield – Rock god
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007Ross Mayfield from Socialtext just gave more advice to us in 90mins than any of us Paddys could have learned back home in months/years. Had we paid a consultant we’d have paid 1000s if not 10s of 1000s for his frank and honest advice. Day 3 of Paddy’s Valley and after meeting Facebook this morning and then Ross, we’re smiling big smiles and buzzing from the welcome. The people on this side of the pond are amazingly generous and open.
Day 3 of Padbrother
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007Day 2 of Padbrother upped the drama levels as Padbrother set a challenge to the Benchd team to unlose their car keys. A frantic few hours of searching the locality and tearing apart a bedroom ended with success and just in time too for the next challenge in San Francisco.
After a quick interlude in the Padbrother house where everyone met Brian Deane from Ceatec and then headed to lunch in the Cheesecake Cafe, everyone then set off to San Francisco for the Scoble challenge.
This challenge involved the Padbrother contestants dressing to the nines to see who was the most fashionable. Touristr’s Jan Blanchard being French had an instant advantage though lost serious points by wrapping his new iPhone in a gaudy red jacket. Steve would not be impressed.
Later today on Padbrother is yet another challenge where five of the contestants will have to stand up in front of a crowd of 120 people and explain in 120 seconds why they should not be evicted from the auditorium.
Before all that some of the contestants will be meeting Facebook. More updates later.
Day 2 of Padbrother
Monday, December 3rd, 2007Read this with a Geordie accent for best effect.
It’s day two of Paddy’s Valley Padbrother and many of the contestants are still asleep in the PadBrother House, while others are up and awake nursing sore heads. Alexia is in the kitchen making food for everyone. One day in and she’s already assumed the motherly role. At the same time Eoghan is already outside the Apple store, face pressed to the glass while stroking the glass and declaring his love to the iPhone.
As this is happening Conor has declared that he’s his own Island Nation and monarch of it at the same time. His grand highness Conor P plans to pounce on the Irish Ambassador on Tuesday evening and talk about setting up and embassy in Ireland so he can bring back lots of cheap goods under diplomatic immunity.
While some are having fun, others are working on their networking. Bus ticket 2.0 manufacturer CoClarity’s Ger Hartnett is busy working on his powerpoint presentation while Niall Larkin from RelevantM is practising his deathly evil and cold smile while reciting “I could tell you what the product does but then I’ll have to kill you.”
As this is happening Shane McAllister from Mobanode is standing outside every door in the Padbrother house in turn and trying to send bluetooth messages about how great his product is to the mobile phones that are in each room.
5 miles away the Touristr crew are polishing their red mustang. (not a euphemism)
More updates on the other Padbrother contestants later.
Fluffy Links – Monday December 3rd 2007
Monday, December 3rd, 2007Adam points out some impressive customer service from Auctomatic.
Gerry’s pisstake Holy Communion mag may become a reality.
Check out the new Irish Arts Blog.
I’d heard of MILFs but not Cougars. Good to know.
Online reviews and boost product prices.
Goatse in the sky with diamonds.
The Pirate Bay really are knifing the music industry. Now they have integrated a music discovery engine so you can pirate more music.
Tim Berners Lee on Facebook, the Semantic web and all that.
The Web 2.0 business conundrum. Build an idea and an audience and then make money how?
Via Random Reflective Rantings is the I ♥ Jackie Healy-Rae Facebook group.
An ad for booze done by Scorcese like it was a documentary of him making an undone Hitchcock movie. Complicated? Maybe. Viduallu beautiful.
Parachuting cats should be a phrase that gets used more.
My Cubic phone details
Saturday, December 1st, 2007While in the Valley I’ll have my cubic phone with me:
All of the below numbers go to the same phone, neat huh? 🙂
San Francisco +14153761381
Dublin +35315262763
London +442088199685
Cubic to Cubic 7770016
Next week I are mostly meeting
Saturday, December 1st, 2007Facebook, Ning, Meebo, Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, Socialtext, United Layer and MORE.
Disclosure: I’m a judge for the Choice Music Prize
Friday, November 30th, 2007is what some people will probably be saying when Jimbo Carroll makes them feel special. And they should feel special. The Choice Music event is a great thing. Hat tip Sinéad. 🙂 Hope you didn’t fall off your seat when you saw the title.
A change is going to come, I can feel it – Irish Web Industry Association?
Friday, November 30th, 2007Paul Walsh has made a call to get something started in Ireland:
I’ve previously grumbled about the lack of support in Ireland for Web based companies. Heck, Enterprise Ireland doesn’t even have the word ‘Internet’ in the ‘Industry sector’ section of their application forms for grants etc. What does that tell you?
If you’re interested in helping me improve the ecosystem, please join me for dinner in January
There are so many things I want to say on this but I just don’t have the time right now. There’s a dinner in January to talk about this and act on this. Watch the Segala blog and do come along.
I’ve had my run-ins with Walshy in the past and people ask me why I’m friendly with him after I exchanged such strong words with him before. The reason is that the more I see him work, the more he impresses me. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly (sounds familiar) and like Fergus Burns he’s a networking machine. And again like Fergus, it’s not the Irish definition of networking which is comprised of gathering and then selfishly hoarding contacts (another blog post on this will follow), it’s all about “This is so and so, you should talk, you work in the same space and exchanging information will help you both”. Paul has made a name and a rep for himself in London and further afield because of the events he organises and he’s done a great job with BIMA and all their events.
If Paul can do the same in Ireland as he’s done in the UK then that’s a very important thing for the Web industry here. In the meantime I’d strongly recommend that Irish companies that are serious about doing business in the real world outside of incubation centres should be getting cheap Ryanair flights to London every now and then to attend many of the networking events that are on, on a regular basis. The quality of the contacts is worth the travel costs and time used up. See you in January in Dublin!
Fluffy Links – Friday November 30th 2007
Friday, November 30th, 2007Elly is working on a nice interactive map of Europe for tourism and such. Have a bash!
Maryam Scoble lists some good places to visit next week.
Well done Pat, another great deal inked.
Death by a thousand cuts. More contradictions to Bertie’s tales.
Lessons for educational publishers in a social media world.
Robin muses about Pixenate and what he’d do with it. He talks about offering a service for bloggers to edit pictures. I’d like to add that I’d take the Facebook widget that already exists and make it a blog widget so people can play with Pixenate on all their friends’ blogs too and mess around with their pictures with an export option to a new Pixenate account. BTW, Robin is on my “ones to watch” list for 2008. Get to know him before he becomes well famous and charges 25k to turn up to talk at a BarCamp.
Haha. The Pay Per Post folks are getting impatient with their dealer.
Brilliant video about proof reading.
The new Knight Rider car. That’s a macho machine. KITT in the 80s was uber-camp. But then so was the Hoff.
Wouldn’t it be great if Google Ireland would support an Open Mapping Initiative which would make their maps much much better? Not like the OSI will give away anything for free.
Sigur Ros – Hljomalind
Sigur Ros – Heima