Lots of Gaming related activity happening in Ireland at the moment
Havok founders, Dr. Steven Collins and Hugh Reynolds are rumored to have signed multiple deals with large gaming platforms and publishing houses, with their startup new game technology, which is trading as Kore
Tribal City Interactive based in Galway are working on social games for both Facebook and Twitter
The site is going live with about 60,000 properties across every major city and town in Poland. Approximately ten times larger than the Irish market, Poland has a population of 38 million.
Eamonn Fallon, founder of Daft, over IM informed us that “The site auto-scales which is a pretty cool technology. Yesterday we went from 3 servers to 18 at the peak and we didn’t have to really worry about it.”
18:00-18:30 Canapés and Drinks on Arrival
18:30-19:00 Welcome and Introduction to Azure
19:00-19:15 Break
19:15-19.45 Customer Speakers: ‘Developing Apps, and Going Live, on the Cloud’
19:45-21:00 Networking and Refreshments
Trinity College Dublin
on Thursday, February 04, 2010
from 5:30 PM – 11:30 PM – this includes a networking event
Chris Newmark (founder of Craigslist) & Matt Mullenweg (founder of Wordpress) , who are regular keynotes at the world’s largest technology conferences, will be talking about the lessons & direct experiences in scaling their companies, which have had huge impacts on global commerce and communication.
Chris Horn will reflect on his experience building succesful global companies from Ireland. He will also touch on the broader issue of innovation and Ireland, as well as prospects & opportunities for Irish entrepreneurs over the coming decade.
It’s designed to be easy to use. We’ve purposely only designed the simplest features, from the outset. Over the next couple of months, the plan is to listen closely to feedback and shape the product into a powerful, useful and valuable tool.
In terms of philosophy, the app is designed around three principles:
“Do little, insanely well.”
Pay close attention to visual design and details.
“Not Saving Changes” … every detail is saved once it’s created or changed.
I usually have these posts written within a day or two of Le Web but other commitments slowed me down this year. 2009 saw the 6th Le Web (my 4th) and it was easily the best ever. Loic & Geraldine can rest easy knowing 2010 will be totally over-subscribed.
People go to Le Web for a couple of reasons:
Networking
Meetings/Deals
Learning
Pitching
I went as an official blogger to the event but with intentions of doing all of the above. It was a real pleasure to be on the official blogger team and a big thanks to Stephanie Booth who organised all of that brilliantly.
The Irish contingent was tiny with Joe Drumgoole, John Peavoy, Colm Long of Facebook and myself flying the flag. Whilst I know the tickets are very expensive, it’s a pity there wasn’t a bigger showing. The IDA attended last year but I didn’t spot them this year. Le Web is the European web business/tech event and I happily skipped every other pay-for event this year to ensure I could go.
The opening session with Jack Dorsey set the perfect tone for the two days. The guy who created the global phenomenon of Twitter showed off his new startup Square. This is P2P payments with a credit card swipe that plugs into the headphone socket of your phone and an application which allows others to pay you. I didn’t quite get how revolutionary this was until I saw it in action (despite the terrible demo problems he had).
There are often complaints that they have too many Americans speaking at the event. I take the opposite view, since this is one of the few opportunities for those of us who don’t regularly travel to the US to see these guys speak and perhaps meet them. Standout highlights for me were Tony Hsieh from Zappos and Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine Library TV but there were plenty of others including David Hornik from August Capital and Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital.
I have ordered the Zappos Culture book that Tony mentioned (just email ceo@zappos.com and they’ll post you a copy) and downloaded the Tribal Leadership audiobook from here (use California 90210 for your address in the registration screen). Wonderful stuff.
Gary (NSFW audio):
Those who worked best on stage were generally the contrary bastards. In that batch I’d include Mike Arrington, Lukasz Gadowski, Andrew Keen, Paul Carr, Dave McClure and Martin Varsavsky. Guys who are not afraid to call bullshit on things but who also see potential in the most interesting of places. The sessions that they were involved in were far more useful and fruitful than the usual cheerleader echo-chamber gang.
In fact, the echo-chamber gang were the only real let-down of the two days. We’ve all heard their schtick non-stop for the past few years and it’s grown old and boring. I’d love to see a bunch of new US faces coming over next year who have something new to say.
The real-time theme of the event did become a bit of an unbearable Twitter love-in at times to the detriment of many other exciting things happening in the real-time web. As someone pointed out on a TWiT podcast recently, more people play Farmville on Facebook than are users of Twitter.
For those who think Irish startups can’t compete at the highest levels on an international stage, just watch Joe Drumgoole’s pitch in the Startup Competition. I was shocked that Cloudsplit didn’t get the win but rumour has it that Thierry Henry was one of the judges
Over a couple of days I met entrepreneurs, bloggers, VCs, techies and business people. That’s why I go. The energy in that room recharges my batteries and reminds me that fantastic startups are being built all over Europe and we all have more in common than we think.
Even if I didn’t get to announce our first US customer.
Nathalie Kosciusko Morizet, Minister of State to the Prime Minister, with responsibility for Forward Planning, Assessment of Public Policies and Development of the Digital Economy, speaking at Le Web with Loic Le Meur in Paris today.
€2B for broadband upgrades in France out of a €4B budget to invest in the digital future.
We reduce the price of booze and come up with meaningless buzzwords like Smart Economy.
2nd of February 2010 by Fergus Burns
20th of 
