Colliding with Irish VCs

Most of you know by now that the Limerick Open Coffee meeting had an interesting pair of visitors, namely Patrick Collison and John Collison of Auctomatic.

The talk was Livestreamed on Ustream.tv by Conn Ó Muíneacháin and Bernie Goldbach has a podcast available.

I would comment about it, but I'm late to the party so I'll let Aidanf Conor O'Neill and James Corbett do a much better job. Besides I'm mostly be repeating their comments), but right now you can see the potential value of the Paddy's Valley tour. Remember that the pair left Limerick to go to the Valley in order to get things started.

On the other hand... there is Walter of Pixenate (who suspiciously suffered from a DOS attack after these comments, no connection I'm sure) commented on Twitter about the really weird offer being made by the Irish Venture Capital Association. On Thursday 27th September 2007 the IVCA training programme is 'How to Raise Venture Capital' developed in conjunction with the Ryan Academy for Entrepreneurship. In otherwords, the IVCA is telling bright and talented Irish Startups how to get money off the IVCA. And is charging the people they might give money to... is that circular logic or recursion?

I'm sure someone would be willing to comment and explain this to me?

take care,
Will Knott

tags : Open Coffee, Limerick Open Coffee, Patrick Collison, John Collison, Auctomatic, Ustream.tv, Conn Ó Muíneacháin, Bernie Goldbach, podcast, Paddys Valley tour 2007, Pixenate, Irish Venture Capital Association

Take note of the venue

On Thursday I was planning to go to the Irish Microsoft Technology Conference in Dublin, but given that I'm currently listening to the podcasts generated at the Reboot (human) conference in Copenhagen, (and asking Clare Dillon for access to the slides and recording from the conference) I think I might be able to pick up the necessary.

And saying the word conference a lot.

The reason I couldn't go was because I'm doing some voluntary work for the Cork Midsummer Festival. Most of this work involved heaving boxes of event flyers and books to stops around the city (mostly libraries and shopping centres). The energy level in the offices (administration and box) are high... the events and gigs start in about a fortnight.

Tips for distributing these around...
1)Don't hit between Thursday and Sunday. The weekend is fairly busy but the free sheets arrive on a Thursday so space is limited. If the venue asks for more however, ignore this tip.
2)Take note of the venue. If it's a library with a large children's section, then they will actually want the kids information. Obvious but its easy to miss.
3)Take note of the venue. If there isn't a information point in the shopping there isn't really a chance of getting stuff in there. In general however, Tesco's information point, which is also a shop counter, is more accommodating than the customer service desk in Dunnes, which is purely an office point.
4)Take note of the venue. If there aren't any other flyers, or if there are a handful which look like the are related to the centre, chances the centre isn't going to be interested in them.

Now I'd like to ask, is there anywhere else (on the North side of Cork in particular) where these flyers should be going?

Tags : Microsoft, podcast, Reboot, Clare Dillon, conference, Cork Midsummer Festival, library, Tesco, Dunnes, shopping centre, Cork

with friends like that

"Hindsight is a cruel companion"
Terry Fallis of Inside PR talks about news conference disasters in the modern age.

tags
overheard, podcast, Terry Fallis, Inside PR, news conference