Copacetic

Antoin Mannering (of Benchd fame) has done all the heavy lifting (with help from Sabrina Dent on the webside) for TechLudd. An event designed to generate some of the energy and enthusiasm that we all found in ourselves over on the Paddy’s Valley tour to Silicon Valley.

Kick off is at  7.00pm at the Odessa Club on Dame Court. (Opposite the Stags Head). The Odessa Club is a very discreet doorway so you need to hunt around for it and ring the bell. You should register here for the event so they can gauge numbers. Who knows, there may even be a few drinks in it…

From the Special Report on eGovernment,

“In 2002, the Government set a target of having all public services capable of on-line delivery made available by 2005.  This was clearly unrealistic”

Right lads, I know what to say at my next EI audit review.

There’s more,

The Public Services Broker was planned as a single website which would facilitate data sharing between public service providers and link together all the public services associated with significant events for members of the public, such as the death of a relative or setting up a business.  The aim was to make it easier for members of the public to find and use services.  No budget or timetable was set for the Broker project when it got initial Government approval in May 2000.

The Broker concept was innovative and ambitious.  Its feasibility, however, was not examined early on and planning was weak.  A review of the project in 2002 led to a scaling back of the proposal.  In May 2003, a less ambitious project was approved with estimated development costs of €14 million.  This project was due for completion in August 2004 but was not completed until December 2005 at a cost of €37 million.  Annual running costs for the Broker are in the region of €14 - €15 million.

37 million? For a project that essentially failed to deliver. With 14-15m annual running costs. Can you say return on invesment?

Hands up here any software startup that would be happy to share in that 37m in chunks of less than 100,000? Who would leap at a chance to implement a Government system at cost just for the experience and referenability.

The Irish government needs to scale down the size of its IT ambitions untils it learns how to manage them properly.

Just caught the last few minutes of The Thin Red Line, Terence Malik’s movie about the American Troop experience of invading one Island in the Pacific during WWII. Its amazing how resonant that movie is. I’ve seen it several time by now, but everytime I see a snippet, it drags me in pretty much like my favourite work of non-fiction about war, Dispatches. Its something about the “loud/soft” quality of both works and the essential humanity of both auteur and author, that leaves you feeling vaguely haunted.

• Facebook will fade and we will all wonder what the fuss was about (You took money from hedge fund, you dolts!)
• Somebody new (not Microsoft, Google or Yahoo) will capture over 30% of the search market place (and it won’t be Mahalo, sorry Jason)
• Apple will increase its market share of the PC/Media Centre market to 20% (thank you Vista)
• Apple will release a version of iLife for the PC (Because twisting bills nuts is Steve’s favourite game)
• The wholesale price of online virtual storage will drop below 5 euro cents a gigabyte a month (Just need one more big player alongside Amazon and Nirvanix to make it interesting)
• Tape storage will make a big comeback (expect an Amazon style offering in this space, with an infrastructure play for all those social networks full of inactive replicants)
• Video blogging will continue to not take off (apart from the self referencing circle jerks who will keep telling us video blogging is taking off)
• I will be able to use my phone as a broadband connector for my PC over bluetooth (Finally, thanks for nothing Vodafone et al.)
• Jabber, AIM and MSN will finally complete their instance messaging interoperability dance (And nobody will care)
• Google will become a Network Operator

 Today I registered,

• StartupIreland.org
• StartupIreland.net
• StartupIreland.info
• Startup-Ireland.org
• Startup-Ireland.net
• Startup-Ireland.info

Now I just need to connect them to a blacknight virtual host. I’ll do that over the weekend and with Blacknights whizzy installatron software we should have a blogsite by Monday.

Where’s the .com I hear you say? Some fella in Cork has it. Maybe I should get the Cork mafia to make him an offer he can’t refuse

Paul Walsh asked me to elaborate (on twitter) on why I only read one of his blogs (Segala.com) and what he should do with his BIMA posts?

Well I keep two blogs going, PutPlace and this one. PutPlace I could do more on, but thats pretty much all about PutPlace and designed for users of PutPlace, Partners and has a pretty clear Agenda, the promotion of PutPlace as a business. Copacetic is mine and existed before PutPlace and will live on after it. If I was Paul I would want my huge blogging rep attached to a site associated with Paul Walsh rather than Segala. Someday Segala will be gone and he will have to do a pile of work to get a new brand up and  running.

For now I will continue to get my Walshie juice from Segala As for BIMA never read it, probably never will.

I watched the blog build up around Scoble’s ejection from Facebook with some amusement today. But its a good question, what parts of your social graph do you own?

Well thats easy, you own the edges that connect to you and your own node, nothing else. You most certainly don’t own all the contact information at the end of each edge (node=person, edge=relationship) which is why Scoble got kicked off Facebook for trying to grab all the other node information.

Dave Winer pitches in but he misses the point. Its not Scoble’s data, as Damien says more cogently than me.

Paul Walsh talks about Ireland Inc. over on the Segala blog as a follow up to a previous post. So here is my two cents about what I would like to see created in 2008.

We don’t need to add to the brand soup of Web 2.0, FOWA DemoBar, Paddys Valley, Techludd, Barcamp, EduCamp and all their friends. Instead lets create an organisation to represent ourselves, the entrepreneurs, as a unified body of people with a realistic set of expectations and requirements who can lobby effectively and with a single voice when facing everybody from Enterprise Ireland to the VC and investment community.

As a person who has had to wash the Barcamp dublin funding through his own company (my accountant is still pissed at me!) just the simple logistical benefit of  having a bank account to lodge sponsorship money would be a huge leap forward. Add to this a committee that can formulate policies that directly benefit the entrepreneurial community and provide a liaison point that can build successful relationships with Enterprise Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland, the Irish Software Association and a host of others and you start to have something worth joining.

Startup Ireland, (a working title) would provide a umbrella organisation for all the events that currently float around as headless body and would provide a jumping off point for a social graph linking all of Ireland’s Entrepreneurs. Membership would be free for the first 12 months and then rise on a scale over three years. Membership is for individuals only, no companies. Companies will change names, exit, liquidate, get bought, but the individuals generally continue to be entrepreneurs and its the individuals we are interested in.

What about the ISA I here you say?  Well apart from the fact that,

• You can’t join via the web
• It doesn’t understand Web 1.0 never mind Web 2.0
• Its too expensive
•  You can’t join as an individual (its an employers club)
• Its not an independent organisation, its part of IBEC
• Its only software (and hardware companies)

there is a bigger problem, its simply become irrelevant to the current batch of Irish startups, they perceive no value in joining.

So Startup Ireland, a organisation by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs who are focussed on building export led businesses in all sectors.

Thats what I want to talk about at Paul’s dinner.

Zed tears all the Ruby guys out there a new asshole. This is funny stuff if your not a rails guy.