Copacetic

Dear ISA Member,

The Annual General Meeting of the Irish Software Association will be held on Thursday, 5th March at 9.30am in the offices of William Fry Solicitors, Fitzwilton House, Wilton Place, Dublin 2.

William Fry have kindly offered to host the AGM following the first in the series of collaborative Breakfast Briefings, “Technology Funding” which commences at 7.30am that morning. Further details on this, and subsequent briefings can be found in the attachment below.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank ISA Chairman Pat Brazel for his enormous contribution to Association throughout the duration of his tenure. Pat, along with a number of his Executive Council colleagues will be stepping down this year. Many thanks to all outgoing members of the Executive Council for their tireless efforts in highlighting the importance of the software sector to the growth of Ireland’s knowledge economy.

Nominations are now open to all ISA members who wish to sit on the Executive Council. Persons seeking to be put themselves forward for election to the Council are required to notify ISA Director, Kathryn D’Arcy : kathryn.d’arcy@ibec.ie or ISA Executive, Anna Donegan: anna.donegan@ibec.ie

Candidates will also be required to provide information about themselves including:

· the identity of the members who nominated them
· a short biography
· a summary of the reasons why the candidate is putting himself/herself forward for election to the Executive Council
· contribution they will bring to the Executive Council

Nominations will close at 5pm on Wednesday, 25th February 2009. An election may take place at the AGM pending the number of nominations put forward. Should you require any further information on the work of the Council or the ISA working groups please contact me.

Anna Donegan

The Irish Software Association Awards will be be held on the 7th November 2008 in the Mansion House on Dawson Street. The ISA has extended the application period for the awards until the the 3rd of October so get your applications in now.

Awards are available in the following areas,

• Company of the Year
• New Company of the Year
• Technical Innovation
• Sales Achievement
• Partnership of the Year

You can apply here.

I joined the executive board of the Irish Software Association yesterday. Why? Because I think it is a worthwhile effort to devote some of my time to making the ISA more relevant to the Irish Software startup community.

Historically the ISA has done a very bad job of engaging with young startups, and I hope to improve that situation over the next few months, but I need your help.

I have the following two things on my agenda,

• Reducing/eliminating the fee for all startup companies younger than 3 years
• Getting information out using a better mechanism than email and and RSS free websites

What else are people looking for?

Its all happening this week on the conference front in Dublin.

From Tuesday through Friday we have the Irish Web Technology Conference hosted at the Cineworld Complex on Parnell Street. Fergus Burns and Conor O’Neill will be presenting and I would suggest you also try and catch Paddy Holohan of Newbay. Paddy has made more money from software in the last twenty years than is probably legal . If you are really stuck, you could kill and hour with this guy.

The IWTC unfortunately clashes with two other great events I want to attend this week as well. XCellerate 2008 is a tabled as “Bringing Silicon Valley to Ireland” but seems to heavily focussed on an (impressive) lineup of irish presenters including Brian Caulfield, Chris Horn, Bernie Cullinane and Shay Garvey.

Its only a half day affair so in theory you could nip across to The Ballsbridge Court (aka the Berkeley Court) for the morning if you wanted to catch up on what appears to be a ISA conference from 5 years ago, dug up and dusted off.

The real clash comes with the ISA Conference next day which has some great speakers but the worst website I have ever seen (did I say website, web page! more like). Guy Kawasaki, the ex Apple Evangelist, A-list blogger and sometimes VC at Garage Ventures is paired with Anthony Williams the co-author of Wikinomics. These are world class speakers and its a real coup for the ISA to get them to come to Ireland. The ISA Conference is hosted at the O’Reilly Institute, UCD in Belfield.

Then to cap it all off on Saturday we have the Irish Blog Awards, organised by Irelands most prolific blogger, Damien Mulley for the third year in a row. This will held at the Alexander Hotel in Dublin (just behind Trinity). Entrance fee is €10 and a good night is guranteed for all.

Don’t even get me started on BlogTalk 2008 which kicks off on Sunday in Cork.

Prices are as follows:

• IWTC : Four Days, 41 speakers : €245 but €189 if you pre-register online
• XCellerate 2008 : Half Day, €100 or 450 bundle which gives you access to the ISA Conference
• ISA Conference : Members €250, Non members €300, Incubation Centre Member €200
• BlogAwards : €10 on the door

I think the keepers are the IWTC for the scope of its presenters, the ISA conference for Guy and Anthony and the BlogAwards because Damien sensibly organised it not to clash with anyone else.

Paul Walsh started it and now Damien has taken his gloves off.  So we’ll be adding the Irish Web Industry Association to,

• The Irish Software Asssociation
• The Irish Internet Association
• The Irish Computer Science Society
• and lest we forget, IT@cork which punches well above its weight for a regional organisation

Yes, we definitely need another association.

Brian Caulfield won the ISA Technology person of the Year last night at the Annual ISA Awards. Well done Brian, well deserved.

I spent this morning a the ISA Conference 2006. I had hoped to have a bash at live blogging but there was no WIFI so I was reduced to taking notes. It was a fairly sedate affair with only Pat Brazel managing to get a few laughs out the audience. The theme was new models, new approaches but the speakers spoke mostly about old models and old approaches. The topic of new models was addressed much more credibly at the recent Web 2.0 event held by Enterprise Ireland.

My notes are on the sidebar. Fergus Gloster of Salesforce.com had a few interesting things the say about SAAS and Pat Brazel did a very quick and useful presentation on acquiring companies and being acquired.

The rest is leaving my memory as I type this, bye,bye…

The Irish Computer Society: Open to all but I would expect the onerous joining requirements (and complicated math:-)) to limit membership somewhat. It appears to lean towards academics given its emphasis on third level qualifications. You can join as an individual (well affiliate member) it will cost you €130 and for that you get subscriptions to a few magazines (ComputerScope is the only one I recognised) and a free ICS email account. They also offer a reasonable number of discounts which can add up. You get add some initials after your name (AMICS, MICS, FICS).

The Irish Internet Association: This is a business assocation for Internet businesses based in Ireland. Its focused on companies. Entry level costs are €220 and for this you get to participate in the activities of the IIA.  Other benefits are loosely described on about us page but no details are supplied. You get a listing in their journal and on their members page but given this is a search page this is a dubious benefit (if I know the company name, why wouldn’t I just visit the company website directly?).

The Irish Software Association: The ISA is an employers association and is actually heavily affiliated with IBEC. They don’t post costs for joining on their website (how coy!) but the price for startups is €400. Prices do rise on the basis of the number of employees in the company. Key benefits are access to employer HR data, surveys and the like.
So if you are an individual in the IT world and would like to join a society the ICS is probably your best bet. If you sell stuff over the Internet or are an ISP then the IIA is what I would go for. If you employ people in the IT sector then the ISA is the one for you.

I run a small startup called Secantus. We are running on a tight budget and are currently focussed on development. I recently inquired as to the price of joining the Irish Software Association. Get this, the special deal startup price for companies like mine is €800!

To put it in perspective, my subversion hosting, and a dedicated hosted server costs about the same price. The loose rule of thumb is you can get a Web 2.0 company started for around $100,000. €800 is about $1000 at todays prices so I’m going to blow 1% of my share capital on membership of a local club.

The HotHouse incubator program in Dublin stamps out ten to fifteen new startups every six months, a significant proportion of which are Software companies. I don’t know of any that have joined the ISA. If the ISA truely wants to represent the Irish Software community then they are going to have to make a bigger effort to include the startups.

Is there even an appetite to recruit this kind of member in the ISA? You would think in this Web 2.0 world they would have a click here to join button on the website with a credit card form and integrated wiki, email and forums. But no its a very sedate email and inquiry form (no mailto: links for these guys, you’ll cut and paste the address like we did in the old days) an once you get access, rest assured its no Alice and Wonderland website in the members area.

So what could they do,

• Drop the fees to something that doesn’t make me sweat, think less than €100
• Take credit card bookings directly on the site
• Add wiki, forums, mail groups, blogs and company editable web pages to this site. All this technology is freeable available and can even be purchased for next to nothing as a hosted option.
• Target the startup companies, these companies are the future of the industry. Where was the ISA are the recent Enterprise Ireland Web 2.0 event? Will they be at the next one in Cork?

If they did this I’d join, what about you?