The Tallaght IT M50 Incubator program is soliciting for applications to its spring program.

Apply now and get that company started.

@walter turns his considerable programming talents to twitter to generate a super cool mosaic of your twitter friends. Then he pops on his business hat and sells you teeshirts and bags.

Walter is a double plus good superhero because he does it all in the programmer’s favourite masochist language Perl 🙂

Get your twitter mosaic here.

For Northern Ireland companies only, but looks very good.

Need Funding? Are you ready to pitch to a VC?

NISP CONNECT PRESENTS:
“ENTREPRENEUR ACADEMY; VC READINESS” CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

NISP CONNECT is seeking up to twelve qualified companies for the upcoming Entrepreneur Academy; VC Readiness, an intense 5 day bootcamp from 5th to 11th May, 2009 for early stage companies hoping to raise private investment in 2009.

Applications for the Entrepreneur Academy will be accepted from 1st February through 31st March.

Entrepreneur Academy graduate companies will be considered to pitch to venture capitalists and angel investors in a number of upcoming events.

To submit an application for the Entrepreneur Academy, Apply Here

About Entrepreneur Academy
The Entrepreneur Academy is all about cramming years of street smarts and real-world experience into a week!  It is not “instructor-led, student-listen” class, you will learn as much from working with, and presenting to, your fellow participants as you will from the leader.  It is intense and brutal, just like the business world out there, but when you graduate, you’ll have years of experience to give your business an edge and a kick-start.

About VC Readiness
An intensive 5-day programme to qualify, prepare and present Northern Irish start-ups and entrepreneurs for engagement with VCs and fundraising. The programme will end with ventures pitching to multiple investors at one of three Capital events.

The course will be delivered by Silicon Valley based David Kirk, one of Northern Ireland’s most successful Tech Exiles, and covers: The business of venture capital, A day in the life of a VC (what a VC looks for), the elevator pitch, data sheet, investment pitch and business plan; their roles and structure. Style, image, projection. What to expect from a “value” VC

Access to Capital
At the end of the programme selected teams will have the opportunity to pitch at one or more of the following investment events:
• Halo angel investor network: remodelled and reborn the halo angel network is now stronger than ever
• Venture Capital Roundtable: NISP CONNECT Venture Roundtables are exclusive, private, invitation-only showcases for promising emerging technologies and companies in the region. Select entrepreneurs and scientists will have the opportunity to present their technology to a group of premier capital providers. NISP CONNECT’s Venture Roundtable will take place on June 11, 2009
• ITLG: “Silicon Valley Comes to Ireland” a delegation of leading venture capitalists and entrepreneurs from the world greatest centre of venture.

Eligibility
To be eligible to enrol in the academy, applicants must:
• have a business plan or business model slide deck
• have a technology related product or service
• have an incorporated / registered company with at least one full time employee
• looking for funding in 3-6 months, not yesterday.
• be prepared to dedicate 8*16 hours during the week of the bootcamp
• be Northern Ireland-based

Cost
This programme is provided free of charge to entrepreneurs who are accepted on to the programme, but space is strictly limited to a maximum of twelve companies, and one representative per company.

For more information regarding the Entrepreneur Academy, please contact Roisin Clancy at 02890 737 920, roisin.clancy@nisp.co.uk

David Kirk Bio
A successful entrepreneur and investor, both private and institutional. During his career – over three decades of software, networking and telecommunications – he has held positions in engineering, marketing and sales, with startups and Fortune 10 companies. He has held executive level positions at American Online, where he led the world-wide launch of their online service, and managed the development and operations of their business systems, including billing, eCommerce, Internet advertising and fraud management. After AOL, David was Senior Vice President at Cisco Systems, where he managed their core software development, and was general manager of their enterprise business. David was born in Belfast, and now resides in California. He has a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science from DeMontfort University (previous Leicester Polytechnic) in Leicester, England.

A bus hit a tree this morning just past the Five Lamps. Looks like it clipped a tree (notice the damage on the tree just where the branches start to fan out) and it stripped the roof off. Don’t know if there were any injuries.

News report from RTE.

Another picture on pix.ie.

Top Toy of Christmas in our house.

No better time than a recession to start a new business. if you are thinking of starting one then then there is no better place than a business incubator. Here are the ones I know about. Please add any I may have missed as comments.

All these programs will get you fast track to CORD funding and offer incubation space and a variety of training programs. However, their most valuable asset is exposure to like minded entrepreneurs for a 12 month period.

Attended an ISA/Microsoft BizSpark Event tonight at the IBEC offices. BizSpark for those of you living under a rock is the super cool new program for Startups from Microsoft.

The short story is if you are less than 3 years old and have less than 1m USD in revenues then you get all the good juice you need to build your application on a Microsoft Tech stack (i.e. Silverlight, Visual Studio, Expression Studio, SQL Server, SharePoint and BizTalk).

More importantly, the package includes runtime production licenses so you can deploy this stuff on a Windows platform provider (e.g Blacknight, Hosting365 or DigiWeb)  for just about nothing. Once they get Windows Azure onto prime time you will also be able to host your application there.

They are also pushing the additional services associated with BizSpark that include support and promotion of your service. Engaging with the the Microsoft Emerging Business Team is this area is well worth while as 28 of the 41 acquisitions that Microsoft made last year were recommended by those guys (and girls).

To signup for BizSpark goto http://www.microsoft.com/BizSpark/. You will need to be endorsed my a Network partner, these are all listed when you subscribe for the Startup service.  I recommend the Digital Media Forum myself. The signup page is still a little funky, but I’m sure MSFT will sort that out eventually.

Top tip for Microsoft, Get Django and Rails ported to SQLServer 2008 so that those frameworks work out of the box with SQLServer.

Also people desperately need to know what Azure pricing will be like before committing fully to the platform.

BizSpark is good for the Irish Startup Community and there is absolutely no downside to signing up so get on board for a pile of free software and support.

Pat would be proud. I’ve been talking about Social Media and Online Social Networking at the ICAI. I did a gig in Belfast yesterday, Dublin this morning and Cork tomorrow morning.

Feel free to swing by the Clarion Hotel in Cork for a free Coffee tomorrow, I’ll be on around 9.45pm.

Slides are below, but you have to be there to get the full effect 🙂

I dropped into the sensational Bloggers Lunch yesterday evening. Niall Harbison from ifoods.tv cooked up a storm in his flat and filled his bath with beer for good measure.

The food was absolutely delicious and double points to Niall for preparing it all in the kitchen of his flat. I didn’t manage to snap what for me was his star dish of the night, Scallops on Black Pudding, Yum!

Stuck in an airport several months ago I finally overcame my age long prejudice against a book I pigeonholed into “self help shite” when I was much younger and dumber. So I grabbed Dale Carnegie’s “How To Win Friends and Influence People” of the shelf and finally realised what I’d been missing.

I’ll quote something from the introduction from his wife which should strike a chord with bloggers everywhere,

Dale Carnegie wrote as he spoke, in an intensively exuberant, colloquial, conversational manner

I can’t think of better advice.

If you read this book (and you’re as old as me) you’ll hear lots of stuff that sounds familiar. The difference with Dale is, he said it first and its all in one convenient package.

His front page (of my edition) says it all. But the method is the key and for that you need the book itself.

• Get out of a mental rut think new thoughts, acquire new visions, discover new ambitions
• Make friends quickly and easily
• Increase your popularity
• Win people to your way of thinking
• Increase your influence, your prestige, your ability to get things done
• Handle complaints, avoid  arguments, keep your human contacts smooth and pleasant
• Become a better speaker, a more entertaining conversationalist
• Arouse enthusiasm among your associates

Do like Dale says and succeed.