South African Connections

by connector on February 22nd, 2010

On Friday night I found myself at a South African business networking event in the Green Isle Hotel outside Dublin asa  guest of Patrick Dunne from Brand Experience.

The highlight was meeting some amazing kids who have some serious get up and go attitude !  I met Brittany & Robin Windvogel & their parents – Brittany (12) is a published business author alreadywith her own web site.  Her brother Robin (8) has been on trial at Manchester United so muct be one hell of a hot shot! Well done to the parents for raising such talented & ambitious kids & please see below the Soccathon organised by their dad Rowan.

South African Networking

by connector on February 19th, 2010

Good luck to our friend Patrick Dunne at the South African networking event tonight.  I might even see you there!

Connect @ Brainfood Store

by Sarai Fernandez on February 7th, 2010

The Brainfood Store focus on gathering high quality speakers and leaders in business and marketing together to discuss and share learnings and experience, and their next event is The Digital Festival, a complete new concept in conferencing which will bring to Dublin a world class international panel to talk about different areas on Digital Marketing and Communications.

The full day seminar (8.30 to 17.00) will be on Feb 24th at the Berkeley Court Hotel and the price is 375€ (+VAT) but at Connector we have got an incredible offer: 270€ +VAT (21%). If you are interested in attending to the event, go to the Brainfood Store tickets’ website and introduce the code BFSCON. This will allow you to save over 100 euros in your tickets to the Brainfood Store. Besides that, full time students can get their tickets at a very interesting price: 100€ (VAT incl.)

The speakers at this conference include Peter Kim, managing director for the Dachis Group; Shel Israel, author of ”Twitterville”; and Brent Hoberman, Co. Founder of  Lastminute.com. For more information about the speakers, check the itinerary

Connector Networking Event @ Dublin Web Summit 2

by Sarai Fernandez on February 5th, 2010

Yesterday Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, and Matt Mullenweg, founder of Wordpress, were the keynote speakers at the Dublin Web Summit in Dublin’s Trinity College. The great expectation this event created ended up in massive crowdofover 400 people.

Other speakers as Wired’s Editor-at-Large, Ben Hammersley, and former Iona CEO, Chris Horn shared their stories and insights about the current situation in front of a very mixed audience, but all interested in entrepreneurship and theInternet.

After the conferences the delegates assisted to a Networking Event organised by Connector where each attendee had a Connector coloured badge identifying the category they worked in so as to encourage conversation and create an ‘ice-breaker’.

Conor is picture with Matt from Wordpress at the No Name Bar after-after-party !  Connector is built on Wordpress so we are big fans of his creation !  Well done to Paddy Cosgrave for organising such a great event for the Dublin web scene.

Connector Weekly – 1st Feb 2010

by Sarai Fernandez on February 1st, 2010

This week at Connector … We are about to launch Connector Training Courses, to get more info click here.

Connector @ Events

Last week was great for Connector too! We had the Speed Connector, and we fundraised to support our pal Adrian Garry’s volunteering trip to Haiti. And now we’re looking for Tribes to parcitipate in our next event “Connector Tribal Love” on the 25th Feb at the Science Gallery

Conor was a guest for the Bootcamp at Stillorgan, the show run by the SFA which helps business to become more professional, more productive and more profitable, check their next venues on the website.We are going to the

ESB Des Bishop’s Gig at the Button Factory this Wednesday with 10 winners from Connector.

The second edition of the Dublín Web Summit will be on thursday, and besides high profile speakers, Connector will organise the networking party after the workshops.

Cool things are happening in Dublin the next days: The Irish Film Institute is having a free movies day on January 8th,  the Postgrad Fair on the 16th and the Dublin Central Library will host a  free workshop for jobseekers on the 25th.

Connector Links

Some links we like on the Internet… : Business Chamber, a free tool for local networking; Sagespark, a platform with lots of tools and services for small business; Bump Technologies an application for your mobile to share contact details, and 2night a website and a magazine to help you decide where the fun is going to start.

Social Media

And some news about the Social Media: A special report on Social Networking by The Economist, new data about time spent in social networking sites and a webinar run by the Irish Internet Association.

Have a look at the latest appearances on the media: On Thursday, The Irish Independent published an interview with Conor and The Sunday Times tackled Social Networking with the Conor highlighting the issue. Besides that , Conor wrote his regular column in The Digital Times and we have sent out the January eNews.

Weekly Connector – 25 Jan 2010

by Conor on January 25th, 2010

By Conor Lynch & Sarai Fernandez

It’s not easy being a Connector and last week was particularly busy with long group meetings & training.  I had seperate  meetings with ‘The Board’ in NCIRL, an  ‘Anonymous Group’ in Ranelagh & the annual meeting of the Chairs of the iia Working Groups in the Digital Hub.

I received a card from the Guinness Storehouse ‘honouring’ me with the title of ‘Ambassador’ for their 10th birthday year. I can get in free only if I bring down friends who can then get 10% off the entry ticket. That’s not very much at all for an ‘Ambassador’ to SHOUT about – a better idea might have been to invite down the Connector group for one of our monthly events & generate conversation that way ?

Events Calendar

Every week Dublin hosts so many events that it can be hard to choose. And at Connector we want all you to keep connected with the coolest events, conferences, seminars, workshops and more that are being held in the city. That’s why we will now start to issue a weekly blogpost including all the interesting stuff we have been connected with, so keep an eye out for them every week.

Dublin Midweek Movie Club

The Dublin Midweek Movie Club will be meeting on wednesday 27th to watch “Brothers”  by Irish director Jim Sheridan and starring Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Natalie Portman. After the film the group will go to The Church to discuss the movie over a drink.

As you know, we are hosting our Connector Nº 18 at Ron Blacks next Thursday January 28th. For those interested, you can take part in our second time to have ‘Speed Connector’. This is like speed dating or speed networking & you’ll have 3 minutes to connect with somebody else and then … move on! Don’t forget to bring your business cards and prepare your elevator pitch … there’s no time to waste. we will also have a ‘Connect 4 Contest’. You can register here.

Dublin Facebook Megaparty

Fun will continue on the 30th during the Second Dublin Facebook Megaparty, at the Purty Kitchen from 7.00. For more details, join the Facebook Group!

February Events

Those are the must-be in January, but you can start booking some events for February now – Connector ‘Tribal Love’ is on the 25th & is in the Science Gallery.  The Dublin Web Summit is on the 4th or the Brainfood Store the 24th. Both are conferences for the digital sector and both of them will have a very interesting networking after-party with Connector.

March Events

Want more? On March 4th the Irish Internet Association Social Media Group will have a half day event. Keep an eye in our blog for future details … have you any ideas for Connector Events? We’d love to hear from you!

Dublin Web Summit – 4th Feb 2010

by Conor on January 4th, 2010

You should get your ice skates on and get a ticket to the Dublin Web Summit 2 which looks like one of the best speaker lineups on these frosty green shores EVER !  At only €100 per ticket, these will be sold out in a matter of hours and are a snip at that price.

A major well done to the the one & only Mr. Paddy Cosgrave for pulling the DWS2 together and for being such a great supporter of Connector in recent months.

“Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, and Matt Mullenweg, founder of Wordpress, will be the keynote speakers at the Dublin Web Summit in Dublin’s Trinity College on Thursday, February 4th, 2010. They will now be joined by Wired’s Editor-at-Large, Ben Hammersley, and former Iona CEO, Chris Horn. For more details on speakers and what will be discussed at the Summit see the latest newsletter by clicking here.”

Connecting with Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Founder

by Conor on November 29th, 2009

I was at a great talk by Jimmy Wales on Friday night at Trinity College as organised by the hugely impressive young entrepreneur Paddy Cosgrave of Lectures Ireland.  Jimmy Wales is the man behind 2 of the world’s most used web sites Wikipedia & Wikia & we chatted afterwards and found him to be very interesting as you would expect!

Key takeaway statements ‘ Culture is getting smarter’ & ‘New media means new communities’.

Content is King @ The Guinness Storehouse

by Conor on November 17th, 2009

Today’s ‘Content is King’ conference in the Guinness Storehouse was a great event and thanks to Jack for inviting Connector along.

My question going into today’s talk was whether ‘Content is King’? Content is normally the likes of digital video, virals, games, podcasts, apps and what is consumed online.

I don’t believe that ‘Content is King’ unless there are more members of this Digital & Social Media royal family!  What about Conversation and Connections for starters ?  Content is what people talk about in their conversations.  However without killer creative or a media budget, the content will more than likely be lacking in views, as no one will know about it.  Having a large amount of existing social media connections also helps to spread the word.

So if Content is King, then is Conversation the Queen and Connections the Princes & Princesses ?

Is this the Digital & Social Media Royal Flush?  As it happens, I am working on a new Digital & Social Media eBook & presentation which will give my views on how to play the winning hand in this new marketing casino ;-0  Watch this space.

At the conference today, as well as showcasing some of the best international content examples, we were treated to an interview with local practitioners that included the excellent Sophie Merry, a new friend who has been down to a bunch of Connector events.  She has had over 5 million views of her funky dancing on youtube.

As Will MacInnes said it is ‘the best time in the world to be the underdog’.  You can follow the rest of the Twitter chat on the hashtag #cik which summarises some of the key learnings via @niamhsmith, @darraghdoyle & @krishnade.

Here is a video interview I made with Kodak’s Philip Scott who is … wait for it … Kodak’s Marketing Director Digital Capture & Devices and Vice President of Consumer Digital Group.  Phew !  He must have to work pretty hard to justify all that ink printed on his business cards !

Connecting @ TED X Dublin

by Rob Cumiskey on November 13th, 2009

Connector were in attendance at the second sold out TED X Dublin event in The Science Gallery last night, and a great night it was. We were privileged to see some of the most innovative and inspiring speakers in Dublin at the moment.

Speaking at the night were:

Kate Coleman, Founder of Right to Sight

Kate gave a very important speech on needless blindness and how we can make a difference in the 21st century.

Mark Leslie, Managing Director of Martello Media

Mark spoke brilliantly about IsIsm, and being open to all ideas.
Tom Hadfield, Creator of Soccer.net and heading up the Le Whif Project

Tom gave a speak on the new way to ingest food – inhalation. We were privileged to be able to try some ‘Whiffable’ chocolate.

Simon Dennehy from Perch.ie,  Ergonomic Furniture for Primary Schools

Simon Dennehy’s spoke about his work on ergonomic furniture for primary schools and its aim to rectify the fundamental problems associated with the current selection of school furniture being used in primary schools in both Ireland, and globally.

There were also some really great video presentations from TED Global throughout the night, the stand out one being from William McDonough on Cradle to Cradle Design: