The Long Debate is at hand:

Check out now the next three scholars, that will bring their expertise to the exciting debate on 11. Nov. We strongly recommend to register now, click here

Did you know: The “Long Debate” is an evening full of lively discussion and networking. Inventorium has devised a special debate format, 18 of Ireland’s key contributors and commentators have been invited to give their views and opinions. Each speaker will present his or her viewpoint for five minutes, the emerging conversations will be documented and presented on the Inventorium website.

Ron Immink

Ron is a serial entrepreneur and author of a number of best selling business books. He has started several, grown a few and sold one company. Ron has worked in entrepreneurship, training, consultancy, publishing, education, innovation and tech transfer.

In 2007, following his passion for books, new learning and entrepreneurship he started Bookbuzz™, a company that has developed an innovative, proven and highly effective learning and consultancy methodology that harnesses the collective wisdom of the organisation, using inspiring business books to stimulate ideas, design innovative strategies, improve decision making and boost fresh thinking. Clients of Bookbuzz include some leading multinationals in Europe and the USA.

At the same time he co-founded www.smallbusinesscan.com in partnership with Ulster Bank. A free and open platform where owner managers can create and share the business knowledge, the insights, the experience and the contact networks needed to generate new growth for their own business and create a new beginning for the economy. Smallbusinesscan is now the fastes growing business support website in the UK and Ireland.

His expertise is around entrepreneurship, story telling, narrative, dialogue learning, social learning, social media and collective wisdom.

Ron Immink

John Collins

John Collins is assistant business editor with The Irish Times. A journalist for 16 years he specialises in technology, business and internet issues. He has been contributing to the paper’s popular technology pages since 2005 and has been on staff since early 2007.
He was the Irish Internet Association’s Net Visionary Technology Journalist of the Year in 2006. Prior to joining The Irish Times he was a freelance journalist contributing to publications including The Sunday Business Post, Computerscope, Business Plus, Ireland.com and Smart Company.

John was editor of PC Live! Ireland’s best selling computer and Internet magazine for five years. He has been online since 1995, and has written for a range of Irish and international publications including The Irish Independent, Silicon Republic, Business & Finance, TVB Europe, The Web Magazine, i-D, Hot Press and Apple Report.
John has commented on technology and business issues for a range of radio and TV programmes for both RTÉ and independent stations, as well as co-presenting the RTÉ2 series, TechTV.

John Collins

Theo Lynn

Theo Lynn is a lecturer in Management in the Dublin City University Business School where he teaches at postgraduate level on Strategic Management. Theo holds a Ph.D. in Law from University College Dublin and the title of his thesis was “The Irish Corporate Governance System and the Role of Irish Occupational Pension Funds as Institutional Monitors”. He is the Programme Chairperson for the MSc in Business Management, is Deputy Director (Technology) of the Learning, Innovation and Knowledge Research Centre (www.link.dcu.ie) and is Principal Investigator on the Global Grid for Learning project (www.globalgridforlearning.org).

Theo Lynn

A unique format and networking opportunity: We invite you to this very special discussion The Long Debate which will take place as part of the Inventorium project, during Dublin Innovation Festival. Make The Long Debate your key event in Dublin Innovation Festival

When?

The Long Debate, Inventorium,

part of Dublin Innovation Festival

11 Nov

Doors open 18.00

Debate: 19.00-22.00

NDRC, Crane St, Digital Hub, Dublin 8

Registration for this event is essential

The Long Debate: Speakers (13-15) out now – expertise at hand! – Ron Immink, Theo Lynn & John Collins is a post from: Connector

A unique format and networking opportunity

As part of the Inventorium project, The Long Debate will take place on the 11 Nov during the festival, at NDRC. An evening of lively discussion and networking, Inventorium have devised a special debate format, 18 of Ireland’s key contributors and commentators have been invited to give their views and opinions. Each speaker will present his or her viewpoint for five minutes, the emerging conversations will be documented and presented on the Inventorium website.

Make The Long Debate your key event in Dublin Innovation Festival

When?

The Long Debate, Inventorium,

part of Dublin Innovation Festival

11 Nov

Doors open 18.00

Debate: 19.00-22.00

NDRC, Crane St, Digital Hub, Dublin 8

Registration for this event is essential

The Long Debate – get involved now: A unique format and networking opportunity. is a post from: Connector

We’re giving  away free tickets to the Appys which take place in the Gibson Hotel on the 4th of November.  The Appys are Ireland’s only dedicated awards ceremony for mobile and web application development and design.

It should be a great night so if you fancy coming along please contact conor[@] connector.ie.

Win tickets to the Appys is a post from: Connector

Ronan Higgins is founder and CEO of Locle.com, a company specialising in location-based social networking. In addition to this he manages and runs Appsie.  Appsie is  a Dublin-based mobile software development team of 4 highly qualified full-time developers who create tailor made mobile applications.

Recently Ronan set up a Bluetooth messaging welcome for the guests at Connector #Appy Hour is also the owner of a great party house in Rathmines where I also reside.  An expert in all things mobile and a nice guy too!  Thanks Ronan and here he is with his business partner Pieter Oonk in April 2009 @ Connector No.9.

Connect with Ronan Higgins from appsie.com! is a post from: Connector

Connector is organising another great networking event at the Nokia Pop-Up Shop in Grafton St. on Thursday, July 1st at 6.30pm.  We’re calling it ‘Connector #Appy Hour’ as our 23rd monthly event will have guest speakers, including Anthony Lawless from Nokia, and Edward Conmy from the Appy Awards.  These new awards are for the best mobile apps in Ireland & the judges will be announced at the event.

We will have a raffle to give away some great prizes amongst the attendees. There will be also some fun networking games, music entertainment, food and drink throughout the evening.

To come to this event you will need to sign up to our Facebook Event and we look forward to seeing you at Connector #Appy Hour!

Connector #Appy Hour @ Nokia Pop-Up Store is a post from: Connector

This is an interesting  article from the Burson Marsteller Blog….

‘Following in the footsteps of consumers, large international companies are now becoming active participants in social media. A recent Burson-Marsteller study found that 79 percent of the largest 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using at least one of the most popular social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or corporate blogs.’

Read more about Innovation_and_insights on Burson-Marsteller’s Blog:

Burson-Marsteller Fortune Global 100 Social Media Study is a post from: Connector

A few months ago I was at the launch of the Vodafone 360 with guest star Dita Von Teese and given a Vodafone 360 phone to test.  I would like to express my thanks to Vodafone for the opportunity to test drive the phone which was supported by TV advertising in late 2009.

As I am lucky enough to have used all the top smart phones in recent months, I thought this phone was ‘ok’.  This Samsung phone which has a completely different operating system which takes a while to get used to I could not give it the time it needed to be mastered.  Furthermore the selection & presentation of Apps definitely will have to improve. 

I think with Vodafone starting to sell the iPhone which has 140,000 Apps, I wonder will the Vodafone 360 will be relegated to a mid-range phone?  What did you thinkofthe Vodafone 360?

Vodafone 360 connections is a post from: Connector

It’s only hours for the Connector Christmas Party, one of the greatest events in the whole year and a must-be if you want to be connected.
As all you know Connector runs monthly meetings where people can make professional and personal connections offline. But we want people to keep their connections online as well and to encourage that, we will raffle two wonderful social mobile phones, and all the benefits will go to the Temple Street Children’s Hospital.

The winners will get an INQ Mini 3G, courtesy of the mobile network 3. This little treat that we are offering has an authentic Twitter application, which will let you be always on’ and send tweets and retweets via the internet rather than using SMS.
It weights only 90 gr., has a 2 megapixels camera, usb and bluetooth and it also includes a ‘plug and play’ HSDPA modem enabling high-speed wireless broadband on PCs and Macs. And all this things in a tiny candy bar shaped phone with the coolest design!

Connect online by phone is a post from: Connector

Last week, we were proud to announce that one of our own, Izabela Zelazna, was chosen to compete in the Meteor Apprentice competition. Izabela has written a diary entry about her first task in the competition:

My first task in the Meteor Apprentice competition was all about social media. We were given a week to get as many fans as we could for Facebook fan page.

‘Use all possible social media and scream about your case’, my friend told me. Scream is good, I thought, however I didn’t want to create too much noise. I think that people are usually reluctant and slow to join Facebook Fan Pages these days, not wanting their News feed to be spammed.

First of all, I decided to record nice and friendly videos and post them on my Facebook page and YouTube channel. I wanted to spread the word through the networks and personal contacts that I have made so far. Knowing that Meteor is about entertainment, engagement and humour, I wanted to incorporate it all, and make people interact and smile.

The number of people signing in was not impressive though. Facebook may have had spectacular results in reaching 100mln users in 9 months but it was essential for me to understand that my audience is dispersed and the key is to have an interesting twist and share worthwhile content.

With that in mind, half way through the task, I decided to use another angle –to position myself as a foreigner, who aspires to succeeed and boldly goes for a high profile job. I sent this positive release to the press and it worked perfectly. My press release got coverage in two Polish newspapers in Ireland (Gazeta.ie, Polski Express) as well as Polish newspaper in Poland – Gazeta Krakowska. I also asked my international friends from Amsterdam for support.

So after all the effort and campaigning, I ended up with nearly 780 of the most diverse and multinational fans in the whole competition.

This has great potential. What should the next step be?

Diary of a Meteor Apprentice is a post from: Connector

I was at a great lunch reception in Bentleys on St. Stephens Green on Thursday at the launch of Vodafone 360.  Why was it so good ?  Well the amazingly stunnalicious Dita Von Teese was there along with loads of people I know including my ex-colleagues at Vodafone and bunch of fellow bloggers & tech journalists too.  Plus the food was great, location perfect and it was a sunny day in Dublin so thanks to Niall Harbison for the invite & Fred for the great video below.

Pictured is the internationally renowned burlesque star and style icon, Dita von Teese who is surrounded by a 360 degree wall of mirrors. Unfortunately she only seemed to be in the room for a couple of minutes and no attempt seemed to be made to accomodate photo bloggers to get photos of her or with her.

As for the service, it looked great on the touch screen devices it was demonstrated on and it defintely something I’d like to try as my operator O2 don’t have anthing quite like it.  In essence, Vodafone 360 is a brand new set of internet services for your mobile and PC which gathers all your friends, communities, entertainment and personal favourites in one place.  At its heart Vodafone 360 has the most personal address book available, bringing together all of your contacts from your mobile phone, social networks and other internet accounts.

Connecting with the stunnalicious Dita Von Teese is a post from: Connector