Digital Media Island

There is one thing that gets me buzzing before events is seeing new products and services for the first time. So we’re very lucky as we’re in Cork tonight and three, YES THREE new services will, as I understand it, be demoed for the first time at the event.

SnapScribe - SnapScribe turns your photos into beautiful books. It is an online service which lets you turn your photo collection into a beautiful photobook. The software is currently at ‘Alpha’ stage

Decisions for Heroes - Helping emergency services save more lives by making better decisions. The service is aimed at helping rescue services make better logistical decisions.

TweetTweet - Tweet Tweet is a WordPress plugin that archives the Twitter conversation, and also sends notification texts when replies or direct messages are received.

I’ll be talking to the people behind them tonight and I’ll be bringing you some more info and reviews and maybe even an interview or two.

Hi guys we’re looking for a venue for the Cork Meetup on the 28th of August.

We’re looking for a medium sized venue with a bit of a cool vibe. Those of you who have been to the Odessa Club  or 4 Dame Lane in Dublin or even The Living Room in Galway for previous events will know the type of place I’m looking for.

All suggestions are welcome and thanks in advance.

Update:

I’ve gone with the most popular suggestion which was the Cork International Airport Hotel.

Thanks a million to everyone for the suggestions.

So we’re heading to the REAL capital for a meetup at the end of August. The Corkonians are well known for their innovation and there are lots of cool startups down there. Should be a bit of fun.

What:
Digital Island Meetups are completely free thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, and open to anyone who wants to attend. There may even be cash behind the bar on the night! Come along and meet new people, and make new contacts and have some fun too.

When & Where:
28th August from 7:30PM • Cork International Airport Hotel • Cork
Dress code, for people who care about such things, is whatever you like.

The OpenDemo will return for those who want feedback on cool stuff they’re doing right now only 8 spaces but if a lot of people are interested we might expand it. Go register to demo now slots are allocated on a first come first served basis.

Sponsors:
Sponsors get to support a great event but also will get promotion with links and logos via posts on Digital Media Island and via announcements at the event itself although we’re flexible and willing to work with people to run the best events possible.

We’re looking for sponsors right now so please drop me a line at anton [at] digitalmediaforum [dot] net for details.

Who’s coming?

RSVP:
This event is absolutely free as always so please register below so you can let us know you are coming and we can ensure we know who you are.  Thanks, and we’ll see you there

Despite the rain and the low numbers I really have to say it was a superb meetup on Wednesday in Galway.

It was brilliant to meet up again with James Gallagher, Ina O’Murchu and Mick Lohan. Naturally with Ina in the room the Semantic web was a topic for discussion but unfortunately she had to run off early. She tells me she’ll be blogging regularly again shortly after her move to the London/San Francisco to join Rummble so I’ll wish her the best with that.

I had a great time chatting with Ben Sykes of Cisco a recent transplant to Galway from Silicon Valley. From chefing to showbiz (he worked on American Beauty among other things) to Microsoft and now helping Cisco’s unified communication effort we had a blast talking about a few of his projects using RFID and also in the web advertising space and of course social networks. Kudos to Martha Rotter for pointing him at the event. He also dragged Cian Walsh along, who he introduced as “a first class icon designer”. Cian proceeded to fill me in on the problems of designing in a medium where literally every pixel counts. Checkout afterglow.ie to see some of his work.

Also in the mix Gerry Cahill and and David Kelly. Gerry is a consultant and also an Enterprise Ireland advisor and is a great source of experience and knowledge having worked previously in senior management at Nortel amongst other places. David has an interesting take on simple CRMs for beauty salons and I look forward to hearing more about it in Cork as he say’s he’ll be coming along to the next Meetup.

All in all despite the rain and the small numbers a great night. See you in Cork at the end of August start of September for the next one.

So TechLudd has moved to the Digital Media Forum and has been rebranded as the Digital Island Meetup. Nothing’s changed except we hope to bring you even more and better events from now on. This is our first new event and we hope to see you there in Galway.

What:
TechLudd events are completely free thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, and open to anyone who wants to attend. There may even be cash behind the bar on the night! Come along and meet new people, and make new contacts and have some fun too.

When & Where:
From 7:30PM • Upstairs at The Living Room • Bridge Street, Galway
Dress code, for people who care about such things, is whatever you like.

RSVP:
This event is absolutely free as always so please go register so you can let us know you are coming and we can ensure we know who you are.  Thanks, and we’ll see you there!

The OpenDemo will return for those who want feedback on cool stuff they’re doing right now only 8 spaces but if a lot of people are interested we might expand it. Go register to demo now slots are allocated on a first come first served basis.

Sponsors:
Sponsors get to support a great event but also will get promotion with links and logos via posts on Digital Media Island and via announcements at the event itself although we’re flexible and willing to work with people to run the best events possible.

We’re looking for sponsors right now so please drop me a line at anton [at] digitalmediaforum [dot] net for details.

Technorati Tags: techludd,digital island,digital media forum,galway,opendemo

Digital Island Meetups (TechLudd)

Hi there folks first an announcement the Digital Island Meetup will be the new name for the TechLudd events now that they have come into the Digital Media Forum. Techludd Galway had been due for July but had to be put back because of the Arts Festival and Race Week.

The Galway Digital Island Meetup will be on Upstairs in The Living Room, Bridge Street on August 6th from 7pm registration will open shortly. stay tuned for that.

Digital Media Breakfasts

The Digital Media Breakfast events will be launching next week in Dublin. The venue and details will be announced later today.

This initiative is designed to bring a smaller group of people together for networking and is intended to help the network reach out to people and companies in smaller clusters around the island.

The format will be more structured with short seminars on valuable issues, networking and of course breakfast (coffee and pastries most likely).

Muzu TV were one of nine companies that demoed recently at the Techludd-Techcrunch meetup CrunchLudd.

You may have heard about this already (it was mentioned by web2ireland amongst others) but in case you missed it, out of that event the Dublin based startup have had some fantastic coverage in both TechCrunch UK & Ireland and in the main TechCrunch.com blogs.

Read more here on Tech Crunch UK and here for the main TechCrunch take

(Note: For those that read this blog that may not be aware, TechCrunch is one of the biggest technology blogs in the world.)

The Digital Media Forum is always working to try and bring value to companies in the Digital space. Digital Media in Ireland is an emerging sector and because of this many if not most businesses in this sector are early stage companies who need as much help and support as possible to reach there goals.

Access to top business experts and good advice are critical to the process but can at times be expensive and difficult to achieve and as Joe Drumgoole learned at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Franciso you can’t be too prepared when pitching. Opportunities to fine tune your pitch and proposition and then have mentors from highly successful companies work with you on improving your company are extremely valuable. Enter the Digital Media Panel.

The Digital Media Panel draws panelists from different sources depending on who the applicants pitching are. These include:

1. Our Listed Corporate sponsors
2. Experts in Digital Media tailored to the particular company
3. Venture Capitalists
4. Successful Digital Media Entrepreneurs

For even more details please feel free to contact us

Applications

Applications are open now for the first panel in September so please fill out the online application form.

Applications close on the 30th of July so don’t delay as there are only 4 places on each panel.

Supported by

It’s great to see a group of great Irish companies getting the attention they deserve in the press. Marie Boran of Silicon Republic came along to the last CrunchLudd event and used the opportunity to connect with several of the “new wave of Irish Digital Media companies” that were demoing at the event. The result was this article in which several entrepreneurs had the opportunity to give their views on the current crop of companies and the issues they face.

Check out the article here on www.independent.ie

This kind of coverage for companies that demo at the events makes it all worthwhile and Kudos to Marie for getting in to talk to these companies when the opportunity arose. There are some great stories amongst these companies and hopefully this’ll help encourage more coverage of Irish Startups.

Eircom Innovation Fund has announced it’s winners finally and I’m delighted but not surprised to see two of the companies who demoed from the last CrunchLudd event named as winners. Obviously that has nothing to do with them winning but it just goes to show the great level of companies demoing at the events. Congratulations to all the winners and we wish then every success and will continue to support and try and help them going forward…

TouristR

TouristR who demoed at the meetup at the end of June when TechCrunch UK & Ireland came to town at the end of June is an integrated full-service trip-planning advisor, which cuts out the online information overload and minimises planning problems. It not only helps the traveller to plan a more complex travel itinerary - such as a trip with multiple destinations on a fixed budget and timeline – but it also draws on content submitted by a community of users which will help the traveller to decide on a destination by getting a sense of the type of experience available at their chosen destination.

A new breed of unique Web 2.0 travel service, TouristR will feature stories, adventures and photographs of destinations submitted by users as well as aid the traveller who needs to factor in multiple elements to their trip such as budgetary, geographical, temporal and other personal preferences and restrictions.

Locle

Locle have demoed twice at TechLudd events now back in April and at the June event when TechCrunch were in town. Locle is a social mapping application for mobile phones that combines information from your mobile handset address book with social networks such as Bebo, Facebook and MySpace to create mapping services that show users where their friends are. Locle is an enhanced mobile web experience that facilitates “here’s where I am, and here’s where my friends are” for social networks and groups.

Locle is a combination of a web service and downloadable mobile phone software. When the Locle mobile client is activated, it identifies the user’s location and presents the location of “friends” who also use the application. Friends can be both contacts from your mobile phone address book or contacts from your social networks. As well as letting you know where your “friends” are, Locle can also keep you up to date on relevant information to your location such as local events, news, weather and provide details on local restaurants, cinemas and ATM machines etc.
Locle is a Business Expansion Scheme qualified investment.

HeyStaks

HeyStaks is a new approach to Web search that helps searchers to share their search experiences with friends, colleagues, and other searchers. HeyStaks is a browser plugin that works with Google and provides users with the ability to create so-called “search staks” as a way to organise and share their Google searches. For example, a group of friends planning a holiday abroad might create a “Holiday 2008” search stak. As they individually search for travel, accommodation and entertainment options, their selections will be shared with each other during future searches as specially highlighted search results. In this way all of the friends can see what results have been found to be useful during earlier searches, which may help them during their own searches for that perfect holiday package.

Research shows that HeyStaks can help searchers find information more quickly and in turn allow users to create and share many different types of search staks to reflect different topics of interest. In this way search staks can provide users with access to a form of Web search that is powered by their favourite search engine but customised for a particular topic of interest, based on their own search experiences or the search experiences of others.

The HeyStaks technology has been developed by Prof. Barry Smyth’s research group in University College Dublin and is the first spin-out of the new CLARITY research centre, a €16m Science Foundation Ireland research centre combining researchers from University College Dublin, Dublin City University, and the Tyndal National Institute.

Playza

With most popular online games focused squarely at the adult gaming market, Playza is a new social gaming proposition for “Digital Natives” – our 12 to 24 year olds who have grown up in a digital media environment where mobile phones, social networking, multiplayer online gaming, and music downloading have always been the norm.

Playza is made up of a series of connected mini games in which players complete tasks and earn points. Online game players are encouraged to bring their gaming colleagues to Playza and social networkers can invite their online friends to join. The main objective of the game is to form and control player groups. By getting new members into their group, players will increase their standing and capabilities within the games. Playza users can also create their own page to host their game account and mini games. Within their page, users can create their own game groups, receive feedback and messages and post the game to their other sites or blogs such as MySpace or Facebook.

Playza combines the addictive nature of online gaming with the community features of a social networking portal.