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.