24th Feb should be a great day. As time draws nearer for Innovation Accelerator more of the line up is being confirmed. It’s great to get to work with some of these people but as if the group of speakers already confirmed wasn’t good enough, we have another group now confirmed who are absolutely brilliant. Check these guys out…

Niall Harbison – Niall Harbison started his career as a chef in Ireland’s premier restaurant at the time, Peacock Alley, under the guidance of Michelin Star chef Conrad Gallagher. Niall became the youngest Head Chef in Ireland of a fine dining establishment in 2001 when he took the reigns at Lloyd’s Brasserie at the age of 20. Niall is now the resident chef and co-founder of ‘Look and Taste’ website which provides free online video recipes with professional chefs and a social community for food lovers. It has already won a web award in its native Ireland by receiving a Golden Spider in late 2007 and in May 2008 it was recognised as the 3rd best European Web2.0 startup this year.

Pat Phelan – Pat Phelan has been involved in the telecoms arena for over 10 years and has deep experience in both the US and European markets. His first step into the market was the building of the first callshop and internet café software, a successful product still in use today by over 100 internet cafés worldwide. Pat launched Ireland’s first independently owned phones cards in 1999 and continues to trade in this market in a numbers of countries, with the business hitting 5-7 million minutes termination per month. Over the past three years Pat has run back end on a number of incredibly successful products, including one which sells to this day onboard Ryanair. He now sees himself as a telecoms disruptor and a champion of the underdog against the ruling telecomms companies. He lives in Cork, Ireland but spends almost three months per year on the West Coast of the USA. His numerous contacts at telecom’s highest levels in the USA and Europe enable him to flirt between the boardroom and the coalface.

Emily Tully – Emily Tully is a former newsreader, editor and reporter with national radio station Today Fm. After more then 6 years receiving PR material as a journalist, Emily decided to return to Public Relations, where she first began her career in 2001. To date, Emily has worked in the newsrooms of East Coast FM, Newstalk and Today FM. She has trained as a Public Affairs Officer for Irish Aid’s Rapid Response Corps. In the field of PR, she’s worked with clients such as Sustainable Energy Ireland, Ryanair, Independent Newspapers, BlueMetrix, Embassy of Brazil, Louth Local Authorities, the International Puppet Festival of Ireland and Omniscout Ireland. Emily provides advice and expertise on all aspects of public relations, media activity and online PR, specialising in in PR campaigns for smaller budgets and for start-ups.

Joe Drumgoole – Joe Drumgoole is software industry veteran with over twenty years experience in building commercial software at companies both large (DEC, Nomura, Oracle) and small (CR2, Cape Clear, PutPlace). His most recent venture is as founder and CTO of PutPlace.com, an online backup service for home users. Joe is a regular speaker at conferences and was one of the first users of Amazon’s Cloud Computing services when they launched in 2006. PutPlace.com is now completely hosted in the Amazon cloud and continues to reap the benefits of being architected from scratch for “cloud computing”.

David Petherick – Described by the BBC in 2007 as the world’s first Digital Biographer, David Petherick has co-founded several companies in his home city of Edinburgh, including Russian Communications (1993), NewsBase (1995) and Clarocada (2005). All focus on making words make sense. He currently is UK Contributing Editor for http://TheNextWeb.com, based in Amsterdam, blogs at http://digitalbiographer.com and improves online reputation and visibility for ambitious entrepreneurs and savvy corporations. He is one of 237 authors of the ebook, hardback and paperback ‘Age of Conversation 2′ the proceeds of which all go to Variety, the childrens charity.

Mark Simons – Mark Simons has helped some of Ireland’s most successful software companies to grow sales over the last 20 years. Mark spent eight years at IONA Technologies, where he opened and ran offices in Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. At Kindle Banking Systems, Mark led sales efforts in a number of emerging markets in Eastern Europe. Previously he had been sales and marketing director of Trintech, where he established its original sales operations in Ireland and Germany.

Gordon Wilson – Gordon Wilson is a Chartered Accountant, working as a Director of Corporate Finance and IT Development at Hilary Haydon & Company. Gordon heads up a dynamic team of accountants in providing professional advice and consultancy services to a broad client base on a diverse range of issues, from mergers, acquisitions and disposals, business start-ups, corporate restructuring and refinancing, to consulting on IT and Management Information Systems for clients.

The event is really starting to look like it’ll be a bit special and I for one am really looking forward to it. I’m buzzed about hearing from an incredible range of speakers on a huge range of subjects for early stage businesses.

Head on over here to register or check out who else is going here.

See you there.