Digital Media Island

We’re delighted to announce the next Digital Island Meetup. We’re heading to Derry to the Awakening Creative Entrepreneurship Conference Next week. This is a brilliant event and the Noribic guys have exceled themselves in putting it together. Check out the schedule here, and you should see some of the fantastic speakers participating here.

If you haven’t signed up already then go do it now. Register here.

The ACE event in the Maiden City looks like it should be great fun and we’re delighted to support it with a fringe event. Should be a bit of fun

What:
Digital Island Meetups are part of the IntertradeIreland funded All Island Digital Media Network and are completely free thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, and open to anyone who wants to attend. Come along and meet new people, and make new contacts and have some fun too.

When & Where:
26th March from 7PM • Halo pantry & Grill • Derry

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.

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Hey there folks I’m delighted to announce that the schedule for the Innovation Accelerator event on the 24th of February is now live. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a great lineup with some great speakers drawn from a wide area of the business, software and startup communities.

As you probably know this event is aimed at helping people get the business part of their technology business going. There will be talks on marketing, sales, company setup and HR as well as talks form startup founders about their experiences and lessons learned.

There will also be an opportunity to Demo your technology business at the event. More on that soon…

You can check out who’s attending and register through the links at the top of this article.

The Irish Tech sector is really starting to show it’s mettle, now especially considering we’re in a downturn. There are so many great examples of this recently, from the funding raised by dbTwang, iFoods (now look and taste) and Revahealth not to mention the Havoc guys new venture, to the recent MAXroam partnership with Dopplr.

And now Conor over at Web2Ireland has a fantastic opportunity for those looking for mentoring and investment. My advice, send your business details or proposition in, what do you have to lose?

(Update: I did mean this as more of a question related to Conor’s post)

A Doppler Shift is that change in tone of a sound as a car whizzes past and changes from low pitch as it comes towards you to high pitch as it goes away from you. That’s what seems to be happening with Irish Startup Cubic Telecom and there MAXroam service as they team up with one of the biggest operators in the social travel market Dopplr to pull away from their competition.  

Pat Phelan, the CEO of Cubic Telecom, is “the Tinkerman” of the Irish startup scene with a hand in many of the recent web successes through advice, involvement or inspiration. His company, through it’s MAXroam offering, is one of the world’s first and largest suppliers of travel SIMs, which abolish high roaming fees that are usually charged by incumbent Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). Within nine months of its launch in September 2007, MaxRoam had saved travelers more than $1 million on their roaming mobile bill and almost $1.7 million to date. These savings will now be extended to Dopplr members with a Dopplr SIM and website to manage their mobile usage while traveling.

The partnership was announced today as Dopplr launched it’s online store with MAXroam as one of the key products. The store, which is available to all Dopplr travelers, contains a number of special offers on products and services to make travel better.

Speaking about the partnership, Cubic Telecom’s CEO Pat Phelan stated “We’re delighted to be working with Dopplr. MaxRoam’s SIM card will enable Dopplr travelers to save a minimum of 70% on their mobile travel bills.” MAXroam sims will be available in Dopplr’s online travel shop.

Dopplr helps you make more of your travels by sharing your future trips privately with friends and colleagues. The service then highlights coincidences, for example, telling you that three people you know will be in Tokyo when you will be there too. You can use Dopplr on your personal computer or mobile phone. It links with many popular online calendars and social networks.

Cubic Telecom also offers a 100% white label platform where MVNOs can customize everything as their own, including having their own branding of SIMs and web portal, plus customized audio prompts and short-codes. So if you’re interested in getting into this market or even in having something like this for your own travellers why not give them a ring.

It really looks like Pat Phelan and his team in Cork are taking Cubic Telecom to the next level and they are both a beacon for the tech sector here in terms of what a startup can achieve and also highlights the level of innovation and entrepreneurship out there in Irish companies.

Digital Media Island indeed…

In budget 2009 back in October that slipped under the radar for a few people so I thought I’d review it again here. I find it amazing that this has been discussed so little amongst the startup community. From the Budget.gov site

3 Year Tax exemption for Start-up Companies

New start-up companies which commence trading in 2009 will be exempt from tax, including capital gains, in each of the first three years to the extent that their tax liability in the year does not exceed €40,000.

This measure is being examined to ensure it is in compliance with EU rules on State-Aid. Further details of this incentive will be contained in the Finance Bill.

What this means is that a new company starting to trade in 2009 can earn up to €320,000 in profit per year (tax liability of €40,000) without paying corporation tax. It’s important to note that that is profit NOT turnover and it also includes capital gains tax. This is a per year allocation so, as I understand it and please correct me if I’m wrong, this means that a startup commencing to trade next year could make €960,000 in profit in the next 3 years and not pay corporation tax.

I’ll be watching this to see how it runs through the compliance stage but it’s definitely good news for the startups and entrepreneurs. Might even encourage a few startups from abroad to locate here. Admittedly it doesn’t help those who’ve already started trading but we rarely get everything.

This brings us back to a popular subject of late which is what can be done to foster innovation started by Pat Phelan on his blog in the run up to our panel on the subject which had some more interesting feedback on the ranging from the lack of angel investment, lack of venture capital, difficulties in dealing with Enterprise Ireland and the huge issues of lack of adequate broadband coverage. I’ll be interested in hearing what Joe Drumgoole of Putplace has to say on the subject at an upcoming IIEA roundtable.

Neil Leyden has ideas regarding a Digital Content Sevices Centre which is an interesting idea and one I’d be interested in hearing peoples views on.

How can this and other measures help foster innovation in Ireland? What measures would you like to see specifically? Can we use innovative homegrown companies to navigate the country to calm waters in these stormy economic times? I’d love your thoughts…

I saw this tweet from Ryan Carson and I had to give him a call to ask him the story about it.

Ryans been a big Fan of the Irish Scene since the FOWA roadtrip and Web2ireland Demobar last year. So I guess he final got himself an excuse to come back.

When: Future of Web Apps comes to Dublin Friday March 6th 2009! 10am – 5pm

Where: Liberty Hall Theatre Eden Quay, Dublin

After Party: The Dandelion Club and Digital Island Meetup should be doing something with them for that.

There will be a limited number of seats at €115 on a first come first served basis then it goes up to €175.

This is the event link but it’s not live till tomorrow (Thursday 13th): http://events.carsonified.com/fowa/2009/dublin

They really have some great speakers too!

• David Heinemeier Hansson – 37signals and Ruby on Rails
• Blaine Cook – ex Twitter & Yahoo! Brickhouse
• Mike Butcher – TechCrunch
• UK Contrast.ie – UseQwitter.com
• Ryan Carson – Carsonified and DropSend
• Matt Ogle – Last.fm Simon
• Simon Willison – Co-creator of the Django web framework
• Emma Persky – TrampolineSystems.com

It’s great to see these kind of conferences coming to Ireland and shining a light on some of the really great things going on here. I hope to see you there.

Ok folks two things. First of all there’s a change of venue for the Digital Island Meetup on the 6th of November. We’re heading to the (very posh) Four Seasons Hotel in Ballsbridge for the meetup. Sorry for the late change but it’ll be worth it.

The second thing is that Microsoft will be launching a new program for startups at the Digital Island Meetup. Details of the program are under wraps at the moment but Paul Rellis, GM Microsoft Ireland and Cliff Reeves, GM Microsoft Global Emerging Business Team will be there to tell us about the program. So we can safely assume that this is a big announcement for Microsoft.

Here’s some of the admittedly vague details of the program. The announcement is at 6:30pm so get their early to get all the juicy bits and don’t worry it won’t drag on.

Members of the program will get

1. All the software and tools they need to both develop and deploy their solution,
2. Technical and business support
3. Lots more visibility to potential customers, partners and investors.
4. The program also offers start-ups in Ireland and Northern Ireland some great discounts on hardware and hosting packages

After they do the launchy thing we’ll be having a short panel discussion on fostering start-ups and innovation in Ireland, featuring some local start-ups, and representatives from industry bodies and even a few VCs as well. Come along and grill them if you like…

Then we’re back to MoMo territory with some short presentations from three mobile startups and then we’re into OpenDemo and networking.

Go signup to come along now so we know who’s coming.

Hi there folks I’m delighted to announce the launch of the Digital Media Breakfast events which will roll out to smaller places over the next while.

Where: Cafe Urbano, IFSC, Dublin – Tuesday, 4th November, 7:30am-ish

We do evening events regularly but we want to offer more. We want to run a smaller event at the other end of the day for Digital people who can’t make it in the evenings.

The theme of the event is open for now but there will be a Q&A about the progress of the network project and the Digital Media Forum and I’d love your suggestions ideas and inputs for future events and initiatives.

We will be running another breakfast in Dublin for Enterprise week on Friday 21st on the theme of “Funding in a tightening economy” more details to follow on that one.

The format will initially be relatively free flowing with some networking and informal discussions. That’s not fixed though so we’re open to the idea of this becoming seminar based or otherwise. We’d love your input into what type of event this eventually becomes. So come along and add your views.

Coffee and pastries will be provided and some good networking to boot. See you there…

Please leave a comment below if you’re coming. (Gives us an idea of numbers)

Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials program has run for some time in the US and more recently, in 2007, it kicked off in Europe. The program is aimed at helping Startups get going and then to help them scale their activities as they grow in a cost effective way. I ran into Sun Startup Essentials EMEA head Stewart Townsend recently at the FOWA conference and here’s what he had to say about the program and their reasons for targeting Ireland as one of the first places to come to as they spread the program across Europe.

AM (Anton Mannering): Hi Stewart you run Sun’s Startup Essentials program in the EMEA region. How long has Startup Essentials been going elsewhere?

ST (Stewart Townsend): Globally it was launched in November 2006 in the US and came to Europe on December 5th 2007.

AM: Who that we’d know has been a client? Give me a few examples..

ST: People like Last.fm, Glasses Direct and fav.ot.it are just some of the services people might know that are Sun Startup Essentials clients.

AM: What problems do you help solve or alleviate for startups?

ST: Discount hardware down to a startup price, so that they can gain access to Enterprise class engineered servers at startup prices, with a global support practice, thus you can ring up, if there is a problem and talk to an engineer. (Here’s Fav.or.it CEO Nick Halstead talking about his experience with Sun and the support they’ve given him)

We also give startups who require hosting, access to discounted hosting for cloud computing, colocation, dedicated and managed hosting, making it easy to scale from Day 1, and we’ll continue talking to them about how to scale their company. (Stewart lists what they offer, I’ve listed it here so you can read it easily)

• FREE technical support, ask a Sun engineer questions on MySQL, Glassfish, and get an answer, to your problem
• Introductions to investors and capital houses.
• Discounts on the latest events…..
• Community hosting offers – FREE hosting for FB, MySpace, Opensocial

Each startup is different so I try to offer as much as I can then tailor where required, if someone wants to grow their business or a channel, I can introduce them to our sales team or channel to market.

AM: Why are you getting into the irish ecosystem now?

ST: We have been running the programme in the UK, France, Germany and Israel for 8 months to trial it, and make certain we have the right offering for the market, now we have all in place,then we are growing out across EMEA over the next two months, and I made certain that Ireland was on the first growth output, as it has such a hot vibrant startup community, that Ive wanted to help and support for such a long time

AM: What is Suns philosophy on this? What are you trying to achieve?

ST: In terms of Startup Essentials, we want to help support the community at large and give them access to our Open Source stack and Enterprise class offerings, so that when they grow and scale, they are prepared for it, and have an infrastructure in place that will mean they wont fail, whilst also by introducing them to our large startup network they can grow as a business as well, and thus benefit not just technically but commercially as well.

AM: And do you have any specific goals for the program in Ireland?

ST: Help grow and support as many startups as possible.

AM: Will there be some sort of official Launch in Ireland? When will it be?

ST: The programme is live in Ireland now at http://ie.sun.com/startupessentials/. We just need to organise a launch event or activity to officially wet the babies head.

AM: Well we’ll see if we can give you a hand with that…

END

So the program is live now in Ireland and it’s free to sign up. It’s definitely worth checking out as their definitely seem to be some great benefits to the program as described here. I’ll certainly be keeping a keen eye on the developments here and I’d love your feedback on any wins and losses.