Posted by Anton Mannering on September 22nd, 2008
For anyone travelling up to the meetup on Wednesday who may not be familiar with Belfast. The Ten Square hotel is VERY easy to find. It’s on the corner of Donegall Square Couth and Linenhall Street. Which means that is directly behind Belfast City hall. Easy-peasy.
If you’re coming from Dublin or are on that route and you don’t want to drive there are trains and buses. A 16:50 train from Connolly will get you to Belfast for about 7pm and it’s a short hop from the train station to Donegall Square. The next train is at 7pm and get’s in around 9:30pm.
If you want to go the bus route there are buses on the hour from busaras. The 5pm bus get’s you in around 7:30pm.
The last train back is at 20:10 so won’t suit if you’re attending but buses run until 2am. The 9pm bus would get you back to Dublin around 11:30pm.
More information on the public transport into Belfast is available on the translink website or from the individual services websites.
Hope that helps folks and hope to see you there.
Posted by Anton Mannering on May 2nd, 2008
As I’ve said before a lot of the most interesting hookups and meetings happen in the hallways and at the fringe events and as this was a a cross border initiative it was fantastic to see Invest NI and Enterprise Ireland co-sponsoring an All-Ireland event that attracted some very interesting people. As I said in an earlier post it was hosted at the “W” bar (very cool) and attracted a few luminaries.
I could try to list off the names of some of those luminaries but there was such a great crowd there, considering the event ran from 5 to 7pm, that I definately didn’t meet everyone. Paul May of Front has a pic on this post that’ll give you an idea. I did meet the guys from Qik.com who kindly gave me an invite to their video streaming service, also some others like Scott Rafer of Lookery, Mike Sigal of Guidewire Group and Jeff Clavier of SoftTechVC. I’m always impressed that in true silicon Valley style some of these guys were willing to open up their rolodexes to us and make connections that can help our businesses. Later in the evening we headed to the Netvibes party which was a lot of fun and ran into John Furrier as well as Pete Cashmore of Mashable and more.
All in all a great trip with many useful connections made by all involved. More news to follow on developments from the trip…
Posted by Anton Mannering on April 22nd, 2008
Yesterday I officially started working to develop the All Island Digital Media Network Project. The idea, as Neil described, is to help bring the Digital Media companies from all parts of the island together to realise real commercial opportunities both at home and abroad. It’s also about giving people a way of adding value for each other by having access to a larger local network which will in turn create an aggregated larger network locally and globally.
For those of you that know me and haven’t heard the news til now I apologise i’ve been sitting on the news mostly.
SO here we are at the start of something new for the Digital Media Forum and me. It’s gonna be big folks I can tell, maybe not from the start, but watch it move over the next few months there are quite a few things in the works. Stay tuned…
First assignment is out here in San Francisco at the Web 2.0 Expo where the Digital Media Forum are supporting a group of Irish companies from both Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. They really are a great group of companies and some great guys and girls are here already, with more arriving today. Here’s a full list of companies on the Web2expo Tour.
In other news we’ve already met some of the guys from the UK WebMission and there are some great companies there too. It was great to meet Oli Barrett of Dailynetworker.co.uk, who’s brainchild the Web Mission is as well as Mike Butcher of TechCrunch UK & Ireland and quite a few of the others with that group at early events on Monday night. Ran into Stephanie Agresta and was delighted to hear that Mairin Murray of Waddell Media had managed to get along to the Techset barbecue I pointed her at on Sunday. It was great to meet Aubrey Sabala marketing manager of Digg as well. She invited us along to the Digg event on tonight so that should be cool.
So that was arrival day of the tour, next post will cover the Workshop day and some more of the events. And I’ll be highlighting some of the companies and what they’re up to and what they’re taking from the tour as we go along. Stay tuned…
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