Watch the Dublin Web Summit ‘Live’ here on Wednesday 17th & Thursday 18th October 2012.
Over 200 international speakers and 3,000 plus attendees from 50+ countries will descend on Dublin. This event is sponsored by Enterprise Ireland. There are 5 concurrent sessions which you can watch live from 9:15am - Main Event, Cloud Session, Digital Marketing Stream, Developer Stream and Interviews.
For the first time there will be a dedicated Digital Marketing Stream .
Digital Marketing Stream Schedule
Wednesday
09:15 – Cillian Kieran, Founder & CEO of Folio & CKSK
09:30 – Alan Coleman, CEO of Wolfgang Digital
09:45 – Andrzej Moyseowicz, Strategy & Innovation Director at Saatchi & Saatchi
10:00 - Ronan Harris, Senior Director at Google
10:15 - Joshua March, Co-founder & CEO of Conversocial
10:30 – Hubert Grealish, Global Head of Brand Communications at Diageo
10:45 – Mark Henderson, General Manager of LivingSocial Ireland
11:00 - BREAK
11:30 - Niall Harbison, Co-founder of Simply Zesty
11:45 - Dharmesh Shah, Co- founder & CTO of Hubspot
12:00 - Stephen O’Leary, O’Leary Analytics
12:15 - Joe Stepniewski, Co-Founder of Skimlinks
12:30 - Jon Myers, Commercial Director at Marin Software
12:45: Silje Vallestad, CEO & Founder of Bipper
13:00 - LUNCH
14:00 – Gregor Poynton, Political Director (UK) at Blue State Digital
14:15 – Alexis Dormandy, Founder & CEO of LoveThis
14:30 – Mark Dewings, Brand & Marketing Communications for SoundCloud
14:45 – Aubrey Sabala, VP of Marketing & Communications at Sailthru
15:00 – Scott Belsky, Founder & CEO of Behance
15:15 – Mark Kornfilt, Co-founder of Livestream
Thursday
09:15 - Joanna Lord, VP of Growth Marketing at SEOmoz
09:30 - Caroline Ghosn, Founder & CEO of The Levo League
09:45 - Maya Baratz, Senior Product Manager at ABC News
10:00 - Bas Van Den Beld, Founder & Chief Editor of State of Search
10:15 - Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite
10:30 - BREAK
11:00 – Sarah Wood, Co-founder & COO of Unruly Media
11:15 - Rachel Tipograph, Director, Global Digital & Social Media at Gap Inc.
11:30 - Kathryn Parsons, Co-founder of Decoded
11:45 - Jan Rezab, CEO of SocialBakers
12:00 - Cindy Gallop, Founder of Make Love Not Porn & IfWeRanTheWorld
12:15 - Brian Wong, Co-founder & CEO of Kiip
12:30 - Omid Ashtari, Director of Business Development at Foursquare
Enterprise Ireland and the Department of Finance are hosting the World Bank / IFC in Dublin next Tuesday 19 June for a Business Opportunities in Emerging Markets seminar. The focus of this event is investment and procurement opportunities within the World Bank group of organisations.
The event will be held on Tuesday 19 June 2012, 08.30h to 17.30h in the Alexander Hotel, Dublin 2 and will be opened by the Minister for Finance, Mr Michael Noonan TD.
This seminar will be of interest to companies who are interested to learn more about:
- Emerging market trends and opportunities
- The World Bank Group
- Introduction to the IFC – its role, objectives, value proposition, financial products and services
- The role of MIGA
- How Enterprise Ireland, IFC and MIGA can support Irish companies in the emerging markets
- Procurement opportunities at the World Bank Group
There is no charge for this event; registration is on-line at https://www.eventsforce.net/enterpriseireland/493/register
ICT is the focus of one of the parallel sessions at 13.30. Jennifer Condon (Divisional Manager, International Traded Services & Software) is facilitating and presenting sector profile & EI supports at this session.
Agenda
08:15 Registration and Coffee
08:50 Opening Remarks, Department of Finance
09:00 Key Note Address: Opportunities for Investment and Growth in Global Markets, Mr Michael Noonan, TD, Minister for Finance
09:15 Welcoming remarks, World Bank
09:30 Trends and opportunities in Emerging Markets, IFC
10:15 Introducing the IFC
11:30 The Role of MIGA
12:15 Enterprise Ireland
12:30 Lunch
13:30 Parallel Break-out Sessions (Opportunities in the ICT sector/Agri-business sector/Energy sector)
15:00 Parallel Break-out Sessions (Procurement Opportunities with the World Bank Group / Opportunities in Africa / Opportunities inAsia
16:00 Networking
For further information, please contact Evelyn Smith (01) 727 2717
This is a guest post from Eoin Brazil (Dr), Technology Transfer Lead, Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC)
Register for the free Financial Industry and High Performance Computing on eventbrite. Date: Tue March 13th.
ICHEC are hosting a free workshop for financial sector companies where invited speakers will outline the rapid changes in hardware technology and where computing can utilise this hardware to have a profound impact on their business. From front to back-office, from portfolio construction to trade execution, from data capture to quarterly reports – there are business processes that are inherently parallel and amenable to high performance computing.
The financial industry, like other industries is increasingly concerned about the transfer of data into information, information into action, and action into profit. There are two forces acting upon the financial industry, firstly the need to reduce the time to get things done and secondly the need to expand the amount of work done in that time.
This seminar will introduce how your company can leverage current off-the-shelf hardware to tackling uncertainty. It does so by highlighting where and how this has already done with practical examples. International speakers will discuss where this technology is:
- Reducing risk (by knowing more, by providing more detail, by dealing with larger amounts of data)
- Getting to answers faster (this can be reducing cost or dealing faster with market uncertainties)
- Making better utilisation of existing IT infrastructures (leveraging existing hardware resources more efficiently and more effectively to tackle problems)
The aim of this breakfast briefing is to highlight the potential benefits of this technology to the Irish Financial industry as one means of achieving business innovation. More information about the programme is available here
Despite a tough economic climate the Canadian financial services market has weathered the storm better than most, and ranks amongst the most stable and highly regulated countries in the world. Canada’s financial services industry is world-class and globally oriented, with over $60 billion in acquisitions outside Canada since 2000. Canadian financial institutions continue to invest in new technologies and software.
Being based in EI’s Toronto Office , I’m delighted that we’ll be able to showcase some of these opportunities in Dublin at the ‘Doing Business with Canadian Financial Services‘ event in EI Eastpoint on the 26th January at 11am (more details below, signup link here, places are limited). The seminar is aimed at for Irish companies who are interested in doing business with the Canadian financial services sector and will offer you strategic advice on tendering, partnering and advice on selling into the various institutions.
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/markwhitt/ The event will be moderated by Chuck Wilson, a Senior Financial Services Executive based in Toronto. Bank of Montreal (BMO), one of the top tier Canadian banks will also be represented on the panel. The session will be an interactive discussion on the Canadian financial services landscape, challenges facing the banks and institutions in Canada and address potential opportunities for technology companies in 2012 onwards.
People that you can learn from at the session;
- Chuck Wilson, Senior Financial Services Executive With almost thirty years of senior level financial services experience, Chuck brings extensive knowledge in the banking and insurance sectors. With a background as an executive at RBC Royal Bank; Country Manager for a retail banking consultancy and technology provider; Independent Consultant; Insurance company CEO; and most recently as a senior executive with Aon Corporation; his perspectives will help participants understand the unique nuances of the Canadian financial services landscape.
- Philip McAuliffe, Technology Head, Institutional Equity Products and Financial Products, Bank of Montreal Philip heads up a Technology unit at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto, with responsibility for Equity and Financial Products. Prior to joining BMO in 2010 Philip worked with Davy Stockbrokers for 11 years. From 1992 – 1999 he worked for Bank of Ireland in their Technology division
If you’re interested in learning more, click on this link to register, or contact Amy.doyle@enterprise-ireland.com Date: Thursday, 26 January 2012 Time: 11am – 1.30pm
- Location: Enterprise Ireland, The Plaza, Eastpoint Business Park Enterprise Ireland,
- 10.30am – Registration / Refreshments
- 11am – Introduction by Chuck Wilson
- 11.30pm – 1.00pm – Presentations by panellists and subsequent Q and A
- 1pm – Lunch .
- Participation Fee: The participation fee for the workshop is €100 per company.
As the world heads into another period of uncertainty, Australia’s economic fundamentals remain healthy, if not immune to the winds of change affecting the Northern Hemisphere. Low Government debt, unemployment at around 5%, legislative initiatives that continues to drive a signficantly healthy spend on IT – all this means that in the words of one local commentator “If you choose where to be in the developed world, it is here”.
Enterprise Ireland’s Software mission in September may be an opportunity for you to avail of EI’s extensive network across the ICT sector and develop a new business strategy to support growth of your business Down Under.
Why Australia?
- Australia has proven to be one of the economies most resilient to the worldwide economic downturn. GDP growth from June 2009 to June 2010 was measured at 3.3% according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The strong growth in recent years is underpinned by strong commodity exports and a very healthy financial services sector. (more…)
Software as a Service (SaaS) is being viewed by many as every CIO’s dream – a low cost, convenient application of software that enables a company to focus on its core business by outsourcing all its IT. But can this model support mission-critical systems effectively? And will the one size fits all approach work for companies looking to differentiate themselves with distinctive products and services?
One of my client companies, Exaxe, recently published a white paper which examined the use of SaaS within the life and pensions industry. While recognising the benefits of SaaS in terms of economies of scale, a usage-based cost, outsourcing maintenance and the appeal of ‘anywhere’ access, it highlights the fact that in order to maximise benefits, users are restricted to the range of possibilities that are provided by the software and its standard configurable options.
The paper argues that the primary benefit of SaaS wihin a life and pensions organisation comes from removing only utility support systems from the internal IT department, allowing them to concentrate on the core mission-critical systems.
The white paper, “Software As a Service – A Model For Life Assurers?” is available here (PDF, will open in a new browser window).
 Dogs welcome is a strange introduction to the opening, next weekend, of the UK’s first new high street bank in over 150 years. The newcomer is Metro Bank. It promises to open seven days a week, including 8am to 8pm Monday to Friday, have a rapid account opening procedure and issue credit and debit cards within 15 minutes. For those with jars full of pennies it will also have free coin counting with the Metro Bank Magic Money Machine. And off course “the bank will provide free bowls of water and chewy bones to ensure that your four-legged pals are as happy as you are”! The initial plans are modest. Two branches this year and twelve within the next two years.
(more…)
 In the middle of our doom and gloom a bit of good news is always welcome. Intel last night reported its best ever quarter results in its 42 year history. Year-on-year revenue up 34% and a net income of €2.9bn. Why is this good news for us? Well, Paul Otellini, chief executive, said that Intel was running ahead of a global economic recovery because of a fundamental shift towards working on the internet. Sales of server chip were up 170% on a year earlier due to a move to hosting applications and services in the cloud. ”As internet traffic continues to boom, the cloud build-out is accelerating in order to keep pace,” he said.
So the move to the cloud continues unabated and confirms what many of Enterprise Ireland’s software clients believe – that SaaS and the cloud are here to stay.
We should also not forget the 4,000 people who work directly for Intel in Leixlip and the many hundreds of others whose jobs depend on Intel Ireland. This is great news for them.
For those of us of a certain generation it is hard to imagine that the Leixlip plant was originally established to produce the i486 microprocessor. A breakthrough in technology, it had a 50MHz chip set with 8k of on-chip SRAM!!!
 Some of my colleagues in Enterprise Ireland were debating the other day an ongoing SaaS issue – whether it is an all or nothing business model or can you run your old on-premise business hand-in-hand with your new SaaS business, i.e. a ‘Hybrid Model’. Salesforce.com and other SaaS zealots go for the purity of SaaS only and see the hybrid model as a bastardisation that will ruin both businesses. The issue I think is more fundamental than alternative ways of applying technology, it is about leveraging your company’s strategic strengths through the key generic strategies of cost leadership or differentiation.
(more…)
 As I have mentioned previously Enterprise Ireland is running a programme to transition ten on-premise software companies into a SaaS business model. At the start of the programme we thought the biggest issue to be tackled would be the technology of delivering a SaaS solution. And by we I include the CEO’s of the ten companies. While the technology element is obviously a key issue, what has emerged from the programme is that the biggest challenge facing the companies is the development of a new business model. The type of questions the CEOs are now asking themselves are: What is the new business message? What is the new marketing pitch? What is the marketing vehicle? What is the revenue model?
(more…)
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