BizCamp multimedia hoard

BizCamp was a fantastic success this weekend, and I'll post some other time about all the great people I met there, but just wanted to do a quick post to try and pull together the various media coverage from the day.

RTE news segment:

Campbell Scott, IGOPeople:

Caelan King, RevaHealth:

Keith Bohanna, dbTwang:

Fred at Channelship.ie also has some photos from Saturday over at Flickr. Paul May of Front Design also has a set up.

I'm hoping to have the radio interviews up here shortly as well, stay tuned.

Update: 09-03-09 21:19

Slides from Paul Browne & John Magill's presentation on EI funding:

Aidan Kenny, who gave a great presentation on adding services to your existing business, has posted his slides here.

Update: 10-03-09 10:42

SiliconRepublic have a piece covering the event.

Nuts to you

We finally got the results back from Fionn's allergy tests yesterday, and, to our disappointment, we found out that he has a serious adverse reaction to peanuts. It's not so bad that he can't be in the same room as them (he's happily played on my lap as I devour peanut-butter and toast), but it's clearly bad enough that he had to be brought to hospital back in December suffering from angiodema.

It will make some aspects of our life more difficult, and he will certainly face challenges of his own when he's older as a result of it, but I have absolutely no doubt that we will successfully manage this as a family, that we can give him the structures he needs now and the support he will need in the future. Ever the optimist :)

Fionn is of course happily oblivious to all of this, and long may it last. To lift the sombre mood of this my 80^th post, check out the man in question and his oh-so-proud father on the swings in the park this afternoon.

Lurgee

So my wife and child are ill. It's Fionn's first cold, and he has my heart broken trying to teach him how to blow his nose. He seems happy enough when he's awake just to sit and blow snot bubbles (nice...) but he's been quite upset at night as he's finding it quite difficult to breathe :( Poor chap. Well, one sickness in eight months is a pretty good return, I'm thankful we've gotten off so lightly.

Sinead's suffering with a head cold as well, compounded by lack of sleep (see above), so I took Fionn out for a walk (well wrapped up, for any Grannies reading this!!) to Dun Laoighre. I think I must have offended some Rain God somewhere, because the only cloud in an otherwise unblemished blue sky dumped it's load on us as we were sitting eating rusks on the West Pier - interrupting what was an otherwise idyllic father-son bonding experience... Although we do now have the shared experience of sitting looking like a pair of drowned rats on the DART home :)

Anyway, enough talk I hear you say, give me some media! First up, the obligatory clip of the nude child in the bath:

And the highlight of the show: Fionn crawls! It isn't the most graceful thing you'll ever see, and certainly puts one in mind of drunken elephants, but you can't fault him for determination :)

Mon petit homme vert

The promised deluge - Fionn as Ireland's 16^th man, opening day of the Six Nations.

Yes, he's wearing a No. 13 shirt - he is, after all, technically from Leinster.

Reacting to another piece of Irish magic:

Halftime pep talk:

Getting ready to pack down behind the scrum - natural born openside:

Full album is here.

Sink to the bottom with you

I've been following the continuing slide of the economy and the Wodehousian farce that is the collapse of the Irish banking system with a mixture of resignation and trepidation. As scandal piles upon scandal, it should really come as no surprise to us that there are senior figures within the business community for whom lying, cheating and stealing on a daily basis is a way of life. After all, the Mahon tribunal showed us that businessmen and women have been more than happy to bribe politicians for years - what made us think that they were not also merrily engaged in bribing and defrauding one another?

Commentators have been calling for "root-and-branch" change, which would be very welcome, but something I read over the weekend gives me a sinking feeling that a simple personnel swap will effect little difference. The problems endemic in Irish business go right to the core, right back to when the rules of how to be a successful businessperson are being laid out.

The piece I read was in the UCD alumni magazine Business Connections (I actually didn't attend UCD, they just haven't updated their mailing list in a while by the looks of things). In a celebration of the centennial of the UCD Business School, the issue was showcasing:

"...some of the leading figures in business, industry and public life who have graced the halls of the UCD School of Business over the years."

One of the "leading figures" they chose was Jim Flavin, the former head of DCC. You might remember Jim from the news in recent past: in 2007 he was found by the Supreme Court to have engaged in illegal trading of Fyffes shares (banana republic, ho ho ho), yielding his company €85 million in ill-gotten gains.

Nice one UCD: what a shining example indeed, a true paragon of virtue to hold up to Ireland's next generation of leaders. Behold! You too can cheat the system!

BTW, Mr. Flavin was also previously head of AIB's venture capital unit. Smashing. As I've said, I think it'll take more than a sweeping out of the old to see any real change in how business at the highest level is carried out in this country. Maybe the memory of the thousands and thousands of lost jobs will make us all a little less trusting next time. Here's hoping.

Sneak preview

There'll be a Fionn flood arriving here shortly: I've been manfully struggling to get my photos and videos organised, battling against dying laptops (Sinead's old Inspiron is on it's last legs), and an ever-shrinking amount of free time, but I'm on top of it now...

Here's a photo of his lordship to whet the appetite (pun firmly intended)...

I liked swimming, so I swam

So I'm almost getting back into a regular swimming schedule. Couple of weeks in the water in TCD, and this week started morning sessions in Glenalbyn. Hope I can stick with it - watch this space.

On a similar note, my father Greg is attempting another long-distance swim this summer: he and the Channel swim crew will attempt to swim the River Shannon from source to sea. Check out the blog.