northern ireland – Page 6

Ah for fuck sake…

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I would describe myself as probably more curmudgeonly than most especially when it comes to things on the Internets. Arlene is often able to discern if “someone is wrong on the Internet” due to the posture I assume, the faces I pull and the fury of my key tapping. It’s one of those things, there’s … Continue reading “Local Brand, Global Vision”

I would describe myself as probably more curmudgeonly than most especially when it comes to things on the Internets. Arlene is often able to discern if “someone is wrong on the Internet” due to the posture I assume, the faces I pull and the fury of my key tapping. It’s one of those things, there’s an immediacy to making sure there are wrongs righted. Sometimes it is better to withdraw and do something else. And I promise I’ll try to do that next time.

So, How do you brand something locally without it appearing provincial?

I hate URLs from local companies and organisations that have ‘ni’ in the title (it’s not restricted to the Internet either, I hate it when they put (NI) in the name of the limited company too. And no, hate is not a strong word.

But sadly while we seem to be surviving without the need for IPv6 so far (years after my mentor predicted the end of the IPv4 internet), we are fumbling towards a more final end – the end of the dictionary. Internet companies have been using nonsense names for a decade or more now but I loathe the ‘ni’ thing more than I dislike the ‘r’ thing in Flickr, Tumblr and others or the ‘n+1’ thing, like in Rummble or Dribble. It points to a cataclysm of Babelian (should that be Babylonian?) proportions. And don’t get me started on the www.xxxapp.com style names. Entire domains for ‘apps’ seems wrong and it can be abused. For example:

http://apps.ie was registered last year as a domain for all Irish iPhone developers and designers to represent their work. Sadly one company has gone ahead and branded themselves as ‘appsie’ after the fact and registered a whole slew of …..apps.ie URLs. When I brought this up, I was pretty much told to sling my hook. Suffice to say that’s one company off my Christmas card list.

So how do you brand something that’s new? And doesn’t actively step on the toes of wider initiatives to improve things for everyone?

In many cases is means choosing a URL that is almost entirely unlike your company name. In other cases it means adding a prefix such as “visit” or “weare” or “designby” to your company name or being extremely creative with your domain name extensions – witness the growth in popularity of ‘.io’, ‘.us’ and ‘.tv’. And there’s hundreds more options.

But right now I’m left with attempting to brand a local collaboration network which has local remit but global vision. And hoping to reduce the chance that someone will waltz in and hijack the name for their own purposes and undermine the network.

So, about that game company…

It’s been an exciting week. On Tuesday morning I met with Leo Galway, John Girvin, Conor McCluskey, Darin Smyth and Christian McGilloway regarding the formation of a local ‘games development cluster’. Everyone seemed to think it was a good idea and so now we’re looking for a good brand to help identify the cluster. This … Continue reading “So, about that game company…”

It’s been an exciting week.

On Tuesday morning I met with Leo Galway, John Girvin, Conor McCluskey, Darin Smyth and Christian McGilloway regarding the formation of a local ‘games development cluster’. Everyone seemed to think it was a good idea and so now we’re looking for a good brand to help identify the cluster.

This coming week (Thursday 25th March) I’ve organised an event with Belfast Metropolitan College called “INGAGE” which stands for “Innovation in Gaming in Education”. We’ve got an engaging calendar planned out for the day.

During the academic year 2009-2010, Belfast Metropolitan College, supported by Digital Circle and the Department of Employment and Learning, introduced a new extracurricular games development ‘club’ for students taking the games design courses at the college.

This event will serve to highlight the work undertaken by the students in the ‘l33t Creations’ club as well as highlight some work being done by other creatives in the games industry in Northern Ireland.

AGENDA

10.00 am	Arrival / Registration
10.30 am	BMC Welcome Trevor Smyth
10.40 am	Welcome & Overview of Project
	Darin Smyth / Christian McGilloway
11.00 am	Guest Speaker Greg Maguire
	Q & A
12.00 pm	Demos
	Lunch
1.00 pm	Guest Speakers
	Straandlooper
	Mark Cullen
	Brendan McGoran
2.00 pm	Closing remarks – Reid Lynas

Attendance is free and refreshments will be provided. Local companies wishing to network are welcome. But you have to RSVP!

And lastly, but not least, I’ve been working on the UI for the game I mentioned the other day.

I’ve spent this evening documenting the Touch Events which will need to be plugged into Unity3D. It’s my job to document the UI, then to write the story and do the research.

I’m still trying to think of a name for the games company (though I have some ideas) and I’m putting together a team of people who can actually manage to pull this together. I provide the ideas – it’s others who will provide the implementation in many ways.

Anyone want to help?

DON’T RUSH THROUGH EXTREME WEB LAWS

I posted this to Onotate. ONotate is a way of ‘annotating’ web mockups for designers. You can see more at http://onotate.com If you’re as unhappy about the Digital Economy Bill as I am, it doesn’t hurt (and only takes about two minutes) to email your local MP/MLA. “Peter Mandelson is rushing to force the Digital … Continue reading “DON’T RUSH THROUGH EXTREME WEB LAWS”

I posted this to Onotate. ONotate is a way of ‘annotating’ web mockups for designers. You can see more at http://onotate.com

If you’re as unhappy about the Digital Economy Bill as I am, it doesn’t hurt (and only takes about two minutes) to email your local MP/MLA.

“Peter Mandelson is rushing to force the Digital Economy Bill into law before the General Election.

The draconian law is opposed by industry experts, internet service providers (like TalkTalk and BT), web giants including Google, Yahoo and Ebay and even the British Library. Despite all this opposition, the Government is trying to rush it through quietly just before the election without proper debate – without a chance for us to voice our opposition. Email your MP now and urge them to stop the government rushing this law through.

There’s plenty to oppose in the Digital Economy Bill, it gives the government the ability to disconnect millions. Schools, libraries and businesses could see their connection cut if their pupils, readers of customers infringe any copyright. But one group likes it, the music industry. In a leaked memo a few days ago they admitted the only way to get the bill through would be to rush it through without a real parliamentary debate. Let’s stop that happening. “

All you need is your postcode.

ConnectED event, QUB.

I spent this morning in the company of academia, industry and government as a ConnectED event. ConnectED is a fund used to create opportunities of collaboration between the colleges and universities. The aim was to try to foster some collaboration potential between the groups. I took some notes from our table (one of 5 tables … Continue reading “ConnectED event, QUB.”

There will be a further event to help foster this but the real wins for me were to get in touch with folk in QUB in the Knowledge Transfer Centre as well as some contacts within SARC.

There was a lot of consensus that there needs to be (at least one) hub for the creative industries (including software and digital media) in the North of Ireland. This is kinda what we’re trying to do with StartVI but without the large funds that ConnectED can provide.

It was startling how little interaction there is between industry and academia in truth – even the difficulties voiced by academia in getting productive student placements within industry. We need to work on that – not necessarily to change courses but to foster understanding. It is not the role of education to prepare an individual for work in a company but rather to educate them to be able to work in any company. And there is an onus on the students to make themselves indispensable to the businesses with whom they are placed. There is significant culture clash between academia and industry – whether it’s the timing of the academic year, the pressure of deadlines or the appreciation of impact on a business that a single student can make, positive or negative.

For our part, StartVI intends to take on a lot of placement students. And if they make themselves indispensable, then they’ll get work from the startups. If not, there’s always a McJob.

Amazing companies are built on free.

I caught a comment on Twitter recently that “a company built on free would be a pretty shitty company”. The author has since deleted that tweet, presumably because some of the best companies are built on free. Brands like Gillette ($43B), Google ($185B), Apple ($205B) all leveraged ‘free’ in some form. King Gillette gave away … Continue reading “Amazing companies are built on free.”

Brands like Gillette ($43B), Google ($185B), Apple ($205B) all leveraged ‘free’ in some form. King Gillette gave away his razors and sold the blades a hundred years ago. Google gives away ‘freemium’ access to their apps and services. The foundation of Apple’s amazing operating system is open source and given away for free and they’ve created and given away a world-class web browser engine, WebKit, which is being used free of charge by Nokia, RIM and Google in mobile products that are competing directly with Apple.

Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary celebrates the notion of free (paying for flights using anciliary revenue – in-flight meals, bag checks, hotel and car bookings, internet and games):
“The other airlines are asking how they can put up fares. We are asking how we could get rid of them.”

Amazing companies are built on free. 20th Century companies were built on the notion of scarcity. They focussed on the shipping of real goods, the transportation of atoms. The scarcity was real. With the exception of High Fructose Corn Syrup, we have a scarcity of many items because duplicating items means duplicating costs. But there’s no scarcity of bits. Bits are the lingua franca of the Internet and we have an abundance of them. Bits enable ‘virtual goods’ to be duplicated endlessly. The cost of duplication is zero so you’re left with the initial cost of creation which, when amortised over the potential millions of recipients, drives the individual cost towards zero.

Now the economics of scarcity keep some people in power – this is the essence of the haves and have-nots. But in a future where the real currency, the currency of bits, is something that is abundant, even more abundant than the air, how can these people retain their power? They can’t obviously and what’s worse, they don’t understand it and it scares the shit out of them.

The scarcity/abundance economics are the reason we’re setting up StartVI. In Belfast there is an artificial scarcity of office space (with over 1.26 million square feet of empty office space in Belfast). The scarcity is created by pricing the office space beyond the means of the businesses which could make use of them. It seems utterly insane that we’re talking about a scarcity of empty space. So, we’re removing the essence of that scarcity. And we;re providing more than empty space. Desk space in StartVI is free. Internet access is free. Light and heat are free. And we’re filling the empty space with people: hopeful entrepreneurs, wise business advisors, savvy investors. And they’re giving their time for free.

Sandafence, Paintafloor

My Sunday was spent sweeping the floors, painting the walls and lifting rubbish for the further preparation of the “StartVI” (pronounced Start 6) virtual incubator opening in Belfast ‘real soon now’. See more, including the list of contributors at http://startvi.com Related posts: Start-Up Nation Virtual Notes This explains a lot. Coworking Microsupport

See more, including the list of contributors at http://startvi.com

think + collaborate globally – innovate locally

Alex is right to highlight this. We discussed (on Twitter) the merits of open systems (open data, open health, open innovation) and seemed to agree that openness creates opportunity but it requires individuals to provide innovation. Code4Pizza is a local group I’ve started to get folk working on projects which are ‘open’. By open, I … Continue reading “think + collaborate globally – innovate locally”

Code4Pizza is a local group I’ve started to get folk working on projects which are ‘open’. By open, I mean that anyone can contribute, anyone can benefit and as an additional bonus, the projects will generally have a public service value slant. The current project, OpenTranslink, is the result of several months of work by a group of people to get the timetable and route data (most notably, Mark Bennett from the DFP who is part of the team reponsible for OpenDataNI)

Taking the OpenTranslink project as an example. When you travel to a new country, one of the most impenetrable aspects of their culture is their public transport system. This is difficult enough when the native language is not a barrier, but very difficult when the language is different. Nearly every region is developing a suite of apps to run on iPhones, Android phones and Blackberry phones which carries the bulk of their public transport data. I’d wonder – however – if data from other regions shouldn’t be included in “Transport’-type apps.

You innovate with your technology and your design – but from then you just plug regional data into it. Differentiate based on your innovation but you collaborate across regions to provide a seamless experience for the foreign traveller.

In essence – once the clever chaps doing the OpenTranslink data visualisations, API, application logic and interface design are finished, what’s stopping them doing exactly the same for London buses, bus systems in San Francisco, trams in Lyon?

Cost of Living…

David sent me this link: How much do top tech companies pay? This prompted a discussion about the costs of living in Northern Ireland compared to Cupertino and the realisation that there’s a normalisation needing done. But despite it not being linear, I still reckon that Northern Ireland gets a raw deal here. Average income … Continue reading “Cost of Living…”

David sent me this link: How much do top tech companies pay?

This prompted a discussion about the costs of living in Northern Ireland compared to Cupertino and the realisation that there’s a normalisation needing done. But despite it not being linear, I still reckon that Northern Ireland gets a raw deal here.

Average income in Cupertino is $123,320 (US average is $76,893)
Average income in Northern Ireland £17,366

Average house price in Cupertino $880,000 (US Average is $259,566)
Average house price in Northern Ireland £156,857

Average house price divided by average salary in Cupertino: 7.13 (US Ave 3.37)
Average house price divided by average salary in Northern Ireland: 9.03

—-

Income Tax rate in Cupertino: 9.3% (highest bracket)
Income Tax rate in Northern Ireland: 20%

VAT/Sales tax in Cupertino: 8.25%
VAT/Sales tax in Northern Ireland: 17.5%

—-

Seems to me that we pay a higher percentage of income on housing as well. Considerably larger – Cupertino just normalises the US average to be almost as bad as Northern Ireland.

Now, adding in utilities (I spent a shitload more on heating and lighting here I bet). Can’t comment on TV/Cable but I spend about $100 a month here on Satellite TV (that I don’t even watch). Everything I buy (and have bought) in and from the USA) seemed cheaper.

Northern Ireland has salaries 20% below the UK average and a standard of living around 20% below the UK average. I reckon that Northern Ireland people live in relative squalor and we just get on with it. And we get on with it because there’s no choice.

Northern Ireland’s culture has been artificially frozen since the 1960s. We haven’t progressed significantly in any way. We have a local government whose level of corruption seems to be the envy of politicians worldwide. We have two microcultures that still, after everything we’ve been through, mistrust and want to hurt the other.

To build for tomorrow, we have to plan today.

The Economist: Nokia tries to reinvent itself: ASK Finns about their national character and chances are the word sisu will come up. It is an amalgam of steadfastness and diligence, but also courage, recklessness and fierce tenacity. “It takes sisu to stand at the door when the bear is on the other side,” a folk … Continue reading “To build for tomorrow, we have to plan today.”

The Economist: Nokia tries to reinvent itself:

ASK Finns about their national character and chances are the word sisu will come up. It is an amalgam of steadfastness and diligence, but also courage, recklessness and fierce tenacity. “It takes sisu to stand at the door when the bear is on the other side,” a folk saying goes.

We have this feeling. We have it. We likely don’t have a word for it. And that’s a damn shame.

We need something to change. Northern Ireland will always have difficulties because we lack the environment we need to excel. Part of this is historical, part of it is just the way our culture is built. We have the talent, we have the brains, we just lack part of the execution. We will never have the same number of angels and funds as Silicon Valley. So we have to make better use of what we have. We will never get the massive DoD contracts that Israel secured so we’re going to need to find other ways to make our mark. We need to have the foresight to prepare for the future, the charisma to make friendships that will last and the heart to build it. Not for our own gain but for the gain of tomorrow. Well, starting from today, the first week of January 2010, we’re going to change that.

We’re going to start an incubator.
We’re going to start building a fund.
And we’re going to do it in Belfast.

So I’m looking for a word in Irish to express something. To express the passion about how I choose to spend my free time. There’s some candidates here – and the front-runner so far in bold.

dream	brionglóid
sight	radharc
To hell with you!	Go hIfreann leat!
friendship	cairdeas
The big race	An rás mór
connection, bond	ceangal
feat, achievment	gaisce
nerve, courage, morale, heart	misneach