I’m absolutely amazed how busy Locle is this year. Less than a year ago Locle won Eircom Labs Web Innovation Competition and ever since you can hear about them just about everywhere.

Their website got launched in two versions in October – eircom.locle.com and www.locle.com . At the end of February as part of OSLO (Open Sharing of Location Objects) alliance Locle appeared in news announcing “an agreement to enable their 30 million users to share location information and interact between networks, which until now has not been possible across different social networks”.

And now they won 10k in HotHouse Program! See photos on my new Pix.ie account

Update few days later:

• Locle application can be bought through iTunes store now
• Eircom Labs are now open for 2009 nominations

Today I decided to start using Technorati more serious. While I have created account like few months ago I wasn’t using it at all. So I decided to go through all the people I’m following on twitter (and most of them are IT persons based in Ireland) and add their blogs to the favorites in technorati. And believe me or not, it didn’t took me a lot of time. However I was surprised that less than half people on twitter has blogs. I rember survey going around about month ago on twitter for all non-bloggers using twitter. And I thought it was nonsense to put it on twitter as everybody probably have blogs…

So why twitter but no blogs?

1) Person don’t use twitter much and don’t care about social media. There is a lot of twitter accounts that haven’t been used for months. I wander – is twitter gonna delete them at some point? Because even if it is only few rows of text, a lot of users like that might take space on their server.

2) Person twitter profile link leads to their company website. I do have problem with that – unless it is companies twitter account, I can’t get more info on person twittering.

3) The blog is hidden somewhere on their website and can’t be found right away. What the point writting blogs if nobody can find them?

After I added all those blogs on the technorati, another problem came up – there is too much of them now! And I still haven’t found button “remove from favorites”.

Reason I started all this is because I’m still newbie to blogging. I love to write. I have always written diaries, short stories and some ideas. But blogging is something more challenging. What would people find interesting? What would make people write comments? Why would they blog about me or put link to me? And how do I get more popularity and traffic to my blog? Kinda challenging, but fun.

The IIA Net Visionary Awards 2009 will be held on Thursday 21st May in the Crowne Plaza, Dublin Northwood, following the IIA National Congress. Awards is always good way of promoting you and your business. I must check out categories (there is 15 of them) and decide whom I should nominate from our clients. We will go for “Web Developer Excellence” this year so don’t forget to vote for us!

Dates for your diary:

23 February 2009 – Nominations Open
27 March 2009 – Nominations Close
9 April 2009 – Judging complete
13 April 2009 – Voting Opens
1 May 2009 – Voting Closes
21 May 2009 – Net Visionary Awards – Winners Announced

What will happen with your loans, debts and credit cards after you die or get serious illness? What will happen to your company shares? Do you have the best pension deal or you are loosing money? Do you want to invest, but don’t know where?

I met Joe O’Regan, owner of Oregan Financial, today and was really impressed. We went through my private and my companies finances and came up with ideas how to improve things (e.g. get life insurance). Consultation itself is for free, so I advise it to anyone wandering about their finances. It’s great way to think where you can save money. Oregan doesn’t try to sell right away and gives you a really good advice. They are using BestAdvice.ie site for latest insurance, pension etc. deals. I found it really great website, but you have to have membership to access information.

So what should you do next? You should go to Oregan Financial website and get a free consultation about your finances.

Business blogging is great thing for Internet Social Marketing. Here is link to Podcast from Enterprise Ireland about it. Most important thing – it is presented by Damien Mulley, blogger, copywriter and trainer, and Roseanne Smith, the Membership, Marketing and Communications Manager for the Irish Internet Association.

I have always problems explaining people what our company does. Not because I don’t know what it does, but because other people isn’t knowledgeable enough to understand the concept. If I say “eBusiness” – people don’t know the term. If I say “business process optimisation” – they think we aren’t IT company. If I say “we do web development”, they usually reply “ah, web design”. Wrong! (Of course we do web design too, but it’s not our main business…)

So I met my mentor last week and he told me that people do not care how I call it – websites are still websites. They want their project done and they don’t care how we build it. And he asked question which made me think – “Which comes first design or development?”.  By logic and all the good concepts I and probably most of you would reply “design”. But is it true in agile development?

I searched a bit over the net and found one really good article about it. And now what I think is that in agile development pilot project comes first. Pilot project is proof of concept that developed idea can work. You can argue that it should have some design anyway, but it’s just something to get ideas from for the finalised design.

Agile development is test-driven. You write tests first and only then code and then design. Have I proved my point? Any ideas about this?

Did I had fun evening? Yep! Would I go to another Twestival if there would be one tomorrow? Definitely. So for lazy persons who didn’t went to the greatest events of all, this post is for you.

What is Twestival? Official statement : on the 12th of February 175+ cities were hosting Twestival bringing together Twitter communities for a charity:water. Non-official statment: go meet with people who you usually chat with, have a drinks, talk and lots of fun.

DubTwestival took place on The Sycamore Club in Temple Bar. It was organised by @qhussain and @aido (maybe someone else too, but haven’t seen them on twitter). One of the topic talks was the open ceiling, which actually was quite cool. Music was awsome – I would loved to do some dancing, but people weren’t drunk enough when I was there. Actually even knowing that beer is for free, I met quite a few who decided not to drink on the night.

I got the coolest picture with @jaimekristene (background put by @JamesLS) and got feedback from @czajkowski and others right away how great pic it is (because everybody uses twitter on twestival). I met quite a few girls from Girl Geek Dinner, people from Open Coffee Dublin meetings, from IBW forum (e.g. @helentreacy), from IIA (@iia and some others) people who started using twitter yesterday and people like gay crusher in toilet who said he will start using it tomorrow. I met also people who was following me, but I never knew they was following me. Nice bunch anyway.

There was amazingly lot of lottery awards. While I was there, they went out 3 times 3 awards and I think there was more after. @maryrose and @debbiemet kept going around and selling lottery tickets. As it was very loud I couldn’t work out the prizes, but I overheard that there was shaving kit, gym memberships, some event tickets and holidays to be won.

I talked with people about everything starting from business with @e_eric, OOSBarCamp with @czajkowski till Nintendo games and travel with people I didn’t know. I didn’t manage to meet @cambellscott (from IGOpeople), @mcawilliams (twitter legend), @martharotter (GGD organiser) and few other persons I really wanted to meet in the short 2.5h I was there. Anyway at the end I lost my voice completely and hearing as well (music was too loud) and there was meeting tomorrow so I had to go.

When I decided to went home finally (it was only 9pm) somebody almost took my scarf to wipe the spilled drink. I run for bus and sat in the wrong one. Realised I’m on the wrong one after a while and had to walk 20min back. Felt like guy on the buss stop was geeky enough and I should try talk with him (I didn’t). No, I wasn’t drunk, just too washed away from reality by the event.

p.s. Can’t get photos out of my iPhone :< So check other ppl photos on DubTwestival website

Who said I’m not artist? I can draw on canvas just like anyone else. Other canvas drawings and people photos will be up on Networth Gallery soon enough.

Yep, I attended my first NetWorth event and it was quite valuable. If I can get for 50 EUR good food, good wine, free canvas drawing (by myself), lot of good networking and some news, I’m quite happy. And doing networking while drawing is fun. I heard they had barbecue last year near Stephan’s Green which was great networking success.

To be honest I have been to so much networking events by now that most of the people I met I knew already or knew somebody related to them. However, they were all very valuable contacts to me and I found some business opportunities. I would definetly recommend checking out NetWorth. Their next event is 9th March 2009 – Networth KPMG – Stokes Place, Dublin 2 and as I understood it will be together with PLATO group. I was actually amazed how quickly NetWorth responded to my application through web. I’m used to waiting few days till somebody sends me a mail about it but there I got call in next 5min.

New event is coming up from Digital Media Forum. As I attended Innovate Media event last year, I would definitely recommend attending this one. You can register for it HERE.

As part of our partnership with Microsofts BizSpark programme, Digital Media Forum and Microsoft Ireland  are delighted to bring you the Microsoft BizSpark Innovation Accelerator Event an event designed to help accelerate the Start-up community in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The aim of the event is to provide business guidance for Start-ups and anyone in Ireland or Northern Ireland who thinks they might like to start-up a tech company. The plan is to get together some of Irelands most experienced entrepreneurs and business people to share their stories about what makes businesses succeed and what are the pitfalls to avoid.

The Innovation Accelerator Event will feature practical sessions on business areas key to success of any Start-up such as Sales, Marketing, Finance and Legal. Participating speakers are coming from every area of the Irish tech community to help with this initiative. Seminar style-sessions will run alongside some panel discussions where our more experienced entrepreneurs can relate stories from the trenches.

Last week I joined yet another networking event – this time speed networking. Provided by Signature Networking event took place in fashonable Trinity Capital Hotel.

For those who don’t know what is speed networking – it is quite similar to the speed dating. But in 1h you get around 20 contacts, hear about their companies and tell them about yours. Each of you have around 1.5 minutes to pitch and ask questions. After speed networking you can go and talk with people who you are interested in, have a drink and have a nice food. And of course most important part is to follow up after.

Signature Networking events are organised by Juddy, very orgnized and responsive person. Here is her picture.

Events usually takes place once per month and people are every time different. This was my third already and it is definitely worth it.

While speed networking is something new to Ireland, I have seen it also in Women Networking events and SFA events. However Signature Speed Networking is the only one that provides it as separate events.