Sorry everyone, I have been slacking on updates lately. There has been so much work over summer! I should have known that people try to complete everything over summer to launch software on September!

Good news is that we finally launched our new website for Agile. It took half year. It’s funny how companies own website is always at last place. But its finished now and I got a lot of good reviews.

Another news – I’m now on M50 Platform Program to launch our new framework. I will be posting more news about that later.

Event page is updated again. Click here to see all events for August & September and some for October. There isn’t much happening now, but still some interesting conferences upcoming in September.

As I’m going and meeting people over different events, meetings, I do learn a lot of interesting stuff. Maybe you find something interesting here.

• M50 Enterprise Platform program provides – free desk space for 1 year, training full-day twice monthly, end of the program pitch to investors, possibility to apply for EI Cord funding, different events over year. I just got on it for next year!
• EI Innovation voucher for €5,000. If you own or manage a small limited company with a company registration number and you have a business opportunity or problem that you want to explore, why not apply for an Innovation Voucher worth €5,000? One place you can use it is in Usability Lab.
• Studentfinance.ie – in case you want to get back in education, there is a lot of information how to get funding for that.
• Dublin Cycling actually costs only €10 for annual membership if you cycle less than 1/2 h every time. If I win over my fear of busses, I will return to cycling.
• Student Internships. If you have too much work and you need some help I think this program is brilliant. Thinking about it now.
• WiseStamp. Most amazing e-mail signatures you will get. Includes your latest blog post or twitter feed or links you need. Have to try it out.

Today I have only 2 business cards left after free business owner network last month. Designer asked me to provide him with content for new ones.

While front of the card is more or less clear (basic person / company information), back of the card is always a challenge. All my previous cards had blank backside and I think it is waste of paper.

So I did my little research going through 500+ cards I have collected over past 2 years and sorted them by back idea.

Quick tip: When designing cards, keep in mind to leave space for receiver to put notes on. They would like to remind themselves where they met you and how can they benefit from you. Glossy cards that you can’t write on is a bad solution.

Colorful background or Irrelevant photos

If you really want to spend money on printing bacground black, at least put logo on it or link to your website.

Colorful background and logo and/or slogon

This is very powerful solution if you want to remind people of your brand. Very often you can put there link or other contact information in small print below logo.

Bullet points

Be careful with bullet points as there isn’t much place at the back of the card. If you want to put 10 bullet points – don’t! Nobody will be able to read it. Three to five bullet points are the best.

Tag clouds

Pretty good as it tells people what can you do and highlights things you want them to notice.

Client names

I actually don’t know why people put their clients on the back of the cards. If they are popular – I don’t believe person really worked with all of them. If they are unpopular – I won’t even know them. I think tag cloud is much more beneficial than client names.

Request for action

If you are in medical, training or service business, then making next appointment, scheduling meeting or writing down next training session is a good selling point.

Product photo & slogon

If you selling product then photo with slogon should do it. And don’t forget your contact information

Unique

The more unique is card, the more there is possibility that it won’t be thrown away later in the evening. Think about how to make people to keep your card. Some make it bigger or smaller so it won’t fit with other business cards. Some make it transparent or opening like book. Maybe there is something that you can do with your card because of your business that some others can’t?

For more successful networking read 9 Networking Success Tips.

Update: Designer created design of my business card. I love it. It can have 3 different backgrounds. I love first one, others love 3rd one. How do you think? See my Business card (PDF)

Seriously – how wrong can you get with new product names?

Yet another great night for girl geeks in Dublin. This time event was targeted to mobile phones and everything around them.

While I’m not directly into mobile market, it is important to know what’s new in market. Phone industry, its applications and usage is quite amazing and is growing every day. While most of the people would discuss iPhone only, there are Androids, Blackberries, Nokias and much more used by people. And each of them are trying to launch application store, make browsing and communicating over web easy.

Of course, we did fun part as well – ate cake, watched movies about cat Roomba drivers and cat playing with iPad.

I heard a great presentation from Ana Nelson about Tropo – VoIP solution with voice recognition. It was interesting tool you could decide to implement on your website to help your customers. Check her blog for more information (code & examples).

Why would you decide to attend GGD next time?

• it’s definetly fun
• great to learn new things
• meet fellow IT girls

Next time is planned somewhere around June.

While I have been working in IT space for 10 years now, I have been working mostly with guys only. It is nice to see other girls in this space and for them being techie enough to understand me..

>> Sign up for Ireland Girl Geek Dinner Newsletter here.
>> Follow organiser of IGGD Martha Rotter on twitter

Last week and this week I’m going through everybody I’m following and removing them. I already reduced people I follow from 600 to 300. I hope to reduce people I follow to 100-150 at least.

Don’t take any offense regarding it. I just want to follow people I know personally. And it hard to keep track of 600 people anyway.

But there is one good thing in all this. I’m creating lists that might benefit to you. So go to my profile and you can see following lists:
- Irish Enterpreneurs – people who setup their own business in Ireland
- Irish Web Creators – designers, developers, hosting providers in Ireland
- Training in Ireland – people who train and coach in Ireland
- Irish Online Businesses
- Financial Ireland – accountants, accounting companies and accounting software in Ireland
- Events Ireland – profiles that gives you updates on events in Ireland
- Marketers in Ireland

This is very nice list for anyone and I will keep it updated. Let me know if I add you in wrong list.

Update: It seems unfollowing people doesn’t really help much. I will be back to following everyone, but will be looking only at particular lists when opening twitter.

Let’s be honest. To deliver a Beta for a project such as online accounting software, is not an easy task. Obviously, we had to celebrate it. See below photo taken in restaurant Yo Thai, in the middle of chefs performance.

Project is still for limited users only. Tweet me if you are interested to try it out.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

The prize of €10,000 for Best Investment Proposal went to Kinesense last Thursday. Another great start up from Ireland that plans to go globally.

While judges were thinking about whom should they award, I asked few people on their opinion. And most of them replied that Kinesense is the best choice. Both of the other projects were quite interesting and good so why such decision?

Here is few tips for your start-up if you plan to attract investors with your presentation:

1) Get clients. Before you even start developing something or planning, get someone who is ready to pay for it. This is basic step where most of the start-ups fail. Even if you have the best idea in the world and you have plan how to implement it. If there is nobody to buy it, investors won’t be intrested.

2) Good presentation. Sometimes good presentation, flashy facts win awards just because they give investors good insight on company. Who cares about your product specifics and technical details? Investor always asks the same question – what is in it for me? Be prepared to present – try it out with your family, closest friends before going to investors.

3) Good team. Very rarely you see investments that goes to one-person company. It is important for any start up to have good team that consists of different specialists. Investors actually want to see that if you get sick and can’t continue, somebody else will be able to do it.

4) Financial Projections. They are important. When will you start to get revenue? How quick your company will grow? And watch out for both – worst case and best case scenarios. If they aren’t realistic then nobody gonna believe you. Don’t forget to tell investors how much money you need exactly.

5) Milestones. Put realistic milestones in your plans. What will be achieved this year? What is achieved next year? Tell how you have been doing for last year and what you have achieved.

Kinesense were able to show that there is somebody ready to pay and somebody is using it already. It is somehow unfair that you won’t get money until you won’t start selling. But its the main rule in investment world.

**Note: Good news – I had enough time to update my IT & Business event page for March and bit of April. This month is really busy so don’t miss interesting events around.

So yesterday I decided to surf over net as I was a bit tired of doing all the “financial stuff”. Lately I go to digg.com and pick up some most popular articles. While some of them are quite crap – there are usually some good ones. For example, this post made me think that I might be better wife if I leave post it notes somewhere (especially after reading male comments). But I loved the comics and quiz site… I filled out two most relevant quizzes. See if you get more than me

Being busy over the holiday season is probably a normal thing. So I don’t feel so bad about little updates on my blog. I was a bit amazed that people are ready to start new projects and ideas over this season. Well, if anyone out there still need web project to be done – just write a comment and I will contact you.

This year was amazing for me and our company. I would be lying if I say it was easy. Honestly – I have never worried about so much things than this year. Recession has made my life more stressful and uncertain. This is why I look forward to New Year with big hopes. This years promise is that I gonna spend more time on my family than our business. And usual those kind of things really work out when you put a thought in them.

Happy New Year! Let all our New Years resolutions come true!

***Note: If you are wandering about events posts I do monthly check out the new page dedicated just for that. I decided not to spam my blog monthly with events posts.