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.

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

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.

I’m back to event list! But before you scroll down, I wanted to tell you that I found 2 really good examples of social marketing. Check out Simon’s Cat and TheFunTheory. You will understand what I’m talking about when you see it.

Now back to what you really want to see :

• 11th Nov 18:00 / Free Business Owner Network / Bewleys hotel, free – meet other businesses and try out your pitch in speed networking
• 11th Nov 19:00 / 10 Min Street Networking / Main Gate of St. Stephen’s Green, free – another great idea of business networking
• 11th Nov 19:45 / Southside B2B Visitors Event / The National Yacht Club, Dun Laoghaire, free – Southside Business Network is a business and professional networking organisation whose primary purpose is to exchange qualified business referrals.
• 13th Nov 19:00 / ISA Annual Awards / Burlington Hotel, 125 EUR – The Irish Software Association is pleased to announce the Annual Software Industry Awards 2009.
• 12th Nov 18:00 / World Usability Day & IQ Studio Launch Party / 34 Clarendon Street (opposite Saba), D2, free – there’ll be wine tasting (or bring your own beer), music, food, shorts and Powerpoint Karaoke!
• 13th Nov 20:00 / Cork pre-BarCamp Girl Geek Dinner / Gourmet Burger Bistro, 8 Bridge Street, 18 EUR – Girl Geek Dinner
• 14th Nov 10:00 / BarCamp Cork / Cork International Airport Hotel, free – people getting together, sharing ideas, learning from each other and finding like-minds.
• 16th Nov 08:00 / SME Links Ireland Breakfast Networking for Childline / Hotel Isaacs (Beresford Place), 10EUR (min donation) – the event will include a number of showcase presentations and offers an opportunity to network with other SME owners and managers while raising much needed funds for Childline
• 17th Nov 08:30 / Synergy Breakfast “Exporting” / Synergy Centre, free – yet another interesting topic you might want to hear about
• 17th Nov 19:00 / Dublin ALT.NET / Seagrass, free – event interesting for developers. This time discussing Open Rasta
• 18th Nov 17:45 / NovaUCD 2009 Campus Company Development Programme Awards Evening / NovaUCD, free – meet companies that has been successful from NovaUCD campus
• 18th Nov 09:00 / Winning International Business with the Web / Radisson BLU Royal Dublin Hotel, price €95/ €65 – how to grow your business internationally, increase your revenues and use the internet to expand into new markets cost effectively.
• 18th Nov 09:15 / Technology in Business Conference / Radisson Blu Hotel, Cork, 95-195 EUR – it@cork annual conference
• 18th Nov 19:00 / Python Ireland Meetup / Scruffy Murphy’s, free – 45 minute to 1 hour talk demonstrating the creation of a straightforward webapp from scratch on App Engine.
• 19th Nov / Golden Spider Awards / Burlington Hotel, from 300 EUR – eircom Golden Spider Awards (recognizing excellence in internet & digital media)
  
• 20th Nov / National Women’s Enterprise Day / Mullingar, 100 EUR – this event offers support to women already in business and those thinking of starting out
• 21st Nov 10:30 / Open Coffee Dublin / Dakota Bar, free – informal event for web / business people to get together and chat about anything and everything.
• 24th Nov 18:30 / Entrepreneurs Only / Mont Clare Hotel, 25 EUR – what do all these enterpreneurs (check out speakers) have in common?
• 26th Nov 09:30 / Virtual Desktop Roadshow / Sun Microsystems, East Point Business Park, seems free – explore the opportunities offered by a virtualised desktop from Sun Microsystems
• 26th Nov 19:00 / Connector – New Businesses / Kobra bar, free – Connector is looking for 10 new businesses to step forward and tell us their story
• 27th – 29th Nov / Xtival / free – XBox Live festival
• 2nd Dec / The iPhone as an Emerging Enterprise Platform / The Alexander Hotel, free – this is a chance for software companies to explore the opportunities presented by mobile applications and Apple’s iPhone in particular.
• 5th Dec 10:00 / GreenHouse Business Camp / O’Reilly building on the Trinity campus, free – event is about sharing information, knowledge & experience

more to come later…

Here is IT & Business event list for October. Don’t forget to add them to your diary

• 6th Oct 14:00 / Launch of the National Digital Skills Week / The Digital Hub, free – I found this event quite advertised, however I wasn’t able to find any events related to digital skills week, which is pretty strange
• 6th Oct 10:00 / Open Coffee Mallow / Springfort Hal, Bar & Lounge area – monthly opportunity for business people to meet in a casual environment
• 7th Oct 18:15 / 121 Marketing Club / The Mint Bar, Westin Hotel, free – great to meet fellow marketers
• 7th Oct 18:00 / FREE Business Owner Network / Bewleys Hotel, Dublin 4, free – good event for networking
• 8th Oct 10:30 / Open Coffee Dublin / Science gallery, free – OpenCoffee Club is an informal event for web / business people to get together and chat about anything and everything.
• 8th Oct 08:00 / 3rd Annual Mid-West Entrepreneur Showcase / Limerick Institute of Technology, Millenium Theatre – 16 LEAP programme participants and more businesses
• 10th Oct / Irish Web Awards / Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, 35 EUR – great place to learn best web practises and projects and have lots of fun
• 11th Oct / Greenhouse Business Camp / Absolute Hotel, Limerick – for people who are self-employed, starting their own business or thinking about starting their own business.
• 12th Oct 15:00 / FaceBook Garage Belfast / The Black Box, Hill St., Belfast, free – learn more about Facebook applications
• 13th Oct 19:30 / Ireland Girl Geek Dinner / Ciao Bella Roma, €15-€20 per person – Girl Geek Dinners are a chance for ladies in technology to get together, enjoy some nice food and drinks, and have fun meeting other women in their field.
• 13th Oct 08:00 / BIG IDEAS Showcase 2009 / Croke Park, Dublin, free – The event is being organised by Enterprise Ireland’s Research & Innovation Business Unit and will showcase the commercial opportunities emerging from Ireland’s Higher Education Institutes in the areas of: Life Science & Food, ICT, Industrial Technologies
• 14th Oct – 20th Oct / Innovation Dublin – Innovation Dublin is a week-long festival of events highlighting and promoting innovation in the city. Check their website as they host some business seminars as well.
• 16th Oct 12:00 / FWIB 10th Celebratory Lunch & Networking Event / Roganstown Golf & Country Club, Swords, 35 EUR non-members – join marvellous celebration of women in business and networking in Fingal
• 20th Oct 19:00 / ALT.NET / Seagrass – talk about introduction to Python and possibly talk about DB
• 20th Oct 19:00 / WebsiteSpark Lunch with TechLudd / Guiness Storehouse – Come along and meet new people, and make new contacts and have some fun too. The BizSpark and WebsiteSpark programs are run by Microsoft to help Startup companies with support, technology and networks.
• 21th Oct 09:00 / IBM Storage – Doing More for Less / Conrad Hotel, D2 – The half day event will provide you with the details and relevant information that will help you to develop plans to to reduce your storage costs and use saved budget for other business critical elements of your infrastructure.
• 29th Oct 10:30 / Open Coffee Naas / venue tbc – an informal event for business people to get together and chat about anything and everything.
• 29th Oct 19:00 / Connector BTW Halloween party / venue tbc – connect with other businesses, usually includes free drinks and maybe some food.

I might be adding few later on, so keep an eye on the list.

Even thought I didn’t get to any presentations (and everyone said they were great) and even if I had to stay by my stand for whole day to tell about our company, I quite enjoyed epicenter. As everything that I haven’t tried before. I’m getting more and more better at all this “sales” thing.

Vodofone presented new application store in conference (similar to iPhone app store). And a very nice thing happened – I won phone with Vodofone app store. My current phone battery ends after 2h, I was just desperate to get new one (I’m so lucky!). I will be receiving it today and might as well take some photo and put it up on my blog.

I have been very busy whole last month, delivering projects, stressing and preparing marketing materials. And I missed summer sun this year too. Maybe I gonna go for vacation in winter?

Here is some photos from epicenter. I wanted to put up more, but all other were blurry (I should win new camera too).

I’m sorry to everyone who have been checking my blog for events and hadn’t found anything new from start of July. I will try harder next time to give you events earlier. A lot of conferences are happening in August and September and there is less free events around. That’s probably because of vacations. As usual – events I’m posting is Business or IT related. Feel free to comment if you think some more should be added.

Events Jul, Aug and Sept

• 13th-16th July / ICGSE2009 / Limerick – The 4^th International Conference on Global Software Engineering will bring together researchers and practitioners interested in exploring how globally distributed teams work and how the challenges can be met (prices from $300 – $1200).
• 14th July 19:00 / The Digital Hub / Science Gallery, FREE – Join this brain storming session to discuss the creation of The Dublin Hub. The vision of the Dublin Hub group is to create a flexible, affordable, shared working environment for freelancers, small businesses, the self-employed, and home-workers looking for a desk, or a meeting space in town.
• 16th July 18:00 / Social Media Networking / Kudos Bar, Clarion Hotel IFSC – A FREE Business Networking event that will help you understand how social media can help you grow your business.
• 18th July 10:30 / Open Coffee Dublin / Dakota Bar, FREE – informal event for web / business people to get together and chat about anything and everything.
• 21st July 08:30 / Maintaining work/life balance as an Entrepreneur / Synergy centre breakfast seminar, FREE
• 22nd July 10:00 / Quickly Discovering and Understanding your Software Applications / FREE – organised by ASG software solutions
• 22nd July 18:00 / HotHouse United / School House pub – business networking event for all current and former participants of the DIT Hothouse programme.
• 23rd July 08:30 / Free NovaUCD event about security / FREE- don’t miss it as there isn’t much free events in NovaUCD
• 23rd July 18:30 / OWASP Chapter meeting – group dedicated to fighting the cause of software insecurity in Ireland
• 30th July 19:00 / Connector BBQ / The Church – connecting people around web, business and technology
• 31st July 09:00 / Podcasting training courses from Podcasting Ireland / 100 EUR
• 2nd Aug 13:00 / Geeknic / Farmleigh Park – picnic for geeks, there is also a farmers market that day
• 5th Aug 18:30 / 121 Marketing Club / Mint Bar, Westin Hotel – usually around 30+ people is attending event, includes 1h speed networking
• 5th Aug 20:00 / Ireland Girl Geek Dinner / Kennedy’s on Westland Road – meet fellow girls in IT
• 6th Aug 10:30 / Open Coffee Club / Science Galery, FREE – informal event for web / business people to get together and chat about anything and everything.
• 14th Aug 18:00 / Free Business Networking / The Bewleys Hotel, Ballsbridge – speed networking and presentation. Great event for networking. Last time more than 60 people attended.
• 15th Aug / CupcakeCamp / Belfast – while I really thought that this was baking event rather than IT, somebody convinced me that it isn’t. So if you wanna go and try it out, let me know afterwards ^^
• 16th Aug 19:00 / Dublin ALT.NET / check website for place (probably The Vaults again), this months talk will be about “ORM with NHibernate”
• 21st Aug 09:30 / SQS Agile Workshop / 4-5 Dawson St, 100 EUR – explore the key principles of agile development with a particular focus on the quality and testing aspects.
• 24th-28th Aug / epicenter – The Irish Software Show / Trinity College, 99 EUR – 197 EUR – the biggest ever event in the software space ever held in Ireland. Should be fun.
• 27th Aug 13:00 / Simply Zesty Summer Camp / The Church, 99 EUR – earn how social media can transform your business
• 10th Sept / OWASP conference / 90-150 EUR – first Irish Application Security conference in historic Dublin University, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
• 10th Sept / Confidence in Action conference / FREE -  if you’re looking to navigate your way through the current economic climate, then Confidence in Action is the perfect place to start.
• 19th Sept / OSS BarCamp / DIT Kevin Street Dublin – open source bar camp
• 19th Sept / BizCamp – website isn’t updated yet, but I’m sure there will be more information closer to date
• 20th-24th Sept / COSAC 2009 / Killashee House Hotel, Naas, Co. Kildare – 16th International Computer Security Symposium (prices from 350 – 4000 EUR). A lot of speakers from outside Ireland. It is self organised event so don’t be afraid of website
• 24th Sept / Mobile Marketing 2009 – explore and develop the many opportunities that has and will drive this sector for the future

Some more information

One week from now on you can promote yourself on Irish Business Women forum. This event happens only once per year and you can promote yourself as much you like and how you like.

If you are just starting networking, few of the Dublin City Enterprise networking groups are quite good. I have heard lot of good things about Link! network. Usually you can attend one event for free to check them out.

If you are in web development check out The Rally Rev-up Webinar about Agile and Rally development methods happening every Thursday. As you might know our company does Agile Scrum development and we are interested in everything agile.

Other non-IT and non-business events you shouldn’t miss this summer is Festival of World Cultures and Electric Picnic at the end of August.

Last Wednesday I attended MIX Essentials conference organised by Microsoft. Overall attendance wasn’t really great as most employers can’t afford their employees waste one day on conference.

I’m not a Microsoft fan as I do love Apple more, but it is always important to know news from competitors. I do love testing so seeing what’s new in IE8 was very valuable for me. It was also interesting to see their new search engine Bing.com which I still haven’t tried. If you want to know more about IE – try their blog.

Let’s make quick list of new things that seemed important to me in IE8:

• Standards compliance – their new IE won’t be compatible with previous IE however it will now follow all standards – CSS, HTML, ACID2 and DOM
• Rendering website to previous IE versions. This is a big benefit to all developers and testers. Finally we don’t have to install numerous IE versions to make sure our site looks good on all of them. It is also possible to set a meta tag for website to make it allways be generated as one previous IE versions.
• Web Slices – follow only the part of site you are interested. E.g. in independent.ie there is section of latest news. You can slice only that section and see it almost like bookmark (hard to explain it, I know). All you have to do is add to the < div > tag text class=”hslice”. To be honest is very similar to Apple Web Clips which have been around for quite a while. There is still no standard for Web Slices.
• Accelerator – it is possible to add pop-up menus for different words on sites. E.g. if I select word Paris, my pop-up menu might contain hotel deals, flights or search for it in Google.
• Be a Search Provider – IE8 allows you to use different searches from websites. E.g. not only Google search, but also independent.ie search. You can do this with simple XML.
• IEAK – build your own IE8 with settings you want your users to use and let them download your version
• As usual there is a lot of improvements in security – anti-phishing, data protection, XSS filters, InPrivate browsing and InPrivate blocking. And I hope they won’t do the same mistake as before where there was more security than usability.
• Improved Performance allowing more threads and connections as well as JavaScript improvements
• New Developer tools – JavaScript debugger, HTML&CSS debuggers, JavaScript profile

Second presentation was made by Sabrina Dent. I have been looking at her blog before and I really love design.

Her presentation was meant to start with Froggie ad from 1955. However, there was connection problems so we missed it. We received few really great tips on how designer should work.

1. Eliminate choices. If you give customer too much choices of design, he gonna pick what he thinks important from all of them. So at the end you will get good for nothing design. 90% clients will be happy with first version you send to them.
2. Like Yoda be – to be honest I didn’t got this point
3. Just say No and don’t explain. If client wants some small changes (from his perspective) and you know it will take few days, say No. He took you do the job and he shouldn’t teach you how to do it. You don’t teach dentist how to fix your teeth, don’t you?

After this presentation I really understand why people love Sabrina. She has really strong personality and does what she loves to do.

See more at the presentation slideshows here

Summer is here and it seems there is less events happening. All conferences will be in August or September as at the moment everyone is going for vacation. So here is my list – if you are not going anywhere, I hope you enjoy networking.

• 13 June 09:30 (tomorrow) / 101 Podcasting – Introduction to Podcasting for Beginers from Podcasting Ireland / Digital Depot, 100 EUR
• 15 June 17:30 / Venture Networking / The National Yacht Club Dun Laoghaire – mail and ask do they still have places
• 16 June 08:30 / Industrial Design Breakfast Seminar / Synergy centre – free
• 16 June 12:00 / Future Focus Dublin conference by IBM / Guiness Storehouse – free, targeted mostly at medium sized IT companies
• 16 – 19 June all day / Comsware 2009 / Trinity College Dublin – they have quite a lot of interesting speakers (prices 99-939 EUR)
• 18 June 19:00 / Dublin ALT.NET / The Vault (this time there will be projector) – free, but you have to confirm attendance. This weeks topic is “Behavior Driven Development”
• 20 June 10:30 / Open Coffee Dublin / Dakota bar – great place to meet fellow developers & business owners
• 24 June 09:00 / User Experience Seminar: Demystifying WCAG 2.0 and Web Accessibility / Fitzwilliam Hall, Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin 2 – organised by IIA Web development group. Price 65 EUR IIA members, 95 EUR non-members
• 24 June 09:30 / Mix essentials. Pure Information / Hilton Hotel Dublin, free – how create next generation web experiences
• 26 June 18:30 / Connector No.11 / The Church, free – meet special guest Liam Cunningham and see 10 winning Canon videos
• 30 June 09:30 / Think2Act – A Free Advisory Conference for People Recently made Redundant or Those Looking for a New Career / National College Ireland (NCI), IFSC, Dublin 1 – Free

And don’t forget by end of month order tickets for OWASP conference to get special discount  €90. Very good price for conference like this.

Last week I attended Google seminar for half day. I have heard before about people being amazed by Google internal politics. And I just loved their office! It’s not easy to get employed for Google, but when you actually get in you can travel (and still get job), get free chocolates, crisps and sandwiches all day. You can take shower, play snooker or build a tent in office. It’s all about creativity. I loved colors and comfort everywhere. Gordon House on Barrow Street is Google EU head office for 44 countries.

Look at some photos here:

Here is some summary from presentation and workshops.

Statistics:

• 59% people purchase products online because of brand
• 57% people search for brand after hearing link on TV ads
• 80% internet users have broadband in Ireland
• 70% households has computer in Ireland
• Internet usage : 1.2 billions people using through PC; 3+ billions people using through mobile
• 121.5% people in Ireland has mobile phone

Free Google Tools:

• Google Webmasters – all about Google generic search and how get in top of it
• Google Insights – check keywords, keyword seasonality, increasing brands online (e.g. your competitors)
• Google Analytics – easy setup tool for seeing your website statistics (e.g. visits, page view, visit time). I learned few new things about Goals and Funnels. Setup goals – what you want users to do on your site. Setup Funnels – what path user should go through.
• Google Website Optimiser – it is possible to show two website versions at the same time and analyse design.
• Google UK Online Ad Toolkit – UK case studies for keywords specific to market. Great source if you are searching keywords for your website.
• Google Adwords Conversation Tracking – if you want to follow people from keyword search till goal on your website, this is tool for you.

Tips for your homepage:

• Landing page should show what you want users to do on site
• People scan webpages not read them. They start with left top corner so make sure your most relevant information is right there.
• Give people options how to contact you
• Don’t make people to fill massive forms.
• Don’t use flash on websites as it won’t show on most of the mobile phones.
• Speak people language (don’t speak to technical)
• Create competitor alerts in Google