Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

Join me, Jeff Pulver and London’s finest entrepreneurs, investors and industry movers & shakers at an informal business breakfast networking event. All welcome.

Demand is likely to be high as you can see from the number of tickets already sold from my mailing list, so we’re going to release tickets in batches over the coming weeks to give everyone a chance. Numbers will be limited so make sure to book your place ASAP.

About Jeff

With more than 14,000 Twitter followers, Jeff is one of the most followed/respected early-stage investors worldwide. Jeff is a technology anthropologist; entrepreneur; early-stage seed investor; speaker - living in social media. Jeff’s blog

Be the first to hear about my upcoming networking events by signing up to his mailing list. Events will be promoted by email first, followed by blog, twitter and facebook - so, sign up now.

Sponsored by

Blacknight - http://blacknight.com
Minimus Hosting: E-mail, personal sites, basic business sites, simple shop, blogs and portfolio sites.

Six Degrees PR - http://sixdegreespr.com
Helping technology companies build positive brand identities is core to what we do.

Partners

TechnoMage Photography
Oliver will catch plenty of photographs - he might even make you look good!

Newspepper.com
Newspepper is an innovative broadcast production company, socially benefiting the media movers and shakers of tomorrow.

Looking for sponsors

If you’d like to promote your brand to more than 17,000 people on twitter - not to mention on both Jeff’s and Paul’s blogs and Facebook profiles, please get in touch paul@segala.com

A few people took the time to email me for an update on my (not so) recent trip to San Francisco. I wasn’t going to bother with a blog post, but I had to write a response anyway. So here goes…

The trip started on a positive footing; I caught the plane. Anyone who followed my Qik travels during recent times will testify that this is in fact, a feat in its own right.

In summary

TechCrunch50 was great. Met lots of cool people and attended lots of networking events/parties. My thanks go to Jason Calacanis and Tyler Crowley for my press pass. The most memorable parties included the MAXroam gathering - hosted by Pat Phelan.

Pat getting all domesticated during the party.

Loved the Qik party – thanks to Bhaskar and Jackie.

Had dinner with Sol (Founder) and the rest of the 12 Seconds crew. We talked about collaboration between 12 Seconds and Wubud. Not sure it’ll be possible on mobile, but there must be something we can do on the Web site.

The ‘Smack my pitch up’ was fantastic! Pitches came from Loren Feldman, Rob Loch and others. Wubud was the proud sponsor of this very professional/prestigious party. I think Pat Phelan’s idea was the best but unfortunately he didn’t pitch it on the night – a social network for people with sexually transmitted diseases. Brilliant – think of the tag clouds to help you visualise the most widely spread diseases in a particular area.

Had dinner with Loren Feldman – that’s always a blast.

• I was interviewed by Shel the puppet. I almost feel like I’ve made it now.
• Did a TechCrunch podcast with Mike Butcher, Rob Loch, Paul Carr and Scott Rutherford.
• Ended up with Sarah Lacey’s mobile phone after a night on the town. That same night, Rob and I chased a homeless person down the street after he ran off with Rob’s money. Surreal.
• Eris played a fantastic host and took Paul and I to various fancy eateries.
• Dinner with Zoe and Pat was a much needed relaxing evening. Well, at least until we ended up with the usual suspects afterwards.

Picked up some t-shirts at Twitter HQ.

Jack Dorsey (Founding CEO) and I talked shop about architecture and the issues faced by companies that need to scale quickly. Very cool guy with a very cool company.

Had coffee with Matt Mullenweg who is equally awesome. What a guy. What a community he has built. Matt is the founding CEO of Wordpress – probably the biggest and most successful open source community on the Web. He has kindly agreed to attend an Open Source Summit I’m hosting for 10 to 15 thought leaders from the around the world – sponsored/supported by BT. We talked about how to use Content Labels as a form of content classification for Wordpress.com

Paul Carr and I spent almost an entire day sitting in the sun on Union Square. Isn’t it great when you can work from anywhere in the world, literally. That was memorable. Paul and I found the world’s first ‘low-fat salad’ in the cheese factory - weighing in at just under 500 calories. Only in America.

My favourite quote - waiter at the Cheese factory; “would you like bread while you wait sir”. Me, “while I wait for my sandwich?!”. Waiter “oh… yeah I see what you mean. Me “smile”. Classic. Only in America.

I gave a presention at the Yahoo! office during my last day. The topic was ‘how to enable more trust on the Web’. I demonstrated Segala’s browser extension and Semantic Web application (yet to be made public). It went so well that one of the best known Trustmark providers in the world is now going to partner with us. Fantastic!

Blah blah blah.

The Irish need to live up to the great name we have for partying so come and help us generate the loudest Mozilla PARTY around the world to celebrate the Firefox 3 launch.

The party is being sponsored by BT, Putplace.com, Blacknight Hosting, Segala, wubud and Mozilla is sending over lots of prizes/swag for us to give away on the night.

Registration to attend is required. Over 100 people have already registered so make sure you get your name on the list before it’s closed. Register here.

I’d like to thank Barry Alistair from IOTC for helping us secure the venue. The party will be streamed live thanks to intruders.tv. Bookmark the page where you can view the party live.

This is a great opportunity to network with the Irish tech industry.

I’ve decided to blog more often about the things I discuss on Twitter. I’ll continue to use Twitter in the same way I do now, but I feel that I’m not communicating enough with most of my social network.

What’s my social network?

In short, it’s you and the other people with whom I’m connected. We are connected by the very fact that you’re interested in what I have to say. By the same token, I’m interested in what you have to say, hence why I converse with everyone who’s kind enough to spend time to leave a comment.

My social network is made up of people. Within that network I have multiple communities, each community representing something unique. The three blogs I author for example, represent entirely different communities, each with some overlap.

• Personal blog = entrepreneurial stuff, connecting, networking, social media…
• Segala blog = trust on the Web, standards, search, semantic web…
• BIMA blog = mainly Industry, creativity…
• Twitter = all of the above

You’ll notice that Twitter represents all of my communities. But it only represents a very small percentage of each one and hence, a small percentage of my social network. That’s because only a small handful of each community is represented by the early adopters in each one.

As I said, I won’t stop twittering. It’s a fantastic way to get to know more people whilst strengthening relationships. Twitter is also the world’s most comprehensive news feed and periodic replacement for a search engine when searching for stuff such as contact details or recommendations.

Think about it for a minute, do you sometimes Twitter messages that warrant a blog post? Does laziness encourage you to opt for the more accessible Twitter?