Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

Every month, Robert Loch and I host an event called Top Cats. The goal of the event is to forge stronger ties and greater collaboration between the internet start up, mobile, interactive marketing, TV and advertising communities.

There are no formalities apart from my introduction to the evening and we don’t have speakers. It’s an informal gathering of likeminded people, many of whom end up collaborating on very interesting projects.

Who qualifies to be a Top Cat

• Established Agencies = Founder/CEO/Chair
• Technology Providers & Brands (big companies such as Microsoft and the BBC) = Director/Head or other senior decision maker
• Startups = Founder/CEO/Chair + secured VC funding or have a seriously good track record
• Other = Publishers, Editors, Authors, TV Personalities, Establish Journalists, you get the picture.

I’m going to have a chit chat with a few people tonight and stream it live via my mobile. Keep an eye on my Qik account and feel free to comment and ask questions in the live chat room. It might be better to subscribe to my Twitter feed so you get a text message each time I stream live.

So, another Top Cats event is upon us. Check out the names of those who have said they can make it this month.

Who’s coming tonight

• Alex Hoye, Chair, Faction/Buildersite
• Alexis d’Amecourt, 19 Entertainment
• Andrew Shorten, EMEA Platform Evangelist, Adobe
• Andy Co Founder, Agency Mobile
• Andy Finney, Founder, ATSF
• Andy MacLaren, Co-founder, Agency Mobile
• Angela Kirkham, Publishing Manager, Online Marketing, O2
• Armando Ruffi, Co-founder, Zubka
• Ben Johnson, Principal, Both Vitruvian Partners
• Brian Hoadley, Managing Director , phunQube
• Caspar Craven, Co-founder, Trovus
• Catherine Toole, MD, Sticky Content
• Cathy Grimes, Marketing Manager Personal Solutions, Equifax
• Charles Astwood, Founder, London Eating
• Chris Wood, CEO, Top Table
• Craig Hill, Founder / Chairman, Digital Outlook
• Dan Morris, Managing Partner, Splendid
• Daniel Appelquist, Senior Technology Strategist, Vodafone Group
• David Hart, Director, Codegent Ltd
• David King, Director, APCO Online
• Dennis Greene, Head of E-business, Royal Mail
• Dr Anxo Cereijo Roibás, User Experience Research manager, Vodafone
• Edward Charvet, Co-founder, Trovus
• Elizabeth Varley, Editorial Director, Online Content UK
• Farzad Jamal, Group Internet Controller, Northern Shell
• Felix Velarde, Founder, Underwired
• Hamish Gordon,
• Irfon Watkins, CEO, Coull
• James Booth, Co-founder, Rockabox Media
• James Pimentel-Pinto, Managing Director, Agency Mobile
• Jasmine Birtles Founder/MD, Moneymagpie.com
• Jemima Kiss, New media reporter, Media Guardian
• Josephine Fraser, Social/Educational Technologist
• Julia Eilon, AMF Ventures
• Justin Bradley, Head of Digital Television, Sixth Sense UK
• Justin Champney, Head of Brand Innovation EMEA, McCann Worldgroup
• Justin Cooke, Managing Director , Fortune Cookie
• Mairi Clark, Editor , Revolution Magazine
• Mark Fallons, Head of interactive, McCann
• Mark McDermott, Director, Codegent Ltd
• Martin Lowde, 19 Entertainment
• Mike Butcher, Editor, TechCrunch
• Mike Risman, Managing Partner, Both Vitruvian Partners
• Nick Halstead, Founder, Fav.or.it
• Omaid Hizwazi, Co-founder, Crayon
• Paul Canty, Founder, Preloaded
• Paul Duncanson, Managing Director, Creativebrief
• Peter Ogden, Producer, ITV
• Richard Daish, Head of Mobile Services, Chelsea FC
• Richard Titus, Acting Head of UX&D, BBC FM&T
• Rob Corradi, Founder, Preloaded
• Rob Walk, Managing partner, NovaRising
• Robert Killick, MD, cScape
• Robin Charney, Sr. Marketing Manager - Web Platform Solutions, Adobe
• Robin Howard, Client Services Director, BT
• Satish Jayakumar, Co-founder, AdJug
• Scott Gallacher, Director of Online & Partner Marketing, BskyB
• Simon Grice, Founder, ideas.org
• Stephanie Bouchet, Marketing Director, Joost
• Theodore Emiantor, Managing Director, Westminster Accountancy
• Tim O’Neill, Founder / MD, Reactive
• Tom Nixon, Founder, Nixon Mcinnes
• Tom Sacchi, Founder / Director, Unit9
• Tony Cocks, Microsoft
• Will Jeffery, Managing director, Maverick Media
• Will McInnes, MD, Nixon McInnes

Hosts

• Robert Loch, Founder, Internet People & Founder, That’s Useful
• Paul Walsh, Chair, BIMA & Founder, Segala

Thanks to Adobe for their sponsorship this month.

BIMA (British Interactive Media Association), the association I Chair, is home to the UK’s most prestigious awards to reward the creative excellence in the Digital Industry.

For the first time in 23 years, I’d like to announce that the Awards Committee is now open to two BIMA members.

More over on the BIMA blog.

Transaction valued at approximately $44.6 billion in cash and stock;

Provides 62 percent premium to current trading price for Yahoo! shareholders;

Combined entity to create a more competitive company while providing superior value to shareholders and better choice and innovation for customers and partners.

REDMOND, Wash., Feb. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT - News) today announced that it has made a proposal to the Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO - News) Board of Directors to acquire all the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 representing a total equity value of approximately $44.6 billion. Microsoft’s proposal would allow the Yahoo! shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock, with the total consideration payable to Yahoo! shareholders consisting of one-half cash and one-half Microsoft common stock. The offer represents a 62 percent premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock on Jan. 31, 2008.

We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “We believe our combination will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders and better choice and innovation to our customers and industry partners.

Our lives, our businesses, and even our society have been progressively transformed by the Web, and Yahoo! has played a pioneering role by building compelling, high-scale services and infrastructure,” said Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft. “The combination of these two great teams would enable us to jointly deliver a broad range of new experiences to our customers that neither of us would have achieved on our own.

My opinion

This could make Microsoft a serious contender in the Internet arena against Google. I’d welcome the purchase with open arms because I can’t help feel that Google is going in the same direction as Microsoft did years ago. That is, monopolising its position. I mean, Microsoft was sued by the EU courts for forcing Real Player upon users of Windows based PCs. Will it force Google into sharing its search algorithms given that it has more than an 80% monopolistic share of online search? Will Google ever be taken to court for Android? Ah, there’s a blog post yet to be written.

Personally I think Microsoft is given a hard time mostly by those who like to take a shot across the bow as they think it’s the right thing to do. I’ve only ever met cool, creative and entrepreneurial people at Microsoft. I mean it, I have never met a Microsoft employee that was anything short of helpful.

As for Google… my last encounter (and I’ve had a lot of them) was with a guy who attended one of my tech dinners recently. I asked him, ’so, what do you do at Google?’. His response was surprisingly not surprising, ‘I can’t tell you as it’s a secret’. I understand that internal projects are somtimes confidential, but it’s the tone of the response I have become accustomed to from Google employees. It’s as if they’re above everyone else. He was a very nice chap and he’ll always be welcome at my dinner table.

Source Ana Nelson via Twitter. Full story can be found on Yahoo! news.

[Update here's an interesting take from Denis Howlett]

Since the BIMA Awards were first introduced in 1984, they have undergone continuous development and always strived to encompass the constant changes within the interactive industry.

BIMA has never shrunk from its responsibility to reflect the very highest standards of creativity and innovation and caused controversy some years ago when it considered that the measure of work in one particular category was not of sufficient merit to be awarded a winner’s trophy. More recently, the industry applauded BIMA’s decision when it announced that the judge’s favourite – the BIMA Grand Prix – was the winning entry in the student category.

The BIMAs™ now rightly take their place on the top shelf of prestigious Awards, alongside the BAFTAs, the Brits and the Oscars.

During my 48 hour day I Chair BIMA (British Interactive Media Association) to help ensure the UK retains the position as centre of excellence for creativity on the global stage. So, I’m very proud to show off our awards with this short video. Thanks to Hermione from Newspepper.com for doing a fantastic job.

The Top Cats are in town and meeting again on the usual hot tin roof this week.

Each month I host a very exclusive invitation-only event with Robert Loch called Top Cats in London. The goal of the event is to forge stronger ties and greater collaboration between the internet start up, mobile, interactive marketing, TV and advertising communities.

Check out the cool venue and take a look at the 4 minute video that newspepper.com shot at the last event.

[Update, names marked with ** were added after the post was published]

- Alex Hoye, Chair, Faction/Buildersite
- Alexis d’Amecourt, Head of New Media, 19 Entertainment
- Andrew Doe, Founder, PCIQ
- Andrew Romans, General Partner, Georgetown Ventures
- Ann Jameson, Director, Pricejamieson - an Aquent company
- Aoife O’Sullivan, Partner, Gates & Partners
- Caspar Craven, Co-founder, Trovus
- Catherine Toole, MD Sticky, Content
- Cathy Grimes, Marketing Manager, Equifax Personal Solutions
- Charles Billot, Marketing Director, Soup
- Chris O’Rourke, Founder / MD, User Vision
- Daniel Appelquist, Senior Technology Strategist, Vodafone Group **
- David Hart, Director, Codegent Ltd
- David King, Director, APCO Online
- Edward Charvet, Co-founder, Trovus
- Elizabeth Varley, Editorial Director, Online Content UK
- Ellie Kaye, Marketing Manager, Soup
- Felix Velarde, Founder, Underwired
- Giles Palmer, Managing Director, Magpie.net
- Grant Currie, MD , Inferno PR
- Gurpritpal Singh, Director, of Emerging Microsoft Technology Developer & Platform Group (DPE)
- Hugo Burge, COO, Cheapflights **
- Ian Wallis , Editor, Growing Business
- Jasmine Birtles, Founder / MD, Moneymagpie.com
- Jemima Kiss , New Media Reporter, Media Guardian
- Jon Watts, Founder, MTM London
- Justin Champney, Head of Brand Innovation, EMEA, McCann Worldgroup
- Justin Cooke, Founder / Fortune Cookie
- Mark McDermott, Director, Codegent Ltd
- Matthew O’Riordon, Founder, The Lemon Foundation
- Matthew Thomas, Editor, Startup.co.uk
- Mike Butcher, Editor, TechCrunch
- MT Rainey, MD, Horsesmouth
- Neil Hughston , Managing Director, Saatchi & Saatchi Interactive
- Neil Svensen , CEO, Rufus Leonard
- Nic Brisbourne, Partner, DFJ Esprit
- Nick Farnhill, Partner, POKE
- Oli Barrett
- Paul Birch, Founder, Cominded
- Richard O’Connor , Founder, Tablina
- Richard Titus, Acting Head of UX&D, BBC FM&T
- Rob Corradi, Founder, Preloaded
- Robin Howard, Client Services Director, BT
- Roger Thelwell, Founder / Operations, mook
- Rory Cellan-Jones, Technology Correspondent, BBC
- Simon Murdoch, Founder, friendsabroad **
- Stephanie Bouchet, Head of Marketing, Joost
- Steve Schlenker, Chief Investment Officer, DN Capital
- Syd Nadim, CEO, Clock
- Tom Holmes, Founder & Chairman, Creativebrief
- Tom Nixon Founder, Nixon, Mcinnes
- Will Jeffery, Managing Director, Maverick Media
- Will McInnes, MD, Nixon McInnes
- Yoyo Allalouf, Director, Allalouf Investment Group

Hosts

- Robert Loch, Founder, Internet People & Founder, That’s Useful
- Paul Walsh, Chair, BIMA & Founder, Segala

Thanks again to Soup for sponsoring this month’s gather of the Top Cats. Thanks to them, we’ll be nibbling on Sushi and drinking fine wine.

Actually Sam didn’t attend Le Web this year. I used his name badge instead, which many thought was quite creative, providing a lot of people with a giggle. It was actually a good conversational point.

Thanks to Pat Phelan for the picture. Dan Applequist amongst others uploaded theirs to flickr. Pictures of my badge seem to be making its way around a few blogs too.

It has been a great conference, definitely worth the time and effort. It was great to catch up with people like Mike Arrington, Jason Calacanis, Tyler Crowley and Amanda Lorenzani amongst the many others who unfortunately I don’t have time to name right now.

Just 3 days to go.

It’s a pleasure to Chair BIMA, host to the most prestigious awards in the UK dedicated to the creatives in the Interactive Industry. The Awards celebrate creative excellence and best practice in interactive design.

More on the BIMA blog.

Here’s the list of confirmed attendees for this month’s Top Cats. I’ll post a comprehensive list in the next day or so. Names marked with * have been added after this post was originally published.

Quick overview

Robert Loch and I host many different types of events and felt that something was missing. We felt something little different and exclusive to the real decision makers within the Industry was needed. So, Top Cats was born.

Read more…

I’ve been wondering for sometime, if Ireland is in need of a non-profit professional body or Industry association to represent agencies, freelancers and students who specialise in the Interactive Industry.

Such a body or association would

1. Act as a unified voice within Industry
2. Combat skills shortages by building better relationships with academy to help it better understand what the Industry requires of graduates
3. Help clients better understand what’s required of them, so members could provide pitches which better reflect their suitability for a particular project
4. Educate and encourage clients about the importance of standards
5. Provide clients with a real opportunity to compare apples with apples - whether that’s a big agency going up against a freelance developer
6. Provide Industry with a central source of information and statistics to measure growth and future potential
7. Provide students with an opportunity to showcase themselves in front of agencies and clients thereby reducing the need to look outside of Ireland or use expensive employment agencies
8. Act as a unified voice to lobby government on policies and legislation
9. Host annual awards
10. There’s lots more but I don’t have the time to list everything here.

I was inspired to write this post after taking part in a lengthy thread (which is still ongoing) on Eoghan McCabe’s blog. In short, Eoghan questioned the authenticity of the Spider Awards based on the companies short listed and the judging criterion used to hand out awards.

Please note that I don’t think Eoghan’s post title does it justice as he doesn’t actually care about not being nominated. Please look beyond that if you decide to read his post.

I don’t wish to discuss the content of the thread here as it’s best left on Eoghan’s blog. In one of my comments I explained that I Chair the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA), which represents the above and much more. The BIMA Awards are arguably the most prestigious awards dedicated to the creatives in the Interactive Industry. I went on to explain that although the awards make a profit, all of the money that BIMA makes from membership and events, is pumped back into the association. That is, it’s reinvested in Industry initiatives to help ensure the UK remains as the center of excellence for creativity worldwide.

One of the other commentators’ response to my comment was

@Paul Walsh - That sounds like an honorable and altruistic venture. We could do with something similar here.

So that got me thinking again. I’ve been given the green light to setup the Chapter for the Usability Professional Association (UPA) for Ireland and I came close to setting up IAB Ireland. I still intend on setting up UPA Ireland when I can find 5 minutes to breath. However, does the Industry need something a little smaller than BIMA but a little bigger than the UPA?

Do you think Ireland would benefit from a professional body or association to represent agencies, freelancers and students where each member has an equal voice and together they are unified?

What do you think?

One of my twitters this afternoon seemed to strike a cord with the developers amongst my followers. My twitter went something like, no exactly like this

Some users may not be able to read what’s in the image above, so I’ve pasted the text below. I’ve purposely done this as Adrian (AKA Aido) is going to write a blog post about ‘creative vs usable’ and this post should act as reference.

Segala developer “not too long left”. Me “what does that mean to say, someone on Death Row? ‘how long please?” Why can’t developers ans you?

I received the following response from a number of my fellow twitters (twits?). I’m assuming they’re taking one side of the argument given that they’re developers.

Sarah Blow @PaulWalsh because writing software is a bit like drawing a picture… ask an artist how long before you’ll have your picture… the ans.

Guestimates only go so far and are always prone to the unknown… Software is a journey of discovery and the more work that.

Craig Murphy @PaulWalsh : Devs rarely commit to time constraints as the business frequently “mishear” or moves the goalposts. Further, the business often takes the first “date” a dev gives as thee date…no room for discovery, etc.

Paul Campbell @paulwalsh because of that FECKING one line that caused 2 hour long script to fall over and now means another two hour wait just to see

Even if writing software is a bit like drawing a picture, wouldn’t you have a good idea how long it’s going to take? Surely when you’re ‘almost finished’, you’d have an even better idea how long it will take to complete based on the historical data you’ve collected from the work you’ve just completed?

If you can’t estimate how long it’s going to take to complete a task, such as developing a simple site using a simple platform (what’s simple I hear you ask) how do you expect the business to appreciate your expertise.

Note that I’m not talking about guestimates of potential work. I’m talking about estimating the completing time of a current project you’re working on.

For the sake of the record, the developer to which I refer above is brilliant at what he does and is able to deliver upon a brief seamlessly. I thought my response was funny (yes I now, you shouldn’t laugh at your own jokes) and decided to twitter it.

What do you think?

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If you’re already on Twitter then feel free to follow my stream of nonsense. If you’re not already using Twitter, don’t bother trying to make sense of it until you’ve used it for a while and managed to build/join a small community.