Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

My stay in Dublin a few weeks ago was kicked off with Curry 2.0 - a new networking event that Aido and I are working on. The t-shirts below were picked up for the Firefox party to help promote the event. I must admit, the photo is a little cheesy and opens the door for a slagging from friends. Go for it guys! You probably can’t read the writing but it says “Curry 2.0 makes you shit hot”

The first few networking dinners will be free for attendees, at least until we can demonstrate value for money - i.e. value for membership fee and the cost of a curry. Thanks to Hosting365 and BT for sponsoring the kick-off dinner.

With 17 hungry executives, a great lively debate was had by all. I met Sorcha, a Segala ex-employee, at 6:30 and as a direct result of her bad influence, we started drinking wine at around, er, 6:30. Needless to say I can’t remember much about the evening. Apparently it was a great night.

My second night in Dublin was just as much fun, but strangely, with a lot less alcohol. In fact, I was completely sober at the end of the Firefox Party that Aido and I hosted. Our thanks go to Aido, Fergus and Conor via Web2Ireland, Laura and Marie Boran from Silicon Republic for helping to raise awareness through their own networks and Web sites. While I’m at it, I should thank BT, PutPlace, Blacknight, Segala and wubud again, for sponsoring the party and Barry from IOTC (check here for video footage from the live streaming) for arranging the venue.

It was the biggest out of 771 parties worldwide - not bad. Even Mozilla sent us a picture of them celebrating our celebrations!

Read Marie’s review on Firefox 3 to learn more about the new features. It can’t all be about parties. So I’m told.

• 200 registered attendees
• 5 Sponsors: BT, Blacknight putplace, Segala and wubud
• Popcorn provided by Cineworld! (party venue - arranged by IOTC)
• Lots of drink and nibbles
• Good coverage online

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 conducted a search for Segala on Google (.com) to see if any of our competitors were squatting on the keyword (this has happened in the past). I was surprised to see that the first result had 7 links to various parts of our Web site underneath the description as per the screen shot above.

Ignore the green tick, that’s what our Firefox extension does to provide more information about the suitability of the content using Content Labels.

Do you know how/why this has happened?

I was conducting a search on an association called the BWDMA to see how it had progressed since the weird phone call I received from the guy who found it a few years ago. I say weird because I’m unable to explain it. He put himself forward as the Founder of an established and well respected independent association and asked that I change from Segala Accreditation to Segala Certification. We did, but certainly not because he asked us to.

After a little digging on my part, I found that he seemed to own lots of Web sites which all connected to each other; either by collaboration, hosting provider, technology provider or endorser. All linking back to BWDMA to say how great it was.

Anyway, one of Google’s search results led me to a site now called About us. (http://www.aboutus.org/Bwdma.com) It’s still claiming the following

The BWDMA is a “broad church”, inclusive organisation, open to all companies and individuals that have an interest in the new media sector. BWDMA is influence-driven rather than membership-driven.

The Association seeks to improve e-business standards through sharing knowledge, understanding and proliferation of best practice. To further its aims and objectives, the association actively solicits constructive relationships with industry, government, academia and other such bodies, as may have common goals or purpose.

The Association seeks to assist all industries with the adoption and application of Internet and related technologies to encourage development in the digital economy. The BWDMA endeavours to provide a gateway for businesses to purchase with confidence from reputable suppliers through the free procurement service Web Project Guide.

When you click on the ‘Go direct to the Website’ link, you’re taken to a weird looking portal where you can buy houses and find Russian brides.

When you click on the AboutUS logo to take you back to the homepage AboutUs (http://www.aboutus.org/AboutUs.org) and then select About AboutUs in the footer, you get the following

AboutUS is a wiki whose goal is to create a free and valuable Internet resource containing information both about websites and other community created topics/information. The site was pre-populated with information about many different websites and thousands of updates are now being made by people each day.

The vision of AboutUs hinges on the power of collaboration and the unique capacity of wiki technology to capture the coming together of communities.

Confused? Yeah, so was I.

So, what is BWDMA these days? Is it a Portal to help you find your next Russian bride, a Web site collecting information and displaying it in a different format, thereby adding to the noise that’s out there already, or, is it an Independent Association representing the interests of Industry? Is it trying to be all of the above?

I notice that Nomensa still talks about BWDMA on its Web site, so perhaps they can tell me more.

For a company/association who specialises in helping you to find more information about companies and associations, it doesn’t make it easy for you to find out more information about them!

Please let me know if you know what’s going on with this association.