Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

Thanks to Michele, I’m in a position to remind you that today is Pancake Tuesday.

Oh, I eat mine with plenty of butter, sugar and lemon juice! How do you eat yours?

I’ve just written a post about this on the Segala blog but thought it was relevant here because it highlights the usefulness of Twitter, even if only for fun.

We ran a competition for an iPod Touch on the Segala blog to find a new name for our Firefox extension recently. 90 comments and dozens of suggestions later, Aido and I couldn’t find one we liked. So we thought…

As a way of thanking everyone for their contribution, we decided to give away the iPod anyway. So, tonight I pasted everyone’s name into a word document and assigned a number to each one. I then asked my Twitter friends to suggest a number so I could choose the winner. I’m extremely lucky because Pat Phelan picked Mike Butcher’s number.

That’s the good news for Mike. The lucky news for me is that one of Mike’s suggestions was powdrr.com Given that Aido and I came up with POWDR, I think Mike should have won anyway.

Talk about being lucky! And I’m referring to me being lucky, not Mike. Reading back on this post, I’m wondering if we should go with powdrr instead of POWDR. Argh!

Weird huh?

I might do a ‘Monday humour‘ post every week. I can’t remember where I found this one.

Events

BIMA Awards

16 Photos

Essential Web

4 Photos

This gave me a great laugh, thanks Steve.

Can you explain what your business does in less than a minute? I can, but it has taken me more than two years to learn how to explain what the hell Content Labels are, what problem they’re solving and why I think they’ll gain mass adoption, all in under a minute.

Ok that’s not true, I can explain what enabling trust on the Web using labels is, in under a minute but I can tell the entire story in under two.

Think about it, if you were to explain what you or your business does to one of my Indian chefs, would they get it?

I hosted a networking event last year called Curry 2.0 in one of Dublin’s finest eateries. I say obviously because my partner and I own Jaipur. I invited a bunch of likeminded people to watch startups pitch to a waiter in a minute. Thanks to Joe Drumgoogle I was reminded of the videos that were captured. Check out the 1 minute pitches.

I’ve also republished my original post below in case you didn’t read it on the Segala blog.

I’m very sorry for inflicting Robert Loch upon you like this. I should have given prior warning. The picture was taken on our way back to the UK after Curry 2.0, where Rob gave his pitch about a new idea called Jokaoke (a bit like karaoke but for people who really can’t sing, rather than pretend they can’t before getting up and singing like a pro).

What started as an idea to entertain a few people over dinner, turned out to be a successful ‘networking event’ crammed with cool people who between them, traveled a few thousand miles to take part in some idle banter over a curry and glass of wine. We had folk fly in from the UK, Spain and the People’s Republic of Cork. My sincere thanks goes to everyone who attended but a special thanks is extended to those who collected air miles just for a curry (Jaipur only delivers within a 500 mile radius, sorry).

Left to right, Paul Walsh and Farzad Jamal.

I started the evening with a few games of pool with Dennis Howlett, Robert Loch and Farzad Jamal. I won, naturally.

We then moved onto Jaipur where we were greeted with some of the delights of Stormhoek wine. Whilst getting familiar with their surroundings, everyone sipped the only Rose wine specifically made to serve over Ice. Full fruity style, yet dry on the finish when served over ice, Stormhoek’s Couture Rose 2007 was a fresh start to the evening. It was also the beginning of my steady decline into a slightly inebriated state. For which I am (almost) sorry given that it’s captured on video thanks to Paul Campbell. I refuse to watch any video footage of myself so feel free no to comment on my performance

I introduced the evening’s entertainment as just that, entertainment; a time to sit back, relax and enjoy good food, wine and company. As the evening pressed ahead we got to taste more of Stormhoek’s offerings, which I may add, isn’t bad at all. The Sauvignon Blanc was my personal favourite. I won’t pretend to know anything about wine. I simply know what I like and dislike. I leave all that stuff to my restaurateur business partner Asheesh (oops, just realised we haven’t included a profile for him on the site!).

I’m hoping this will be the first of many similar events in Dublin (and other parts of Ireland should anyone wish to use the term Curry 2.0).

Left to right, Christ Smith Paul Walsh and Dan Teodosiu.

I spent some time chatting with Dan Teodosiu, Microsoft Director, Windows Live Europe. Very cool guy. He now wants to host some events at the Microsoft office. So, please leave a comment if you have any suggestions. Perhaps we could do something with the Blue Monster.

I didn’t hear this from Dan himself but Farzad filled me in on a (not-so) funny story. Apparently Dan went to college with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The sore point is that Dan was offered a job which would have made him employee number 3! How sorry is he for not accepting that job offer. He’s not doing too badly though, as he sold his venture in the Valley to Microsoft and is now heading up Live. I look forward to working with him on a future event, or two.

Left to right, Paul Walsh and Brian Caulfield.

I’m pretty confident our worthy waiter purposely absconded just before the pitching session started. So, who better to replace our 100 meter sprinter than Sanjay, Head Chef. Brian Caulfield of Trinity Venture Capital was my independent adjudicator. It took Sanjay no time at all to decide that James Kennedy of SmartNote was the easiest pitch to understand. I don’t have a video clip of this particular pitch to hand so I’ll write a separate post and explain why I personally feel he deserved his place on the podium.

First up on the pitching session is a buddy of mine, Philip Wilkinson, Founder of Crowdstorm. This was a little different because Philip previously recorded a video clip especially for the occasion, which I ran on a laptop connected to some loud speakers.

It was good to have Maxim Kelly, Business Reporter for the Sunday Tribune (the first Irish newspaper to write something about me) at the table. I put Maxim on the spot by introducing him as one of the pitching companies. I love doing stuff like that. He did a fantastic job given that he had less than 5 seconds to prepare. I think I said something like ‘so, why should we read the Tribune Max?’ to which he had no choice but to respond.

Not only did Chris Smith from Stormhoek provide the wine for the evening, he also flew over from the UK to team up with Julian Alubaidy,from Bubble Brothers. It was good to get a pitch from Chris as it gave him the opportunity to further promote the brand. So Julian, what date are you launching Stormhoek in Ireland so we can start to stock it in Jaipur?

I spoke to Hugh MacLeod on the phone this morning and he has kindly agreed to sponsor the wine at a new event that Robert Loch and I am running (email me if you want to be invited, it’s invite only).

We even got a pitch from Dan Stevenson from Microsoft. I think this was a nice touch because it’s not exactly a startup. It does however, demonstrated how Microsoftians can hang out in the same playground with the rest of the kids.

I won’t run a commentary on each pitch. You can see them for yourself below thanks to Paul Campbell. The picture and sound quality isn’t great but I think that only adds to the character of the evening and demonstrates how impromptu it was. I’ll write a separate post which will include the winning pitch.
Thanks to Dennis Howlett for the pictures

It’s not actually Ben Childers pitching for Microsoft as it states on the YouTube video, it’s Dan Stevenson.

I’ve heard along the grapevine that a small company called Segala, an expert in content classification and standards compliance certification, is giving away an iPod Touch.

I hear the competition is just as easy as those silly questions you see on daytime TV too.

Why not take a trip to the Segala blog and enter the competition now. I know the guy who found Segala, so buy me a few beers and I’ll help fix it so you win

Enter the competition now.

We had a chat on Twitter about how it could be referred to as a ‘village’ recently. I agree, but only in the context that “Twitter is a small village within the social marketing world, embraced mainly by early adopting geeks”.

I have to say, I love Twitter as it’s a very easy way to meet new friends and strengthen current relationships.

If, like some of my offline friends, you don’t use Twitter, you’ll find my idea of using the medium for anything useful, hard to believe. You may even laugh as heartily as they did over dinner the other night. And to think they’re early adopters themselves. You really can’t form an educated opinion about this particular tool until you’ve managed to converse with people.

What does that say about us Twits? Are we cutting edge? Are we more open to the idea of creating and sustaining relationships online? Do we need to get a life?

If Twitter was a village, Shel Israel would nominate a few people to his neighborhood.

Connie Reece (conniereece on Twitter) Secretary of Health, for the work she has done building the Pea Foundation

Jeremiah Owyang (jowyang), secretary of community development, although I reserve the right to occasionally heckle him.

I (shelisrael) nominate me to be the Director of the Twitter Village Senior Center. I have seniority.
Scoble (scobleizer), of course, is the press secretary because of his hyperactive communications gene.

KD Paine as director of weights and measures. This, of course, is a step down from her current position of Measurement Queen, but it could pay better.

Hugh MacLeod (gapingvoid) is clearly our Illustrator in Chief.

Paul Walsh (paulwalsh). Secretary of State, For speaking out about doing evil in China and getting banned in one or two places.

Loic LeMeur (loiclmeur), Secretary of Tweesmic, a new bi-lingual post.

Very funny

Feel free to follow me on Twitter.

My new Head of Communications has advised (eh, no, he has told me) to create a new blog under my name and move my non-Segala related posts with me. I must admit, this is something I’ve been pondering for ages as the Segala blog has attracted a great audience, but one that is perhaps, a little diverse for it to gain real benefit.

I think Dennis Howlett will agree that this has been a good move as I’ve asked him for advice on this matter in the past. I should have plenty of real estate to include my buddy’s gapingvoid widget too.

By splitting my posts between the Segala blog and here (oh, and BIMA), I hope to make my writing a little more relevant for you. Mind you, my writing skills aren’t likely to improve, I’ll continue to use poor grammar and spell things as if I’m looking in a mirror. I’m likely to cross-post where I feel my thoughts where relevant also.

I’ll continue to post on the Segala blog about the Semantic Web, Accessibility, Mobile Web, Standards, W3C, Content Labels, Trust, Search and anything else that’s relevant to Segala. This should make what we’re launching in 2008 much more prominent.

On this blog, I intend to cover everything else that I used to cover on Segala’s blog, such as Social Media, Web 2.0, Web and Mobile Trends, Twitter, Facebook, Networking, Events, Connecting People and anything else that I have an opinion on. I might even write about some personal stuff.

Kamrul, our Wordpress and PHP guru, is currently working on an Semantic Web application for Aido, but I’m hoping to squeeze a couple of hours out of him today to get some minimum functionality added to this blog, not to mention a little branding.

I don’t expect many comments left on this post because my mother doesn’t even know about it yet. However, if for some reason you stumble across this post before it falls off the edge of the blog with the introduction of new posts, please provide some feedback on what functionality you’d like to see?

Would you like to see any of the following on the sidebar

1. Most recent comments and who made them?
2. A summary of posts with the highest number of comments?
3. Digg?
4. Photographs of the people who left comments?
5. Recent Readers (MyBlogLog)?
6. Tag cloud or Recent Posts?
7. My last Twitter message?
8. My followers twitter messages?

Please ignore any design or layout changes (breakages) as Kamrul and I make changes on the fly to get this blog off the ground. We’ll transfer all my social media and entrepreneurial type posts from Segala to here, along with the comments next week. That should be fun.

I look forward to building a wee community here and hope you can be part of it

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