Startups: What are you paying for office space in Dublin?
You can see the results here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AoBRu050aBBYdEtHY2pZR2cySHBzdzhBS1phekp0Z2c&output=html
Technovate 2012 : A Proper Tech Conference in The Sunny South East
Image by KDamo
Technovate 2012 is on next week in Wexford town. Looks like a great event and and doesn’t suffer from ‘its a conference so it must be held in Dublin’ sydrome.
Great Speakers, great sponsors, if you want to see more events like this outside the Pale then vote with your wallets.
A Search Engine for Node.js
I’ve pulled together a bunch of resources into a Google Customised Search Engine for Node.js programmers. The main admin site is here.
Do suggest sites to add.
FeedHenry Brings Mobile App Development to Cloud Foundry
Big day at FeedHenry. Today we launched our CloudFoundry integration.
Available today at mobilecf.feedhenry.com, Cloud Foundry developers can build mobile apps using HTML5, JavaScript and CSS fully integrated and instantly staged to their CloudFoundry.com account. To get started, simply download the FeedHenry Command Line tool, using your existing CloudFoundry.com credentials. New subscribers to CloudFoundry.com can join using the promotion code “feedhenry”.
Dash over to mobilecf.feedhenry.com and give it a spin.
Copyright and Innovation – A White Paper – Web Friendly
The original paper published by Sean Sherlock is here.
A Microsoft Word version is here.
A poor but serviceable HTML version is here.
The website is at http://www.djei.ie/science/ipr/crc_statement.htm
The email address for feedback is : copyrightreview@djei.ie
Send feedback by post to:
Copyright Review
Room 517
Department of Jobs
Enterprise and Innovation
Kildare Street
Dublin 2.
Why the IIA is not the best forum for Government Feedback
Minister of State Sean Sherlock has recently published “A Copyright and Innovation White Paper” its a big read at 182 pages and I have only skimmed it. At the same time he then tweeted:
The IIA in turn posted a statement on their website which outlined my key concerns with using an ”Industry body” to collate feedback for an issue that will have widespread societal impact. Specifically:
This will allow the IIA to collate the views of its members and enable us to comprehensively represent their concerns and ideas to Government and input into this important legislation.
So its first priority is to collate the views of its members, which is right and proper. The IIA is a society of its members that as far as I know does not purport to represent the views of those segments of the industry who are not members.
The IIA then goes on to say:
Non-members are welcome to submit their comments using this survey tool. However, comments by non-members will be passed un-collated and un-filtered to the department as it would not be in the best interests of our members to use IIA resources in working for non-members. I believe this methodology strikes the right balance of being inclusive and facilitative whilst prioritising our member’s needs as we are charged to do. Allowing the widest stakeholder feedback is quite simply in the spirit of the community. Stakeholders are not limited to using this tool but it is open to everyone.
They are upfront about this, the IIA is about its members.
So where is the forum for feedback for non-members of the IIA? I don’t want my feedback refracted through a third party organisation. Nor do I want to be treated as a second class citizen because I have no business being a member of the IIA. Stakeholders are not limited to this tool, but where are the other tools?
What priority is the minister likely to place on IIA feedback vs feedback from other sources? No one can tell at this point. But we can infer from his behaviour on the SOPA Ireland issue that feedback and decisions how to proceed are likely to be made behind closed doors.
Can I suggest that a more open forum for Feedback would be for the minister to set up a Facebook page to which anyone can post public commentary, an email address to which private commentary can be posted and his own survey (again trivial to setup on a site like PollDaddy).
All this feedback should be published “in the raw” including back-channel input from various industry bodies who use “other channels” to reach the minister. Lets shed a little sunlight on the process.
I would be happy to do this work for no charge in order to facilitate an open feedback process.
The Shame of SOPA Ireland
Un.Fucking.Believable.
SOPA Ireland got passed into law tonight despite the protests of 80,000 people. I ask you, what do we have to do to move the needle for the venal deadbeats that have brought this country to its knees? These people want to hand it over piecemeal to every transnational corporation who comes looks looking for a piece of the action.
If democracy can’t work like this how is it supposed to work?
We spent the last 50 years eradicating the anti-democratic forces that turned Northern Ireland into a battlefield only to find the enemy has always been amongst us. The Trilateral Commission in 1973 bemoaned “The Crisis of Democracy” surrounding the protests associated with the Vietnam War. They would have smiled benevolently on our current government’s ability to blithely ignore the concerns of the electorate in order to serve the “the needs of the market” i.e. the music industry who put a gun to its head after the Eircom three strikes ruling was overturned.
We apparently “must legislate” because the EMI told us so.
What should we do? What can we do? Our government had slapped us on the arse and told us to go to bed.
If as a democratic state we no longer have democracy then the alternatives are bleak indeed…
