No More Art Notepad

So it started with the iPhone, progressed into a Mac Book and now, only a year after first biting the Apple, I too am Maced up for the first time in over a decade. Granted I’m cheating a bit with a dual boot Hackintosh but still I have to admit that using Snow Leopard and especially design tools like Coda is a refreshing experience and one that may well help me up my game in design terms.

I have been assimilated. For shame…

What a week it’s been in Belfast. From Monday until yesterday we had the privilege to have the presence of the ITLG, the Irish Technology Leadership Group, a Silicon Valley based group of CEOs, VPs, VCs, private investors and people who are and have been at the very peak of the world in technology, digital media and ICT.

Why were they here? Well they have a long term plan to help accelerate Irish tech companies to a new level through mentoring, infrastructure and investment. It’s been a week of flowery language (boil the sea, hurricane the forest) and big big thinking on both their behalf and on behalf of a shedload of Irish companies energised by their presence, open approach to business and world view. What we all learned fundamentally was simple; we set our sights too low and underestimate our talent and ability to compete on the world stage and this must change.

We had many many meetings with Invest NI, NISP, Momentum, NISINE, the Universities, ministers and too many organisations to mention really all of which were intense but overall positive in their content and outcomes. The ITLG came to help make things better, and from where we sit that’s already a job well done. Many of us will never regard our businesses, opportunities and ultimately our outlook on life quite the same way ever again.

I learned personally when to keep quiet, when to speak and that passion is no crime. I also learned to look higher for what we are trying to achieve and that I’m 33 and not 21 anymore when the exhaustion started to bite!

One moment that resonates was at a drinks reception at Stormont where the First Minister and Deputy First Minister encapsulated the importance of what was going on and welcomed the continuance of what had been set in action with open arms. For two former sworn enemies to come together with a common message and set of goals was an inspiration to everyone who witnessed it, and they understood the gravity of the ask and the task at hand to make it all happen. Let’s help them to roll up the sleeves and muck in with the rest of us, they’re needed if we are to try to reach the goal of having five 50 million plus turnover companies in Belfast within five years. The roadmap for how that is achievable has been drawn in pencil and it’s now up to us to fill the colour and the shape of this for years to come. We have help from the best in the world, and no excuses for not taking it. But we must ask…

And on failure? What’s our alternative? We know that our current approach isn’t working and that we need to up our game. That’s a given. We’re too insular, too inward looking and too fearful of falling over to ever move at the pace required to keep up. The public sector can help us in some ways but it moves too slow to fast track, and that’s what’s needed. It can find a better role though, and support us better in our goals and we’ll start building that route too.

To look down the road and see only stop signs is a worthless approach and not something we should be passing on to the young people who are staying in Belfast for the first time in 40 years, for them and for ourselves we all must do better.

So here’s to you Mr Robinson, Mr McGuinness, Mr Kirk, Mr Gilmore, Mr Hartnett, Mr Johnston, Mr McMillan, Mrs Foster, Mr Hamilton, Mr Orr, Mr Watts, Mr Richardson, Mr Moran, Mr Simon, Mrs Clinton, Mr Kelly, Mr Elchenlaub, Mr McGrath, Mr Sims, Mr Murphy and every other Mr and Mrs with the heart to believe we can get there. Belfast loves you more than you will know…

So Paypal have finally unwrapped their distributed payments platform and it’s a doozy by the looks of things. Have a look over at www.x.com (how’d they get a single letter domain btw?) for details of upcoming events and a shed load of micropayment geekery. X looks like the final release of the system they’ve been hinting at for a while, allowing developers to act as psuedo merchants and to automatically distribute payments as required. Bliss. We’ll be integrating PaypalX into the AirPOS system as soon as is humanly possible. Check back for more info on that soon.

I’ve been having a very interesting time having my own natural / unnatural inclinations challenged and thinking a lot (again) about the idea of culture change. And as tends to happen sometimes, things seem to appear from the ether on the same subject to help you along your way.

Last Thursday at the Northern Ireland Science Park I had the good fortune of meeting a genuine web over-achiever in the guise of Toby Coppel, ex of Yahoo and an all round needle twitcher on the world stage. And he’s under 40. And he’s from Northern Ireland. And he’s interested in investing in businesses, particularly cleantech and digital media.

Have a listen to his speech from the 25K Awards, it’s very revealing. Also notice the total absense of civil servants or government in general from his outlook and career to date.

Download the speech (.m4a format) from our Drop Box

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1942900/Toby%20Coppel%20Talk%20NISP%2025K%20Awards.m4a

I wonder if there is a point when you can have too many good things going on? Or is it really true that good things happen to good people? Either way at the minute I’m blessed in my working life, even if it does mean sometimes a few too many nights out on the beer and early rises to cope with.

Recently a meeting happened under the guise of Code4Pizza which saw 20+ developers, designers and such folk in a room discussing how to ‘crowdsource Translink.’ What the hell does that mean right?

Well essentially the rise of the OpendataNI iinitative that seeks to release governmental and other types of public interest data into the public realm has led to a bunch of folk deciding to use the Translink data for bus times, rail times and such to create something that serves the public better than what’s currently on offer from the Translink website and other places that publish bus times.

Ultimately this may be an iPhone app, or a web app or both that allows people to better see what’s happening, maybe even in real time, with bus locations and GPS tracking but perhaps not. Whatever it will end up being, serving the public will be its aim and that is to be applauded. There’s no talk of money here or anything sort of reward beyond just providing a better public service, again a laudable goal.

Of course the whole initiative rests on Translink releasing the data that’s required in a usable format and there’s no guarantee that that will happen, even though a bunch of freedom of information requests (FOI) have been sent in. Translink have, at the time of writing, about two weeks left to reply to these so we’ll know more soon.

Failing the release of the data, we have discussed ways of producing our own en masse, such as geo-tagging bus stops using our phones or Google Maps or some similar method. In terms of the routes information we decided that using Runkeeper for the iPhone would be a good approach, an application made to record the times and route of runners as they run using GPS tracking in real-time. So there are options no matter what happens, and anyone can get involved too so if you have an iPhone and fancy getting a few buses to help us record and map the routes, get in touch and we’ll keep you informed of what’s needed and when. It should be fun!

Check out more on Code4Pizza on the Digital Circle ning and you can get updates and find out about future meetups there.

It’s not a co-incedence that all of these people are showing up with common mentalities and common goals in mind at the myriad of events happening in the tech world. It’s inspiring and energetic and if that energy translates into action it may well be something to behold. Come as you are as always, you will have a part to play. Maybe after all the geek will inherit the earth? Or at least be able to catch a bus more easily.