Getting Digital

Tuesday the 14th of April brought about an end to the business conferences in the Helix, attended by all DICE students during the academic year. It began with the presentation of the cloud computing posters worked on by the groups in conjunction with their mobile apps developed in semester 1. Each group was met by 2 to 3 judges in the form of academics and entrepreneurs associated with DCU and questioned on their project. The questions varied from “what does cloud computing mean to you” to “describe the thought process behind your poster”. The presentations were a success and the students were an outstanding representation of what DCU has to offer in terms of innovation.

Mary Moloney was the first of the 4 speakers present at the Get Digital conference, and she kicked off by talking about CoderDojo. For those that may not know, CoderDojo is a voluntary programme through which kids from as young as 7 to as old as 18 can learn technological skills such as coding and programming. The Dojos began in Cork, and now 600 of them operate out of 58 countries worldwide, and have an estimated total of 50000 students. She first became involved when she noticed that her 8 year old son was spending a ridiculous amount of his time on the Xbox, but without gaining any understanding or appreciation for the technology he was using. With this is mind she brought him to CoderDojo and immediately noticed that he was more innovative and could problem solve better. She also mentioned their rules, of which there are two.

1. Be Cool
2. Ask 3 Then Me

I particularly liked the “ask 3 then me” rule, in which children are encouraged to first see if they can solve the problem at hand themselves, then ask a friend and finally the Internet. After this they are more than welcome to ask a volunteer for help. I love how this promotes creativity and problem solving from the individuals, a skill that they’ll have for life particularly in the business world.

Richard Garsthagen of Oracle was next up. He talked a lot about cloud computing, and made a point of calling it cloud computing as opposed to “the Cloud” which suggests some sort of set location, where data is stored, when in reality it is everywhere. Oracle themselves make databases for companies, and I really liked the analogy of a restaurant which he used to describe them. In a restaurant there is a set menu, and you choose the meal you want. In Oracle, he wants to have it so that you can walk in and pick the database which you want, rather than create it from scratch, and customise it with the technological substitute of mayonnaise or ketchup.

These days, innovators and entrepreneurs are “bypassing the IT department” so to speak, thanks to the technology available to them. Why pay someone to do someone in twice the time when you’re capable of carrying that task out yourself?

Next up was John Massey, the EMEA Business Development Lead for SAP Ireland. They have 2000 people, millenials even, fluent in 29 languages working for them. He reiterated the point of the importance of cloud computing, and its impact on our business day to day. “The future is now”, the world is at our fingertips. Whilst writing this post, I am putting it out into the world wide web and anyone can remotely access it on any device. We take this service almost for granted these days. He told us to embrace technology (mind you, I do believe we’re already doing that but leaving that to one side) and left it at that.

Finally we heard from Shay Garvey from Frontline Venture Capital, a €50 million fund designated for investment into new software companies. “Giving it a go” is cheap these days, as the cost of starting a company is 1/10th of what it used to be, having fallen from a whopping €2.5 million to just €250k. There are 3 stages to the investment process, and they are the following:

• Discovery: €100k
• Seed: Up to and including €600k
• Series A: €1.3 million of a €5 million investment

Again we heard about the change that cloud computing had brought about in the industry, and how it has shaken off the structure as we know it. It is essential for companies to be responsive and able to adapt to this change in order to continue to prosper in the coming years.

Alas, the conferences are at an end, however the knowledge and skills focused on starting and maintaing your own company have been imparted on bright young minds. Maybe in 10 years time we can be the ones on stage in the Helix, regaling undergraduates of our business ventures and successes.

Get Started

Introduced by Sean Donnelly of DCU, Tuesday the 17^th of February saw the return of the conferences in the Helix associated with DICE in the form of “Get Started”. This was all about becoming an entrepreneur and taking the initiative to start and run your own business, a difficult but evidently rewarding career choice. With each speaker they recounted in brief how they came to be where they are today, as the best advice you can get about being your own boss is naturally from those who have succeeded at it themselves.

Our first speaker was Niamh Bushnell, the first ever Dublin Commissioner for Start Ups appointed in September 2014. She was last here in DCU in October, judging the entries for the UStart competition held annually, open to all students. She began her career as an entrepreneur a number of years ago, after leaving her family’s business to move to New York where she took a job with Enterprise Ireland until she went out on her own two feet. She told us about the reality of being an entrepreneur, as often the struggles associated with it are overlooked in favour of the pros like flexible hours, and only paying yourself. In fact, it took a year and a half before Niamh could pay herself in her second start up company. She also mentioned the problem with being heavily emotionally invested in your business, dubbing it “deaf, dumb and blind”. Something I hadn’t considered before was the benefits of being a Dublin based start up, as it gives you somewhat of an advantage over competitors in terms of being fairly rare, or showcasing how hard you’ve worked to break into markets abroad.

Our next speaker was David McKernan of Java Republic, a hugely successful Irish coffee business that you’ve probably already heard of. I personally found David to be one of the best speakers of the conference, as he spoke directly to us, and didn’t see himself really as an inspiration, rather as a person who just knew a bit about business. David went from working in Bewleys for a number of years, straight out of secondary school and not attending third level, to owning a company worth “a couple million”, his modest way of saying roughly €9 million. He told us what he deems the most important traits necessary in order to start a company, the main one being self-belief.

David believed in himself, and in doing so, made others believe that he could do what he had set out to do. He took risks, like any entrepreneur, however he took those risks that you are strongly advised against, such as putting his house on the line and not paying people back immediately- I believe his exact words were “didn’t fucking pay them back for 160 days”, but at the end of the day he did, regardless of how long it took. He was also brutally honest with us, about how much more difficult it is today to set up a company, compared to say 20 years ago. “We’ve blown the prospect of funding for your generation for the foreseeable future”, as banks no longer lend without recourse. This means that if you fail to repay a loan, the bank will make up the value of what you’ve defaulted on by taking an asset, such as a car, house etc. Having said that, he left us with his advice which is to “keep innovating, stay relevant and grow like hell!”

Next up we had a panel from here in DCU, made up of 3 individuals, the first of whom was Richard Stokes Director of Innovation DCU. He was in charge of the creation of Invent DCU Ltd. in September 2001. There are 18 resident companies and 35 spin outs so far. Then we heard from Ronan Furlong, the Executive Director of Innovation Campus in Glasnevin, which only opened in May of last year, and employs 300 people. It combines high-quality companies and an efficient strategy of engagement involving aspects such as a supportive eco-system. Last up was Eoghan Stack of the DCU Ryan Academy, who had me hooked the moment he said being an entrepreneur is like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. You have the call to adventure, and then 9 times out of 10, the refusal of the call in favour of a safer, risk free option. Then the wise sage appears…this could be a friend giving you the necessary kick to get going, followed by the foreboding ‘dark forest’ of general uncertainty and hardship. After the death and rebirth (rebrand maybe), you make your masterful return to the obsolete planet from whence you came (that old job) and it’s a fantastic and moving moment. Kinda. He left us with a last mildy sci-fi related piece of advice “I am the master of my own destiny”.

Following a quick Q&A by the panel Kealan Lennon, the CEO and founder of Cleverbug was the next to take to the stage. Clevercard is a service through which you can “share moments in minutes”. We’ve all done it, forgotten a birthday or left it too late to send a card. Clevercard takes out all of this, by syncing with your Facebook account, finding the few people you genuinely care about (they get that fine line between friends and Facebook friends), and will remind you their birthday is coming up so that you can send them a card or even better, schedule it so that a card will be send to them in time without you having to worry about it. Great right? So great that after 4 months the president of American Greetings, their biggest competitor offered to buy them out, and is now working for them. In terms of advice Kealan had, he said something you wouldn’t usually expect; “business plans are a waste of time”. To be fair he had a good point. No one knows what the future holds and planning it to a T, won’t make it happen.

Sean Aherne from ThankFrank was next, and if you’ve no idea what that it, you’re not alone. It’s a new company, that’s still only working on the stages of actually being marketed properly. Its all a tad bit too complex, however its to do with basically giving a monetary reward to users who help the company out. Aherne introduced himself by saying he used to be successful, but then he became an entrepreneur and gave some honest down to earth advice such as hanging out with people who are better than you. As an entrepreneur its your responsibility to ensure that you’ve your company’s best interests at heart, which means you need to have an incredibly good team of people with you to make things happen. Sean himself is a huge fan of inspirational quotes and things to get you through the day, and so most of his presentation consisted of them and I’ve included a few below.

“If you can’t explain it simply you don’t understand it well enough” – Albert Einstein

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again this time more intelligently” – Henry Ford

“Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success” – Henry Ford

Last up we had Paul Kerley, who left school and home at 16 to pursue his dream of becoming successful in the business industry. I was thoroughly impressed by his dedication to his education, as he completed his leaving cert at night over 2 years, then did electronics for 4 years, commerce for another 4, and then spent a further 4/5 years doing computer science. This was all whilst he was working full time. He also made a point of saying study what there is demand for, hence the computer science and other subjects that as time went on, became more and more essential to understand in order to be ahead of the curve. He worked in US multinationals, before setting up his first ever company, Maxim Solutions in 1994, where he had 4 people working for him. In 1997 he set up Norkom, his most successful company. Then came the “.com era”. He went from 2000 employees to 320 4 months later, and needless to say, was sued for a lot of money. As a result of this Paul talked a lot about how emotionally and mentally challenging being an entrepreneur can be. In the past he has had to fire close friends, and its something that you can’t learn how to get over, you just have to live with it. His other main piece of advice, was to plan for all eventualities. He built shock absorption ie. €30 million in cash, without which he would probably no longer have a house or an income. Although he did speak about Norkom, he didn’t talk about his resignation mere weeks after they were bought by BAE systems for €217 million, as he felt it was more important to stress the personal cost. I’m glad he did, as it is often something overlooked when people talk about how difficult being an entrepreneur can be.

As usual the conference was hugely informative and definitely fueled the potential entrepreneurs sitting amongst us now in 1^st year business. Watch this space!

Get Mobile the Smart Way

 

It’s pretty much a given that everyone has a mobile phone these days. In fact 96% of 18-35 year olds in Ireland own a smartphone. 60% of these own an iPhone. I myself am the proud owner of a (wait for it)…Nokia C1-01. If you don’t know what that is, well you’re not the only one. I get the most judgemental looks from people when I take my phone out in public and I don’t blame them, because frankly its seen as an antique by now. I only bought it about 2 years ago.

This just shows how much we have progressed when it comes to cellular devices in recent years. When they first appeared, the size of bricks and twice as heavy, they had to be carried around in briefcases no less. Now they’re getting thinner and thinner, and if the latest iPhone 6 is anything to go by, in a few years time they won’t physically exist anymore. There appears to be no limit to how thin a smartphone can be these days, but that’s just one of many interesting points made at the Get Mobile conference on the 11th of November.

The first few statistics are courtesy of Dr. Theo Lynn, who introduced the conference. He also had a few more up his sleeve, such as 90% of us check our phones first thing when we wake up, 87% of us use smartphones on public transport, and a shocking 57% of people (admitted to) using their mobile phone on the toilet. Talk about unhygienic…

Our first speaker was Mark Hughes, CEO of Digifeye, where “every vision is a decision”. Around 250 million images are shared by mobile users everyday, and Digifye lets you look at them and effectively, buy what you see. This led to the creation of Style-Eyes, which allows you to take a picture of someone’s outfit, and find an exact match or similar piece of clothing from over 900 UK and US high street brands. Without apps like this, the ‘Duchess Effect’ (the influence of Kate Middleton, fashionista extraordinaire and royal Brit) and general fashion trends wouldn’t exist to the same extent. All this, available on what used to be a simple mobile phone.

Our next speaker was Cathal Gurrin, a lecturer in computing here in DCU, and a researcher specialising in data analytics. He started with a bang, stating that the iPhone 5 is 6000 times more powerful than the Apollo, a rocket that flew to the moon of all places. Not only that, but smartphones like the iPhone 5 will be seen as about advanced as my Nokia C1-01 in 5 years time.
Cathal also talked a bit about Google Glass, and here is where I can’t really take him seriously. Apparently the recently launched Google Glass will be mainstream by 2015. That’s next year, if you didn’t realise. Sorry?
Maybe I’m being a bit cynical here, but even at the rate at which smartphones and technology are evolving around us, I don’t think, especially here in Ireland, that we’ll all be donning what looks like robot headgear in the next year. On the other hand, that’s the beauty of this day and age, the inability to predict what will come next. The concept of seeing everything through your own eyes, but also through a computer built into your glasses, is something that we used to look at it Star Trek and think “wow that’s so cool!”. Now its actually possible.

Eoin Cruise took to the stage next, the market lead in Ireland for Nokia, soon to be Microsoft Mobile Devices. Come Christmas, not only will I own an antique phone, but I’ll own a rare breed, as Nokia will cease to exist. Eoin talked a bit about how this came about, from the renewal of 2011, the revitalisation of 2012, the momentum of 2013, to the recent consolidation of 2014. In the last few years, a number of objectives were brought forward by Microsoft, including to increase the usage of Microsoft, and also to work on what are termed the “bottom range” of smartphones, ie. the €60-€200 range. He also mentioned Universal Windows Apps, which us business studies students are already well acquainted with from our work on the DICE tourism app project.

The next speaker was Paul Davey, mobile leader of IBM– international business machines if you’ve ever wondered. They claim to have made the first ever smartphone back in 1994, albeit a lot more basic and a lot more clunky and heavy than today. IBM are one of those companies that you hear an awful lot  about, and see their logo floating around a lot, however if you’re like me, you’ve never really quite known who they are or what they do. Are they mobile based? Security based? Are they involved in the process of making airplanes? Believe it or not, the answer to all of the above is yes. They do everything, from app development in partnership with Apple, to working with Twitter, to even assisting the fight against cancer. Impressive resume, to say the least.

It could be quite hard to follow a company curing cancer, in fact our final speaker Alex Meisl, the chair of Wiforia prefaced his talk with “shit, those guys are doing that?”, however he was definitely not outshone by them. Did you know that 1/3 of adults would rather give up sex than their smartphone, and 2/3 adults would forgo alcohol in favour of it? Well now you do. He talked for an hour and a half so for all of our sakes, I’ll stick to the most important points he made (in my opinion) otherwise we’ll be here all day! He talked a lot about app strategy, something I’d never really thought about before, but makes so much sense. Due to the popularity of apps these days, its very common for companies, retailers etc. to feel like they have to make an app fast and get it out there to the public. However how many of them actually sit down and think long and hard about the actual content of their app, and how it can benefit customers? Take John Lewis as an example. By increasing IT expenditure by 600% in 5 years, they doubled their sales, to $16 billion. This is a combination of app development and also showcases the importance of mobile-optimised sites. Considering the fact that 61% of people leave a site immediately if they can’t view it properly on their smartphone, it would be utterly ridiculous for a company to not invest in mobile app development.

I’ll leave you with a question that Alex put to us; what’s holding us back? The answer is quite simply, fear, uncertainty and doubt with regards to the mobile industry. This is nonsensical as it is evident that there is so much potential for businesses to expand and develop and be innovative when it comes to the smartphone. So why not be smart about it?

Getting Social with Media

Get Social, Helix

If you’d never come across ‘Get Social’ before, don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of it either until I attended the conference on Tuesday 14th October. Introduced by Dr Theo Lynn and held in the Helix, myself along with roughly 400 audience members settled down for a 4 hour event, consisting of 7 different speakers from various different companies specializing in social media marketing.

What does this whole Get Social thing actually mean though? Well it focuses on finding out what people are talking about and why they are talking about it. It looks at who’s influential on the world wide web, and uses this information and much more in order the ‘predict the future’ if you will, in terms of what kind of products there will be a market for in the future, whether it be the iPhone 27 (that’s the next model right?) or simple holiday deals. In short, it does a lot more than you may think. When many of us hear “social media” we think ‘Facebook,Twitter, Instagram and Youtube’. The big guns. Created to keep in touch with friends, family and the world’s population. However there’s so much more use they could be put to from a business perspective. Allow me to explain.

The first speaker was Deirdre Hogan, a recent graduate of DCU, and the brains behind Gajo. The “quick and easy way to discover your target audience”. Remember when I mentioned the whole “predicting future products”? That’s primarily what her company does, or is setting out to do since its early days yet. A big part of her job, is the question of how to make machines that can in short, understand our generation. We have a tendency to abbreviate words, use hashtags and generally tweet as if we were deprived of inventions such as spell check. One way Deirdre explained that they overcome this struggle, is to use a process known as ‘Key Word Targeting’. By matching travel agencies, for example with customers tweets about “holidays”, “Spain”, and “travel”, they can narrow down the extensive range of tweets out there, and only target relevant consumers interested in what they’re offering. Simple but effective, especially in this day and age.

Second to take to the stage was Jane McDaid, director of Thinkhouse, a youth communications industry based in both Ireland and the UK. After some initial technical difficulties (always ironic in these technologically orientated events), and the promising words “we are recruiting”, Jane launched into a fascinating video presentation specializing in the “7 Sins of Killer Content” online. Viral videos are a huge part of social media. The smarter they are, the more likely they are to hook a viewer and sell them their product, brand, service or information. So what are the 7 sins you ask?

• Comedy
• Epic
• Emotive
• WTF?
• Zeitgeist
• NSFW (Not Safe for Work)
• Informative (check out the amazing documentary below)

The next speaker was Lucy Campbell, RTE’s marketing director. Her focus is on the needs of the  audience, and following the leadership of digital economy. As technology has evolved and progressed over the last few years, it has been her job to ensure that RTE as a television and radio based medium, has evolved with it. This has led to the creation of services such as RTE Player, a catch up web player that is also available in app form, one which I have used many times myself. Brilliant for keeping on top of Home and Away! She also made a very interesting point, that shocked me when she mentioned that although 89% of adults regularly surf the internet and do most of their online work on smartphones, only 4% of Irish companies actually have mobile-optimized websites. They’re immediately setting themselves up for a loss in my opinion, as unlike RTE they aren’t engaging with the majority of their viewer demographic. Madness, right?

Our next speaker was Alex Coleman, of Wolfgang Digital,a website that although we didn’t immediately recognise it, once reminded of the sex shop story that broke in March this year, we were quick to remember where it got its fame from. However thats not all that Wolfgang are about. They essentially offer digital marketing and advertising to companies of any shape or size and have worked with brands as big as Littlewoods Ireland and Brown Thomas. Alex told some fascinating tales, such as the time Google went down on Thursday 16th August 2013 for less than 5 minutes. In those 5 minutes alone there was a 40% fall in internet usage, giving evidence to the claim that Google makes the world wide web go ’round. Alex also talked about the “Google Effect”, and the ongoing rivalry between Google and Facebook, the two leading social media outlets for advertising. I especially liked his point, about using social media to create brand advocacy, something that is so simple and easy to do, yet I had never really considered it before.

Next we listened to none other than Nicolas Cappiello, the creater of the infamous LinkedIn website, an en-devour to connect the world’s professional community- think of it as a Facebook for business people if you will. Or even better, an online CV. As someone who admittedly had never really come across LinkedIn before, I was confused as to how it could possibly benefit me. Cappiello sold it to me, simply stating that it is for those who “want to be better at what they are doing” and “want to be informed” in terms of the opportunities available for them in their careers. So once I’ve got a spare minute, I’m going to set up an account, because why wouldn’t you want to give yourself every single chance at succeeding in life?

Last but certainly not least was Eric Weaver, the chief social media officer of IPG Mediabrands Worldwide. So he’s kind of a big deal. As you can imagine, after 3 and a half hours of listening to people, your brain might start to switch off, however with his enthusiasm and booming American accent, that didn’t happen at all. He talked about Facebook and paid advertising and asked who was the most important in ensuring the success of a business. Is it the CEO? The staff? The janitor? Nope. Its the consumer. When a consumer shares a link on Twitter, likes a page on Facebook, emails or texts their friend telling them about an amazing product they’ve used, thats essentially free advertising for the company. Its called Social Performance Optimization, and its happening all around us,every minute of every day. Need an example? Throughout the course of this post, I’ve unintentionally advertised for all of the above companies, and it didn’t cost them a single cent.

Social media marketing is without a doubt, where its at right now.