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.
- Be Cool
- 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.
Digital Innovation Creativity and Enterprise 