Gremlin’s Fireside Chat

Bit of an exciting week for me. Last Friday a long contract finally came to an end and since I had six weeks notice of it I had signed up for the “Open Data 18 hour Challenge” on 4th and 5th July which from the blurb on their website was about local government data sets which have recently started to be released in Ireland. I was expecting something like the tech conferences I have attended in the past – some presentations, discussions maybe the odd coding and brain storming sessions; But boy was I wrong. If I had known what it was to be about before hand I would probably never have signed up for the challenge, but I am SO GLAD that I did. In short the challenge was to generate business idea’s that used open data and maybe in the future take them forward to a product and a new High-Tech business.

The challenge was run over two days when on the first day was almost a pure brainstorming session where you as part of a table of techies, academics, entrepreneurs you came up with as many idea’s as you could on using the open data sets (Fingal County Council datasets and Dublin dataset ) Each table had to create two or three posters from the best ideas they could come up with – and there were loads. Once the posters were created and everyone had a look at them there was a short presentation on each one of them after which everyone voted on which ones were the best idea’s. Once all the votes were cast the idea’s with the least votes were eliminated and then we were asked to pin our names to the projects we wanted to do the next day – I chose one called “BizFit”. We were then told at the end of the next each of the ten teams had to do a five minute “Dragon’s den” style presentation to a panel of judges who would make the the final choices.

The BizFit idea is conceptually a simple one in that the idea is to use demographic data to either allow a small-to-medium company to find the best location for their business or for someone like an estate agent find the best kind of company for a particular empty business unit. With a great team of six people we had to develop the idea, discover the competitors and work out revenue streams etc for the final slide based presentation.

Anyway to cut a long story short our BizFit team beat off stiff competition to win the £4000 euro prize. Needless to say our team were stunned at our success.

Not too sure what we are going to do next. There is talk about entering the launchpad process to see if we can take the idea further. I hope we do since its an interesting business idea.

If you want more information on the challenge and the results from the Fingal Open Data Site, New Tech Post, Silicon Republic and Digital Times

I learn’t a lot on the process of business idea generation and what is needed to initiate the process of turning an idea into something more concrete. The “buzz” in the air on both days was palpable and I got to meet a lot of great people whom I hope to maintain contact with.

Its Ten-Ten-Ten or 10/10/10 today, or if you are pedantic its 10th October 2010. Nothing special happened today except in 732AD Charles Martel and the Franks defeated a large Andalusian Muslim army led by Abd er Rahman at the Battle of Tours thus “saving” Europe from Islamic domination. I also realized that I have not blogged an entry in 4 months. There is not a lot to blog about.

The family had a nice holiday in Lisbon which is a very child friendly city and where my Daughter fell in love with the old trams and showed a love of Flying and airplanes – so much so she frequently asks to go to the airport to watch planes take of and land. On the flight back from Lisbon and just as the plane hit the runways and started to violently jolt from side to side as it decelerated my Daughter Maeve started to giggle with joy. When the plane eventually stopped jolting and slowed down she start to shout towards the pilots cabin “Again. I want to do it Again”.

Maeve has come along rapidly these last four months. She is almost completely potty trained and her English has improved a lot for one who is only two and a half. Phrases such as “No Daddy don’t do that – your are bad boy”, “Is Daddy going on the cho-cho (train)” are common. Her memory and understanding are progressing a pace to. For example we went down the village show for some “Bread, Milk, Pop and Potatoes” – and Maeve remembered the list without prompting. When we got to the shop I asked here what we were looking for and she recited the list off pat before pointing out the items on the shelves. Impressive.

As onto grander things Ireland is still in a deep recession. My family have been lucky so far, but many friends are now out of work and things look bleak for the immediate future. I know we all have to suffer, but the politicians and their backers in the banks and building trade seem to still have their noses in the troughs. All this doom and gloom reminds me of the 1970’s and 1980’s recessions which were pretty bad. Why did not the government realize we seem to a “downward spiral” every 10-20 years and plan for it and base most of the tax income off the one source? Pretty dumb.

Anyway time to look at something positive – my mom is throwing her 70th Birthday party next weekend.

The Irish National Archives have today released the 1901 Irish Census – and I could not help but take a dive and have a look at my mothers side of the Bartleys. I knew that in 1911 they lived in Whistlemount just outside Navan. The census results for 1911 shows :

My Grandfather Joseph (a kindly but tough and pious man) is the 7 year old mentioned and his Parents are Joseph and Jane.

In 1901 in the same place both Joseph and Jane are mentioned:

But Joseph’s parents Pater and Kate are there also along with Joseph’s and Jane’s daughter Eliza aged 2 months. Eliza must have died at a young age (May the Lord have mercy on her soul) but isn’t in the 1911 one.

You will also note that Joseph is in 1911 aged 40 and in 1901 is 25! From the scan of the census record I see that the age entry for Joseph is in a different ink than the rest. I wonder what the story was for this..

Happy new year all,

and what a xmas – its been quiet mostly because we have all suffered from one cold or another. New year was fun because her family came to visit and food and drink was shared.

After the new year snow arrived – the worst in Ireland for 30 years. I remember the one 30 years ago, but I was in England at the time – and I remember the fun of six foot snow drifts that lasted for weeks and digging snow tunnels, school being cancelled and the roads so bad you cannot drive on them. I remember fantastic snow covered vista’s. We lived in the country in a small English village miles away from most so called “civilization”.

One of the main things I remember is using sledges full of food which we teenagers pulled to out-lying houses containing old people who needed our help.

Back to the present and we see Ireland brought to a stand still by a prolonged cold spell (>14 days) and a meagre 2cm of snow – that and a lot of dangerous black ice on the roads. Funny thing is the government has run out of road salt (blames local council’s and the “rare” condition). Everyone is angry at the government’s incompetence in handling any crisis – before the snow it was the flooding, banking, housing etc. No imagination or planning with our rulers.

Ireland is one of those places that goes nutty over christmas – not that we get much snow here which is a pity. When I went out to lunch and I saw the following snowman on the move.

Made me laugh out loud – something good on a miserable day like today.