Doing business in Ireland

And on the other side of the table, the advertising industry is taking notice. At the second round of judging in week one, Steve Latham of the world’s premier event for the advertising industry, said “I can definitely see these ideas on stage at Cannes as potential Lion winners”.

Nonetheless, there have been frustrations. The FUSION programme’s loose schedule (for which the present writer has been responsible) imposed a tough time commitment on otherwise busy entrepreneurs. The startups had to grapple with dodgy connectivity inside the Irish Times building. And because of the Chinese wall that rightly exists between The Irish Times editorial and commercial operations, the initiative’s focus on advertising made it difficult for some of the startups to engage with writers early on in the process.

Set to recover, year after year after year.

 

Jean Pisani-Ferry has a generally reasonable discussion of the problems with the “troika” that has managed European rescue policies. But I was struck by this:

Three years later, the results are mixed at best. Unemployment has increased much more than anticipated and social hardship is unmistakable. There is one bright spot: Ireland, which is set to recover from an exceptionally severe financial crisis. But there is also a dark spot …

What’s the Irish for “et tu, Jean”? As best I can tell, Ireland has been universally (that is, by all the Serious people) proclaimed a successful role model at least once a year since the crisis began. Meanwhile, unemployment remains spectacularly high, although down a bit. Growth looks like this:

This is a “bright spot”?

True, Pisani-Ferry doesn’t actually say that Ireland is recovering, only that it is “set to recover”. But we’ve heard that before, and before, and before. And as this useful summary points out, much of the data used to tell the recovery story is suspect — not because it’s wrong, exactly, but because Ireland’s odd economic structure, in which so much of its reported exports in particular come from companies that add little value in Ireland, means that the usual numbers have to be treated with great caution.

 “We have decided to merge all of our businesses into one holding company called Topflight Travel Group” said Tony. “This means we are merging Direct Ski, Ski Beat (our UK chalet operation), Topflight Schools, Topflight and Ski McNeill (Northern Ireland) into the one company. We bought out our Venture Capitalists who were in Ski Direct, so we now own the whole business” said Tony.

The new Senior Executive team will be headed by Tony Collins (Chairman of new Group) Anthony Collins (ceo) Marco Piccoli (Topflight Schools) Neill Collins and Kevin Nolan (Finance).  “This means we all have specific responsibility for each section of the business. With the combined businesses in the new set up turning over in excess of €50 million per year it’s important that a tight control is kept on such a large business” said Tony.

Everyone has strong rights when it comes to the data that is held on them thanks to the Data Protection Act.

 

And it is up to the data protection commissioner to uphold those rights.

All businesses and institutiions should be concerned about data protection and the Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003. These 2 acts attempt to balance the rights of individuals in relation to personal data that is stored by various organisations about them.

People who control and use data about others are called ‘data controllers’ and are recognised in the acts above as having certain obligations imposed on them by law.

Individuals should know when they provide personal information to any organisation…..

Who is gathering the data? What use this data will be put? Who the data will be disclosed to?

Waltons Music, one of Ireland’s longest surviving retail businesses, is to open a large new store at the Blanchardstown Centre in west Dublin.

 

 

The Waltons music firm was founded by Martin Walton, a Dubliner born in 1901, who at the age of 15 took part in the Easter Rising in 1916. He taught music while imprisoned in Ballykinlar Internment Camp and opened the Dublin College of Music at North Frederick Street in 1924. A further store was launched in 1992 at South Great George’s Street. The present managing director, Niall Walton, is the third generation of the family to run the business.

 

www.waltons.ie

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An Irish newspaper is moonlighting as a start-up incubator. Check out the small companies it's trying to nurture.

 

The newspaper The Irish Times is looking to answer a question near and dear to the hearts of media companies everywhere: What is the future of advertising? It asked entrepreneurs to submit their best ideas for companies that might help media--say, a newspaper--make money in coming decades, now that the sun has set on classified ads. 

 

More than 100 start-ups applied to be incubated at the Times, applicants has been whittled down to a final 10, which were selected by a panel of Ireland's largest media buyers, including Tyson Pearcey of Mindshare and Paul Farrell of Initiative. The competition, dubbed Fusion, will close on June 14, when a judging panel selects an overall winner right before theCannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in Dublin.

 

 

Mobile internet usage is soaring past desktop usage. Wearable computing is poised to supplant mobile computing as the hot new thing. Basic business processes, things like logistics, manufacturing, and transportation are being reinvented. And marketers are spending money in the wrong places.

 

Those are among the findings in a new report on the state of the internet from Mary Meeker, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a top Silicon Valley venture capital firm.

Representatives from more than 40 of the world’s leading companies, including Toyota, Bosch, Kraft Foods and Volvo, are coming together today at an Enterprise Ireland conference to share practical experiences of what does and doesn’t work in the...