April OpenCoffee Recap & A Request

Posted on April 13, 2012 by martha

Many thanks to everyone who came along to OpenCoffee Dublin today, we had a great turnout!

Thanks to Ann from Yelp, Robert from ZenDoc, and Mairead from Success Teams for talking about their organizations with us, and to all the new faces.

If you have updates or info you’d like to share, please email me or post it below and I’ll do a bigger follow-up. I know there was interest in Ann’s event over the May bank holiday and some people looking to hire folks as well.

In other news: I am sad to announce that this is the last month that I am running OpenCoffee Dublin. It’s not a huge time commitment, but I am working and travelling a lot due to my startups and need someone else who can be here more regularly and keep it going.

Running OpenCoffee is not a lot of work, but it’s been one of the best experiences I’ve had in Dublin. I have had the opportunity to meet loads of bright and interesting people who have helped me and my companies very much.

If you find OpenCoffee Dublin useful and would like to help it continue, please get in touch at martha [at] opencoffeedublin.com. It’s really just updating twitter and the blog regularly and letting KC Peaches or other venues know when we’re showing up. I’m hoping that a couple of people will step up so that you can help each other and help OpenCoffee continue to grow and assist the tech community of Dublin.

Thanks for your continued support & interest, hope to see you at the next one!

Next Dublin OpenCoffee: Friday APRIL 13

Posted on March 17, 2012 by martha

This year is flying by! OpenCoffee skipped a March meetup due simply to too much going on. We’re back on April 13th instead of the 6th due to the Easter holiday. We’ll be at KC Peaches on Nassau Street from 10am on Friday April 13th. As usual, we’ll be there until around noon.

KC Peaches is located at 28/29 Nassau Street, very close to the Pearse Street DART station and Grafton Street, so it’s easy to get to. Their coffee, pastries and food are all fantastic and healthy, too! (Also, if you’re having a particularly bad morning, they have just opened a great new wine cellar in the basement!) KC Peaches also provides free Wi-Fi via Bitbuzz for your first 20 minutes in the cafe. We’re usually downstairs and in the room to your left.

I have two slots for people who want to talk about upcoming events or demo projects they’re working on. Please get in touch or leave a comment below if you’re interested in demoing or talking. If you’re demoing, kindly remember that we don’t have an overhead projector or anything, so it’s very informal and best kept to about five minutes or less.

Thanks and see you on April 13th!

February OpenCoffee Recap

Posted on February 9, 2012 by martha

Our first OpenCoffee Dublin of 2012 was a great success! Lots of new faces and great news from people about projects they’re working on.

MOVING TO FRIDAYS:
The vast majority of attendees mentioned they much preferred the Friday morning to a Thursday morning, so we’re going to try that again for a few months & see how it goes. Our next OpenCoffee will be Friday, March 9th, but I’ll put a post up on that next week.

THE NEWS:
Here are a few things that came up during OpenCoffee that I thought I’d repeat here for others who couldn’t make it

CoderDojo
http://coderdojo.com
Eugene, who teaches a Python course at Coder Dojo, gave us an overview of the program and how people can get involved. The program now fills up very quickly each week, so they’re looking for mentors & teachers to help teach kids about programming for free.

Alternately, if you have a child or teenager who is interested, there’s a mailing list to sign up for the weekly sessions, which happen Saturdays between 1pm – 4pm in Dublin city centre. If you’re not based in Dublin, the list of Dojos around Ireland is growing so join your local event (http://coderdojo.com/dojos/), start your own, or keep your eyes open for one near you.

Mobile Application Design & Development at IT Tallaght
For more see:http://mobileappcourse.ittdublin.ie/about.html

The course is starting Wednesday, 8^thFebruary in the Institute of Technology, Tallaght. It is one night a week from 6:30pm to 9:30pm, and runs for 12 weeks. The course covers:

jQuery Mobile
HTML5
CSS + Media Queries
PhoneGap
Titanium
Android development

It is one day in, but they were looking for more students, so no harm in inquiring if it is of interest! There were certainly many people looking for mobile developers at OpenCoffee last week.

Everworks
Everworks are developing SAAS applications for small businesses, and they’re currently working on ZenDoc, a web-based tool to help small businesses manage staff training (www.ZenDocHQ.com).

They’re looking for web designers and web developers, so check out their site & get in touch if interested!

If I missed anything, email me & I’ll add it to the list. See you in March at KC Peaches Nassau Street!

Late Update: February’s OpenCoffee moved to FRIDAY

Posted on January 31, 2012 by martha

Hi there,

Just a late update – hope it won’t inconvenience anyone. We had to move this month’s OpenCoffee to Friday instead of Thursday. See you Friday at the KC Peaches on Nassau Street!

Next Dublin OpenCoffee: Friday February 3rd

Posted on January 6, 2012 by martha

Late update: February’s OpenCoffee is moved to FRIDAY February 3rd – NOT Thursday!

Hope you all had a great holiday and new year! OpenCoffee Dublin kicks off for 2012 on Friday February 3rd at the shiny new KC Peaches on Nassau Street from 10am. We’ll be there until around noon.

KC Peaches is located at 28/29 Nassau Street, very close to the Pearse Street DART station and Grafton Street, so it’s easy to get to. Their coffee, pastries and food are all fantastic and healthy, too! (Also, if you’re having a particularly bad morning, they have just opened a great new wine cellar in the basement!) KC Peaches also provides free wifi via Bitbuzz for your first 20 minutes in the cafe.

I’ve had a few emails from people looking to hire technology talent. Please feel free to leave comments below about what you’re looking for and those interested can come along and chat with you about your company and the role. Another option are the job postings at our new Irish technology magazine, Idea: Job Board at Idea Magazine.

We have someone in to talk about the wildly successful Coder Dojos that have been happening in Ireland lately! I also have one more demo slot if someone would like to share what they’re working on, just let me know or leave a comment below.

Thanks and see you on February 3rd!

Next Dublin OpenCoffee: Thursday December 8th

Posted on November 28, 2011 by martha

We’ve been on the lookout for a new spot for Dublin OpenCoffee and we’ve found one. I’m delighted to announce our next OpenCoffee Dublin meetup will be Thursday December 8th at the shiny new KC Peaches on Nassau Street from 10am. We’ll be there until around noon.

KC Peaches is located at 28/29 Nassau Street, very close to the Pearse Street DART station and Grafton Street, so it’s easy to get to. Their coffee, pastries and food are all fantastic and healthy, too! (Also, if you’re having a particularly bad morning, they have just opened a great new wine cellar in the basement!) KC Peaches also provides free wifi via Bitbuzz for your first 20 minutes in the cafe.

I’ll be demoing Idea Magazine (which launches that day!), a new technology magazine for the Irish tech community. I have one other demo slot if someone would like to share what they’re working on too, just let me know or leave a comment below.

Thanks and see you on December 8th!

Annnddddd We’re Back

Posted on November 16, 2011 by martha

Apologies for the downtime – OpenCoffee has a long and gnarled history of multiple owners, registers, etc. All sorted out now.

I’ll be fixing this up very shortly – in the meantime, you can follow the Twitter account or our LinkedIn account for more information.

Thanks for your patience.

Next Dublin OpenCoffee: Thursday November 3rd

Posted on October 21, 2011 by martha

Our next Dublin OpenCoffee Club will be meeting on Thursday November 3rd from 10am at Foam Cafe. We’ll be there until around noon.

Foam Cafe is at 24 Strand Street Great (near the Jervis Street Luas Stop & Bar Italia on the Quays), and they have the absolute best muffins and scones in Dublin (try the filled fruit muffins, they’re out of this world).

If you’re interested in demoing something cool you’re working on, please let me know. We have two slots available at the moment.

Thanks & see you on November 3rd!

Get OpenCoffee Dublin Updates via Email

Posted on September 20, 2011 by martha

I have received a few email requests for other ways to find out about OpenCoffee Dublin events. At the moment, I primarily use the blog, but there is also a Twitter feed with update and a LinkedIn groupwith events & update information.

One option, if you’re not a Twitter user, is to use something like SocialOomph or If This Then That to get OpenCoffee Dublin tweets e-mailed to you on a regular basis. I created an ifttt recipe you can use: just use the following to get Tweets mailed to you: http://ifttt.com/recipes/1626.

If email is the best way for you to get updates, I would suggest you use the link below to sign up for the blog updates to be e-mailed to you and/or use the mail notifications from the LinkedIn group.

Subscribe to OpenCoffee Club Dublin by Email

September OpenCoffee Recap

Posted on September 19, 2011 by martha

After our summer break, we had a great meetup this month on September 8th at Foam Cafe in Dublin with lots of new faces including a group of startups who had driven down from Derry. By the end of the morning I had completely lost my voice so I think that’s a good sign that lots of good conversations were going on!

A few things from that morning to put on your radar:

Text me a drink:

Text me a drink

Text me a drink demoed their new business to a very interested crowd. Their service, which currently works with Dublin bar Czech Inn, allows you to select drinks or food & send to your friend, who receives a code he or she can redeem at the selected bar. Other bars are signing up now so there should be one near you soon.

Inventorium Designs for Learning Competition:

Designs for Learning

Designs for Learning is an exciting competition for new products and services which bridge home, school and gallery-based learning. Five finalists will will 3,000 each to develop the ideas that best link learning between home, school and gallery. The five finalists will then go on to compete for a further 5,000 along with support to make their idea a reality. The competition is open to anyone with great ideas, but the applications are due by 5pm Friday September 30th. For more information and to apply, visit their website.

PyCon Ireland:

PyCon Ireland

PyCon Ireland returns to Dublin on October 8th-9th at the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel on Golden Lane. Check out their site for information on the talks and tutorials for this busy weekend. You can also follow the Twitter account @pyconireland for the latest updates.

Eirtight:

Eirtight

Eirtight is a provider of highly robust, scalable, custom software solutions & secure cloud-based applications. They are located in the Media Cube at IADT in Dun Laoghaire. For more information on their services and how they might be able to help you build software systems, check out their website.

PCI eCommerce Solutions:

PCI eCommerce Solutions

PCI specialises in delivering technology solutions to the Irish marketplace. Their core areas of expertise are software solutions, database design, web development and systems integration. To learn more about PCI and how they might be able to create solutions for you, visit their website.