On Tuesday evening I met up with a guy I’d contacted online, Liam Casey, who runs Zed PR and Zeriously, a ‘speed networking’ event along the lines of Ecademy and Ryze.org. Later we went to Renards, which is (I gather) one of the more exclusive clubs in Dublin, where the Corrs and Bono have a permanently reserved ‘sofa area’. Needless to say they weren’t in, but the night was great fun all the same.
On Wednesday I had lunch with one of the few remaining contacts I have here, Damian Ryan, who started one of Ireland’s earliest Internet advertising companies and now runs an events and publishing company called Digital Media Intelligence and a consultancy called Perfect World.
As my friend Karlin Lillington (a tech journalist who writes for the Irish Times, among others) was out in the evening I went to ‘Bowling for Colombine’, an excellent documentary by Michael Moore, which has more or less totally changed my view of America, of which more later.
Karlin has been working on a great story about how the Irish government has been secretly planning to retain data on its citizens for far longer than has been mutually agreed by the majority of EU states. This is unusual given that Ireland has been more or less at the forefront of thinking about how to attract and develop e-business in the country.
This afternoon I’m off to the annual luncheon for the Irish Internet Association, which should be interesting. A minister is speaking and the ‘Net Visionary’ awards are being handed out.