ArcLabs Research and Innovation Centre

I recently saw an interesting presentation by Kevin Burke of Enterprise Ireland, on licensing as a route to market for technology firms. Kevin and his colleagues in the technology transfer department will work with clients to expoit or to find technologies across Europe.

For many small companies, this approach could be an attractive way of generating much-needed revenue. You can learn more about licensing and the overall service at the IRC website . I’ve found the E.I. tech transfer consultants to be very helpful.

Just back from the it@cork conference. Great venue, well organised, good food and facilities. It looked like about 200 people attended.

Eddie Hobbs opened the proceedings and was very entertaining, as always.

It seemed strange somehow to see people like Hugh MacLeod, Marc Canter and Salim Ismail, whose blogs I read almost daily, presenting in a standard conference format. It also confirmed for me the depth, scope and quality of writing that can be found in blogs as against any other publishing or delivery medium. Hugh seemed a bit nervous or perhaps was just out of his usual context; he was at his best answering questions from the audience. Marc Canter was very entertaining and could have done with a longer time slot.
Salim gave an excellent overview of his work with start-ups; good advice about keeping development costs down; using marketing and PR; performance-driven compensation for founders and key employees; and speed-to-market. Salim could have handled a entire conference stream by himself. Tom Raftery has posted information on the upcoming BarCamp Southeast event on Salim’s latest venture, Confabb - built for almost nothing with usage skyrocketing!

Jeff Nolan, CEO of Teqlo, gave a very interesting talk on pricing and ROI for online businesses. I hope copies of this, and the other presentations, will become available.
Of the home-grown presenters, Conor Kenny talked about creating his family’s online book-selling business, Tony Kenny (no relation, I assume?) gave an excellent presentation on the benefits and issues around his experiences with open-source software in the public service. Eamonn Fallon gave a great presentation on building daft.ie.

Congratulations to all at it@cork for a very worthwhile event.

Thanks to Colin Rooney of Arthur Cox Solicitors who delivered an excellent seminar at ArcLabs last week, on legal issues for start-up companies. In a couple of hours, Colin covered a wide range of issues and generated a lot of interaction. He also held a number of one-to-one sessions which were very valuable.

Looking forward to a workshop on November 15 where Colin Rooney from the Technology and Intellectual Property Practice of Arthur Cox Solicitors will discuss a range of legal and IP matters that entrepreneurs need to be aware of. Topics will include:
- Company formation - incorporation and corporate governance matters
- Forming and working with Boards
- Intellectual Property - what is it and how can it be protected?
- Preparing for Investment - typical issues and legal terms
- Commercial Contracts - documenting the terms and getting paid
- Common Problems

Contact me if you are interested in attending.

Tom Raftery recently ran a business blogging worshop at ArcLabs. We had a mix of entrepreneurs and researchers; some technical and some not so and Tom did a fine of job of meeting a broad set of expectations from the course. If you get a chance to attend one of his seminars, its highly recommended.