This is a piece I originally published in Contagious.
An understandable malaise in ad agencies surrounds all things digital. Low revenues on the one hand and a new answerability to metrics on the other are accompanied by a sense that digital formats remain largely underdeveloped, and that new, possibly unwelcome, surprises await. This is a moment of uncertainty. But it is also an opportunity to build an entirely new avant-garde. Continue reading
If a 153 year old newspaper is to adapt, to experiment, and take useful risks, it makes sense to work with startups. Since The Irish Times’ initial eight week experiment in 2012, both the NYT and the BBC have followed with their own ways of incubating early stage digital businesses. But beyond incubation there is a wider opportunity. Established media businesses ought to make themselves aware of startups’ ideas, skills, and ways of working. And they should support the startup community with a view to increasing the flow and cross pollination of ideas and knowhow.
The more openness, networking, and cross-pollination the better, or at least, so the relative success of the Silicon Valley startup scene versus that of Massachusetts appears to suggest [hat tip to Brian McDonnell, whose recommendation has put Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 on my reading list].
In short, a smart media organisation will help disruptors to network and learn.
With that in mind I approached Darren Mulvihill of StartupGrind‘s new Irish chapter, among other startup groups, about working with The Irish Times. The idea is to make The Irish Times’ building, right in the heart of Dublin, a place where startups, coders, entrepreneurs, designers, and financiers network. But beyond that, I wanted to apply The Irish Times particular focus on rigorous thought to a small set of key themes that matter to startups.
After a little experimentation, we are zeroing in on a format that seems to work. At the Grind At The Times event in early March 2013, Darren quizzes Barry O’Brien, Managing Director of corporate ventures at Silicon Valley Bank, on the challenges, pitfalls, and opportunities for Irish startups tackling US funding.
Let me know what you think. And if you have ideas for ways you would like to use The Irish Times as a space to meet and mingle with coders, entrepreneurs, designers, and financiers, let me hear it.
I wrote this obituary for The Irish Times last week.
Aaron Swartz, Born: November 8th, 1986 Died: January 11th, 2013 Aaron Swartz took his own life in an apartment in Brooklyn on January 11th. Though only 26 when he died, Swartz had many claims to fame. Continue reading
This is my op ed in The Irish Times, 7 January 2013.
In the early 1960s a Harvard graduate student named Ted Nelson developed the idea of ‘hypertext’, a system of digitised links between tidbits of information that would transcend the limitations of printed paper. The idea was wildly ambitious. A user could click various links within documents to pursue particular veins of information. But unlike the Web as we know it today, Nelson envisaged that each page would have multiple versions, annotations, and contain live snippets of other pages to which it ‘hyperlinked’. Continue reading
A brief note: I was asked to think about the hot topic in tech for 2012, and make a prediction for the hot topic of 2013 by Corriere della sera, an Italian newspaper.
It might seem passé, but I think the hot topic of 2012 has been mobile Internet. The ITU disclosed in June Continue reading
(This post also appeared in The Irish Times on 4 October 2012.)
LAST FRIDAY, at The Workman’s Club on Wellington Quay in Dublin, an Irish technology start-up company called GetBulb was announced as the overall winner of The Irish Times Digital Challenge.
GetBulb has produced a system that can rapidly create data visualisations suitable for both high-resolution print and for online interactive graphics in seconds. This start-up could, quite literally, change how media organisations across the globe approach design. Continue reading
The Irish Times, 24 September 2012: “3D printers to manufacture a revolution”. (This is a condensed version of a longer piece - read full piece here)
THE THREE trends toward cheaper 3D printing, consumer co-creation, and digital distribution should be understood as part of a great adjustment.
The current stage of 3D printing is analogous to the early 1990s when the music industry failed to foresee the disruptive impact that ongoing improvements in audio compression and increasing internet connectivity would have on its business several years later. The “crowd manufacturing cycle” is almost upon us. Businesses that sell physical products need to urgently consider how to adapt to and mitigate the coming disruption. Continue reading
