Admittedly, the Irish internet community is rather small and many of us never heard of Paul Walsh and Segala until quite recently due to blog activity.

There is no national web entrepreneur network in Ireland and everything generally ends up stultified in Dublin while the rest of Ireland ignores it. Even the IIA was, until a few years ago, Yet Another Dublin Association. However it has expanded and now has a more widespread coverage. It may be better to use such an existing network to help develop some kind of national web entrepreneur network. The best thing is to get some kind of ecology going rather than a pissing contest between egos.

You and your fat drunk pointless friend Robert Loch couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery.

Focus on Segala, try and raise some VC money IF you can to prove you are not just a “top c*nt”.

Paul, you and Robert are legends only in your own lunchtime.

those who agree with me (i.e. those who have lots of experience running, hosting or talking and whom are very open and transparent) and then those who disagree (mostly people who have absolutely no experience and whom have never demonstrated an interest to help others)

Rather than comment directly on your insulting and disrespectful tone I am simply going to reiterate my original tweet to you which sparked this entire debate in the first place: http://twitter.com/marcusmacinnes/statuses/523656672

So, I’m an outsider like you

If this was under your name, I wouldn’t have had an issue. But, because it was pitched as an Irish Community initiative, thereby giving the impression that seasoned Irish event organisers were involved, it’s confusing.

You really have a way with words Paul.

So seasoned Irish event organisers ‘own’ the right to pitch as the ‘Irish Community’ then? Again, it reads more like you don’t like someone pissing on your patch than a real concern the ‘Irish Community’ will suffer negatively from this initiative.

Of course I speak as a humble outsider in these matters

1. Comment by Gary Reid (above): http://uk.techcrunch.com/2007/12/24/when-irish-spleens-are-vented/#comment-87968
2. Comment by Niall Larkin: http://eirepreneur.blogs.com/eirepreneur/2007/12/techludd-web2ir.html#c94685790
3. Post by Robin Blandford: http://www.bytesurgery.com/blog/2007/12/24/let-100-flowers-bloom/#comment-20412

Fresh ideas, fresh faces and fresh places are always good and if it’s a bad idea it will fail, if it’s a good idea it will take off, I really don’t think we need people stomping on ideas that people are prepared to run with, otherwise we’ll have committee’s running everything.

One of the factors in SV’s success is running with ideas that many think are bad.

I would advise the TechLudd guys to carry on regardless, it may be something fresh and interesting that changes the way the current thinking.

rc

trading tennis blog

…despite almost none of the interesting companies being based there.

Sending this to seasoned entrepreneurs who live outside of Ireland when you have
- no venue
- no keynote speaker
- no panelists and
- no content

looks very unprofessional.

Only extremely well respected event organisers can get away with this, as it’s their reputation and people they’re likely to attract that’s being rated.

If this was under your name, I wouldn’t have had an issue. But, because it was pitched as an Irish Community initiative, thereby giving the impression that seasoned Irish event organisers were involved, it’s confusing. I didn’t make any assumptions. Everything I said in my original post hold true today.

If the problem is that people outside the country have been invited then perhaps Paul should have enquired as to the type of invite sent. There is a huge difference between “come speak at this event” and “if you happen to be in Dublin we’re starting this, pop in if you like”.
I think it is hugely unfortunate that Paul, feeling so strongly about this as he appears to, couldn’t just have made contact and asked a few questions. He has instead assumed a whole lot of things without enquiring. And we all know what that does…
I think Pauls contribution though has been fantastic. I love when people speak passionately about what they believe. In fact it is what this idea is all about. I think though he has missed the point.
If an event such as this were to organise all of this in advance it would have run completely against the grain of the idea.
I don’t know what is needed by the community here but the communtiy do. This meetup will reflect that.

Off the top of my head in the Cork region we have it@cork, SohoSolo, CorkBIC, Cork OpenCoffee, some Web2Ireland people, BarCamp organisers and the Irish Blog awards organiser (and for a short while, BN). We all try to help and support each other and work in complementary ways. So it is heterogeneous but not fragmented or factionalised. I’ve heard of a few other professional organisations down here recently and I’ll be reaching out to them via OpenCoffee to strengthen the “meta-network” even more.

I was being polite when I suggested that the TechLudd idea was ‘half baked’. Without securing a keynote speaker, pitching startups, content, or even a venue, the people behind it sent out invitations to people such as Loic Le Meure.

There are very few people in Ireland in a position to run great events, so why not work together. It’s not about one place to do the networking. It’s about proposing a group of people to *build* an ecosystem in Ireland as there is little to nothing at present.

Perhaps TechCrunch could play an integral part – I purposely didn’t mention Web2Ireland in my last post as I didn’t want to make any more assumptions.

Thanks a million for raising this here. You’ve just demonstrated that TechCrunch could in fact be UK & Ireland and not just another version of Fish ‘n Chips