I attended the yearly IT Association of Galway Barbeque on behalf of DERI last week - it was an enjoyable night, and you can check out the ITAG website for other forthcoming events including Managing Teams Remotely, Borderless Ireland, and the ITAG Industry Awards 2007.
Archive for the 'Galway' Category
At last, my review of the first two Galway OpenCoffee Club events…
The first meeting of our local OpenCoffee Club took place on the 15th of June at the Forster Court Hotel in Galway. The location was chosen so that we could avail of the free wi-fi there! In attendance were guest Edward O’Connor, a web programmer from San Diego who also organises their local BarCamp events, Jan Blanchard, MD and owner of TouristR, Conor Wade, web designer and developer at TouristR, James Cooley, CoolReason Consulting and now working at DERI, Aidan Finn, researcher at DERI and organiser of the event, Ina O’Murchu, DERI outreach, and yours truly. Though the turnout was small, we had some interesting conversations ranging from TouristR and object-centered sociality to BarCamp and microformats.
The second event was on the 3rd of August in the same location, and our guest of honour was David Lenehan, lead developer at PollDaddy and contributor to the popular blog Read/Write Web, Joe Desbonnet, founder of the galway.net city guide and I remember him as a student of UCG where he maintained the Computer Society Directory in the early 90s, Uldis Bojars, researcher at DERI, Liga Besere, creative marketer based in Galway, Damien Clothier, manager with Precipio and consultant for companies interested in creating an interactive online presence, Aidan, Ina and myself. Again, I think number of attendees was a positive feature of the meeting, as most could participate in any of the discussions, and some mention was made by David of the ‘mart’ nature of some OpenCoffee events in the larger cities where companies parade their wares in a line of laptop demos.
aidanf mentioned the possibility of making the Galway OpenCoffee Clubs a more regular event, perhaps on the 1st Friday of every month? What say you all?
More from aidanf and Upcoming:
David Lenehan of Polldaddy and Read/Writeweb is in Galway on Friday. I’ll be meeting up with him and we thought this would be a good opportunity to have the second Galway Opencoffee club. We’ve provisionally arranged Friday at 11 in the Forster Court. Let me know if you’re interested. Please pass on this info to anyone you think might be interested.
An interesting comment by NUI Galway President Iggy Ó Muircheartaigh at last week’s graduation (in reference to Enya’s music for the Lord of the Rings): he said that JRR Tolkien was an external examiner for the University in the 1950s.
Eithne Ní Bhraonáin (Enya) was among six recipients of honorary doctorates from the National University of Ireland, Galway at a ceremony held at noon today. The other recipients were Irish traditional music archivist Nicholas Carolan, Reuters chairman Niall FitzGerald, South Africa chief justice Pius Langa, Galway-based composer Jane O’Leary, and Sequoia chairman Bill Walsh.
As an adjunct member of staff, I was fortunate enough to be in the academic procession, and was even more fortunate to meet Enya briefly after the ceremony. She is a very gentle and friendly person, and was accompanied by her producer Nicky Ryan and lyricist Roma Ryan. I’ve been a fan of Enya for some time - the “Watermark” track from her album of the same name is my favourite.
Here’s the official bio of Enya from the NUI Galway press office:
Born in Gaoth Dobhair and educated in Milford, County Donegal, Enya was born into a musical family. In 1980 she was asked to join the family group Clannad at the request of Nicky Ryan, Clannad’s Manager at that time. After leaving Clannad in 1982 she commenced her musical collaboration with the producer and lyricist team of Nicky and Roma Ryan. Enya has become Ireland’s best-selling solo artist in the history of the state and ranks alongside the most successful female artists in the world. She was the world’s biggest selling female artist of 2001 and 2002. To date Enya has sold over seventy milllion albums worldwide.
Enya’s musical compositions have brought her many accolades. A four-time Grammy award winner, Enya and her production/writing team were nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar for their work on The Lord of the Rings. Enya has won six World Music Awards and the coveted American Golden Plate Award.
Enya has released many albums including: Enya (1987), Watermark (1988), Shepherd Moons (1991), The Celts (1992), The Memory of Trees (1995), Paint the Sky with Stars (1997), A Day without Rain (2000), Amarantine (2005). Enya was commissioned to write songs for the following films: The Frog Prince, produced by Lord David Puttnam (1985), Far and Away, directed by Ron Howard (1992) and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) directed by Peter Jackson. She has also contributed to many other film soundtracks such as Toys (1992) and Calmi Cuori Appassionati (2001).
Enya supports many charitable causes – Temple Street Children’s Hospital, Dublin and the New York City Uniformed Firefighters Association’s Widows and Children Fund are just two of the charities which have benefited from her generosity.
Upcoming.org has details of this Friday’s first OpenCoffee Club event for Galway at 11 AM (thanks for setting up the page aidanf).
This follows on from an e-mail from Jan “TouristR” Blanchard to some of us here in DERI in response to a blog post from Edward O’Connor, a web programmer living in San Diego, CA, who is visiting Galway this week.
Hope to see you there!
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