Cast Your Vote in the Digital Circle Elections

If you’re a member of Digital Circle PLEASE make sure to cast your vote in the steering group elections.

The candidates include:

• Alan Anderson, Blue Tube Design and Creative Boom Belfast
  
• Ryan Adams, Future Media Delivery Team, BBC Online, Northern Ireland
  
• Caroline Connor, Business Development Manager @ Culture Northern Ireland
  
• Martin Gilchrist, Referalot Ltd, Gilchrist & Co (NI) LLP
  
• Mary McKenna, Learning Pool
  
• Ian Sayers, Giant Associates
  
• Matthew Scott, Digital Director, Ten Alps Vision, Ten Alps PLC

And as I’m sure you’ve noticed, there’s even one from the NW!

Derry Gets Its First Digital Champion

After a packed day of interviews on Tuesday, the Digital Derry project have appointed the city’s first Digital Champion – me.

There were some pretty cool people in for it so I’m kinda chuffed and looking forward to getting stuck in. Things don’t kick off officially for another week or so but it’s fair to say that there’s a helluva lot on the agenda.

First off, I’ll need to buy a costume and cape to go with the job title (underpants on the outside is apparently optional). After that, I’ll be sitting down with members of the digital action team (which includes some great local businesses alongside UU, NWRC, DCC, ILEX, LCC and any other acronym you can think of) to start planning what we’re going to do.

What I’m really interested in though is making the entire process as open and inclusive as possible.

As you might expect, I’ll be blogging just about everything as we go (with a new website to come) but I’m also keen to meet with absolutely anyone who’s interested in digital content in Derry and the NW. In short, we’re open for business and open to ideas.

I’ll put together a proper post soon – to fill you in a little on what the broad plans are for Digital Derry – but in the mean time, feel free to give me a shout anytime on Twitter, Facebook or by email.

Mark Nagurski

(NB: Any suggestions for a better job title will be warmly appreciated)

A Fab Lab for Derry?

A group from MIT will be in Derry this week in search of a possible location for a ‘fab lab’ research centre.

If you’re wondering what a Fab Lab (short for fabrication laboratory) is you can find more info here and here – but as far as I can tell it’s a small workshop kitted out with the kinds of tools you’d normally only associate with mass production operations. So like a kick-ass shed that just happens to have laser cutters, 3D printers and such.

The idea is that access to these tools at the grassroots level can “empower individuals to create smart devices for themselves” and that “ordinary people [can] not just learn about science and engineering but actually design machines and make measurements that are relevant to improving the quality of their lives.”

Let’s hope they find a home for one here.

NW-MTUG for Techies

If you’re a tech type you might like to check out the NW-MTUG (that’s Microsoft Technology User Group, I think).

They’re run by good egg and sometime OpenCoffee attendee, Alan Bradley. Details of the next one are below:

When & Where

The event will be on Monday 17th May in the MS building of the University of Ulster’s Magee campus. The events starts at 6:30 pm.

Summary

This session looks at each of the new language features that have been introduced with the release of C# 4.0, dynamic, named & optional parameters and generic variance. The session will mostly consist of code samples to illustrate each of these features.

There will also be some prizes given away on the night!!

Registration

Please register for this event here: http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=147860

Speaker Bio:

Alan has worked as a developer is a wide range of technologies developing software for many fields including research projects, local government, telecommunications and finance. Alan has also delivered training session on Windows PowerShell to industry and is currently working as a developer creating web applications using ASP.Net and the MVC framework.

Blog : http://gangleri.net
Twitter : @alan_bradley

Two Derry Events Worth a Look

For those of you interested in online marketing (which should be everyone) or making the best use of your intellectual property, there are two InvestNI events taking place in Derry next week that you need to check out.

Online Marketing Workshop

Tuesday, June 16 – City Hotel – 9:30am to 4:30pm

“The workshops will allow participants to interact directly with the Speaker and delegates will learn about current SEO techniques applicable to their specific business. Attendees will also increase their awareness of Pay-per-click advertising, learning how to plan, setup and monitor online advertising campaigns that bring real results.”

The last time I checked, this one is currently booked out (a good sign) but you can still register for a standby seat.

Register here

Intellectual Property: Protect and Exploit it in the Digital, Film, TV and Music Business

Wednesday, June 17 – Magee Campus – 8:30am to 1:30pm

“Most businesses generate their own intellectual property.  In the development stage of any product it is important to ensure that you do not infringe any third party copyright and your intellectual property is fully protected.  Creative individuals and businesses should, therefore, be protecting their designs, brands, logos, software and content creations.”

In other words, if you’re in the business of creating anything you need to be there. And, it’s a great lineup of speakers including

• ELearning guru Donald Clark,
• Derry’s own Andrew Ferris from music label Small Town America,
• iPhone app developer Malcom Barclay,
• Marice Cumber – Director and Founder of Own-IT,
• Matthew Forde – Media and IP lawyer, Forde Campbell LLP,
• Davy Sims – former BBC producer
• and Stuart Worthington – Leading Authority on Music Management.

I’ll most certainly be there and hope to see you too.

Register here