The conversation continues at:

• Digiculture - Conn Ó Muíneacháin’s blog
  
• Edgecast Media Ltd - Company website

Go raibh maith agat.

Today Edgecast Media Ltd launches its official company website: edgecast.ie. In the past that URL redirected to imeall.wordpress.com, a site which had started out as my personal blog.

It was obvious from the moment the company was formed that one site could not continue to be all things to everyone. However given the myriad tasks involved in starting a new business, it’s probably not surprising that it took a few months longer than we planned.

This post will appear this morning on 3 websites. The following information may be relevant to you, depending which site you are currently viewing:

• edgecast.ie If you normally visit edgecast.ie, you’ll notice a change this morning. Previously edgecast.ie URLs redirected to imeall.wordpress.com. From today, edgecast.ie hosts its own website. This site will be the official company website, with information on products and services and company news. It already contains a selection of the business related posts which originally appeared on imeall.wordpress.com. You can subscribe to the feed at feeds.feedburner.com/edgecast.
• digiculture.ie This is the new URL for my personal blog, as well as my Digiculture podcast. It is the successor to imeall.wordpress.com and contains the full archive of all the blog posts from that site. You can subscribe to the feed at feeds.feedburner.com/digiculture.
• imeall.wordpress.com This is the last post which will appear on imeall.wordpress.com. If you are subscribed to imeall.wordpress.com/feed you will need to subscribe to one or both of the feeds listed above in order to receive further news from me or from Edgecast Media Ltd. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I hope this will improve the experience for everyone from now on.

Technorati Profile

Dave Winer is uncomfortable with cameras in his face. Robert Scoble responds thoughtfully (in a Kyte video). James Corbett is fascinated by the video experiments at Irish Open Coffees, and interested in discussing the privacy implications.

I’ve pledged to support camera-free zones:

We are going to continue to bring cameras to OpenCoffee and other events, primarily for the purpose of recording interviews with consenting parties for later publication on a soon-to-be-launched new tech-news videoblog. We want to use the events as a backdrop, as an opportunity to meet interesting people to interview, and we want to report on the events themselves. Note I say “report on” - not “interfere with”.

We will provide equipment and support for live streaming if people have something they want to broadcast. Or anyone who wants to can do it - as Eoghan did in Dublin. But no matter who does it, I think there ought to be a time and space where people can breathe freely, knowing that they are not part of a broadcast.

And at risk of stating the obvious, now that we’ve all tried it out, let’s not feel that we have to stream for streaming’s sake. There’s a perfectly adequate Twitter/Jaiku channel reaching out to interested parties outside the event. I’d suggest we don’t turn the cameras on unless we get a Tweet saying: “Give us a look!”

And finally, I was thinking about how we can change things by observing them and, while I know Schrodinger’s Cat isn’t really about the Observer Effect, I thought it was an amusing coincidence today when I heard this LOLCat mentioned on TWiT.

Blogging has been light here in recent weeks - but there’s a lot going on behind the scenes.

This afternoon I approved our new logo, which was designed by Peter Walsh of Doop. The brief they got from us included the idea of

…ripples on the surface of water emanating from a single point. This suggests the power of effective media …

I felt it was important to specifiy that the logo

… should not include any specific representation of technology or activity, i.e. no headphones or microphones or anything which might limit the perception of the company’s activities …

It’s going to be a busy week here at Edgecast Media - and we’re not done with announcements yet!

I’ve been so busy I hadn’t time to blog about my experience of Limerick Open Coffee Club last Thursday. Much has been made of the excitement caused by our live broadcast. James describes the twitterstorm, and there is more about it by Bernie, Conor, Niall and many others.

Conor gets the credit for giving me the idea with a twitter-query about live updates from the Limerick meeting. Hat-tips also to Robert Scoble, Chris Pirillo and Leo Laporte - all of whom I’ve been watching play with this stuff over recent months.

But the real inspirations, in more ways than one, are Patrick and John Collison. If Ustream.tv has taught me anything, it’s that not everything is worth broadcasting! Robert Scoble figured this out early on, and soon began to keep his live broadcasts for special events. And last Thursday’s OpenCoffee Limerick was undoubtedly special - and certainly worth sharing with others.

At it’s peak, we had 14 viewers on the stream - and at least 3 of those were in the room!!! But I’m very pleased that people who wanted to share the experience were able to do so - and even contribute, as Niall did with a question.

Now that it’s over I notice all the faults in the recording! If there had been more time to plan it I’d have got a tripod and a better microphone setup. I’ll get those things right the next time - and I’ve a feeling there will be a lot of next times, and not just by me either!

Video streaming is easy. All you need is a camera, a computer and a broadband connection. (The Flash on sites like Ustream.TV takes care of everything.) The difficult bit is having something worth broadcasting, but I think that the OpenCoffee clubs, BarCamps and PodCamps sweeping the country are actually providing that.

Explanatory Note: Open Coffee Clubs are informal gatherings of entrepreneurs, investors and people interested in startups which have spread worldwide since they began in London last spring. Limerick Open Coffee club meets every second Thursday (not this week, next week) from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. It recently moved to a new venue at the AbsoluteHotel.Com. Currently the best way to keep track of Irish Open Coffee meetings (including Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Belfast) is on the #irishopencoffee channel on Jaiku.

Continuing my experiments in video! This morning I’m attending OpenCoffee at the Absolute Hotel in Limerick.

Update 5:00pm: Live streaming this morning’s event went very well!  And the Collison brothers are very impressive!  More about them in my next post, and in the meantime I’ve updated the embedded video above to show the archived recording of their presentation.

It’s been over a week since we agreed a date (29th Sep) and venue (Kilkenny, exact venue TBC) for PodCamp Ireland. I’ve been meaning to post here about it sooner, and I’ll certainly have more to say in the weeks ahead, but there is no shortage of information available elsewhere.

We’ve used the wiki to get it this far, and we’ll continue to use it. If you plan to attend, you’re asked to add your name to the wiki so we can help plan for the numbers. Did I mention PodCamp is free? Not everyone is comfortable using a wiki so Ken is working on a submission form which he’ll put on the PodCamp Ireland Blog (thanks to Michele and Blacknight for the hosting!)

The blog is where you’ll find all kinds of news over the next few weeks about PodCamp Ireland. Who’s coming? What will we discuss? Where will we eat/sleep? What’s a PodCamp?

If you really want to get into the nitty-gritty of the PodCamp Ireland planning, you can join the conversation on Jaiku on the #podcamp channel! This is where the discussion ebbs and flows - we even use it to take minutes during conference calls! And it’s all open and transparent - in keeping with the unconference ethos of PodCamp. Stay tuned for further updates - and listen out for podcasts of course as well!

Hope to see you in Kilkenny!

AbsoluteHotel.Com

AbsoluteHotel.Com is near Barrington’s and the Abbey Bridge.

Google Map

Nothing to see here - just a webcam-view of an audio podcast being recorded (and it’s in Irish as well) - but it’s an indication of the direction in which I’m moving.

I’ve posted this already on An tImeall and in Facebook as well.

If you’re thinking of applying to the Create Programme for Digital Media Entrepreneurs at Dun Laoghaire Institute for Art Design and Technology, the closing date is this Friday at 12pm.

The programme consists of 12 months training and mentorship of Digital Media startups, and includes:

• Programme grant of €550 per month
• 12 months customised training programme tailored towards the core business and management skills needed for starting up and managing a sustainable business
• A dedicated location in IADT’s campus Incubation Centre – The Media Cube – equipped with broadband and phone connections
• Access to Digital Media commercial and technical expertise from an expert panel of mentors and trainers

Further information from Helen Murphy, email: create AT iadt dot ie, or phone +353 (0) 1 2144644.

See also: Article in ENN