Newspresso at Dublin Startup Weekend

Better late than never. I'm finally posting some photos and videos (later) of the Dublin Startup Weekend (2nd to 4th March) that I attended at the Google European Headquarters in Barrow Street, Dublin 2. I found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable experience despite my having made a complete balls up of my own pitch. I had it worked out at exactly a minute if I read it out. I really should have known better than to try and read it. I had to hold a microphone right up to my mouth and being so aware of my own voice and trying to hold, and read from a piece of paper was bound to lead to disaster. I faltered and suddenly felt very self conscious. In the end I ran out of time, (60 seconds).

I was one of 38 people out of over 100 attendees that pitched an idea. A slight plus in my favour was that one person voted for my idea whereas several other ideas got no vote at all.

Anyhow I ended up joining a small group of three other people on an idea pitched by Diarmuid Bourke, a Developer, which was called 'Newspresso' a platform for enabling journalists and small publishers, such as local or regional papers, to publish a journal and to use the space as a market for services such as photographs and content contributers to support their journal. I offered to conduct any market research and to develop and map out an appropriate business model. I found one direct US based competitor, namely; www.pressmarket.com.

The unique selling point was that content subscribers and photographers would be eligle for a portion of the advertising revenues which would be the main source of revenue. another source of revenue would be a premium membership for additional functionality that would benefit small to medium journals. We didn't come anywhere in the vote rankings for the weekend in part because we had such a small team and in part because we hadn't mapped out our route to market clearly enough. We also didn't complete many of the criteria recommended for a favourable judgement, such as a street survey, (although not really appropriate for this market) and a video. Nevertheless we seemed to be heading for the neccessary 100 Twitter folowers and had tremendous support and encouragement from the mentors including www.siliconIreland.com who gave us a mention on their website.

There were ideas ranging from sport event Apps, Health Care Apps, Gaming developments and much more. Here are just a few:

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All in all it was a very worthwhile weekend. I shall now pitch better in future and I also learnt a thing or two about preparing for presentations as well as the power of Twitter which I will be using much more now to promote this blog and other projects.

Startup Weekend is Here!

So one of the reasons I haven't built my own App is because I've been preparing for the 'Startup Weekend'TM in the Google offices here in Dublin. I'll let you all know how I got on. Wish me luck! On a side note, I wrote a few months ago about the Rasberry Pi miniature computer by those clever OxBridge guys which was finally released this week in England to tremendous aclaim. Apparently the miniature computers were sold out in less than a day. I believe the retail price is set at £30.00, not bad for a PC no?!

Build your own App for free!!

Have you ever wanted to develop an App for your iPhone Android or other smart phone? You have? Yes I know it costs hundreds if not a few thousand Euro, and even if you get that far there's the hassle of getting it into the iTunes store or onto the Android or Microsoft store....or at least it did! Not anymore. I was privileged to be able to attend the formal launch to the World of 'The Mobile App Builder' TM by those fantastically tallented guys at Jampot.ie. The guys at Jampot have decided to jump ahead of their competitors and have developed a platform that democratises app development. Much like website development now, The Mobile App Builder allows your average user to develop a custom app for themselves, or others with the click of a few buttons. The lads have even placed a tab on their platform for HTML5 development so that one can develop a more sophisticated app, provided one is familiar with HTML5 of course. I was talking to a college lecturer from Tallaght IT who felt that it would be a magnificent teaching tool and I think he's right.

I confess that I haven't yet got arround to building an app on the platform but as soon as I have I'll let you all know.

How do these guys make money then you might ask? Well if you want to place your app in any App Store they will charge you about 50 Euro plus any costs from Apple, Google or Microsoft provided it passes their own (Jampot.ie) vetting and assessment procedure. However they look after all the formalities for you as it goes under their own company banner. This means that one can earn money yourself from enabling advertising with your app but one cannot charge for the App. If you do want to charge for the app Jampot will furnish you with the procedures you need and it will then be up to you to apply yourself under your own name for each app to get into the respective app stores.

So go ahead now and build your own app at: TheAppBuilder or check out the guys at Jampot.ie.