ESB Spark O' Genius

I don't write much about the Company, what with me being a self-effacing developer type with a disinclination to hyperbole. But we have an interesting week ahead of us. There are a couple of things happening -- the first is about learning: the first module of the iGAP3 Program, subject matter being Strategy. There's even homework! Due today! And it's not done yet! I'm writing a blog entry instead -- classic displacement activity. Provided I don't have to wear the cone of shame, I'm looking forward to the session. The second thing is about exposure: we've entered Vigill in a number of these startup competitions, one of which was the ESB Ireland Spark of Genius, which is inextricably connected to the upcoming and massively hyped Dublin Web Summit.

As an aside, if you bump into me, don't ask me how and when and what we did -- if it's not a story on Trello or a ticket at Assembla or a strange MongoDB query or trying to do capacity analysis for cloud service pricing, it's difficult to get my attention these days. I'm merely the development angle here. Barry spins the visions and Helen hunts down and corrals the customers. Myself, more than ably assisted by Steve, has to make sure that the services don't break and that we can make good on our promises and that there's some kind of costing and schedule that makes sense.

Back to the competition. Last Friday we went out to a big lawyery place on St. Stephen's Green with nine other companies to pitch to the judges in the semi-final stage of the Spark of Genius. Sitting in the Green Room there was a noticeable lack of G+Ts, but plenty of coffee, which was no doubt fuelling the nervous tittering of the individuals that were there to show off in front of the panel in the boardroom.

The panel turned out to be a dozen people -- I still don't know who half of them were -- but we did our pitch, our multiply-practised 5 minute pitch, and then we toddled off, intercepted briefly by a posh lawyerly standup lunch and a bit of a hobnob with the great and the good.

Long story short, we just recently found out we had progressed to the final and there's a short article in the Irish Times with an overview of all finalists. I remember being told that one of the important goals when running a company is to keep the organization off the front page, but the technology section is good, apparently. Myself and Barry have lined the meeting room with whiteboards and are bursting our brains to try to come up with a good presentation for the final which is on Thursday 27th at 1515 on the main stage of the Dublin Web Summit. Follow the @_vigill tweetstream for more information as it comes in.