Category: speaking

speaking

More prestigious speaking engagements

I recently received an invitation to address the bi-annual meeting of the Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS) in Athens.

CEPIS, if you are not familiar with it is

a non-profit organisation seeking to improve and promote a high standard among ICT professionals, in recognition of the impact that ICT has on employment, business and society. CEPIS currently represents 33 member societies in 32 countries across greater Europe. Through its members, who are the professional ICT bodies at national level, CEPIS represents 450,000 ICT professionals

Quite an honour to be asked to address them.

This got me to thinking of all the prestigious talks I’ve given in the last few months.

I addressed the European Commission’s European technology platform for Smart Grids on Energy Digitalisation last November.

DrivingATesla

I addressed the TeslaWorld event in Antwerp last year (see video above). This was a spectacular event with two Tesla Model S cars on either side of the stage, a phenomenal line-up of speakers, and I got to drive a Tesla on the way back to the airport! So that was pretty awesome, and I have to admit to seeing my Prius in a less favourable light when I arrived home 🙁

I gave the opening keynote at the SAP for Utilities event in Huntington Beach last September on the topic of The convergence of the Internet of Things and Energy, and I was bowled over by the positive feedback I received afterwards from the attendees.

And I was very honoured to be asked to be the keynote speaker at the EclipseCon event in Toulouse last year.

There were other events I spoke at last year as well (SAP TechEd and ThingMonk off the top of my head).

But with the CEPIS invite, and another I’m not allowed to reveal just yet, 2016 is definitely shaping up to be an even better year for speaking engagements!

 

speaking

ISA and IWTC conferences next week

I’m speaking at both the ISA and the IWTC conferences next week!

At the ISA conference, the topic title is “Local companies, Global Successes” and I’m on at 12:40 on the Thursday (Feb 28th).

At the IWTC conference I am speaking on the Friday (Feb 29th) at 11am on the advantages of blogging for businesses.

Then the following week I have the BlogTalk 2008 conference and the it@cork Green IT event!

Busy, busy!

cix, Conference, data centre, IT@Cork, speaking, Web 2.0

Phew!

These next few weeks and months are manic busy.

I think I need to clone me!

Personal, speaking

I am such an idiot!

We were flying to Madrid this morning.

Everything was set. Bags were packed. Ticket printed. Accommodation arranged. The lot.

My wife lived in Madrid for six years so we have friends here who we had arranged to met up with. Needless to say we were looking forward to the weekend for a long time.

We arrived at the airport just about on time (05:40). Queued up to check-in. Got to the check-in desk only to have the woman at the desk tell me I had brought an out-of-date passport for Tomás.

In my haste to get out the door quickly I had grabbed the wrong one from the drawer.

His face completely collapsed when he realised he wasn’t getting on the plane. Words cannot describe how badly I felt for him (and his mother who really needed the break since I have been away so much recently).

Grin

What made it worse was that, as I am speaking at Remix Madrid on Monday, I had to get on the plane, leaving them behind.

If the locks haven’t been changed when I get home on Tuesday, I will be amazed.

cix, speaking

Just arrived in Copenhagen

I have just arrived in Copenhagen for Reboot 9.0.

I’m giving a talk tomorrow at 12:20 on “Reducing Information Technology’s ever-increasing carbon footprint”. This is in the context of the work we are doing building a hyper energy-efficient data centre in CIX.

There’s a meetup organised for tonight which I will be going along to. If you see me there, come up and say “Hi!”

cix, Microsoft, social media, speaking

Lot of travel coming up!

In the next few weeks I am flying to Bilbao where I have been selected to be on the prestigious jury forStartup 2.0 – an international competition judging startup companies.

Then I am off to Copenhagen for Reboot 2.0 where my suggestion for a talk about the energy efficiencies in the CIX data centre has been moved to the official program! I’m really stoked about that. It is an incredible honour because the quality of speakers and delegates at Reboot is stratospheric.

And finally I’m off to Remix 07 in Madrid (yes, Spain again – is it my imagination or are the Spanish becoming really active in the web space lately?) to give a couple of talks on social media.

I’m looking forward to the events but dreading the travel. I used to love travel the the mindless security theatre we are now put through makes flying a complete PITA.

Podcast, speaking

Thanks Sarah!

Sarah Carroll, the uber-organiser of the Events Day Conference wrote me a lovely email this morning to thank me for speaking at the conference yesterday. In the email she said:

You were absolutely terrific, I’ll send you on some quotes later from the delegates so as you know it’s not just me in your fan club :-))

Many many thanks for being there with us, and for your contribution all day long, most particularly your “official” session.

Thanks Sarah, it is lovely to get that kind of feedback.

Over on the Conference blog which Sarah maintains, she has promised to podcast the talks so I’ll put up a link here as soon as they are published.