If this is Friday ....

...than this must be Belgium.  This is the first full hour I've had to sit in one place. I am overstuffed with food for thought and I won't have it all digested for some time to come. The pace has been such that I have not had sufficient time to blog and any in depth writing is probably going to have to wait until the travels are over.

This post is sort of an executive summary trip report, trying to summarizes some of the thoughts this trip has generated so far.

1. Learning should be joyful, but generally, it is not.

It is about tests and tenure, tickets to the next grade.  It is not about discovery. I have known educators over the years and they are like the same good folk I worked with in government.  They start filled with passion and a belief that they will make some small difference. But, over time, it all get eroded and they become complacent.  Their work becomes redundant, the students just become faces. The classroom doesn't change much from year to year or even generation to generation. They call it "chalk and talk."

I found hope that this could change during my 30-hour visit to Edinburgh and Glasgow, where Ewan McIntosh introduced us to all sorts of people who care and have introduced social media to an increasing number f kids and instructors. I was particularly moved by Don Ledingham, the educator who entertained Rick & me along with Ewan in his home. 

Here’s a guy who came up through the public school system and one would think he would be an enforcer of administrative policy. Instead he is a disruptor and he is inserting social media into the Scottish school system.  We met kids who blog, chat nd podcast.  Teens who talk to people on other continents. Flash forward ten years to when these kids enter the workforce and you see a different level of global connectivity in the Scottish culture.  Flash forward still further and maybe the difference in Scotland will spread to other national educational programs as well.

2. Cork is a special place.

Everyone in the city of 400,000 seems to know everyone else and the local neighborhood is becoming a global neighborhood. The traditional culture is changing as the native Irish move up the vocational food chain, being replaced in manual labor and service jobs by growing communities of imported labor, who in turn, are reshaping Cork into a more globally connected community. There are lots of good people with lots of good ideas and I am hopeful that Cork's rapidly developing ecosystem will soon flourish.

Despite all this promise, this is not yet the case.  Ireland has traditionally been a hard place to live and there remain barriers to rapid development as a new media player. First and foremost is that Ireland lags badly in broadband adoption.  At about six percent, it lags behind all other EC countries, except Malta and perhaps Greece.  Second, is that the determined entrepreneurs that are popping up at an accelerating rate are starved for venture funding and without it have to bootstrap too much. There are also doubts that that they can penetrate affluent markets such as the US. I think this last one will go away in time.  One of the Cork social network will break that barrier and others will follow.

h Rick and I met with some great start up guys. I'll write more about them later. The absolute highlight was a blogger dinner, hosted by my client and good friend Pat Phelan, who not that long ago was the chef at taste of Thailand where we gathered and consumed massive quantities of great Thai food.

3. Dublin is to Cork as New York is to San Francisco.

There is a decidedly big city feel to Dublin. Rick and I were there for a period too brief to make any enduing judgments.  We spent a day sequestered in a meeting room at an SaaS conference sponsored by Enterprise Ireland who had invited us there.  We met several promising startup execs all of who are currently focused on Internet-based services to large organizations. This is not my area of personal passion, but still I was impressed by who and what we saw.

My personal highlight was in a two-hour walk in and around Trinity College, where some of the greatest English writers of the past 300 years. I lunched at a Pub where perhaps James Joyce began his long sojourn into death by excessive drinking, to be followed by another Trinity alumnus Brendan Behan. Perhaps the bench where I sat on campus, was the same one where Becket began to sketch out Waiting for Godot.

3. Fergus Burns is an awesome dude.

Dublin was the first to spend some time tripping around Dublin by night with Fergus, founder and CEO of the very promising Nooked.com, a company that provides companies like Ryan Air  customers Really Simple Shopping through RSS feeds. Like Tom Raftery in Cork, he's just downright likable.

4. Much is happening in Brighton, England.

Yesterday was a three-country day.  We woke up in Dublin, took plane and train to Brighton, then flew on to Brussels for a day being arranged by some hospitable Microsoft folk.  It was grueling travel but worth it. A group lunch put together by Clearleft's Andy Budd was just awesome.  I had no idea how much is going on in this beach-fronted city of 250,000 at England's southern tip. It has more free wifi than any community in the the UK. There is an annual new media conference that keeps outgrowing its venue.  They use a mail list of 500 to share information and technical knowledge. The folks I met are as well informed, optimistic and energetic as any I've met, even in Silicon Valley. I hope I have an excuse to get back there and learn more than i could get in my three-hour visit.

5. Unlikely Connections happen.

I recently posted about a computer chat store in Swords Ireland.  It turns out that my client Pat Phelan, who had hosted our  Cork blog dinner is friends with the guy who owns it, and is doing a project with him. I guess Swords, Ireland is more part of his global neighborhood than mine.

Well, I've just blown my free hour gotta go.

Comments

[Andy Budd]

Hi Shel,

It was great to meet you and Rick. I'm glad you had a nice time in Brighton. It's a very cool little city. Best of luck with the rest of the world tour, and hope you make it back to this neck of the woods some time.

[Tom Raftery]

Hey Shel, thanks for the kind words. I'm delighted you enjoyed your time in Cork - we thoroughly enjoyed having you here.

Btw, if you run into a buddy of mine called David Boschmans in Microsoft Brussels, tell him I said "Hi!"

[Tom Raftery]

D'oh! That should have been Microsoft Belgium, not Microsoft Brussels.

[Fergus Burns]

Hi Shel

Thanks for the kind words. Glad you enjoyed your Irish trip - hope to see you next month in the US [will be over at web2con]

Safe trip home

Best Regards
Fergus