I’m pleased to be leading the team running #BizCampAND this Friday, 11. September.

The theme of the day is “What it Takes”, and we’re delighted to have 21 speakers confirmed.

We’re highlighting the possibilities we can imagine, practical skills we can acquire and how best to poise ourselves for peak performance.

Possibilities

Seven successful local entrepreneurs will share their journeys. The businesses they’ve built are in artisan foods, purpose built software, a home for creatives and a retail + online sales enterprise to support job creation & training.

Two have developed consultancies which are a direct outgrowth of their “day jobs”. Still driving those businesses they also serve to educate and inspire others in their industries.

Ranging in age from their twenties to fifties, most are doing jobs none imagined when they left school – and that is a key message BizCamp wants to deliver: Ordinary folks ‘like us’ can accomplish what once seemed like extraordinary things – by simply doing what they love with passion and extraordinarily well.

Practicalities

Entrepreneurs are made, not born! Thankfully we live in an era where programs exist to support our learning curves. You’ll meet seven professionals ready to illustrate what it is that we don’t know we don’t know.

There will be practical training and advice on sales, marketing, tendering and finance. There’ll be nothing dry or didactic about it. Four of the 6 experts are entrepreneurs themselves. They’ve started businesses, struggled with the same things you do and have come out the other side.

There will be two bankers ready to take the intimidation out of approaching banks for traditional finance, as well as offering their insights into alternatives.

Performance

The dream is one thing – getting in shape to sustain and drive it is quite another. Our speakers will explore “design thinking”, goal setting, and putting down our digital devices to achieve balance in our lives.

They will cover the “relationship building” that characterises 21st century sales and identifying the “priority tasks” that keep us focused.

We’ll also hear about “extraordinarily ordinary people doing ordinarily extraordinary things” – which is, in fact, our experience of most “Bizcampers”.

Peripheral to two capitals that benefit from significant foreign direct investment, policies favouring support of 21st century technologies plus agencies committed to expanding markets, the NI/ROI border region is uniquely placed to focus on just three of these six key pillars.

Human Capital, Supports and Culture

Our task is to develop these to ensure we can fully participate. In an age of a mobile and freelance workforce, geographically peripherality does not preclude our being pivotal to both markets

A skilled workforce is educated, confident, flexible and resilient. Peer to peer educational and networking opportunities serve to showcase local entrepreneurial success stories, highlight opportunities and encourage our somewhat risk averse population to follow their lead.

At the core, programs like BizCamps, Newry Creates, Women that Work among others, address the roots of our collective difficulty with ambition & self-promotion.

We signpost resources designed to provide mentorship among peers, encouraging participants to “pay it forward” volunteering with outreach efforts like CoderDoJo and Drone Academy to inspire and support skill building among young people as well as the unemployed.

Where opportunities may not yet exist we support people seeking to create them.

Learn more…

What is a “Career Check-Up”?

Careers are like relationships – the more you value them, the less you take them for granted.

Whether you are in your “dream job” or working at something that covers expenses, pay attention!

Ask yourself:

• Are you putting your best foot forward every day?
   If not, what would that look like?
• If you interviewed for your job tomorrow…
   Would you get it?
• Have the job requirements or responsibilities changed since you assume it?
  Does your supervisor/manager know?
• Are your accomplishments, awards and new qualifications acknowledged?
  Have you brought them to the attention of your supervisor/manager?

Not sure of the answers? Get in touch!

We can help you focus on what’s next.

Skeptical? Book a preliminary appointment. The 1/2 hr consultation is free.

My relationship with the Irish language has evolved over the half dozen years I have been here.

It’s doubtful I’ll learn to speak it, I’ve little facility with language, but what I’ve learned about it has certainly informed my understanding of the people of this island.

Three people opened the door to that understanding.

Carol Conway, Freelance Catalyst, facilitator and youth leadership trainer was the first. I’d no idea that she “had Irish”. She’d studied it for the love of the language.

She held my frustration with the use of it – often politically on the border – as a weapon designed to divide an audience into “them vs us”.

“Eve, you won’t understand the Irish people until you’ve studied the Irish language .”

She got my attention with two relevant aspects of the language:

• The absence of the possessive to have. I don’t have a coat. It’s the coat on me or the coat beside me.
• Tenses are constructed differently. We haven’t had a conversation – the absence of a “past perfect” means we’re “after having a conversation” and after living here, one learns to ask, is anything really in the past?

The net effect informs our use of English – and I’ve heard it posited – makes us the storytellers we are.

Linda Ervine, is a Belfast teacher and an Irish Language evangelist. She sees merit in teaching the “Hidden History of Protestants and the Irish Language” going so far as to suggest that in refusing to become familiar with it we deny the connection of the language to the culture of Ulster.

Beyond opening my eyes to the inclusive nature of the language she opened the door to tolerance. In delivering “The Hidden History of Protestants and the Irish Language” as a talk at the 2012 PUP Conference she even addressed my intolerance of what I once thought was a Northern Irish ignorance of grammar. It’s not! *

This abstract is from the Slugger O’Toole blog on the event.

Linda Ervine spoke about the “hidden history of Protestants and the Irish language”. In what was probably the best delivered session, she explained how she had been filling out the recent census online when she looked back at the 1911 census and discovered that her husband’s relatives had lived in East Belfast and spoke both Irish and English. Yet their signatures were listed on the Ulster Covenant. Linda deduced that their knowledge of Irish wasn’t linked to their politics…

She quoted Douglas Hyde, son of a Church of Ireland minister, first president of Ireland and founder of the Gaelic League in 1893, an organisation set up to preserve the Irish language. In 1905 he said:

The Irish language, thank God, is neither Protestant nor Catholic, it is neither a Unionist nor a Separatist.

 Linda went on to illustrate how Irish is behind many place names, and words and phrasing we use in everyday vernacular. She also pointed to the Red Hand Commando’s motto which is in Irish! During the coffee break, several delegates signed up for Irish language classes at East Belfast Mission!

She concluded that language was neutral, only a tool to communicate.

She drove home Carol’s point about the structure of the language and what we have carried over into English. Things she used to correct about her Belfast students’ grammar were actually correct in Irish. This among people who are many generations removed from Irish speakers.

She is “Beating swords into plowshares” in Belfast.

And lastly, a cultural and evolutionary observation which bears out the message of both women:

Anthony McCann has proposed imagining an Irish cultural equivalent to “Ubuntu”

Garaiocht: An Irish Value for an Energised Ireland

A linguist, musician and  a coach he reflects on Garaiocht as a deeply hopeful value which allows an understanding of the possibility of potential and an openness to a deeply hopeful future.

The link will take you to a brief video describing it in greater depth. In short- imagine the folks of this island – at our convivial best, in good company with a pot of tea and the time to express ourselves in stories. This concept of Garaiocht embodies:

1. Nearness
2. Hereness
3. Withness
4. Helpfulness
5. Conviviality
6. Continuous Action (verbal noun – a noun that acts as a verb) Can’t have an absence of action in the notion of Garaiocht
7. Mutual support/interdependence
8. Resourcefulness/Entrepreneurship the ability to make the best use of the resources that you have (opportunities for helpfulness)
9. Response-ability appropriate to context. Leadership quality with its core values at the heart of Irish life This notion of leadership which is not authoritative – not reliant on command and control.

In “sourcing” the wisdom from this ancient language – he reiterates Douglas Hyde’s point, Linda Erivine’s point and Carol Conway’s widsom when she told me:

You won’t understand the Irish people until you’ve studied the Irish language

We can better understand each other with the gift of a language that predates our generations of conflict. A language that is neither Protestant nor Catholic, it is neither a Unionist nor a Separatist.

Thank you Carol, Linda and Anthony – for opening the door to knowing what I might never have otherwise known!

For more on this subject: “Beating Swords into Ploughshares”

* at 16:55 Linda Ervine discusses the structure of the language. To “twig on” begin a bit before that for a fascinating overview of the words that have entered the Northern Irish vernacular directly from the Irish.

Here’s a  2022 update on Linda Ervine’s work

Starting with my own!

January 1981, I remember the moment vividly.

This was what I didn’t know I didn’t know!

I’d relocated and needed work. I took a recruitment job “placing” accountants and then “selling” for a temporary placement agency. “Salesmanship” was a skill I lacked. Utterly.

Today I understand it on a deeper and more nuanced level. “Salesmanship” is a way of life. Daniel Pink describes it brilliantly in To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Persuading, Convincing, and Influencing Others. “We’re all in sales now…”

The persuading, convincing and influencing begins every day as I arise. I am the “customer”. Today I will choose… it is the mantra that opens my day.

It doesn’t end as I leave for work. My practice is about supporting change. Trained in counseling, my credentials for this subspecialty are less about education and certifications than experience. Recovery is a a process, a way of life. It is not a destination. Every day involves overcoming objections.

My own objections and other peoples’.

Choosing a conscious, mindful  presence in the world, a world overmedicated with mood altering substances and practices isn’t easy.

“Change management” isn’t just for businesses any more. Everyday the question is:

What very small change will I make – or sustain, in order to move forward, personally, professionally or in community?

Begin with: “I will not do what I have always done”,

believe that you can choose to be the “master of (your) fate, the captain of (your) soul“.

It can be done. More easily in the company of others, in fellowship with likeminded people and with skills and tools to short-circuit any objections you encounter.

How? Well quite frankly -“it takes guts”.

Don’t go it alone . Get in touch!

More on Personal Change Management→

Never has it been easier! Resolve to be a “Digital Media Mensch“* in 2015.

It costs little and you’re out there anyway.

A great recipe for money management is saving 10% of what you earn. Some folks with a charitable mindset strive to contribute 10%. Seem steep? Give of yourself, give your time!

Even just one percent of your work week. Work an 8 hour day? That’s 480 minutes. Consider adding 5 minutes on line, 5 days a week. A gift of 1%.

Now:

• Recommend a business that served you well
• Congratulate a Startup, SME or Micro-business on whatever platform you favor
• Thank your tribe – tell your followers & connections what benefit they’ve brought – even if just a smile
• Introduce a service professional to a potential customer
• Like, favorite or comment on discussion – engagement helps everyone

Could give more? Up it to 2% -10 minutes and you’ll have time to ask folks what digital media support they could use. Be available to open doors.

• New menu at a local cafe you frequent? Tweet about it – help drive traffic
• Refurbished premises? Sale on the High Street, Award Winners? Spread the word
• Repost, retweet or recommend an event – help an organizer fill a room

Creating community begins with one relationship at a time. You don’t have to love your neighbor, you don’t even have to like them. If you like what they’re doing, and if they’re adding value to the community – help them along.

*In Yiddish, mentsh roughly means “a good person.” The word has migrated as a loanword into American English, where a mensch is a particularly good person, similar to a “stand-up guy”, a person with the qualities one would hope for in a friend or trusted colleague. (Wikipedia)

Neo Ireland is all about growing a dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystem regionally.  We do that by creating community.

We provide a physical and virtual space for curious and interested people who want to experiment with entrepreneurship and social enterprise. We inspire by telling the “good news” stories and letting entrepreneurs lead by example. It’s an incubator and a “launchpad”.

Our first outreach was BizCampNI since 2012, we’ve run in them Newry, Belfast & Craigavon.

BizCamp provides an entire day of inspiration and education as volunteer speakers, accomplished in some aspect of running an SME or microbusiness take to a podium to share their experience. It’s continuing education to teach what we didn’t know we didn’t know about marketing, PR, finance, innovation and business development.

Beyond that it has created a community of “BizCampers”. When you leave a BizCamp you don’t just have a pocket full of business cards. You have potential relationships.

We offer a microbusiness support group in Newry. Moms that Work and Women that Work were the original day and evening groups. Merged into one and meeting monthly, on line and now informally over the course of three years, relationships have been established and new businesses formed. More importantly the group now exists as a safe place to ask for help and advice, test new ideas and get the word out about new products, opportunities, craft fairs and available business development courses.

The Drone Academy and After School Coding Club are perhaps the best example of what happens when you simply make the space available. This ground up effort by a resident programmer with little more than his ambition to teach young folks to code – has resulted in about thirty people through the doors and 3 full time programmer/app developers added to the region.

Newry Creates is our latest endeavor. Re-united with BizCamp co-founder Chris McCabe we’re happy to support this bi-monthly, evening meeting at Amplified Bar. Chris is leading with his same passion for building community as when he helped introduce BizCamp 5 years ago. Local entrepreneurs, creatives and technologists are invited to give a 10 minute lightning talk on their success story. The ups & the downs.

We’re a dynamic and entrepreneurial region already – come find out who is making all that happen and how! Perhaps become inspired to take a leap yourself.

2015 promises to be a banner year continuing these endeavours and adding more. We’ve moved to smaller quarters, created a “hacker space” to invite more techies to hang out and share their wisdom. There’s a regular Coderdojo back on the roster. We’re taking the Women that Work group to a new level, rebranding as Microbuzz.biz in order to offer a crossborder reach to men and women.

Let us have your feedback, add your name to our mailing list, or just let us know how we can help you make 2015 a prosperous one.

Email: eve@neoireland.org

Global City!

Tangible Ireland’s Dublin meeting October 9th is a special one. It marks the first session of my “senior year”* at Tangible.

Four years ago, with the help of Linkedin’s algorithms, I found my way to a meeting at the Dublin Civic Trust.

Welcomed by Dan Feahney, an enthusiastic, ex-pat American, I felt comfortable. Joining over 20 men and women from Northern Ireland & the Republic – it was the best collective company I’d found since arriving two years earlier. Remarkably, a full quarter of the group were women!

2010 was a bleak time in Ireland. We’d already hit bottom. My response was that there was no where to go but up. Everywhere I turned I saw opportunity.

Not so my Irish neighbours.

I was frustrated. The passivity of most and their despair was overwhelming. Where was the outrage? Where were the protests? Why were people saying “We got the run of ourselves, now we’ll pay”?

No one deserved it. It was clearly a failure of leadership, abuses of power and downright incompetence and it was going unpunished. (Sadly, still is…)

Compounding my frustration, I was still confounded by life on the border. The Good Friday Agreement was over a decade past and I lived every day with new messages about “them” & “us”. Somehow we could rail against historic wrongs, be willing to fight imagined enemies over exaggerated slights, but we were passive about the real and present danger.

Not at Tangible. It was different there, among these people.

One by one people rose to present.

I finally heard a language I recognized. Passion was alive in the voices of those calling for new & responsible leadership, self-reliance and a prosperity process!

Presenters came from across the island. I heard the language of respectful citizens of both governments interested in addressing the needs of the island’s economy with no political agenda.

Everything I heard at that meeting affirmed my vision of what life in Ireland could be. This community and their messages have sustained me.

There were 11 speakers that day. They included a young activist and social entrepreneur, Killian Stokes. He’d created a charity. Conceived in Dublin driven by a software platform built in Belfast, he recounted fundraising in America. Nothing passive about a young man equipped with a file of Google images, doorstepping executives and funders at meetings and conferences in New York. Here was passion, confidence and enthusiasm I could relate to!

Next up was Paul Smyth. The quiet dignity of this Belfast based Chief Executive of Public Achievement – belied the passion behind founding WIMPS – Where is My Public Servant? He was answering my near constant musing: Why isn’t anyone holding politicians to account? He was empowering teenagers in Northern Ireland to “speak truth to power” – with microphones in their hands plus the training and wherewithal to disseminate the interviews.

And then Ronan King took the floor. The theme of the day was Excellence in Ireland and one of the most powerful moments was when he put up a slide and said: “Do you know what happens when you Google Fianna Fail & Dynasty?”

Suffice it to say much blood was spilled to form a Republic that is shockingly dynastic.

His focus on demanding the accountability of regulators and bankers was refreshing in light of the self-flagellation I was used to hearing.

Noreen Bowden, an American ex-pat then living and working here presented on diaspora relationships, specifically, the disenfranchisement of emigrants.

Talks on talent management and leadership development by Alan Jordan & Danica Murphy were delivered in language I recognized. Empowering, not self-effacing; proactive and not passive.

Carol Conway then went on to deliver a summary of the first Ambassador Summer School. I knew I’d found a home. She and Dan Feahney closed by moderating a discussion: A Shared Future, the potential to design an Ireland of excellence.

Every seminar since has done precisely that. Tangible Ambassadors share the vision of an excellent, prosperous and sustainable island of Ireland fueled by the wisdom, strength & wealth of Global Ireland.

Join us as we gather annually in other Global cities – London in November, New York in May or Sydney in the summer; Belfast in February, Limerick in March;  Howth in January, Crossmaglen in July & Kilmallock in August.

Why? Noreen Bowden has returned to America, Killian Stokes is living and working there, along with 1000 like him who leave Ireland every week. Let’s develop the leaders who will create a dynamic, sustainable and prosperous Ireland for our children and grandchildren to come home to!

*College & high school years are called freshman, sophmore, junior & senior in America.

It’s a poor workman who blames his tools…

This adage conjures an image:

• a Singer sewing machine
• my frowning, 4’10” Italian grandmother and
• a judgment that if times got hard, my earning potential doing “piece work” would be pitiful.

Good that I’m better equipped for 21st Century “piece work”! Probably because the “tools” are more like “toys”.

My favourite new toy is Wordle. Their copy calls it: a toy for generating “word clouds”.

And I had been playing with it as directed – until…

Collaboration, cooperation, and a circle of like-minded souls changed all that!

Something extraordinary happened when Carol Conway, Freelance Catalyst didn’t use Wordle “as directed”.

She’s the dynamic facilitator who was directing, coordinating & tracking the content, tenor & tone of a  Summer School I attended this week. She employed Wordle to help.

The gift was not in this visual which highlights the output of 25 speakers, but rather that it was a key part of the process. Each day we submitted on post-its – words and themes that resonated with us as they came up.

In the evening, via the magic of the word cloud, she’d create and share an image.

That was powerful enough – but having slept on it – our breakfast conversations were even more enlightened.

Here’s why it mattered:

We think in images. Carol pointed out that we are exposed to thousands (did I hear 50,000?) of bits of information a day. We remember or focus on only a tiny fraction. In a crowded room, the attention of individuals was on different bits – and we all experienced those differently – through our individual filters.

This image of our collective process was a brilliant way to encourage reflection on what had percolated to the top of the group consciousness and encouraged some to bring their voices and passion to other issues that hadn’t been heard.

I delighted in the power it brought to the introverts in the room.

Their voices are empowered by reflective time. This allowed the extraverts to then could see what they may not have heard.

The visuals will speak for themselves!

United Technologies placed this ad in the Wall Street Journal, 1979

Playing “catch up” in Ireland.

Imagine the surprise at 53 years old discovering I was, yet again, a girl.

Imagine the surprise in finding my accomplished, professional peers were also girls.

Imagine my sadness on realising they didn’t have a problem with it.

Please let us consider the underlying misogyny and join in rejecting the appellation.

When I moved here in 2008, the feminist in me never expected to be back at square one.

This tattered copy has hung in one office or another since 1980. The Christmas gift tag added in 1985 was a reminder that my bemused staff didn’t think it was important either. They got it eventually.

One hopes the New Yorker cartoon illustrates the absurdity of accepting something we can change…

…or else we conspire in our own oppression.