Hicham, Paul, and I travelled to the first OpenCoffee Club BBQ, a spin-off of the highly successful OpenCoffee Club network, which was held in Terryglass, Tipperary on the 16th. This was an informal meeting of entrepreneurs, tech people, start-ups, bloggers, twitters, investors, marketing people, with a programme combining talks, open discussions, and demonstrations. We heard about this at a very late stage but bundled a load of equipment in the car early that morning and headed down with the aim of setting up a demonstration and talking tech with people.

Terryglass is a picture postcard Irish village that you would almost drive by without realising. Thanks to the OCC organiser, Evert Bopp, the ‘Derg Inn’ (the local fine ale emporium) offers free WiFi and Wii tournaments along with a warm welcome.

The talks ranging from setting up a wireless ISP and making money from it and how the tides can affect network performance, as we found out afterwards, to distributed content and delivery systems, education and tech, web 2.0 and beyond, sparked some very interesting conversations. We set up an audio/video wireless link demo using our reconfigurable radio system in the pub across the road from where the main action was taking place and displayed the action using a LCD projector – not the usual thing seen in a pub I guess.

The programme also featured a ‘Dragons’ Den’ competition where contestants pitched their ideas to a panel (the dragons) for an array of prizes for the winner. I entered at the last minute without my laptop, slides, or demo since they were all in the pub, and although I didn’t come away with the top prize in the end, it proved to be a valuable opportunity to learn and spark off some interesting chats with those present afterwards at the BBQ down at the lakeside. Have a look at the photos by Will Knott.

Paul sailed through his Ph.D. defence – Congrats!!