Paul May

A talk I gave at Barcamp Belfast 2008. A very early draft of something I might develop in the future. 20 mins talk + 10 mins q&a

Hypothesis: There are some incredibly talented people working in technology, design, business - and I’ve often wondered, how do these people stay so fresh, so highly skilled and so motivated when the nature of their industry and their business changes so quickly and so often. So I asked them. And what they told me was very interesting. For some people it’s a strategy, but In most cases these just happen to be some things that really great people seem to have in common. So, what are these traits, these strategies?

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I’ll be presenting at BarCamp Belfast. Notionally the topic is: “Everything You Know is Likely to be Wrong - Perspectives on creating value and remaining relevant in the technology industry.” Should be fun! I’ll post slides, notes and photos here next week.

Update: I’ve now uploaded my notes from the talk. it was a good day. The topic I landed on in the end was “Staying Relevant in Tech Industries“. It was a little abstract, but it was a good first stab at a topic I’d like to develop further.

The o2 rugby site is now live; and was developed by Front. Submit a message through the site, and your message will screen in the Irish dressing room before every match of the Rugby World Cup. Check it out. (http://www.o2.ie/rugby)

I did Triathlone today; It was great - tough swim, nice bike and a confusing run (confusing for me anyway…). I was told three laps by one marshall, four laps by another - so I finished one lap early, had my timing chip removed, then figured out I wasn’t actually finished. I begrudgingly did another lap, but my time for the run will be wrong by a few minutes. Annoying - but that’s life.

It’s 1am now, I’m just packing my things for holidays. Off to Barcelona tomorrow for a break. See you soon.

If you haven’t seen Jeff Han’s Multitouch Interface then you really, really should. It’s amazing, breathtaking, the stuff of dreams.

Hello! I did the Port Tunnel run on Sunday, which was good fun. I haven’t been running since the Dublin Aquathon back in September (?), so I was really bluffing it. Anyway, I made it home in a leisurely (read: crap) 59 mins….7 minutes slower than my 10K leg in Chicago in August and about 30 minutes behind the decent runners.

10 thousand people huddled together on the approach to the tunnel for 30 minutes listening to the interesting blend of a local radio station van blasting out every song with the word “run” in it (Born to Run, Run To You…etc.) and the Starter shouting at people to get off the grass verge and that they were only kidding themselves. All good fun.

We started running (jogging) into the tunnel; from the grey winter light and the icy wind outside to the warm sodium glow and balmy 18 degree air inside. The contrast was wild; people were ditching jackets, santa suits and tracksuit bottoms all over the place. A leisurely jog later and we were back outside in the real world. The medal is very nice, well done to the organisers.

So, I’m going to try the Aware 10K on Sunday in the Phoenix Park, see if I can beat my pedestrian time. I’ll give it a go anyway.

Hope you’re all well.