The next Open Coffee Galway will take place next Monday and will have a focus on urban gardening! We will have a visit from Valerie O’ Connor. Val is a professional food photographer based in the sunny mid-west city of Limerick. Val is also a contributing editor to the Bridgestone Irish Food guides, a columnist at the Limerick Leader newspaper and currently studying Organic Horticulture and sustainability at The Organic College, An t’Ionad Glas in Drumcollagher, Co.Limerick.

She recently went on a solitary brigade to Cuba to see how the country has survived the peak oil crisis and turned it’s horticultural self around to a point where it can now actually feed all of her people. The Trip was organised by ICAP,  the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples which was founded on December 30 1960, as a result of the heat, enthusiasm and solidarity arose everywhere in the world after the victory of the Cuban Revolution.

When we import 90% of our fruit and vegetables, Ireland would have enough food to eat for about two weeks if our fuels were cut off and we suddenly had to fend for ourselves.
Cubans don’t have the luxury of emigrating when times get tough, they simply don’t have the money or freedom to do it like we do.

Val will speak about her trip to Cuba and urban gardening and how the Cubans manage their gardening.

We will also be hooking up to chat with Mark Cub Covington of Detroit to talk about the urban garden that has he started on Georgia Street in Detroit via Skype.

You can read more on what he did here in this recent Irish Times article.

You can also have a look at the garden that they built in this video below.

Where: Webworks building, Galway
When: Monday 28th of February at 3pm

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Open Coffee Galway will be holding a very interesting evening of collaboration with Open Coffee Thessaloniki Greece via Skype tomorrow evening.

Open Coffee Galway will be held at the Webworks building in the evening due to the difference of time zones and for people to be able to attend after working hours on Tuesday the 18th of January 2011.

The Open Coffee group in Thessalonki is run and organised by both Apostolos Kritikos and George Gatos.

Apostolos Kritikos from Open Coffee Thessaloniki will introduce himself to the Open Coffee Group in Galway via Skype.

Ellen Dudley of Crowdscanner and Ina will be giving short introductions via Skype to the Open Coffee Thessaloniki Group.

Why Link up?

Greece like Ireland is currently facing chronic emigration and unemployment. The syncing of the Open Coffee clubs could possibly lead to collaboration opportunities. In Greece they have created a small network of existing start-ups through the Open Coffee network, including people that would like to create a start up, an umbrella of experts that supports the Open Coffee network in Greece that help it to grow.

However in this time of economic crisis entrepreneurship on a national level is not enough.

Open Coffee Meetings around Europe create healthy spots of entrepreneurship. Connecting them could lead to:

• Innovative ideas circulation
• Entrepreneurship acceleration…

and even possible international cooperation (in both B2B and B2C perspectives) further down the road…

Open Coffee Thessaloniki

The Group runs like Open Coffee Galway once a month.
The short video below shows how big an event it is for them.

Green Technology Theme & Agenda

Maria Malindretou & Panos Voulgaris two architects from Mal-Vi Architects, will be giving a short presentation on Marvin the eco-sustainable, energy efficient catamaran they have designed which has already caught the eye of some European companies. Sotiris Milonas is presenting an online, environment friendly, network of hotels, GreenHotels. This platform is a place that hosts information and promotes hotels that both apply environment friendly policies and aim in natural resource preservation. Hans Buster, founder of Vitaverde. Vitaverde aims in transforming a place of the city to an “oasis” of green, increasing the quality of life for everyone.

Open Coffee Galway will also discuss the Endeavour program.

Social Bits will be hosting the Open Coffee Galway event at the Webworks Galway building in the city centre at 6pm.

Links

Open Coffee Galway

Open Coffee Thessaloniki

Twitter: ocgalway and opencoffeegr

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Christmas has crept up quickly this year. To see the close of 2010 we are having a Christmas Open Coffee Galway next Tuesday at 11am. There will be mulled wine and mince pies and it will be held in the Webworks building in Galway city. Prof. Dr.Stefan Decker of the Digital Enterprise Research Institute will give a short informal talk on the future of the Web in Galway (Linked Data & Semantic Web technologies) and the direction the Web is heading. I hope to see many of you there.

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September Open Coffee Galway will be held at Webworks building, Fairgreen Galway (beside the coach station) this Friday at 11am.

Henry Story will give a short talk/discussion on the emerging Social Web.

Henry was until recently Social Web Architect at the late Sun Microsystems (now Oracle). Before joining Sun he developed the BabelFish machine translation service at AltaVista in the late 1990ies.

He has been working on blogging tools, specs (Atom), and recently on the emerging Social Web.

The Talk: Current Social Networks are centralised: members can only “friend” other members of the network. But why? With a telephone one can call people the whole world over independently of the network operator used. With email you can send a message to the whole world. So why can we not connect across networks? This would allow users to control their data much better, something which for many individuals and organisations is vital.

In this talk Henry Story will explain both where the problem lies, and how it can be solved, leading to the emergence of a wholly new web ecosystem.

Hope to see you there

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Open Coffee Galway July is set to be held at 091Labs in Exchange House, Fairgreen, Galway. 091 Labs is a new shared physical space for any and all creative projects: art, woodwork, software, photography and electronics – to name but a few. The aim of 091 Labs  is to provide Galway with a place for people to work and collaborate on creative projects, to learn and to share their knowledge. They welcome all skill levels and all creative ideas. Due to the  busy time of year in Galway – Open Coffee will be held Monday the 26th of July at 11am.

Padraic O’ Maille will give a short talk.

Hope to see you all there.

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June Open Coffee Galway will be held this coming Friday at Webworks Galway, Fairgreen, Galway city at 11am.

Hope to see you there.

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As May Open Coffee Galway coincides with Green Open Coffee the same Saturday, May 1st, I would like to take the opportunity to bring Open Coffee Galway to Tipperary.

According to Google Maps it takes 1 hour and 32 mins to get to Cloughjordan in North Tipperary.

I know that it may not suit many to travel but I think it’s an opportunity to meet other Open Coffee members and the chance to check out the ecovillage that they have there – it is Ireland’s only ecovillage at present.

There is also a community farm and a green enterprise park undergoing development.

It is to be held in Sheelagh na Gig on the main Street from 10:30 am onwards.

I will be car pooling and will have 2 seats free in my car for on the way and back.

I will stay for lunch and head back around 3pm that afternoon. Please contact me via Linkedin if you would like a lift.

There is also an Event page on Facebook that you can RSVP to.

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Your Country Your Call comes to Galway and will be held at Hotel Meyrick in the Connemara Suite this Wednesday.

The workshop is open to the public are free of charge and will take place as follows:

Galway: 24th March 2010, 7.30pm, Meyrick Hotel, Eyre Square, Galway.

The workshop will last for about two hours and promises to be a lot of fun as well as being informative and helpful.
If you would like to participate, please send an email to workshop@yourcountryyourcall.com indicating which event you would like to attend.
Please note that places are limited and will be allocated on a first come first served basis.
The workshops are being run in conjunction with jump and The Irish Times.

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The next Open Coffee Galway will be held the 6th of March at the Hotel Meyrick. A-list blogger Damien Mulley is to give a talk on how he used the power of Social Media to do business. It will be held at 11 am upstairs in the Executive Suite. Please follow @MeyrickHotel for special coffee promos that you will be able to avail of on the day! Hope to see you there.

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The first Galway Open Coffee Galway 2010 will be taking place at the Hotel Meyrick.

It will be held upstairs in the Executive suite in the Hotel.

This month there will be a talk given by Liam O’ Morain of the Digital Enterprise Research Institute.

Liam will be giving his talk on Linked Data.

Wikipedia defines Linked Data as “a term used to describe a recommended best practice for exposing, sharing, and connecting pieces of data, information, and knowledge on the Semantic Web using URIs and RDF.”

As the Web shifts away from a Web of Documents towards a Web of Data Liam’s talk aims to give an insight into this coming shift with the Web.

Linked Data will affect your business on the Web if you have a website. To find out more about both Linked Data and the future of the Web the talk will be held at 11am Saturday morning, January 30th, at Hotel Meyrick.

Hope to see you there.

These are just a few of the datasets that are being connected and reused on the Web.

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