Throwing out convention and simply gathering like-minded start-ups, entrepreneurs, small businesses and expert speakers for a free user-generated grassroots conference has been a successful format for Bizcamp, now in its second year.
At the 2008 event, Bizcamp got 200 business-minded folk together, but this year it sold out rapidly, with 499 people registering for the 19 September event at the Guinness Storehouse.
Doubling as both a networking event and a day of business learning, the “non-conference” is free to attend and will feature heavy-weight speakers including Jerry Kennelly, former co-founder and CEO of Kerry-based Stockbyte, which was sold to Getty Images in 2006 for €135m.
Kennelly will be speaking on a panel discussion with three other successful entrepreneurs: Kevin Traynor, CEO of Sonic academy, Colm Lyon, CEO of Realex Payments and Asheesh Dewan, founder of Jaipur Restaurants and co-founder of Segala.
Aside from the featured panel there will be four streams of talks running from 10am until 5pm, with advice ranging from using Twitter as a marketing tool to talks from IBM, Microsoft’s Bizspark programme and Enterprise Ireland.
Some really practical advice can be had. For example, David Lucey of Enterprise Ireland’s talk entitled The Top 10 omissions from business plans and Gerard Brandon’s talk, It is part of the job of an entrepreneur to find money. Get over it!!!
Bizcamp Dublin 2009 is sponsored by 3 mobile, Bank of Ireland, Microsoft Bizspark and Mason Hayes+Curran Solicitors and its supporters are The Irish Internet Association and Enterprise Ireland.
By Marie Boran
Photo: Business-minded folk can take part in Bizcamp at at the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin on 19 September.
