Digital Circle

Future postings on the Digital Circle blog will be on the Digital Circle NING site.

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Adrian Lennon has announced his resignation as Chair of Digital Circle.

Adrian’s business, Being Online, is expanding and he is moving to London to open an office there.

Adrian is the founding Chair of the group that became Digital Circle. He has put a great deal of time and effort into over the last few years. Without Adrian’s professional and personal commitment Digital Circle would simply not exist. He has been a friend to me and the industry in Northern Ireland and will be missed.

He has a fantastic opportunity to grow his business in London and we all wish him well.

The DC Steering Group has elected me as the Chair and I thank them for that vote of confidence.

I am very pleased that Kevin Traynor of Sonic Academy will be joining the Steering Group. Kevin is the next in line following the Steering Group elections earlier this year.

So very best wishes to Adrian for his new venture and thanks to Kevin for stepping up to the mark.

Posted by Davy Sims

Title: QUB: All Ireland Innovation Programme
Location: Queen\’s University of Belfast
Link out: Click here
Description: Date : Tuesday 10.11.09

Professor Henry Chesbrough, Executive Director of the Centre for Open Innovation, University of California, Berkeley will present this Innovation lecture. Specifically, he will discuss the concept of Open Innovation – creating an open platform around your innovations so your customers, your employees and even your competitors can build upon them.

Who should attend?
Business leaders, entrepreneurs, academics, knowledge transfer professionals and policy makers.

Location : Queens University, Belfast

Times:
18:00 - 19:30

Contact:
Stephen McGowan
s.mcgowan@qub.ac.uk
028 9097 2573

http://www.innovationireland.org
Start Time: 18:00
Date: 2009-11-10
End Time: 19:30

The Digital Circle is now live on the NING Social Network platform. We’ll be mving a lot of the community-related efforts over there in the coming weeks but right now you can sign up, set your profile (which is searchable and gives you an opportunity to tell people who you are and what you do) and there’s room for you to write your own PR posts, post images, videos and audio of work you want to showcase. You can also join special interest groups, note events for the community and invite folk to see what you’ve posted.

If you haven’t registered already, get on there.

There are three sector skills councils which are of immediate interest to the Digital Content Sector:

eSkills - covering the skills for Business and Information Technology
Creative and Cultural Skills - which have a remit for Design, Music and Creativity
Skillset - specifically for the Creative Media Industry

Skillset have asked the Industry in the UK to complete a census. We have just been notified of the Census and there is only a week until the Census closes. As a result I would like to insist that the province, through the Digital Circle, ensure that our voice is heard.

Dear Colleague

I am writing to ask you to take some time to participate in the seventh Skillset Census of the Creative Media Industries by completing the Census form available at www.skillset.org/census.

All Creative Media companies in the UK are urged to take this opportunity. Please indicate your employment of staff and use of freelancers as on Wednesday 1 July 2009 as soon as possible and by Friday 31st July 2009 at the latest.

If you have already received a paper form, you can choose to complete the online or the paper form. However please make sure that you complete only one form per region that your organization is active in.

The Census is the established independent measure of the shape and size of the industry by sector. The information collected, alongside other Skillset research, allows the industry to identify changes in the labour force, chart areas of growth and decline and target investment in skills development to ensure industry needs are met.

The results of the Census will be publicly available by the end of 2009 and a report will be sent to all participants. Please be assured that all information provided will be treated in strictest confidence and used only for the purposes of compiling aggregate statistics on the whole industry

Thank you for taking part in the Census. If you have any concerns or queries about the Census please contact Juno Kurian Thomas at Skillset either at: junok@skillset.org or on: 020 7713 9886.

http://www.skillset.org/census

Meeting took place n 22nd June, all Steering Group in attendance.
See link for details
Steering Group Minutes (PDF)

Yesterday the e-Synergy fund was launched at Stormont. Immersed in the great and the good, Sammy Wilson, MLA, addressed the crowd to launch the fund and was joined by the founders of e-Synergy and the Chief Executive of InvestNI.

The e-Synergy fund is actually two funds.

The £3 million Invest Growth Proof of Concept Fund is a pre-commercial grant enabling individuals, start-ups, micro-enterprises and SMEs to establish, develop and test the commercial potential of a concept resulting from in-house research and ideas. The fund offers two levels of grant - Mini-Grants up to £10 000 and Standard Grants up to £40 000.

Mini Grants focus on market demand/readiness, assessing your competitive strengths and weaknesses and examining your intellectual property. Standard Grants provide for activities like prototyping, patent investigations and licensing, building a management team and early customer interactions.

The Invest Growth Fund is a £5 million venture-capital fund set up to invest in startup and early-stage businesses based in Northern Ireland. To access this funding, the prospective investee can approach e-Synergy with a two-page Executive Summary presenting a business proposition that demonstrates a product or service with one or more unique aspects, early sales or demonstrable customer traction and an experienced if not complete management team.

This fund is designed to be the first institutional funder after friends, family and founders; with the majority of transactions requiring at least 30% of the funding from private sources.

To find out about both funds, go to http://www.nispofunds.com

In late May, Dark Water Studios, a games development company in the North West released a promotional video of their new game, Dogfighter.

“DogFighter is a fast paced, arcade aerial combat game with arena style gameplay values. Players will engage in single and multiplayer game modes using beefed up biplanes sporting a vast array of weaponry including the omni-directional Tesla Coil, the deadly Viper Cannon and the devastating Hunter Missile.

Game modes feature the classics, Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, as well as others with a distinct DogFighter flavour including Race and Nemesis. These new game modes have been designed with team play in mind and offer multiple rewards – many based of the successful completion of team rather than individual objectives.”

We’re now keenly awaiting the release of this fun free-flight combat game!

Dark Water Studios are now members of the Digital Circle and we’re very pleased that their recent business has been so fruitful. They’re also represented on the new-and-unfinished Digital Circle community site on the NING platform and are actively hiring developers, designers and artists. Dark Water Studios are based in Derry, contact details available on their web site.

TRC media’s pioneering digital media initiative, Cross Creative, is now open for applications. Cross Creative is a 9 month programme for top creatives in digital media looking to expand their knowledge, networks, collaborative creative horizons via top flight masterclasses combined with a trip to Silicon Valley. The programme also helps to instil a more ambitious, entrepreneurial approach to the possibilities and partnerships in future media.

Download guidelines and application form from www.trcmedia.org

09 Guidelines and Application Form GO.doc

Some spaces on this programme will be sponsored by NIScreen.

Discuss this at the DigitalCircle NING site.

I’m putting out another call for members to the Digital Circle Internationalisation group.  We have three volunteers on board and it would be great to have a few more, particularly if

·         you have experience in doing business outside Northern Ireland

·         you have a passion to do business outside Northern Ireland.

The next meeting will have no agenda beyond asking the questions:

·         What do we (and an industry) want to achieve?

and

·         What (as an industry) do we have to offer?

I would have an overall aim of identifying potential trade missions and industry events which Invest Northern Ireland will be sympathetic in supporting.

I’d like to do something in early July.

Please let me know if you would like to participate and what time of the day suits you best

·         8.00 am ish

·         noonish

·         6.00 pm ish

Thanks

Contact me at davy.sims@digitalcircle.org