I sat up and ran two small businesses and I remember the first idea for the first business – I was unemployed at the time – and I got highly excited when I had this idea, a eureka moment. I said I know what I am going to do, I’ll set up a cycling holiday company. And I spent the first few weeks thinking that I should get a big office, with a big swivel chair and a big desk and stationery and lots of things so people would know, so I would know, that I was in business. I realised then that I didn’t have the money for it, so I set up the business in my bedroom at home. And it worked. It was slightly chaotic, I had everyone at home trained to answer the phone – Hello, Irish Cycling Holidays, can I help you? That worked, unless my grandfather got to the phone first and answered Hello?, What?, Who?! But other from that, people wouldn’t know where they were dealing with. Tourism is an international business, so they could imagine the shiny desk.
So I am very jealous, and I am very proud, to see that people who are being entrepreneurial in starting their businesses, they do get the shiny desks and the flash offices and all the facilities that you would want to set you on your way. And this is a very impressive building for someone who has a very keen regard for people who are taking that entrepreneurial step. It’s also interesting because it’s in an area in our department, digital media, which I think is a hugely interesting area in the development of our economy and our country. In relation to the IADT, the Institute for Art, Design and Technology, I think that is a brilliant example of having an incubation centre, having an enterprise centre, but also tying it in to some of the expertise, to some of the resources we have in the academic side in this area. I think that that is what is particularly attractive about this centre – that it is not only the support base for people who want to be enterprising but it is providing a link to Jim and his staff, which is exactly right. There can be a fertilisation of ideas, or even just the very presence of the two benefits both.
I would very much like to recognise the work that you are doing, in a sense of being one of the first such centres here in the country, specific to this type of area. I think it goes on top of other projects that you are doing, the work that you do with our own Department in the National Digital Research Centre. The work, as you said, with the Films in School, because there is a convergence occurring. I know this has been said for a long time but I can see it so clearly happening now between a range of different industries and be that in your MSc in cyberpsychology, which is a long way from the commerce degree I did in my time – it sounds much more attractive, whether it’s the new validation in the masters qualification in digital media, or whether its just the particular work that the graduates of the creative arts and media are doing and indeed, the school of business humanities programmes here in terms of what entrepreneurs can create. It seems to be a perfect fit, this fits in with that range of products that you are engaged in.
As I said, this area is of crucial importance in the development of our economy and it is one where I see huge potential, the digital media services area. If I can just comment on the speech you were referring to recently in Dublin, that in this converging world, where we are seeing the computer industry, the telecommunications industry and the broadcasting industries converging, that it is content, creative content, that will ultimately be the key winner. That it is very hard to work out, even for people in the industry. I had a meeting with the Telecommunications Industry Federation this morning, fourteen of the companies there – they are not sure how it is going to break, what is going to change. I had a meeting just before lunch with RTE and they are similarly in a position, as are other broadcasters, where they are not sure how some of this digital future is going to work. Digital radio is a very different space to FM radio. Digital television is going to provide different challenges to what current analogue television does. So who is going to win out and who is going to be successful in that is hard to tell because the technology is changing so quickly and the market is changing in response to the technological changes. Indeed, the computer industry, the changes that are occurring there as we move from the system where all the access, all the services you have are in your server or in your particular laptop to one where it is clear that companies are going to out those services in cloud computing or whatever you want to call it. It will be then a very different system of collecting that information. The speed of that change and the effect of that change on companies that we see now as absolutely established is, I think, going to be very very profound. In that changing world, it is those people who are creating ideas, who are good at content, who are good at being flexible and who are quick in responding and providing new services are the ones who are going to succeed.