Given that there are only an estimated 150,000 Internet users in Ireland, a three-day show at the weekend at the RDS in Dublin dedicated to all things Internet seemed a fairly ambitious undertaking.
Organisers were predicting 30,000 punters, but that seemed unlikely after a modest start on Friday. Attendees seemed to find it a bit disappointing, but worth a wander. "I wasn't terribly overexcited now at all," said John Gleeson, who was having a look around. "It's smaller than I expected," added his friend Simon Holohan. Nonetheless, both planned to return for further exploration over the weekend.
The two, users of the Internet for about two years, would fit the bill for typical visitors to the show. Not techies, but they like the Net. They wanted to see new products for consumers, and also have a look at the separate, business-only section of the exhibition. They would have liked to see more companies, especially the smaller Irish ones, represented.
But even this low-key show demonstrated the growing pervasiveness of the Net. For example, both the Bank of Ireland and AIB were showing their new online banking services. Bank of Ireland's group business manager of Internet services, Nick Fahy, said over 3,000 customers have already signed up for this online extension of its phone-based Banking 365 service. The bank is even launching its own Internet access service, called BOINet, in conjunction with Telecom Eireann. It has a £5 sign-up fee, then £12 a month (plus VAT) charges for three email addresses and up to 5Mb of Web space.
Web recruitment site Top Jobs on the Net was encouraging people to see it first before jumping jobs, while MotorWEB is offering cars via your modem. Dell Computer, which has its European manufacturing centre in Limerick, had terminals set up so that customers could make an impulse PC purchase right at the show. And of course, the people who provide connections to the Net, the Internet service providers, were also out in force, with the notable exception of Ireland On-Line.
Irish Internet business was over in the corporate exhibition, where Web design companies as well as big technology players such as IBM had set up stalls. IBM Ireland's network computing manager, John Leech, was talking up IBM's newly-launched electronic commerce-focused campaign. Ecommerce, he said, "is not about technology. It's about a new way of doing business."
Nua, one of the original Internet design firms in Ireland, says it's shifting away from the Irish market because high-level Web work is hard to find: "The amount of serious jobs in Ireland are few and far between," said managing director Niall O'Sullivan. "Our focus is very much international now," he added, noting that Nua had recently clinched a large American Web database project.
One of the companies doing much of the high-end work in new media, Oniva, noted a difference in the conversations they were having with clients about the Web: "Before, they wanted to see the latest versions of applications," said managing director Wael Wansa. "Now, they're interested in Net solutions." He says there's still much confusion about what businesses can do with a Web site. A surprise presence was Windmill Lane, which has focused on film and video since getting out of the recording studio business. While the company is a relative newcomer to the corporate CDRom and Web site market, business development manager Kevin Galligan says, "This is definitely our growth area."
For businesses visiting the show who still feel ill at ease on the Net, MIDAS-Net Ireland had a couple of announcements to help ease their pain. MIDAS-Net, part of a European Commission initiative to promote the use of online and multimedia technologies in European businesses, will have a range of discounted training programmes on multimedia and the Internet available in the new year. Also, two national support centres will be available, in Dublin and Limerick. "We're trying to work with the average person on the street and bring them up to a comfortable level," said Martina Flynn, head of MIDASNet Ireland.
Karlin Lillington is at: karlin@indigo.ie