The Irish Internet’s Association’s recent annual conference, entitled ‘Connect – Inform – Promote: Monetising the Internet’, has been deemed a big success, with tickets for the event selling out three weeks in advance and feedback since then generally very positive.
“Tickets even went on sale on Ebay at twice the face value,” said IIA CEO, Fergal O’Byrne. “I think we were fortunate to have an excellent speaker line-up and we seemed to promote a theme that is very hot at the moment. I think that fact that we had a speaking panel representing companies worth over 500 billion dollars was testament to the level of importance these companies attach to Ireland as a marketplace. It is also great to see companies like Ebay present at these events and know that they are genuinely treating the Irish audience as a business constituency.”
Speakers included David Jesse, managing director of Ebay Ireland, John Herlihy, director of Google’s online sales and operations, Mark Charkin, head of EMEA regional sales at MSN, and Jim Scheinman, who is responsible for business development at Bebo. Jesse spoke about the Ebay phenomenon in general, its business history in Ireland and current security initiatives to improve customer confidence. He also spoke about a number of companies that are now trading almost exclusively through Ebay. Peter Cobley, meanwhile, gave an overview of how to earn money from sponsored search, or pay-per-click advertising. John Herlihy kicked off by observing that this was probably the first time this year that these four leading Internet players had come together on the same stage to share their views and debate the current hot topics. In his presentation, he talked about Google’s vision, about the development of the company, and about the challenges of delivering global solutions. Mark Charkin described how the consumer is changing and how Microsoft is adapting to this. He also gave some examples of companies that have used the MSN network to drive business through to their sites. Scheinman talked about the development and phenomenal growth of Bebo in the English speaking world over the last year. He also spoke about various revenue opportunities for the site.
One of the highlights of the day, however, was the presentation by Des Kenny of Kennys.ie, who spoke about growing up and working in the Galway bookshop and about moving the entire business online earlier this year. “Judging by the feedback forms, Des Kenny of Kennys.ie charmed and beguiled the audience with his unusual presentation style and wit,” said Fergal O’Byrne. “He was one of the most honest speakers, as regards his Internet experiences, that I have seen for some time.”
The IIA introduced a new ‘in-the-round’ format for some of the sessions in the afternoon to allow people to sit in on smaller gatherings with teams of experts in Internet security, online marketing, hosting and domain issues, user experience and online privacy. “These sessions gave people an opportunity to attend, listen to very brief presentations and then engage in a question and answer session with the panels,” said O’Byrne. “We tried to time these so that attendees could attend all of the sessions in the two hour slot. I think we cut this a bit too fine and might alter the format slightly next year. The great thing about this was that the chairs for the session were all members of our working groups. We got requests to start more working groups due to the success of this event.”
Podcasts of the conference presentations are now available at www.iia.ie.
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