Alexia Blogs

Spotted over the weekend in the window of a Dublin shop.

More and more, I seem to be coming across friends and contacts who dabble in other jobs in their spare time. Some have thriving side businesses doing consulting in similar to their day jobs. For others, it’s broadening their hobby into a small, but fulfilling cottage business. I like to call this phenomenon dabbling. Dabbling doesn’t have to come in the form of doing formal IT consultative work. Far from it. Dabbling could simply be a stay-at-home mum deciding to use her foreign language skills to help out local businesses operating in international markets or a student starting a crafting business from their bedroom. Dabbling comes in all shapes and sizes, and in every Hush Puppy flavour you can imagine.

Economic experts tell us that the demands of the modern working world mean there’s no automatic job for life (ignoring civil servants here, as they live in an alternate universe). They say that we’ll change job every couple of years. And they’re right, but aren’t we dabbling more in side projects? Hell, almost every big-name technology giant you can muster up started in someone’s back room or garage as a dabble. This is not to say that dabbling will end up founding a Google, rather, that there is potential in every seed to build out fulfilling businesses where you call the shots.

Dabbling is great for the indigenous Irish business scene and the creativity engine that drives it, but are there ways that we can improve the environs to seed more dabbling by the populace?

Providing easier roads to capital: Some time back Elly blogged how she contributed a loan of $25 in a scheme organised by Kiva to help entrepreneurs in developing countries. Now, I’m not advocating we set up local loan shark organisations to loan out to small businesses and then shake them down, but there it wouldn’t be nice to see local people contribute and investing in businesses near them? Perhaps through a scheme operated under the umbrella of their local Credit Union. Of course, ways to prevent cronyism and neighbourly oneupmanship would need to be put in place.

Being flexible with networking time: On the tech scene I see Open Coffee Clubs happening every week up and down the country, wouldn’t it be nice if dabblers could use that idea too? It could be called the Open Dabblers Club! Instead, of having networking meets in work hours, perhaps a Thursday or Friday evening would suit. Yeah, it’s time away from the dabble, but it could make good business sense, if the right connections get made or business gets done. People could the chat about their work, look for advice and sell their product to others. I think the more flexible and unstructured these networking meets can be, the better. Dabblers have too many demands on their time already, with work and family, so keeping it flexible is mandatory. Perhaps, even the local County Enterprise Boards could host some, get some speakers to talk and provide some teas and coffees. Just tea, mind, no booze, else it might attract opportunistic freeloaders instead of opportunistic entrepreneurs.

Open attitudes are vital to helping dabblers taking that first step from hobby to business. It would be nice to see big government take an interest in fostering that spirit of enterpreneurship. Taking to the nth degree, the next generation could get firsthand knowledge into the inner workings of business DIY by witnessing dabbles piloted by their parents. Lessons learned in the home are always more strongly reinforced than limp attempts by the secondary educational system to implant business know-how in grey vocational programmes.

There’s no doubt that dabbling can be big, but are we ready? So, what do you think? Are you a dabbler?

Pesky baby vampires.

Bertie is going through a rough patch, show him you care.

Does a boomerang return to you in space?

Interesting post on science and belief.

I can’t wait until the new season hits our screens. Season four is scheduled to kick off in a few weeks and just to breach the gap, here’s a teaser. Mind, it has season three spoilers. Oh, and the great news is that the Battlestar prequel, Caprica, has been officially greenlighted. Super news.

Nice piece on Twitter’s Ev Williams.

Pat explores future of citizen journalism with a nifty hotspot creator cradlepoint device.

This is not rick rolling as we know it.

The Youtube Award winners for 2007.

Indexed demonstrates how being rich is boring.

Here’s a post I wrote some time ago on the viewing of ‘Battle in Seattle’ during the Dublin International Film Festival.

Waking up on a Saturday morning is difficult to do. Waking up early on Saturday morning, even more so. How does one generate the sort of energy to oscillate oneself out of their toasty reveries and into the biting Febuary cold? Why with the carrot of an early morning show at the Savoy for the Dublin International Film Festival to see Charlize Theron and erm, Stuart Townsend in the flesh for a post-movie Q&A session, of course.

Sitting in dark, those first few seconds were pregnant with anticipation. My first movie of the festival. Last year’s showing of the ‘The Good German’ let me down, so hopes were high. As the credit rolled up I knew I was in trouble.. Ooo, World Trade Organisation vs. Hippie protesters. Nice. Perhaps I should have read the programme. I barely know where my movies are on (I had that many), not to mind what they’re about.

‘Battle in Seattle’ is set during the WTO meeting in Seattle in the Winter of 1999. It’s a fictionalised account of the protest, primarily told through the eyes of anti-globalisation protesters. I like to think my politics are fairly liberal. I believe in free, open and liberal international trade. I believe in equal rights for all irrespective of gender, religion, race, sexuality or any other label that we use to create taxonomies of people. I also like to believe that these goals are common to all. Aspirations that humanity ought to reach for, right? Apparently, not. If the nanny-stated ‘Battle in Seattle’ is anything to go by, then there are protesters with lots of bleeding hearts that fight the ‘good fight’ and there’s the rest of us.

Oh yes, our heroes are people on the coal-face that like to rile against authority. Lame attempts at humanising police officers fail miserably. In the scene, where we are introduced to the police officers’ in their natural habitat, gearing up in a changing room, we witness the officers getting a bit mad and punching lockers. Harrelson creaks through the picture and gets to play angry cop who beats on protesters.

The point that the movie leaves with me is that those who fight under a banner that is labeled, do little to move on the consensus. Like those anti-globalisation protesters for example, this film is manna for the agenda. Protesters are heroes. People who sacrifice for things they believe in. They are Jesus figures. The film likes to think that the police are misguided by the heavy, yet invisible hand of commercial power-brokers. Monied heads whose lobbyists and political toys sit in the seats of public administration. Absolutely - society and commerce are tied together. Try to unwind one thread and the other wrestles free as well.

The movie was followed with a lengthy Q and A session. I couldn’t be bothered in asking any hard questions. People were undeniably there for one of two reasons: to give more noise to the anti-globalisation movement or to see an Oscar winner. Neither group was going to pressure the actors into answering real questions or interested in anyone with contrary views asking.

Battle.. is the kind of movie that seventeen teenagers called Daisy or Squeak would like. Most probably members of a left leaning political yoof movement like Young Labour or the Greens, that find it easier to braid their hair or stick up posters for yet another public demonstration than get off their arses and impact change in their community. Yes, let’s write letters to save the sea otter instead of visiting your elderly aunt that has problems leaving the house and is desperately lonely. It’s much easier to feel like contributing to a change when press bites congratulate your movement. Yeah, only bleeding hearts need apply. And yes, that brigade did congratulate and whoop at the end of the movie. I felt sad. Sad for society. Charity and change starts at home with the little things, with generosity and doing things invisibly. I wonder will this cadre ever learn that lesson.

Happy chocolate egg day to all. I’m not a particularly religious person, but Easter can be a time of reflection for everyone. A time to sit back and think about the beginnings and endings of the past year. I hope you all have a wonderful day with your families and friends. Don’t forget to go out and get some fresh Easter air, the web can survive without you for a few hours.

There’s just a couple of weeks to go before the Irish Microsoft Technology Conference. It’s a two-day, four-track conference that covers lots of Microsoft technologies from Silverlight to Sharepoint, through to LINQ and Hyper-V. One of the nice things about the IMTC is that speakers hail from Microsoft and the developer community. The conference kicks off on April 3rd and tickets can be snapped up from the website for €189.

Late today as a Twitter game pushed em outta last night..

Something.ie is using content from all over planet Irish Blogging without permission.

Don’t forget to plan in time for Poop for Peace Day on April 18th.

Grannymar gives us a warning re: wearing our newly bought smalls, without washing them first.

Tropic Thunder trailer. An exercise in silliness, but I like silly movies now and then.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs ‘Cheated Hearts’