Enterprise Ireland Masterclass: Enabling eBusiness: Best Practice and Future Trends

I've been invited to speak at a Masterclass this morning at Enterprise Ireland. Though not something I've done much of, the opportunity has come at a great time, as I'm mid way through a couple of big projects with Boards.ie

The Enterprise Ireland eBusiness and High Potential Start Up Units are organising an advanced eBusiness Masterclass for clients who operate in the online space. The Masterclass, entitled "Enabling eBusiness: Best Practice and Future Trends", will feature presentations on international best practice from leading industry figures on the following topics: blogging and the law; online advertising; virtualisation; and online payments. The presentations will feature indepth analysis of the current best practice in the topic areas, as well as outlining future trends and developments.

Rather than waffle on alone for 40 minutes, I've invited a panel of expert speakers to contribute to the conversation. My intention was to give a broad mix of experiences, backgrounds and skillsets while still maintaining a connection with the audience, all of whom already occupy the online space.

On the panel will be:

• Eamonn Fallon, CEO of Daft.ie - http://www.daft.ie
• Brendan Hughes, ecommerce manager of FBD Insurance - http://www.fbd.ie, http://www.nononsense.ie
• Carolyn Fisher, Senior Press Officer, RTÉ News and Current Affairs - http://www.rte.ie
• Jason Roe, lunatic blogger, http://www.jason-roe.com/
• Thomas Brunkard, Bvisible Communications - http://www.bvisible.ie
• Eoin Kennedy - Slattery Communications - http://www.scomms.ie
• Stewart Curry, Design Director with XCommunications - http://www.xcommunications.ie
• Stiofain MacDhaibhead and/or Eoin ó Suilleabhaín - Bórd Gáis - responsible for the Big Switch Campaign - http://www.thebigswitch.ie

In my own presentation will be some statistics about Boards.ie, including that in March 2009 we had over 1.49 million individuals visiting Boards.ie with over 22 million pages served and the average time on site was just under 9 minutes. We are working on facilitating conversations between companies and Boards.ie members, so the opportunity to present this morning comes at an interesting point in the project.

Other speakers today include Roger Galligan, CEO of Cognotent who runs irishblogs.ie on Website promotion and Social Media, Simon McGarr of McGarr Solicitors on Legal Questions arising from Cloud Computing and Keith McCabe from Realex Payments on How to do business online securely.

Am I nervous? Hell yes. Will I enjoy it? Time will tell but sure I'll give it a go. A huge thanks in advance to all the speakers and to David Scanlon for arranging.