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The international confidence in Ireland’s skilled workforce was evident this week with eBay’s announcement it is to expand its Dublin European Centre of Excellence workforce by 150.

The expansion of 150 jobs at the centre is supported by the Irish Government with the aid of IDA Ireland. eBay, which already employs over 1,600 people at its Blanchardstown, Dublin site together with PayPal, its online payment system, has created the new permanent positions in customer service, personal account management and process enhancement.
With more than 90 million active users globally, eBay is the world’s largest online marketplace, where practically anyone can buy and sell practically anything.
The roles created are in areas that will support the execution of eBay’s global and European strategy, and include positions for specialists with strong technical skills in business analytics, content management, project management and account management. The company is also keen to recruit multilingual customer service representatives.
Welcoming the announcement, Taoiseach, Brian Cowen TD, praised the job creation. “eBay is now a global brand name and we are delighted that our capital can provide the flexible and skilled workforce necessary to help this brand grow further in the period ahead.’’

Ireland may be traditionally known for its agriculture, however, farming abilities of a different type are connected to a US company with plans to  set up an operation here.
However, Zynga, the San Francisco-headquartered gaming company behind the hugely popular FarmVille is remaining tight lipped about its plans for an Irish office.

Zynga, which creates games on social networks and iPhone, is the creator of popular games such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, Café World, and Zynga Poker, to name a few. Company spokesperson Shernaz Daver would not comment on when the Irish operation is scheduled to open, what types of roles would be filled or how many professionals the company plans to employ in Ireland.
“We are expanding operations in Ireland, but can’t comment further at this time. We will have more to talk about later.”
Zynga’s most played game is FarmVille, which has over 80 million people playing worldwide. However, it has more games in the pipeline. “We’re always working on new games. You’ll be seeing some more games from us very soon,” Daver told the Prosperity ezine.
Zynga has over 600 full-time employees that work in a variety of roles, from game development, to customer service, to finance. It recently opened an office in Bangalore, India. Apart from that, it has a handful of US offices: San Francisco (headquarters), Sunnyvale, Los Gatos, Los Angeles and Baltimore.
It currently does not have a European presence and would not comment on whether its planned Irish operation will serve as its European headquarters.

How are your project management skills? More and more job descriptions are looking for people with project management skills and a new offering is on the market to help.

A new Irish project tracking online tool built with Web 2.0 technology is to create up to six jobs by the end of next year. Barney Austen, who founded MyProjectTracker with Eoin Redmond, says the tool aims to make project management more accessible for businesses.

This year the focus will be on sales and product management staff, while plans to recruit development staff will start next year. The target is to employ four to six people by the end of 2011, says Austen.

MyProjectTracker, explains Austen, is directed at consultancies and small businesses right up to large design houses. “It’s designed for people who run lots of little projects and need to keep tabs on them or big companies that have one or two projects with a lot of people working on them, so you have both sides.”

It tracks time, costs and milestones across projects to allocate resources efficiently, meet deadlines and maximise profit margins. It also gives instant visibility of all projects, showing those that are on track and those in danger of missing deadlines or running over budget.

The online tool is open for friendly user testing for the next four to six weeks at MyProjectTracker.com before its commercial release in April. When officially launched, it will be priced by the number of users a company assigns to it per month – without an upfront cost.

It’s suited to projects running for more than a day in duration and costs don’t need to be tracked either. It can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be, says Austen, but an advantage is that the whole team can use it without any need for training. “The whole intention behind this is to keep it as non-techie as possible. A lot of the language that’s used in project management is elitist and can seem very distant and removed from business users. What we’re trying to do is take the good practices of project management and bring it into a tool that business users can understand.”

There was an “is it a bird, is it a plane” reaction last week to the launch of Weedle.com, a Dublin-based website which offers to connect people with other people who need their skills.

Speaking to Prosperity’s Digital Ezine, CEO of Weedle.com, Iain MacDonald explained: “You have demand for people with skills and supply of people with skills. Currently there’s no large-scale, simple way of connecting people with skills to the people that need them. We provide a very simple way to connect you with people who need your skill or to find people with the skills you need.”

The obvious question is, isn’t there already LinkedIn? “LinkedIn is a very good way of managing your contacts within a white-collar network environment. Facebook is very good for sharing your thoughts or photographs with friends. What Weedle does is enable you to connect with people who need your skill or find people with the skills you need.”

How Weedle works is business people create a profile, explain what they can do and demonstrate what they can do, by uploading a video for example. Businesses could vary from accountants to babysitters to carpenters.

For those searching for skills on Weedle, the search string is semantically analysed so that a search for a carpenter will also return results for a joiner, for example. Answers are ranked according to an algorithm, so that the person most likely to meet your search need will be ranked at the top. Also taken into account are the content of a profile, the last time the person logged into their account and how quickly they respond to queries.

You don’t have to log in for the aforementioned results. However, people who are logged in will also get results based on whether friends or contacts have used them and thought they were good or they have gone to school/worked with people. “It’s like automatic word-of-mouth,” says MacDonald, “you can see instantly who in your social network has used somebody with the skill you need now.”

It’s not just for sole traders or consultants; whole teams can sign up to it and put their Weedle link in their email signature to help clients become aware that the team does more than what the person they are dealing with does.

Weedle, which currently employs 18, is expected to grow over the coming year along with some future site improvements. “We are launching in beta, so we’re looking for some support from the Irish internet community,” says MacDonald. “It isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. The only way we’re going to make it better is through feedback from real live users.”

A new masters in digital games is to be launched in Dublin this week at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival gaming forum – Controller Cinema – which will feature a keynote speech from Peter Molyneux, a legendary figure in the gaming world.

Dublin Institute of Technology’s Schools of Media and Computer Science MSc in Digital Games will be launched at this event. DIT has introduced this MSc in Digital Games to meet the increasing demand from the games industry for postgraduates with the high-level skills in the analysis, creation and management of digital game content.

According to DIT, this exciting new programme will address the key occupational areas identified by the Forfás report on the International Digital Media Industry. These are: management/project management, design; artistic/creative; programming; and quality assurance.

A one-year Masters programme, the MSc in Digital Games at Dublin Institute of Technology will prepare graduates for a broad range of careers in the computer gaming industry including game designers, level designers, game software engineers, project managers, consultants, and games analysts.

The programme has been designed to encourage graduates to become innovators in this exciting field. Uniquely building on the combined expertise across the entire DIT, this industry-oriented programme will emphasise creativity and innovation through interdisciplinary study, cross-faculty cooperation, and constant industry input.

Building on the combined expertise of DIT’s Digital Media Centre, and its schools of Media and Computer Science the programme will provide modules in Ludology, game design, programming, animation, project management and the business of games.

It will appeal to graduates from diverse undergraduate and work backgrounds, including the visual and media arts, and computer science.

Also of appeal is Molyneux’s DIT Aungier Street appearance as part of the JDIFF 2010’s gaming forum, Controller Cinema. Run in conjunction with the schools of Computing and Media in DIT, the event takes place at 6.30pm, Thursday February 25th at DIT Aungier Street. Molyneux will discuss RPGs and their inherently cinematic nature as well as showcase his latest work on the evening. This will be followed by a panel discussion addressing RPG game development within the Irish gaming industry and will be chaired by Aphra Kerr author of The Businesses and Culture of Digital Games: gamework/gameplay. Peter Connolly, executive producer from Microsoft Games Studio will also be in attendance.

To guarantee a place at this event (spaces are limited) you can purchase tickets (€5) from http://jdiff.ticketsolve.com/shows/23497949/events, by calling 01 6877974 or in person at the JDIFF Ticketing Office, Filmbase, Curved St, Dublin 2. Entry will be allowed on the night but subject to space.

The event can be viewed live from Seriousgames.ie, the website of the DIT Experimental Gaming Group, a cross faculty research group for digital games in the DIT.

http://seriousgames.ie/wordpress/projects/live-stream-from-peter-molyneuxs-talk/

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