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Ever wonder about digital’s place in the agricultural world? A new online hub connecting farmers with suppliers will make it clear how well digital and agriculture go together.

The new website is linked to plans to create 80-100 jobs over the next three years north and south of the border.
Farmbud.com from Farming Internet Services Ltd offers a vast range of services such as information on farming shows, jobs, machinery, property, and news affecting the industry.
It will be seeking innovative individuals with the drive and ambition needed to help this company continue to grow and thrive.
Sales and Marketing Manager, Lyndsay Eccleston, explains: “Farmbud.com is an innovative new departure for the agricultural community in Ireland and abroad, allowing farmers to hub, trade, learn and interact online. In the harsh economic conditions prevalent in both economies, job creation is essential for growth. We are pleased to announce that Farmbud has grown to the extent that we can contribute more robustly to the provision of employment in every corner of Ireland.”

The time of year has come round again where the Irish Internet Association board has been voted in.
Comprising of 12 individuals from industry, the board had four changes this year.

They will join the lineup of Chairperson Keith Bohanna, Vice-Chairperson David Kerr, Treasurer Peter Callan, Yvonne Cunnane, Clare Dillon, Maeve Kneafsey, Jason Roe, Jermain Williams.
New additions to the board for 2011 are:
•    Martin Casey, co-founder and managing director of digital media company Arekibo.
•    Gary Mullan, co-founder of Prosperity
•    Gerard O’Neill of Amárach Research
•    Aoife Sexton, technology lawyer with Maples and Calder.

Where there’s funding for a tech start-up, jobs will surely follow, so as Global Entrepreneurship Week is upon us it’s worth considering that a €26m investment pool is available for tech start-ups from crowdfunding outfit Seedups.

Seedups was founded by Michael Faulkner in 2010 as a means of connecting the best tech-startups with tech-savvy investors.
Faulkner explains while tech companies are the ones with the greatest scale, most ideas stall in their infancy. Crowdfunding can help this, he says.
“It’s impossible to underestimate the importance of entrepreneurial activity: most new jobs are brought about by new companies, not larger ones. They really are the lifeblood of the economy, yet they are the ones that struggle to raise the working capital they need to grow.”
Since going live in February of this year, Seedups has attracted nearly 900 entrepreneurs and nearly 400 investors from the USA, UK and Ireland.

Dublin may be popular amongst social media and digital giants but there is also plenty going on in other innovation hubs around the country.
Irish people are very enterprising; around Ireland there are enterprise centres in every county and many universities and colleges have some sort of technology hub attached to them.

One of the most recent initiatives on the drawing board is TechOvate in Wexford town which will see Wexford Enterprise Centre link with Silicon Valley based innovation centres to provide a route to the US market for south-east based clients.
A group representing the initiative were well received in Silicon Valley recently and will begin TechOvate in earnest in the first half of 2012. As well as appealing to jobseekers, Techovate also welcomes companies based outside of the south east to move into the area to take advantage of the links.

The top tech international companies of the future could be grown by skilled digital, technology, marketing and creative professionals from Ireland and in Ireland.

Internet, Games, and Cloud Computing start-ups from outside of Ireland are part of the answer to finding jobs for jobseekers in the Government’s eyes and a €10m fund has been made available to draw them here.
Announcing the fund, Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton TD said one key strand of the Government’s new industrial strategy will be to create a genuine indigenous engine of growth.
“As I have said before, our ambition must not only be to attract the next Google or Microsoft to Ireland, but we must also seek to grow the next Google or Microsoft in Ireland. Indigenous companies provide proportionally more than three times more benefit to the Irish economy than multinational companies.”
Across the world, many of the start-up companies which go on to succeed and create jobs are driven by people within a small class of mobile, innovative, serial entrepreneurs, he added. “What the Irish Government is saying very clearly today to the international technology community gathered in Dublin is – come and start your company in Ireland, we are open for business, and we will support you.”