Players can view the aspiring entrepeneurs’ pitches, and then decide if they are ‘out’, ‘in’ or assess the projects for equity. The aim is to scale the ranks on a live online leaderboard and bcome the sixth dragon on the panel : )
The app was developed to profile Bank of Ireland’s SME portal www.allaboutbusiness.ie and to demonstrate Bank of Ireland’s support for business in Ireland.
This game is a nice forerunner of TV based engagement, and heralds a future where television viewers will no longer be passive. EightyTwenty/4d have put together a nice story board of how they developed this campaign http://www.eightytwenty.ie/project/dragons_den_game

The annual Campus Company Development Programme (CCDP), which has just commenced at NovaUCD, assists UCD academic and research entrepreneurs in bringing their innovative ideas from intellectual concepts to fully developed and sound commercial businesses.
Just under 190 new ventures and 290 individuals have to date completed this programme which has run since 1996.
The programme culminates with a high profile Awards Evening which will be held in November. At the end of this event the UCD 2012 Start-Up of the Year Award will be presented to one of the participating ventures. Former winners of this prestigious Award include companies such as BiancaMed, Equinome, Logentries and RendezVu.
This year a prize fund of over €35,000 will be available to the 2012 CCDP award winners. In addition to cash prizes and 6-months free NovaUCD desk space, Aristo, Arthur Cox, Delaney Financial Consultancy, Deloitte and Newmarket Partnership will be providing professional services. AccountsIQ will also be providing a free 1-year subscription to its accountancy software.
For further information contact Micéal Whelan, University College Dublin, Communications Manager (Innovation), e: miceal.whelan@ucd.ie, t: + 353 1 716 3712

The competition was inspired by an initiative of senior executives at Pepsi. They saw the value of engaging with early-stage digital companies that might help to provide insights and innovation to the soft drink maker. The PepsiCo10 competition was born out of this, and run in conjunction with Highland Capital Partners, and a participant of Highland Capital Partners is now working with the Irish Times on The Irish Times Digital Challenge.
There is a major bonus to the winner of The Irish Times Digital Challenge in the access their innovation will have to Irish Times users  – up to several million per month. Each finalist will receive marketing to the value of €10,000 while the overall winner will receive investment funds to the value of €50,000. To assist the finalists in developing their path to market, NDRC LaunchPad will run a mini-startup incubator inside The Irish Times over eight weeks. In addition to extensive mentoring, there will be €10,000 worth of free legal, accounting, and taxation advice for the finalists over the eight weeks. Enterprise Ireland will also be offering support during this phase.
To register your interest - http://www.irishtimesidealab.com/

The venue is the Burlington Hotel, Dublin, and the seminar runs between 8.30 am to 10.00am

To book and confirm your place on this Breakfast Briefing you can register your interest here -  http://www.sureskills.com/social_media_for_business_briefing.html or you can email registerme@SureSkills.com

Company: TradeDoubler is a digital performance marketing company. Our focus is on delivering incremental sales to companies who are selling their products and services online. We run affiliate marketing programmes for the very biggest online brands as well as providing performance CPA, CPL and CPC campaigns to agencies and online start-ups.
Job description: I manage a team of digital professionals who look after the affiliate and performance marketing needs of approximately 75 clients, ranging from the likes of Dell, Aer Lingus, O2 and Vodafone to smaller Irish online business such as Screenclick, Feedme.ie and iClothing.ie. Our clients expect us to put them into partnership with websites which can send qualified traffic to their sites and ultimately lead to sales and revenue.
Every member of the team is constantly looking at ways of setting up these partnerships and improving them on a daily and monthly basis.
Likes: Affiliate marketing is a relatively new discipline in Ireland, so there is an education process we go through with all of our new clients, it’s particularily satisfying when they embrace the concept and work with us towards sourcing additional traffic and sales. I personally enjoy the sourcing and recruitment of new staff and the training process that goes with it. We have a great record of taking people in at intern level and helping them develop into fully-fledged digital professionals.
Career ladder: First 9 to 5 was in the Japanese Localization and Support team at 888.com in Gibraltar. It wasn’t quite the tax-free, ex-pat lifestyle I had hoped for but it did lead me to an online marketing role at Paddy Power, where I got two and a half years of invaluable experience in the digital space, not to mention my initial exposure to TradeDoubler and the ins and outs of affiliate marketing. A million timesheet hours of experience crammed into a short 9 month stay at Agency.com set me up for an affiliate marketing role with TradeDoubler Ireland. It was a company I had targeted as a future employer from my time at Paddy Power, and it’s been a fantastic 2 plus years here working across affiliate and campaigns roles in the build-up to becoming Commercial Director here at the start of 2012.
Qualifications: BA Degree in International Marketing and Languages
Working hours: Monday to Friday 9am to 6pm. I try to get out of the office by 6pm most days, but have been known to do some of my best work from the sofa in the evenings.
Breaktime: Can regularly be found in one of the many coffee shops on Baggot St.
Social media credentials: I wouldn’t call myself a Social Media addict. I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and Linkedin is a key tool for sales, research and recruitment. More and more of my time on the above is spent on mobile devices, and I only expect this to increase. Still pretty sure my life is not interesting enough to justify a personal Twitter account!
Onsite or offsite: In the office about 70% of the time, regular trips around the city to visit existing and potential clients, the occasional trip to London and Sweden to check in with the overlords.
Digital strategy/vision: Outside of the key element of building strong personal client and publisher relations, everything in my business is digital.
I love Mondays because it sets the mood for the week. Monday morning is a proactive few hours where we set objectives for the week and focus on how best we can spend our time. If you’re serious about your work or building a career, you have to find a way to enjoy those first few hours of the week. It helps that my colleagues find me hilarious and are keen to get in early on Mondays to wallow in the magnificence of my comedic genius!

Company: io is a compact digital advertising agency based in Dublin, working on a roster of local and international accounts, from Opel and Google to the Irish Times and Triton, and pure online services like SAAS Markets and Sysnet. We don’t place media but we develop, design and build your online presence as well as all the usual above-the-line.
Job description: The traditional copywriter would have worked with an art director, typically in an agency, conceptualising and developing an ad campaign based on an agreed client brief. It might be a TV campaign, radio, print or a direct marketing piece. But in the last decade or so, the explosion of the web for most clients has signalled a recalibration. A copywriter could now expect to write content for blogposts, websites, social media communications, app content, games or any number of other new media that brands increasingly need. And TV and radio are still alive and well.
Likes: Variety is the spice of life, and I’ve particularly enjoyed the process of reinvention that’s happened with my job description over the last few years. I love the fact that ideas can live outside of the traditional shackles of the media they were conceived for, and find new expression online, ofline, spontaneously on your bus ride to work… Creativity hasn’t changed much, but how it applies and catches fire certainly has.
Career ladder: I’ve spent (wince) 20 years as a copywriter, and I’ve worked for Grey, Ogilvy, Saatchi & Saatchi and quite a few others in that time. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer at one point, but only two years of failed exams taught me that the pen was mightier than the scales of justice, at least for me. I still remember legal wotsits like ratio decedendi and obiter dictum but, true to form, not what they mean. Advice for others? Copywriting is a craft. Your book is the art. Don’t confuse them. Also, brevity is your chief weapon, even if you think it’s not.
Qualifications: I have a BA in French and German, which is nice and all but quite useless for copywriting in English. I decided to reinforce that by doing the DIT advertising course in Aungier Street. That’s so long ago that it wasn’t even in Aungier Street. My certificate was on papyrus.
Working hours: 9-6 is typical, but it typically goes beyond typical.
Breaktime: Lunch is an opportunity to catch up with friends. Otherwise you’ll find me hard-wired into current affairs, reading the Irish Times while listening to the lunchtime news with Sean O’Rourke on RTE 1.
Social media credentials: I am a hardcore social media addict. I don’t quite draft out tweets on the shower glass, but now that I’ve thought of that I probably will. I have about three active blogs, several inactive ones, two Twitter accounts of my own and contribute to others. On the phone, iPad, laptop and iMac. Am not Facebook’s biggest fan, but appreciate how people have gathered around it. On Twitter I’m @nmcgivney and @adlandireland, and contribute to the @thisisio work account.
News sources: Irish Times, Silicon Republic, Journal.ie, Guardian. Also keep an eye on tech journos like Adrian Weckler or biz insiders like Michele Neylon.
Onsite or offsite: Frequent meetings but mostly onsite.
Digital strategy/vision: Digital strategy is front and centre of 95% of our company’s communications, for ourselves and for clients. But complacency is the graveyard of many’s the noble intention. Or something. If I was advising someone from scratch to incorporate a digital strategy, I’d say find out exactly where your target market are most active, and talk to them there. And don’t try to be cool for coolness’s sake.
I love Mondays because every week is a new opportunity to be astounded. And hopefully in a good way.

The nominations were announced earlier this month and it is a hotly contested field with a lot of great contenders across 6 headline categories. The length and quality of the nomination list reflects the mainstreaming of Social Media across many different media platforms, including video, mobile apps, blogging, Twitter and Facebook.  While many categories will decide who makes BEST use of these platforms, there are headings that award the Effectiveness, Integration or PR value of campaigns. There is even a category for our Obama wannabes - Best Use of Social Media in an Election.

You can check out the nomination list here - http://socialmediaawards.com/ , you can follow Social Media Awards on Twitter for all the latest news - @socmediaawards and the official hashtag for the event is #sockies.

It promises to be another great night, so get your tickets early

Four Irish and six international teams from Israel, Brazil, US, China, Romania, Lithuania and Poland selected from over 150 international applicants, will pitch their start-up businesses to a global panel of over 100 investors.
These new businesses have a good chance of job creation thanks to the Startupbootcamp model. Eoghan Jennings who is behind the Dublin initiative explains: “what we’re trying to do is build tomorrow’s employers.”
The programme focuses on creating sounder businesses rather than focusing on funding. They create traction with customers before seeking funding or hiring people.
“Some of the mistakes we’ve made in the past, if we’ve funded an idea before we reached the product/market fit, jobs aren’t created and funds evaporate.”

RendezVu, the NovaUCD-based company, rocketed its way to international notice with its ExamSpeak product – the only Irish product shortlisted in the six award sections.
Run by the British Council in association with Cambridge ESOL, these awards celebrate innovation in English language teaching. ExamSpeak fills that brief by offering a real time practice environment where students can interact with other test takers and answer exam questions.
The products success lies in the fact that it allows students to practice their English oral skills, without the pressure of an actual exam.
RendezVu has to wait until May 23 to see if it is in the final shake up when the ELTons are announced in London.
The full shortlist is available on the British Council website.

Online and technological innovators will rub shoulders over canapés and cocktails at the end of the month at this start up mixer in the nation’s capital.
This is an event for everyone from investors to designers, hackers, media professionals, students, developers – in fact anyone involved in ever-evolving online businesses  in Ireland.
According to the organisers you can:
•    Expect upwards of 300 people at this event.
•    Get the technology conversation started over a tipple.
•    Witness some exciting interactive demonstrations.
•    Be inspired by Ireland’s early stage start up community, who believe they’re standing on the verge of something big.
This is the third event of its kind for Dublin Beta and takes place at Lost Society on 30 April. Register online at dublinbeta.com.