DEC Coding Camp: Success for Dungarvan's coolest new summer camp

DEC Coding Camp: Success for Dungarvan's coolest new summer camp

The word is in: Code is definitely cool! Dungarvan Enterprise Centre's first ever Coding Camp was a huge success! This group of young computer wizards enjoyed 5 days of coding fun; designing websites, creating user interfaces and much more. 

We are absolutely delighted with the turnout of the camp and loved the chance to meet with so many creative young minds! We would like to thank everyone who supported the camp and all our attendees. Special thanks goes to Darach Cawley of Darock Media for teaching the kids and making it such a great camp!

Hopefully we will get another chance to do it all again next year. And who knows maybe we will be teaching the next Zuckerberg or Jobs?! Until then keep coding!

Digital Marketing Institute providing a professional diploma course at DEC

Digital Marketing Institute providing a Professional Diploma course at DEC

Exciting news everyone! We have partnered with the Digital Marketing Institute to present a professional diploma in digital marketing. This highly acclaimed course will be coming to Dungarvan Enterprise Centre on the 2nd of October and will hold an individual lecture each Wednesday for 10 weeks.


As the Digital Marketing Institute is Ireland’s top provider of courses in online skills we are so honored to have them come to our centre and spread their knowledge of the business world. The skills that they will be teaching include:

• Search Engine Marketing - Customer insights, search results and positioning, pay per click.

• Social Media Marketing - LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter pages, apps and plug ins.

• Strategy and Planning - Situation analysis, target audience, measurement of plan.

• Digital Display Advertising - Campaign planning, tracking your campaign, running effective ads.

The Digital Marketing Institute has worked with a number of top names from around the globe including Facebook, Twitter, Google and eBay. Their expertise is one that is sought after by hundreds of companies and their presence in Dungarvan is a great sign of growth for the future of the town.

The Digital Marketing Institute provide courses exclusively designed by marketers for marketers. Attendees are guaranteed to learn about current trends in the digital world and the most advanced tools in digital marketing. It is a skillset that has become more and more crucial to businesses in recent years. Most recent research suggests that 25% of businesses will need to hire a chief digital officer by 2015.

This course costs €1500 and funding of 15% of total costs is available to all CEB clients. To book your place or for further details on this course please contact us at 058 23598 or email us at dungarvanec@gmail.com.


See the flyer with full course details at: http://www.slideshare.net/Dungarvanec/digital-marketing-institute-lyer

Congratulations to DEC tenants Forcelink!!!

A HUGE congratulations to our tenants Paul, Mark and all at Forcelink who have been selected by SouthWestern for the delivery of the National Quality Assurance Framework in Irish tourism.


Read the full article on Forcelink's website here: http://www.forcelink.net/2013/07/forcelink-selected-southwestern-delivery-national-quality-assurance-framework-irish-tourism/

Summer Camp with a Difference at Dungarvan Enterprise Centre

Summer Camp with a Difference at Dungarvan Enterprise Centre

We are super excited to announce the launch of our first ever “DEC Coding Camp” in association with Darock Media and Waterford County Enterprise Board. This exciting new summer camp is aimed at teaching kids how to code and create websites.

This summer camp will be running for 5 days, from the 19^th to the 23^rd of August and will definitely be a great opportunity for children to get practical experience with websites. The camp is open to any kids that have an interest in coding, from those who have absolutely no knowledge of website design to those who want to extend their existing knowledge of coding further. Either way it is bound to be a fun experience!

This camp promises a simple and friendly approach to teaching skills in a fun learning environment. Skills taught in this camp include how to write HTML, create themes and publish fully functional websites. The camp will be open to children from the ages of 8 to 14 and will take place each day in the Dungarvan Enterprise Centre from 10.00am to 1pm.

The camp will be taught by our friend and associate Darach Cawley, an IT and coding expert who founded Darock Media and co founded Bundlebee.ie. Darach also runs Dungarvan Enterprise Centre's Coder Dojo club, and although our camp is not associated with Coder Dojo it was definitely inspired by it! Darach has also presented a number of our digital workshops at the centre and we are very excited to be working with him again.

In a few short years we have seen a huge increase in the number of jobs that require coders and programming skills. Ireland itself currently has a shortfall of 20,000 software engineers. Learning how to code young not only provides a better future for children but it also teaches them how to think logically and creatively, while learning how to work in teams.

This summer camp begins on the 19th of August and will cost €99 per child and €160 for two siblings. If you would like to book a place please contact dungarvanec@gmail.com or phone 058 23598.

To learn more about Darach Cawley or Darock Media please visit his website darockmedia.com

Results on training/seminar survey carried out by Dungarvan Enterprise Centre

Results on training/seminar survey carried out by DEC

We would just like to thank everyone that took the time to fill out our survey, it is very much appreciated. A new series of training workshops and seminars will now be developed around these needs for our local businesses.

Q1. Do you feel your business could benefit from training in digital tools?

Businesses in our survey feel they could benefit from training in digital tools with 95.1% saying yes and 4.9% saying no.

  Q2. What digital skills would you be interested in developing? (Tick all that apply)

Businesses in our survey predominantly showed an interest in Social networking for their business and online marketing 63.2%.

Other:
LinkedIn x 1
Photoshop x 1
College-studies x 1

Q3. Do you feel your business could benefit from business skills training?

100% of businesses surveyed believed they could benefit from business skills training.

 Q4. What business skills would you be interested in developing? (Tick all that apply)

Time Management and Building Brand Recognition were the most popular business skills amongst the businesses surveyed 47.5%.

Other:
Models for how community/creative orientated projects can be nurtured and interwoven through a profit driven endeavor/business x 1

 Q5. What (Irish based) speaker would you most like to see deliver a seminar?

Doug Richard was the most popular choice amongst businesses 34.0%.

Other:
Michael O’Leary x 1
Richard Branson x 1
Mark Breen x 1
A speaker associated with the organisation business and arts x 1
Hands on Speaker who shows how to apply what they are talking about x 1
A speaker who will talk about a topic that is relavent to our business where we can bring something back to our own business to utilise and benefit from x 1
A speaker with experience of taking an idea from concept through patent to product on shelves x 1

Q6. What areas of business would you most like to see a speaker talk about? (Tick all that apply)

Innovation was the most popular 52.6%

Other:
Any of the above x 1
Getting more local business x 1
Sustainable / eco packaging and green business models x 1
Making room for creativity and ethics within a company x 1

 Q7. How long would you expect these workshops to run for?

Half a day workshops were the most popular with the businesses that we surveyed 57.4%.

Other:
Full Day x 1
Anytime x 1
Main work shop 1/2 day and evening time for lighter topics x 1

Dungarvan Enterprise Centre’s “Lunch with Bill Liao” deemed a huge success

Dungarvan Enterprise Centre’s “Lunch with Bill Liao” deemed a huge success

Last Thursday marked the arrival of Dungarvan Enterprise Centre’s most ambitious event to date. The lunch time seminar with entrepreneur Bill Liao proved to be a huge success amongst all attendees and Dungarvan’s local businesses.

Our guest speaker Bill Liao delivered what was described by many attendees as an “Inspiring” and “Thought Provoking” seminar. Bill touched on a number of subjects such as his own background and rise to prominence in the business world, getting investment, value creation, the key aspects to being a successful entrepreneur and the importance of networking. The speech itself was preceded by an informal buffet lunch where the participants in the seminar could network and we are pleased to announce that a number of exciting new business contacts were created.

The topic of entrepreneurship was something that Bill Liao was keen to discuss as he explained the importance of learning from ones mistakes, “Failure is the number one aspect of entrepreneurialism, it is all about how you handle and learn from failure.” A particularly interesting piece Bill spoke about was a concept that he learnt form Daniel Pink called “The ABC’s of Enterprise and Selling.” In this Bill explained that in order to increase sales one must adopt:

•  Atunement – “Be friendly, polite and increase your listening skills…atunement with investors is very important.”

• Buoyancy – “You want opinions of and interactions with your product to be resilient and positive.”

• Clarity – “More Simple instructions or brand will be chosen over all other cheaper alternatives.”

Bill went on to say that he became the man he is today because of a single question “Imagine handing over fifty grand without suffering any pain or loss. Imagine who you would have to become.” His understanding of the power of networking is something that really shined through in his visit. He made various new contacts and connected the seminars participants with his own contacts. Even during the seminar he promoted a number of businesses he was working with such as Sunzu and Task Messenger. This showed his extraordinary ability to constantly make introductions.

We couldn't be more pleased with the turnout to this event and would like to thank you everyone who came or helped out. Hopefully all our seminars in the future will be as successful as this one!

A Shot of Mags Durand O' Connor, Bill Liao and Anike Tyrell.

A group shot of entrepreneurs networking.

Who is Bill Liao? The entrepreneur and self-made millionaire comes to Dungarvan.

The 16^th of May 2013 marks a very important date in Dungarvan Enterprise Centre’s calendar as Bill Liao, investor, author and member of the entrepreneur hall of fame will be visiting us to give a once off seminar on the digital world.

So who is Bill Liao? Aside from his full time role as venture partner with the highly successful firm SOSventures, Bill Liao is also a founder of charity WeForest.org and co-founder of the innovative business social network XING. In 2011 Bill Liao co-founded the ground breaking Coder Dojo movement in an attempt to teach children how to write computer codes and programs. In relation to the movement he has stated that “Computer programming is a language skill and it needs to be learned young.” At this time Coder Dojo is operating in 22 countries and teaches 10,000 children every week. Bill Liao is also known for his involvement as investor and director in such companies as Silicon Republic, Storyful and many more and from his best-selling book “Stone Soup: The Secret Recipe for Making Something from Nothing.”

Having Bill Liao come to our Centre is an absolute privilege. Especially as DEC Coder Dojo has been such a success with the young people of Dungarvan. Anike Tyrrell, CEO of Waterford County Enterprise Board noted that “Dungarvan has one of the best fibre optics networks in Ireland and Bill Liao is a huge name in the digital world, his presence in Dungarvan only further pushes the notion that we could transform our town into the digital centre of the south-east.”