Two years ago I visited New York and was fortunate enough to catch a Martin Puryear exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art. The two photos below of Ad Astra (2007), really don’t do the impressive piece justice. The Latin phrase, Ad Astra meaning ‘To the Stars’ – is a fitting name for the a sculpture whose powerful presence really captivated its viewers. Puryear’s work is best seen in person and I was fortunate enough to appreciate it in the a fantastic space at MoMA. I would strongly recommend a visit to see his work.

Normally we don’t do weather reports but this morning we and the rest of Cork awoke to find the entire city centre flooded. I donned my raincoat and took a walk into town on my lunch to have a closer look. Fortunately most of the floods had receded by then but there was still a small bit of flood at the back of the court house. Garda checkpoints prevented people having a closer look at the damage around the Mardyke and the Mercy Hospital. Here’s a interesting piece on when Washington Street was flooded in 1853.

Walking down Cornmarket Street in Cork City, I spotted this gem opposite the Garda Station. It’s great to find unique buildings like this remaining intact and in such good condition. The form of the disused public toilet is characteristic of its era, as is the attached/craved typography, which is a particular interest to us. Typography is a very important element of graphic design and this building shows us designers from its era paid particularly good attention to it.

While in Valencia, Spain during the summer for a few days to catch the Time Trial Stage of la Vuelta, I came across this organic chocolate bar. The simplicity and playfulness of the typography really caught my eye. Check out the range of organic bars from Ibiza here

The website chocolateorganiko.es showcases some other products with really nice simple designs and is well worth checking out – as is the chocolate!

Having never attended a Barcamp event before I was determined to make the most of the opportunity. I was met at the entrance with a large whiteboard offering a multitude of talks for every 30 minute segment of the day. Quickly realising I didn’t have the ability to bilocate, I had to make some tough calls on which talks I would go and see. I know I probably missed some great talks but had no regrets with my choices.

Here is a brief enough overview of my Barcamp Cork day out.

Google Sketch Up, Earth and Apps 11:00am

The first of the talks I attended was Paul Lee and Alan O’Brien from Viewsion who specialized in Google Apps, Google Earth and Google Sketch Up.

Google Sketch Up

Alan started off the presentation by showing us the capabilities of Sketch Up, which is an alternative to Auto Cad. Sketch Up is free to download from the http://sketchup.google.com/. The capabilities of Sketch Up were quite impressive from Alan’s initial examples, especially in the 3D. Also impressive was the relative ease of use of Sketch Up, it is an intuitive programme and gives you back the ideas you have in spades with invaluable feedback.
The guys are looking into collaborating with the Cork City Library to provide training for kids in Sketch Up. Check out the Sketch Up Ireland Blog here

Google Earth
The guys then moved onto the Google Earth topic and gave examples of 3D Models/Layers on Google Earth, showing examples of Shandon, the Glucksman Gallery on UCC, Shandon Catherdral and the Cork School of Music shown here in both 3D View and basic image There were very impressive examples and they invited the room to submit further 3D models of Cork buildings using Sketch Up but warned the standard of drawing needed to be high.

Google Apps
Paul Lee then went onto show us the professional uses of Google Apps which allows you to interchange and file share documents online so 3-4 people from any corner of the world can make changes to one document at the same time instantly through Tele Conferencing. Google Apps has the same capabilities as Mircosoft Office and is usable offline as well as online. It’s a product that we use a lot ourselves and one that larger companies are becoming more open to trying out.

Time Management – Elaine Rogers 11:30am

Time Management is something we here at Irenses always try to improve upon, so I was really looking forward to this talk by Elaine Rogers to try and improve our performances at work. She started off by claiming time management is a myth, and that time is uncontrollable and what we should do is Self Management. It was a sentiment that engaged the group and made for an enjoyable discussion with Elaine touching some very interesting points.

Elaine went on to explain the Mayo Jar concept to us. It was a simple but an effective method of explaining how to best managing your time to find a healthy personal/work life balance while always finding time for a coffee.

Jump Start Up by Phoebe Bright and Ciara Crossnan – 12:30pm

Intrigued by the title I decided to attend the talk by Pheobe Bright and Ciara Crossnan who introduced us to the Jump Start Ireland concept. It’s a service for businesses that can benefit greatly from the availability of having a group of expert individuals from different backgrounds to come together to focus on a business and trash out ideas in a one-day session.

This idea excited me as it is one of the reasons I got into design in the first place, to interact with professionals from varied and exciting backgrounds you’d usually never meet or interact with on the street. It was a nice talk and quite encouraging to see such a proactive step into diverse teamwork

Jump Start Up initially drawn up from an Open Coffee day in Cork, the current team consist of Bart Ptaszynski, Phoebe Bright, John Peavoy, Gordon Murray, Conor Murphy, Calvin Jones, Catherine O’Shea and Ciara Crossnan.

Sales-Side Partnerships – Meeting.ie Donagh Kiernan 12:00

The Sales-Side Partnerships talk by Donagh Kiernan of Meeting.ie was an enjoyable session which was transmitted live on the barcampcork website.

Donagh explained to us how partnerships in business work quite successfully by using each others strength to provide a successful product. His examples included Mike Fitzgerald of Alto Bridge, who tried to implement mobile calls service on aeroplanes and mobile calls from remote communities by using satellites teaming up with Ericsson and Kevin O’Leary of Qumas teaming up with Paisley.

The main issue Donagh highlighted was it had to be a joint offering that benefited both you and your partner.

Mental Health: Madness & the Spirit of the Entrepreneur Paul O’Mahony 2:30pm

Paul O’Mahony’s talk about Mental Health: Madness & the Spirit of the Entrepreneur was hugely enjoyable and enlightening. Unfortunately it was the only talk that I completely forgot to take notes on the subject because it demanded so much from the group. It was unconventional in style, highly stimulating and we found out a lot about ourselves as a group by his methods. He began the session by asking the group to ask him questions first in order to place importance on our curiosity of the title. From there on Paul talked about his own life and his thoughts on the Madness and the Spirit of the Entrepreneur. It was a fine finish to the day.

Thanks
Obviously such events don’t happen by themselves. I would like to thank everyone who gave the talks and helped out. In particular I would like to congratulate Ciara Feely, Ciara Crossnan and Gordon Murray for organising a really enjoyable event.J