Davy Sims's Podcast

Henry McDonald is a journalist and author. He is probably best known as the Ireland correspondent for the Guardian and the Observer. But there is much more to his thirty year (plus) career.

Henry still makes his way home very often and while here to launch the Two Souls novel we met in Cathedral Quarter and sat down in The Dark Horse for coffee and a catch up.

It was recorded in our kitchen. An odd place to record a podcast. But it’s Saturday morning and Sonja Sleator and Daniel Lynch live nearby, and, why not? A conversation over a kitchen table and coffee.

Virtual reality on the podcast this time. I talk to three people creating a VR and an immersive media industry here. Dee Harvey is a producer as is Phil Morrow who runs the production company RETìníZE and Nigel McAlpine who runs Storyfx and Digital Catapult in Belfast. This is the last episode in this series. I’ll take a break for a few weeks and plan the next series.

Stuart Bailie’s new book Trouble Songs will be officially published in May, but it’s already starting to stir conversations and commentary. He takes on difficult stories from our history since the mid-1960s at the place where music meets social and political change. It will be in the shops around now, but you can also order it on the web at TroubleSongs.com

The book launch will be May 11 at Oh Yeah.

On this episode the story of the Oh Yeah music centre with Charlotte Dryden and Paul Kane. There's music from Hand Models, Reevah, Strange New Places and Cut in Blinks.

In this edition, women who work in tech, three leaders who were involved with the Women Techmakers summit which was held in Belfast last weekend.  On Friday evening there were workshops and on Saturday the main event was in W5.

Victoria McCallum was on the podcast to preview the event a few weeks ago, and she’s back to reflect on how it all went. Claire Burn and Danielle Topping were with Victoria when we sat down to talk about the summit and more generally women in technology here.

When Maxine Mawhinney left the BBC this time last year, she had plans and ideas about what she wanted to do. Yet her most recent project was not even on the horizon. A few weeks ago, she announced plans for a YouTube channel,  The Moment with Maxine Mawhinney.

In June, Digital DNA returns to St. George’s Market in Belfast. The founder is Gareth Quinn.

How do you fund creativity? If you are planning to make a business from your passion, be it music or technology or animation or film making or anything from the creative industries, how do you find the financial support to follow that dream?

Vasiliki Carson from Sapphire Capital Partners and Martin Gilchrist from Gilchrist and Co  met me in the Loft shared workspace to talk money.

The keywords for this podcast are Creativity, Innovation, Tech, Media and Investment and the subject of this episode can be tagged with all those words. Matthew Scott is the CEO of Navada Group.

Navada HQ is in Newcastle Upon Tyne, but it has a presence in Belfast, London, New York and about to open an office in Sweden. In June.they will launch their single biggest investment --- between 30 and 50 digital media channels.

Victoria McCallum is one of the organisers of Women Techmakers Belfast. The main summit will be held in W5 on Saturday 14 April and there will be workshops the evening before. 

Andrew Bolster – known almost universally simply as Bolster was one of the founders of probably the first hacker space in Belfast – Farset Labs. It’s a tech lab, a creative hub, a workshop, a tech store, a networking place and partly a museum of a techie childhood. It also has the biggest blackboard in Ireland.