The Big Tech Show

This week, Adrian Weckler is discussing 5G and taking a critical look at its strengths and weaknesses.

To help him make sense of whether it is all it’s hyped up to be, Adrian is joined by Bobby Healy, founder of Manna Aero, Con Kennedy, Chief Technical Officer with Ericsson Ireland and Niall Campion, co-founder of VRAI.

The panel discusses everything from drone usage to 4K movies to the pros and cons of ‘millimetre wave’ 5G.

The Big Tech Show is in association with Vodafone Business.

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This week, Adrian Weckler’s panel looks at what’s coming next with TV. Is traditional ‘linear’ television mortally wounded, as Eir CEO Carolan Lennon recent told Adrian?

Or can Sky, Virgin Media and broadcasters like RTÉ and the BBC hold their own against the tens of billions being invested by Netflix, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video and all the rest?

Adrian is joined by Sunday Independent business editor Samantha McCaughren and the cofounder of Dublin-based startup LogoGrab, Alessandro Prest.

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The former Ireland international rugby player, Jamie Heaslip, is becoming a textbook example of how to transition from sport into modern business.

Eschewing the role of a corporate mascot, Heaslip has chosen the role of tech investor and promoter, meeting young startups to see whether they’re worth a punt.

Some are. One of his earliest bets has just paid off spectacularly. Pointy, the retail listing startup cofounder by Charles Bibby and Mark Cummins, recently announced its acquisition by Google in a nine figure deal. Heaslip is understood to have made a six-figure sum from his initial investment.

Other bets, such as the analytics firm Kitman Labs, look promising for a significantly augmented return in the near future, too.

And if tech hits another bubble, he has a few Dublin pubs to fall back on, such as The Bridge 1859 and Lemon & Duke, as well as a job in Google he could probably return to.

But Heaslip doesn’t think that startup tech is going south anytime soon. He has just taken a deeper role in a fintech firm, Flender, that has created a new online platform to match lenders with small businesses who want to borrow sums up to €300,000.

Adrian Weckler sat down with Heaslip to ask him about tech, trends, culture and the transition from sport to investing.

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This week, Adrian sits down with Eir CEO Carolan Lennon, who says:

- the Huawei controversy isn't about security but is a "US-China trade issue"

- Minister Michael Ring’s claims about Eir are "factually untrue"

- Traditional ‘linear’ TV is toast: we will all move to apps-based television in time

- Eir hasn’t decided yet on a new price for GoMo after the current €12.99 “for life” offer runs out

Lennon also says that Eir’s 5G launch wasn’t kept private because of the presence at the event of Huawei chairman Guo Ping. And she rejects criticism that using Huawei telecoms equipment in Eir’s 5G network makes it any less secure than other networks.

“It's very hard to take the smoke away from everything that's going on around this,” she says. “But obviously security is really important to us. We've just recently won the Garda mobile business tender. So it's not stopping us winning business. Do American multinationals mention it? Yes. But has it stopped us winning business? No It hasn't. So we're going to push on, we’re committed to them, they've been a good supplier and we're very happy with the kit and the quality of the network.”

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Twitter is an angry place. It can drain your natural sense of goodwill and manners.
This week, we look at how to behave on the world’s narkiest social network.
Adrian is joined by Victoria Turk, features editor of Wired UK and author of the international hit book, ‘Digital Etiquette’.

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Politicians like to say that elections are won on doorsteps. But most of them now spend almost as much time on their Facebook pages and Whatsapp groups.

But who is policing Facebook and messaging groups for misinformation, planted false stories and algorithm-gaming?

It’s not the BAI. It’s not the telecoms regulator, Comreg. And it’s not the Irish Press Council or Press Ombudsman. Unlike broadcasting or print, there is no official policing for fairness, accuracy or balance.

Invariably, it comes back to the companies themselves.

This week, Adrian is joined by Damien Mulley, founder of Mulley Communications, to look under the hood of how targeting works on social media during an election campaign. Mulley talks about an experiment he ran where he was able to target a handful of influential TDs and their political advisers for a couple of euro using Facebook’s ad system.

And the two discuss the darker side of the political system and what it can throw up by way of trying to skew political debate online.

Techniques have moved beyond the creation of outright false headlines claiming that a particular candidate has been endorsed by the Pope.

Modern methods can be subtle and sophisticated, playing off algorithms. This includes getting dozens, or hundreds, of people to swarm online, all leaving comments under a news article or candidate post. Or to search repeatedly for a candidate’s name in an attempt to skew the search engine’s algorithm.

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Trinity College Dublin has a €1.1bn plan to build a new high-end innovation district’ plan that would see the cream of academic and industrial talent come together.

The government is to consider putting €150m into the 10 year plan. The resulting five-acre space near Dublin’s Silicon Docks hopes to create a new super-hub for engineering, scientific and tech research, mixing academic stars with multinationals and venture capitalists.

Dublin, the college says, should have its own equivalent to Boston’s Kendall Square or London’s Crick Institute.

But is the plan a bold new template for the next stage of Ireland’s industrial ascension? Or is it another symbol of a two-tier city where the super-successful push ordinary citizens out? Could it be both?

Adrian sits down with TCD’s chief innovation and enterprise officer, Dr Diarmuid O’Brien to find out.

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In this podcast, Adrian and Donal O’Donovan (Irish Independent business editor) continue to look ahead at some of the big tech trends, services and products that are set to make a difference in 2020.

As usual, Adrian makes a couple of calls on what he thinks will and won’t pan out.

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It’s the last week of 2019 (and, depending on your view, the decade). Instead of looking back, we’re going to make some predictions about what you can expect to come at you in tech over the next year.

Adrian is joined to discuss his predictions by Donal O'Donovan, Irish Independent business editor.

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This week, Adrian and Buzz.ie editor Mark Kavanagh list the best tech gadgets of the year.

These include phones, headphones, smart speakers, cameras, smartwatches, drones, laptops and desktop PCs.

The two also look forward to what is expected in 2020.

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