Speaker: Des Traynor (Contrast)
Title: Product Strategy for the Business of Web Applications
Comments: good tips on optimising web applications by being disciplined about only building the key required features and constantly examining whether there is a market for your product.

Speaker: Paul McAvinchey (Yaboya Media)
Title: Service before content. Creating online experiences that people will pay for. For anyone wondering how to make money with online content.
Comments: Innovative web business models based on selling premium services to the visitors of your media website such as1) aggregating niche content that is extremely valuable 2) Providing live support /tutorial services 3) Selling products and services relevant to your target market.

Speaker: Paddy Cosgrave (Dublin Web Summit)
Title: I’m not good at much – but I keep trying. I started and exited, have since spoken in a few places like Facebook’s HQ in Palo Alto, and have been appointed to UN committees at a global level for ICT
Comments: Successfully engaged the audience into a group discussion ranging from the value of business coaching services, to the dangers of the Irish service industry model of only serving one or two large suppliers.

Speaker: Alan O’Rourke (Toddle)
Title: Double your online sales & cut your marketing costs by optimising your landing pages.
Comments: great tips on increasing the performance of the call to action on a website.

Update: 01/06/2010

The next installment of BizCamp happens on June 12th at BizCamp South in the Arclabs Research & Innovation Centre in Waterford. You can register online for free tickets at www.bizcamp.ie/southeast

Here’s the first ten minutes of Caelen’s talk at BizCamp 2009 in the Guinness Storehouse last weekend, covering the 4 main points you need to think about when starting a web business:

1. Who will pay?
2. How much will they pay?
3. How will they pay?
4. Can you reconcile revenue to costs?

Elsewhere on the blog you can find the full set of slides for Caelen’s web revenue models presentation. He has also written up the first half of his presentation.

Personally, it was great to hear a lot of people feeling very positive about their businesses, from the brand new start-ups like Cloudsplit (Real time analytics for the cloud) to the better established companies like Realex Payments, and it was good to meet up with some friendly networking faces again – hi to @LeoFogarty, @CareersCoachEU, @UnaColeman, and @redoaktaxrefund.

Big thanks to the whole team of volunteers for organising the day in the first place and hopefully you all got as much value out of it as myself and Caelen did.

You can also check out this video of Caelen at BizCamp Dublin and his write up of the first half of his presentation on online business and revenue models.

Phil, Owen and I headed to the First Wednesday Club last night at the Mint Bar. Congrats to Karina Heavey of the 121 Marketing Network for setting it all up and for making it such a great event. Here are some of the people we spoke to:

Fiona D’Arcy- Head of Communications and Marketing at Silicon and Software Systems (S3), a company that provides next generation products and services to consumers.
Bertrand Raoult- Sales and Marketing Executive.
Jen Keane- Senior Web Developer at Cahill May Roberts, pharmaceutical distribution and wholesaling.
Peter Cullen- CEO of Interleado, internet marketing and search engine optimisation site.
David Jones- Hoping to breath some life into the Irish economy through his new venture For Paddy’s Sake- selling Irish affiliated merchandise to the diaspora worldwide.
Joe Newell- CFO of Ticket Text, a company that passes on savings to concert-goers by delivering  tickets directly to their mobile phones.
Lorcan O hUallachain- Founder of Only Brilliant.
Fred Caballero-Channelship, web design and internet marketing agency.

We hope to meet more people at the next First Wedneday Club, which will be May 6th.