The Cardinal Hotel in Palo Alto is our base for this trip and the group rate discount was expected to expire yesterday. However they have been kind enough to extend the offer until the end of this week. So if you haven’t already booked,… book now!
(Email us if you’ve mislaid the special link to the discount rate booking page).
Via the always excellent Jeremiah Owyang blog, he has a list of really interesting groups in the Valley/San Fran area that run various networking events. If any of these groups interest you, then give them a shout to see about going along to one of their networking events. I’ve fired off an email to SF Beta, blurb:
SF Beta is San Francisco’s largest monthly startup mixer. Since launching in September, 2006, our event has brought together thousands of people from hundreds of startups, creating innumerable connections along the way.
Fly in on Sunday the 2nd and get our bearings and relax.
Monday: Mobile Monday in Silicon Valley. The biggest mobile event in the Valley. It is on in the evening, so the morning is free to meet any big names/investors you have contacted to meet with.
Tuesday Morning: E.I. will organise a half-day morning seminar with local Silicon Valley people who will give us the lay of the land and how business works over there. This will include Irish-friendly VCs. Pitches will be checked-out and even done for real at at this event.
Tuesday Afternoon: Free but ideally you will have set-up some pitching opportunities either in advance or from the morning sessions. Possible sub-group visits to local companies.
Wednesday Morning: Free for you all to do your own thing, meet contacts and people you know in the Valley. Also sub-group visits to local companies.
Wednesday Afternoon: E.I. will organise a tour bus and will be bringing us to the geeky places we want to go to. A highlight will oviously be a visit to Googleplex and meeting some of the folks there. In addition we will do photo-ops at HP Garage, Infinte loop etc. If there are sites where you think we should all go as a group, let us know.
Thursday Morning: Pitching practice
Thursday Evening: Irish Network in San Fran networking event. Irish ex-pats and potential investors should be attending. This will be a night to really work your networking muscles.
Friday: Free day for anyone to meet up with contacts made from night before and any meetings you have arranged yourself in advance. Sub-group visits to local companies.
Saturday: Free to shop and do what you want before you pack and leave. We’ll look into some touristy things to do here. Golden Gate, Bay Bridge maybe. Computer history Museum?
We are aiming to have social dinners on most nights and invite guests to them. We can discuss this in more detail at the PV Meetup on September 13th.
It’s interesting to read that, “this year’s BarCamp anniversary will take place full circle back in the same place it started: SocialText’s offices… and spilling out into the streets! Yep. We will be working with SocialText to get this puppy off the ground with the goal of having a multi-office party starting SocialText’s offices… and maybe looping in nearby neighbors like Facebook, iMeem, IDEO, Edgeio and so on.”
Unfortunately it’s all happening next week, and not when we’re there in December, because all the action is just a block away from our base at the Cardinal Hotel. Still, it’s useful to know about these other companies just around the corner on High Street.
Jeremiah Owyang put together a very handy list of companies working in the South Park area of San Francisco. Some of them include:
Well worth seeing if some of these are interested in meeting some Irish people.
Jan Blanchard of Tourist Republic received an email from an Irish entrepreneur who setup a business in the Valley 10 years ago. To summarize his advice -
Make sure to read Jan’s post for the detail behind those bullet points.
BBC’s technology show Click is taking a new look at Silicon Valley. Part 1, which you can watch in Real Player includes interviews with the Twitter founders and Teqlo investor Peter Rip in South Park. South Park being the location around which companies like Six Apart, Adobe, Podshow, Technorati and Citizen Agency are based (see the Paddy’s Valley map).
If you’re planning to stay with the group in the Cardinal Hotel in Palo Alto please make your room choice (standard or ‘european’) by tomorrow Wednesday 1st August. Either comment here or email us.
We’ve had a few people ask about exactly what will happen the week we are in Silicon Valley. It’s going to be quite a while before we have a detailed agenda and one of the main reasons for that is that it should be driven by the attendees.
However, to give some flavour, particularly to those who have only just heard about the trip, here are some of the things we see happening:
Generally it is up to each attendee to make the best use of the opportunity for their own business.
I’m sure there are companies/people that each of us would like to access but have no contacts to. On the old wiki we had a the beginnings of a list of who each of us would like to meet. I’ll move that here and at a certain point we’ll put the call out to everyone to see if they can get intros for others but done in a way which respects everyone’s privacy.
There was a nice writeup in the Irish Times for Paddy’s Valley today. Read it behind their paywall. Tourist Republic, RelevantM and Grazr all got mentions. Finfacts also covered the trip here. Conor O’Neill also will be on 103FM today talking about the trip. Please let us know if there are any other mentions.
If you are new to the site and here as a result of the press coverage, please leave a comment or contact us on paddysvalley < at > Gmail .com if you want to know more. There are still places open for anyone that wishes to come along.
Update: RTE.ie coverage, ENN coverage, and Silicon Republic coverage.
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