Paddy’s Valley

Given that there is only a very small group discount available, it makes sense for each person to make their own arrangements to attend the mixer. It is $30 each to attend.

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.

David Smith in EI Palo Alto sent me information on an exciting sounding event that is on December 5th.

It is called the Silicon Valley Mixer and is happening in The Tech Mart in Santa Clara. They say it’s a major opportunity to mix “Silicon Valley Style” with Founders, CEOs, CTOs, CFOs, CMOs, VPs & Directors, Investors and Influencers. They generally have 350+ in attendance.

Tickets go on sale on October 25th and go here to book them ($30) and find out more.

David also pointed out that workit.com is a great resource for finding out what events are happening in the Valley, particularly in the weeks running up to the trip.

Sean Tario from UnitedLayer has put us in touch with Alex Lavidge from Altrupreneur who has just opened the Sandbox Suites co-working facility in San Francisco.

I told them that several of the Paddy’s Valley travellers are very interested in co-working and I know some of you are now in such a facility in Dublin. Alex would be happy for some of us to call in and see their set-up. This won’t be a full formal tour, just a sub-group one for those who really want to find out more about co-working and see how other locations operate.

Pop a comment here if you are interested in visiting the Sandbox Suites so we can gauge interest.

We’re really thrilled that InterTradeIreland (the all-island trade and business development body) is now on board the Paddy’s Valley tour.

They will:

1. lead a MasterClass for participating companies and entrepreneurs on November 26th where companies can hone their investor pitch and proposition before an expert panel (all participants will be asked to furnish a 5 page Executive Summary in advance). Details TBA.
2. Co-host a VC and angel investor networking dinner in Palo Alto in association with Enterprise Ireland, on Tuesday 4th December”

For those of you who don’t know InterTrade, their mission is:

InterTradeIreland’s mission is to enhance the global competitiveness of the all-island economy to the mutual benefit of Ireland and Northern Ireland through measures such as the creation of knowledge-intensive all-island trade and business development networks and the implementation of all-island trade and business development programmes.

We should be announcing that several Northern Irish companies are joining the trip very soon.

We’ve been kindly offered a tour of the UnitedLayer datacenter in south San Francisco during the PV week. This is tentatively arranged for the Wednesday morning.

The building they are in is 425,000 square feet, clears a little over 85% of all Northern California’s internet traffic, and is home to major providers such as XO communications, Level3, Telex, AboveNet, Time Warner, and many others as well as Facebook.

Not only will they do a tour (and arrange a side-visit to the Facebook floor) but Sean Tario has offered a talk/Q&A on all things infrastructure related including how their clients scale and UnitedLayer’s role in that process. Whilst I’m sure many on the trip will know about these concepts in principle, it should be very enlightening to see how it happens in practice.