The Irish Tech News Podcast

Amjad Pirotti has set up a lottery with a difference - on blockchain where even past ticket holders can earn returns - and some 85% of all funds raised are dispensed to the ticket holders.  Mylottocoin.com was set up to - Designed to empower players and disrupt unjust classic games.

Latest insightful episode from Jamil Hasan, who interviews Dr. Drew Miller Crypto/Blockchain, Pandemics and the Use of Utility Tokens Colonel Dr. Drew Miller is a USAF Academy honor graduate who received an academic scholarship to Harvard University where he earned a Master’s Degree and PhD in Public Policy/Operations Research. His dissertation topic was underground nuclear defense shelters and field fortifications. Drew served in the Cold War at Strategic Air Command, deployed to Germany, Bosnia, and Iraq. In addition to serving as an intelligence officer in Active, Air Guard and Reserve AF positions, retiring as a Colonel, he served in the Senior Executive Service in the Pentagon, and in many business management positions. His articles on the bioengineered viral pandemic threat and collapse have been published in leading journals. In addition to opening new Fortitude Ranch locations, Drew serves as Ranch Manager for Fortitude Ranch Colorado. About Jamil Hasan Jamil Hasan is a Generation X Author and experienced data intelligence technology builder with two decades of experience leading data-based teams at Fortune 100 companies, including AIG, Prudential Financial, and Ingersoll Rand. Jamil believes that skill and experience, not just age, is the most important factor required to build and lead corporate organizations. His unique story, as someone on the ground floor of the 2008 financial crisis and his role to help repay the $180 billion AIG bailout, enabled him to come face-to-face with many of the societal ills facing Generation X today and their causes. As the result of his experience, Jamil has developed a path forward for his fellow Gen Xers to restore his generation’s financial standing in society today and to rebuild the American Dream for Generation X.

The pandemic has greatly changed how we access, consume and use data. This has resulted in a huge increase in cloud usage and data centres usage. Ronan talks to Seamus Dunne, the Irish, MD, of Interxion who were bought last year by Digital Reality creating the leading pan-European data centre provider. Seamus talks about what Interxion does, how the cloud has changed since the pandemic hit, the transformation of industry, multi cloud, blockchain transforming supply chains, smart contracts and infrastructure providers pivoting to deliver cloud experiences. More about Seamus: Prior to joining Interxion Séamus held various roles during a successful career with Hewlett-Packard, where his last position was Vice President and General Manager with Hewlett-Packard Enterprise based in both Texas and Ireland. He led the data centre services business which served customers in 170 countries across diverse vertical’s such as financial services, Government, Digital Media etc. His business unit’s focus was on supporting customers’ transitions from traditional IT infrastructure to hybrid cloud solutions.

In this episode Jamil Hasan chats with Sebnem Rusitschka Sebnem Rusitschka started her career as a computer scientist specializing in peer-to-peer networks at Siemens in 2006. The application domain was mainly in Smart Grids and Smart Cities. As senior key expert for cyber-physical systems, Sebnem founded Freeelio in 2016 as a free innovation collective to understand the paradigm shift of tokenizing real world assets such as decentralized energy resources. In June 2017 Freeelio became a founding member of German Blockchain Association, in which Sebnem led the Energy and Token Economy committees. The resulting Blockchain Strategy was adopted by the German government in 2019. During this time, Sebnem worked in networks of peers and organizations in a decentralized manner, yielding proof of concepts like Energy Solidarity Token, The Sun Protocol, and ElectraSeed Fund. In 2020, Sebnem started to curate and coordinate the community-sourced, crowdfunded book “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Token Engineering” and design courses for the Token Engineering Academy. She is part of the DADA.art collective, co-creating the Invisible Economy with embedded incentives to protect creative spaces. Since February 2021, Sebnem joined Boson Protocol as Ecosystems Architect, co-creating the Things Economy with embedded incentives to unbundle online commerce monopolies and rewire valueflows for a more equitable and sustainable dCommerce network. Sebnem Rusitschka started her career as a computer scientist specializing in peer-to-peer networks at Siemens in 2006. The application domain was mainly in Energy Management, for existing energy automation products & services: reaching from Meter Data Management for Online Energy Marketplaces, Plug & Play Intelligent Electronic Devices in Substations, Cloud Computing as a model for Smart Grid Data Management, to the combination of Machine Learning & Control Theory for Grid Monitoring, Protection, Control. Sebnem lead multidisciplinary research & innovation project teams both for Siemens and customers Europe wide, as Senior Key Expert for Cyberphysical Systems. Twitter: @sebnem LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rusitschka/ About Jamil Hasan Jamil Hasan is a Generation X Author and experienced data intelligence technology builder with two decades of experience leading data-based teams at Fortune 100 companies, including AIG, Prudential Financial, and Ingersoll Rand. Jamil believes that skill and experience, not just age, is the most important factor required to build and lead corporate organizations. His unique story, as someone on the ground floor of the 2008 financial crisis and his role to help repay the $180 billion AIG bailout, enabled him to come face-to-face with many of the societal ills facing Generation X today and their causes. As the result of his experience, Jamil has developed a path forward for his fellow Gen Xers to restore his generation’s financial standing in society today and to rebuild the American Dream for Generation X.

Whether you are an incumbent or a fintech startup; a community bank or a credit union, our industry’s goals should ensure that there are better financial outcomes throughout the lives of every customer and every community — beyond those already privileged and already profitable. Tune in to this week’s One Vision episode, where Theo and Bradley chat with Ramsey Alwin, CEO of National Council on Aging, on the role the financial services industry can play in making economic security a reality for older Americans and beyond. We have the technology and the capacity — to design a more inclusive future for every person and every community — now we just need the will to do so. It is not only the right thing to do, it is also a smart business decision. Aging well for all is a matter of equity. A matter of dignity. And a matter of justice.

Melanie Boylan spoke recently to Ken Finnegan the Chief Executive Officer at Tangent, which is described as Trinity’s Ideas Workspace about how Tangent has created a platform that elevates an entrepreneurs concept to a reality.  Hear about their most popular courses and plans that will make educating people between 17 to 70 a reality. Tangent is a transformative learning environment that fosters creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship at all levels for Trinity, our partners, lifelong learners, and anyone brave enough to  take the first steps to turn their ideas into  impact. Tangent is a collaborative environment for all people who are open to new possibilities. Tangent aims to bridge the gap between the university and the wider start-up ecosystem. We collaborate with companies large and small who play an active role working with our start-ups, our students, and on our educational  and training programmes. Previously Ken was the Chief Technologist with IDA Ireland. While in IDA Ken advised and supported organisations with regards to Irelands technology skills, supports and ecosystem.

Growing up, a native of South Africa, Shadrack Kubyane was born in the platinum belt and should have by default ended up working in the mining industry. Instead he ended up in consultancy and when you hear him talk you can understand why – he has a compelling oratory gift, and one which almost made me want to give a standing ovation at the end of our conversation. His story is also unusual as it focuses on the blockchain – salon – hair extensions industry – not necessarily a combination one might have put together. Yet it makes sense, compelling sense. In terms of business, Shadrack was responsible for providing the consultancy that scaled an informal sales entity into a company turning over $2 million in revenue in just 36 months.  The company was the hair extension salon company in question and the informal sales consisted of the founder touting hair extensions from her handbag at busy taxi ranks directly to punters. Today that same business has bricks and mortar shops as well as two concessions inside five star hotels. Find out more about the passion for blockchain and trade in Africa - and find out how many weeks until Africa's population doubles from 1.2 billion to more than 2 billion.... Jillian Godsil is an award winning journalist, broadcaster and author. Her latest book can be found at https://persons-of-interest.io/

We catch up with Jan Huitema to learn more about what the circular economy is, and what the European Parliament are doing to help achieve more sustainable results. More about Jan Jan Huitema was born on 5 July 1984 as son of a farmer in Heerenveen.  He obtained a Bachelors degree in Animal Sciences and a Masters degree in Animal Production Systems, from Wageningen University. Jan Huitema is a Dutch politician and Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from the Netherlands since July 2014. He is a member of the People Party for Freedom and Democracy, part of Renew Europe. He was re-elected in 2019. During his first term from 2014 until 2019, Huitema was a member of the AGRI Committee, where he served as rapporteur on fertiliser products and water reuse. During his first term he worked on a change in the definition of animal manure and prevention of the patenting of plant-properties. In 2019, he joined the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. Jan Huitema was nominated rapporteur on the Circular Economy Action Plan in September 2020. Follow him on Twitter here. https://twitter.com/jhuitema 

In this podcast Melanie Boylan spoke with Tomas Flanagan about their latest news and innovations coming up in an array of sectors.  Irish creativity at its best! Tomas Flanagan is the CEO of ÉireComposites. He joined ÉireComposites as a Marie Curie senior research fellow in 2014 and subsequently held the position of R&D director before becoming CEO.  He has managed over €7 million of research funding and concerning innovative manufacturing, novel materials and processes, aviation, space, and renewable energy.  Tomas obtained a PhD from the University of Cambridge for research focused on design project planning and management with special emphasis on simulation and risk analysis. He previously worked in roles as Turnaround Project Manager at BP Norway and Offshore Construction team lead in BP Angola. He has also held roles in change management and in-house consulting within BP. Tomas has lived and worked in several countries and has a keen interest in sports, especially soccer, running, and hiking. ÉireComposites is an innovative design, manufacturing, and testing company, involved in lightweight, high-performance fibre-reinforced composite materials, with an international blue-chip customer base of over 70 companies in the aerospace, renewable energy, and automotive sectors. ÉireComposites has established accredited aerospace composites manufacturing and testing facilities in Galway, Ireland, and has significant intellectual  property in manufacturing and tooling for composite materials. It manufactures over €2 million of primary structure aerospace components for Spirit AeroSystems annually and supplies components for Bombardier and Airbus aircraft.  In addition to aerospace, it manufactures wind turbine blades, tidal turbine blades, and catamaran hulls. The company was founded as a spin-out from NUI Galway and maintains a strong  research and development focus. ÉireComposites has managed over €20  million of EU FP6, FP7, and Horizon 2020 projects relating to composite materials for wind turbine blades, aircraft structures and space launchers. The most notable of these are Powderblade (manufacturing technology for very large wind blades), FloTEC (Floating Tidal Energy), SEABOAT (Novel Materials for zero-emission Boats) Airpoxy (novel  Aerospace materials), and LEAPWind (leading edge erosion protection for wind blades). In addition, ÉireComposites has three ongoing projects related to space programmes.

Following hot on the heels of Kava's latest partnership announcement with Chainlink, Irish Tech New's crypto expert, Jamil Hassan caught up with Brian Kerr from Kava to learn more about it all.  Kava, built on the Cosmos SDK, is quickly gaining momentum as the most trusted DeFi platform for institutional clients around the world. Kava plans to take another major step forward towards that end through an integration with Cosmos’s recently launched Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC). Kava will then use IBC to make Chainlink's widely used and secure decentralized data feeds available to blockchains across the wider Cosmos ecosystem. Kava To Use IBC to Make Chainlink Data Available Across Cosmos More about Brian Kerr Brian started his career as Founder and CEO of Fnatic Gear, a company that Forbes valued at $175 Million, makes peripherals and hardware, designed by the world's best Gamers. As a gamer himself he found value in the premise of NFTs and gaming which lead him to the world of crypto. Soon he saw the demand for open banking where he created Kava, a decentralized finance platform for crypto. About Brian: https://disruptmagazine.com/kava-ceo-brian-kerr-shares-the-top-five-crypto-trends/ About Jamil Hasan Jamil Hasan is a Generation X Author and experienced data intelligence technology builder with two decades of experience leading data-based teams at Fortune 100 companies, including AIG, Prudential Financial, and Ingersoll Rand. Jamil believes that skill and experience, not just age, is the most important factor required to build and lead corporate organizations. His unique story, as someone on the ground floor of the 2008 financial crisis and his role to help repay the $180 billion AIG bailout, enabled him to come face-to-face with many of the societal ills facing Generation X today and their causes. As the result of his experience, Jamil has developed a path forward for his fellow Gen Xers to restore his generation’s financial standing in society today and to rebuild the American Dream for Generation X. For Questions: Email Jamil at jamil@jamilhasan.com or info@jamilhasan.net See more on his website here.