DUBLIN--Ireland might be one of Europe's more active technology hubs, but blogging still isn't big there.
That's the opinion of Tom Raftery, a longtime member of the tech community here and author of a blog on social media. (He's one of the bigger ones, and he starts his day by getting on Twitter.)
Part of the reason is that broadband penetration stinks. A survey published last June by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development pegged Ireland at No. 22 in terms of national broadband penetration by inhabitants, sandwiched between Italy and Portugal, but below the Scandinavian countries, the U.S., and Japan. In all, 15.4 people per 100 had broadband, and it's a small population on top of that. In all, the OECD counted 653,000 subscribers. That puts Ireland 27th overall, between New Zealand and the Slovak Republic.
Getting broadband to your house requires a lot of phone calls and appointment scheduling, one person told me. All those factors make it tough to start your own site.
A lot of people in the Irish tech community also tend to be somewhat reserved, Raftery said. You don't see execs or companies publishing their own blogs like Sun's Jonathan Schwartz does. That should change over time, however.
On the positive side for publishing, newspapers continue to do better than in the States, it seems. Dublin is still served by two major dailies, the Irish Independent and the Irish Times, as well as a bunch of smaller papers. Not bad for a city with 1.6 million residents in the urban hub and surrounding region.
And even though the country doesn't have many bloggers, and hence few arguments over the differences between journalists and bloggers, there is a dichotomy between journalists and reporters, a reporter called Derek Foley from the Irish Daily Star told me. Journalists specialize in writing well-crafted analysis pieces. Reporters might not be able to string two sentences together, but they are the ones who find out first about which soccer star was seen getting a lap dance.
CHICAGO--Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers disagrees with BusinessWeek's recent article that claims the telecommunications industry has risen from the dead.
In Chambers' view, the telecom market is simply entering the second phase of its life cycle--a cycle he claims to have envisioned some 15 years ago when Cisco pledged to change the way people work, live and play.
"BusinessWeek got it wrong," he said. "Telecom is not back from the dead. It's merely in phase 2 of its development. In this second phase, collaboration or sharing with a large group will change the service model and drive growth on networks."
During a keynote speech here on Monday at the NXTcomm tradeshow, Chambers said that collaboration at the corporate level, along with more than 50 percent consumer broadband penetration and the rise of Internet video, will push traffic growth to between 300 percent and 500 percent per year. This is far beyond the 50 percent to 100 percent per year growth typically expected today.
This talk of collaboration and shaking up business models is nothing new for Chambers. He's been touting this message in stump speeches since the company launched its high-definition telepresence video service last year and bought WebEx in March.
Of course, Chambers' vision of a transformed Internet also helps sell the company's bread-and-butter products, the huge routers that shuttle IP packets across the Internet. In fact, he noted during his speech that Cisco has sold more than 900 Carrier Routing System, or CRS-1, routers to more than 85 service providers throughout the world due to increased traffic on the Internet.
But to drive home his point, he used Cisco's own business as a sales pitch to those not convinced that collaboration will transform how companies do business.
He said that Cisco itself is stepping away from a top-down leadership style, relying more on soliciting new ideas from employees. Already, he said, IP collaboration tools have increased Cisco's productivity. He cited the company's acquisition team as a perfect example. Last year, the company took 45 days leading up to its acquisition of Scientific Atlanta. Earlier this year, it spent only eight days closing the deal with WebEx and that was with key executives working remotely in other parts of the country.
"I'm very comfortable with the use of 'command and control' leadership," he said. "When I say turn right, we turn right. But now we are going toward collaboration. And we can move with tremendous speed."
In the end, Chambers said, the new phase of the Internet will not raise all boats as it did in the first phase. This time success will be dependent on execution, he said. For those that miss a market opportunity or move too slowly, consolidation is the answer.
"This market waits for no one, including Cisco," he said.
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