A little storm erupted this morning over the TechLudd initiative which was launched by some of those who went on the Paddy’s Valley trip to the USA. Paul Walsh from Segala considers it misguided and wonders why no attempt was made to reach out to existing networks in Ireland, particularly considering TechLudd is supposed to be about networking. I offered my few cents in support of Paul’s position and some decent debate ensued in the comments.

Fergus Burns posted a comment which I consider incredibly important to the web community and I quote it below. I encourage you to offer your own opinions on the Segala post.

On a sidenote, I just did a theme change on the Web2Ireland site and imported all my old blognation posts there. It would be fantastic if some designer in the Irish web community would do a custom design and logo for the site. It has a large number of RSS subscribers and many highly influential people visit it regularly. It would be a great calling card for your design abilities.

Fergus on Web2Ireland and the community here:

• Web2Ireland is for everyone - its not me, nooked - its about the community
• it was setup @ web2con in SF in 2005
• its audience is widespread - you would be surprised who’s subscribed
• web2ireland is a brand that people relate to [esp. outside of Ireland]
• EI provide no support to the forum - although its all about startups/web companies in Ireland [32 counties]
• I personally pay for the domain reg.
• Hosting365 provide hosting for free
• we ran one large conf in 2006 - which EI stage managed
• Web2Ireland only works because people like Conor, Paul, Sean, Jonathan, Julian and a host of others contribute
• we also try to stimulate activity - seedcamp, opencoffee, barcamp, etc - not in the business of “approving stuff”
• we tried our best to get EI to do a israelwebtour - instead people stepped up and PV happened
• Demobar was based on Stirr model in Valley
• Ryan/FOWA presented a great opp to make the 1st event successful
• Sean O’Sullivan made DemoBar I happen
• the next demobar was pencilled in for end of Jan [the date was based on a keynote speaker availability and working with Ireland Inc dinner, etc - hence how Paul and I ended up talking about events in Jan]
• We have sponsors already - instead of us going with a begging bowl, we actually have people coming to us. [and some of these sponsors contacted me in relation to techludd - confusion as you can imagine]
• At the end of the day the question is - do you want a vibrant community @ web2 in Ireland or do you want a host of little groups doing their own thing.
• An example of how it can work from Ryan Carson: “The scene in Dublin is very, very exciting. So much so that I’d venture to say that it’s even more happening than the London scene. We had a massive turnout (200 excited people), there were demos, tons of networking - it felt even more exciting than a TechCrunch party in Silicon Valley. I’d say a big key to that is the Web2Ireland group. They’re very positive, outgoing and excited about succeeding in the web space.”
• An example of it not working was MashupCamp - that was not good - Damien posted what everybody felt was wrong.
• In summary its all about a successful ecosystem - we’re struggling to create one - and I question if we’ll ever have one.
• Its not about who does what - its about who does what for everyone - and creating success for a everyone

As usual Fergus is 100% on the money.