Here's the video and slides of my talk on Saturday at Bizcamp in Dublin. My audience was superb, giving lots of feedback. Please comment below if you have any thoughts on the topic - would love to develop the idea further.





Had a lot of fun creating the slides using Prezi, but was disappointed you can't yet embed them in slideshare.net. Still, they are a nice change from the powerpoint slides from a presenting standpoint - I get bored with the status quo ;)

When we were stuck here in Galway because of the ashcloud, it was my dream to have a robot cafe right here in Galway.



I would book a time slot and tell them my desired location, in this case the San Francisco Airport Marriott, 1800 Old Bayshore Highway, Burlingame, CA 94010, USA, and they would ensure that a robot had found its way to my location on my chosen date and time. All I would have to do is get myself to a robot cafe anywhere in the world at the same time.

I would put on a specially made suit, glasses and earphones that would all be hooked up to the robot, and stand in one of those machines like the one Mr Incredible is trapped in:



When I would walk and move, the suit would transmit my movements to the robot. When I would talk, it would come out the speakers of the robot. I would be able to hear everything in the vicinity of the robot, and I would be able to see through it's eyes.

And voila! I would be at the conference, albeit encased in a metallic, less feminine version of myself, unless of course I had upgraded to a robot which could sense my body shape and clothing choices, and project them over the robot to create a more realistic, holistic Ellen experience for the conference attendees to converse and interact with.

So you will imagine my surprise and excitement when I walked into Y-Combinators offices in Mountain View, CA, and saw the AnyBots hanging out in the hallways:



They have been in development since 2001, so I'm about 9 years too late, but technically, watching through a web browser is not as nifty as my suit idea. (I call it my idea only because I can't remember what film or sci fi book I stole it from ;)

Imagine - you could visit places all over the world and actually walk and talk and experience them without having to leave your city. You could hang out at these foreign locations with your friends, even when they are controlling their robots in different robot cafes all over the world. You could have sensors that transmit the heat and humidity of that location to your body, but I don't know how exactly you could get food from that location to your location - slight downside as food is always a fundamental part of my travelling experience. Perhaps these God particles will help me out on that one.

Speaking of entangled God particles, it may just be that there is a future where I can transport myself, through time or through space, without any of these robot interfaces. The future is exciting, but it's probably not something I'll see in my life time. I might just have to settle for Anybots. At $15,000 a piece, it won't be long before we all have control over a virtual self, and I will be thinking even more about the impact of further reduced face to face interactions.

So we got back from San Francisco yesterday... or the day before, I forget, all of the jet lagged days are rolling into one long confusing time space existence.

What can I say about San Francisco...? Let's just say it wasn't what I expected, and I wasn't aware that I had expected anything, but of course I had created an idea of what the place and people would be like, and it was just... not that. It was something else. That would sum up my whole experience. A lot of cognitive dissonance going on and an unwillingness to let those people who love the place convince me of its merits.

It does have its amazing factor, but something about it was not to my taste and let's just leave it at that.

So back home, I have this awesome new appreciation for Ireland and all its fucked up ness. I have no desire to step on a plane for a very long time, and it is odd to feel this gratitude and willingness to just STAY here for a while. So if you want to cure your addiction for travelling, perhaps all you need is a visit to San Fran :). No offence (or perhaps just a little) intended.

As we couldn't fly through the volcanic ash to get to San Francisco in time for eComm, we made a video of CrowdScanner to show in our 3 minute slot. Thought I would share it here:

CrowdScanner was chosen as one of the most creative and innovative apps to present at the AppCircus taking place @ eComm in San Francisco next week! Yippee!!

We have 3 minutes on stage to show what we have to offer. We are super excited about being involved - the AppCircus sounds amazing - and it's a perfect chance to CrowdScan the audience while we're at it :)

Huge thanks to DotOpen.com and eComm for the competition and the opportunity!

Check out all the companies involved - you can see their app in the "app" tab: (it's crazy we are the only one with only 2 employees and no funding so far)

Aloqa - Germany
Nimbuzz - Netherlands
CrowdScanner - Ireland
Cmune - China
Cellictica - Finland
waze - Israel
my6sense - Israel

If you'd like to see us at the AppCircus @ eComm, you can book tickets here.