1111: Space Toilets, AI Realities and Kindle's "End of Life"

Right now on Tech Radio, welcome home astronauts. Hi, I'm Artemis. I am a computer-generated AI voice, and you're listening to Tech Radio. Every week online we bring you the latest in tech from Ireland and across the world. And in today's episode from outside of our planet as well. It's episode 1111 with the latest on the Artemis 2 mission. Why no one is safe from AI taking their job? And Amazon says get a new Kindle or else. Plus, I guess this week Mary Rogers from Porteshed in Goalway will be chatting about the challenges of establishing and fostering a startup hub. This is Tech Radio with Dusty Roads and Nile Kitson. I'm just enjoying me as always, and Nile Kitson Nile. So last week we were all talk about the Moon mission and Artemis 2. And I stayed up until all kinds of ridiculous hours of the morning watching the launch, and you didn't. You just stayed in bed, you had to. Yeah, I don't care. So here we are a week later. They've been to the Moon. There are as we speak on our recording. They're on the way back. Are you any more excited? Well, we got some absolutely stunning footage of the Moon. And we got some stunning footage of the Earth from Space, which helped him push a lot of things in perspective, given what's happening in the world at the moment. So from speaking as purely a spectator, it was a very successful mission. I mean, we got everybody up at time of speaking. Everybody is on the way back. Everybody looking in good health. Got some excellent footage. Whatever else went on as part of the mission, I'm not O-Fay with. But yeah, I'd say that was successful. What's your take? Well, firstly, it's Thursday afternoon as we are recording this. So they still have to return safely to Earth and fingers crossed. That'll all go according to plan. What did I think of it during the week? Do you know how I surprised myself? I thought it was all a big anti-climax. I kept thinking about Apollo 13 because you remember the movie, but you know, they'd add Apollo 11 and then 12 and then 13. By the time 13 came around, everyone was like, oh, it's going to be a gang. Yeah, yeah, whatever. I felt a little bit like this time. This time it's kind of like, it's exciting that humans are going to the moon and they've set the record for being the furthest that humans have ever been from Earth. That's nice. But I think because they didn't actually land on the moon, it just didn't hit with me, do you know what I mean? Well, it's about session in "Cramental Standards" really. Oh, I know exactly what it is. Yeah, but this wasn't the main event. Do you know what I mean? Because they're not actually landing. It's like, yeah, life took a long time. You have the timeline on this. When is the main event meant to be happening? Next year, what they're going to do is they're going to do a test in space with Artemis 3, where they are going to take the separate, the landing craft and the capsule and then turn them around because that's what they need to do and then reattach and then go to the moon. So that's kind of just a test for that work. And then Artemis 4 now is when they're actually going to go to the moon and they are expecting early 2028. That's still pretty tight. Still pretty tight. Do you think? Two years. Okay. What if that was a boss? Well, next boss is doing 2028. Well, I mean, given what's happening this week. I know. What's that? The boss is going through a column street. No, it's not. I think not. I think not. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's not. No, it's not. But anyway, no, I found it all to be a bit of an anti-climax. However, it is quite an achievement to that and it's great to see humans back in space and going to the moon and talking about I just can't wait until 2028. And on that anti-climax side of things, I thought what was interesting was the two big stories, right? I mean, we'd earth rise and all that kind of stuff. For the other two big stories that came out of this mission were, no more on the toilets don't work. And then number two on a text side of things, the commander read Weisman had a problem connecting his outlook and getting his email. I'd say Elon Musk was rubbing his hands. Oh, sure he was. I'm sure he was. Anyway, you know, Starlink with sort that right. Right. Well, of course, well, actually, that's one of the things that they aren't planning to do is they're looking at building a permanent base on the moon. And part of that is they're going to use, no, don't have Starlink, we'll be doing it. But a Starlink type thing with satellites orbiting the moon and offering internet and network connectivity around the, I was going to say, it's not a planet around the moon. Whatever, around the celestial body. Very doable. Very doable. Far more important and down to earth and could affect us in our pockets, especially for people who listen to our podcast is AI and taking jobs. We have a report out now from ESRI, which has been co-authored by the Department of Finance, which looks very serious when you look at the headlines, but maybe not quite as bad. So what's the headline news on this report about jobs and AI? Well, I've done a very shallow dive into this because it came across my desk a little bit late. Well, okay. The short version is that 7% of jobs, 7% of the workforce is in danger of being replaced by AI in the short to medium term. The remaining 93% can be reasonably confident that they will reap the benefits of that downsizing and their wages will rise. I think that is absolute nonsense. I think that's a little nonsense anyway. And if it does rise, it'll be used to inflation and won't be due to anything else. However, I'm thinking when as soon as I saw that report, I went, okay, 7% of people will lose their jobs due to AI. And then I went, well, it's not going to be my postman, is it? Or it's not going to be my plumber, is it? It's going to be people who work in the tech industry, and especially coders are probably the ones who are going to be affected the most. So that's where it really is home. Like I got a study, I got two studies during the week on sort of areas that are most at least likely to be affected by AI. And those on the least likely to be affected, aromatics, nurses, doctors, lawyers, CEOs, pretty much anyone working a trade. It's not going to cost you your job. Issues when you look at those middle management positions, because what happens when there are fewer people to manage, well, what's the point in having a manager for them? Just, you know, those are it. That's going to be natural wastage. Bush, here's the other thing. The nature of coding is going to change. I saw a really good tweet on this. I actually wrote on this last week as well on tech central. We sort of looked at, okay, what is the workforce going to look like, especially when we have thousands of coders re-entering the workforce. True layoffs like has happened in Oracle, right? And we'll talk a little bit about where and how those redundancies were decided. But you have entry level positions now that require two to three years experience in industry. You have people coming out of college looking for jobs, but are competing against people with industry experience. Because that's the nature of the jobs market now. Those entry level positions are now being considered by people, Dashwood, Beacon, Dashwood, you know, be on the way to developing a lucrative career. So, you know, we are getting a job in computer science or software development. It is no longer the golden tickish it used to be. So, instead of having, you know, I've got a good degree from a good college straight into a junior level position, it's like I have a good degree from a good college. Those jobs you would have been applying for, actually those are handled by AI and are being used by more senior, more skilled coders. Yeah. Right? Because that's the nature of the workforce at the moment. You have the good talent being hoarded at the top. Those are the guys making millions and working an AI for Facebook and Oracle and, you know, all the multinationals. Then you have what I call the fat middle of people that are entering mid-career either by, you know, an organic upward trend or because they've had to re-enter the workforce, if you will, they've had to go locking for jobs again. And then you have this shrinking entry level where, you know, those traditional entry level jobs are drying up. And that's the status of the of the job's market at the moment. So is your job as in danger of AI? Yes, it is. But also very, very scary is those entry-level positions where you solidify your base skills. That's now being replaced. It's either shrinking out of existence or being replaced by people managing AI-generated slop. So it could be a case of you get a job at an entry level. You still won't get near to coding for another two years. In which case your job will be reviewing code generated by AI. And that actually is kind of a bit of a weird thing in itself because if you're only reviewing the code, you really to review something you should have done it. Yeah, so if you never got the opportunity to actually write the code and then debug everything and find out where things mess up and stuff like that, then how are you supposed to do it for AI who's going to write code probably an awful lot better on a first draft than a human would? Yeah, because AI, it's prone to hallucinations in code as well as in text because a good description of LLM's, as we know them at the moment, is it's basically really fancy predictive text. That's essentially what it is. I don't think it's all doom and gloom because we've had major change before. Well, we've had major, I mean, the internet came along and that changed just the world. And then there are things that happen on the internet that then just change the way we interact, social media and all that kind of stuff. And now we've got AI here and it's changing again. So even though we're kind of looking at 7% of jobs could be lost in the short to medium term according to the Department of Finance and the SRI. I think the trick is to kind of go, okay, I need to pivot or just pivot slightly and I need to upskill or I need to really niche down on something. Well, I think that is a really interesting point. Neathing down is really interesting. Why? Because it's upskilling, I think, is the enemy of AI. If you look from a management perspective, the whole point of AI and companies attitude to AI now is about freeing up as much operational expenditure to be reinvested into AI. That's where we are at the moment. If you find or if you develop a certain set of skills that aren't being replicated anywhere in the industry, that's where you create value. If you are somebody working in that fat middle and you're looking to find some way to differentiate yourself then going niche is the way to go. Otherwise, it's another thing I'm working on at the moment is looking at the role of continuing professional development, which is something I've always quite admired. The technology industry for being good at is that emphasis on lifelong learning and on keeping your skills current because as we know, degrees come with a best before date now or rather a use by date. And I'm almost forgetting my train of thought now. If you can come up with somebody and I'm calling them the minimal viable human, right? If you can find someone within that fat middle who can do a specific job for you and you don't have to invest in their skills, you'll use them probably as a contractor and then drop them. Good God, you are a cheer you bloke this week, aren't you? I'm just thinking in things from a management perspective, I have a job that needs to be done. I don't want to pay to upscale someone to do it. I can find someone in a very compassionate workforce that will do it on a consultancy basis that I won't have to train to keep up scale it. So I think it's down to then from if you're looking at somebody who is working in tech, now is a good time. And I think this is just a warning shot. I don't think it's actually happening just yet, but I think it's a warning shot. Just to think, all right, well, look, I'm doing this, how can I make myself more valuable? Yeah. All right. And then go and pursue that or niche down or specialize or just get the hell out and do something else. I mean, the sucky part of it is that a lot of companies are really good at supporting employees in their CPT efforts. Right? However, if you are not working full time for a company without benefits, you still have to look after yourself with CPT. You cannot wait for another job to come along before you start reinvesting in your skill session, which will help you if you're a contractor. Because like as we're seeing, and I kind of want to dip into last week's article story because we are learning more about what's happening and how article is dealing with losing or lashing goes many people as it is. Because as we might have gotten this deep into it last week, article fired a lot of people by email. We don't know exactly how many people they let go. It's estimated up to 30,000. That's the number that's still thrown around a week later. And the question is, who got let go and why? Right? Because it wasn't last in first out, which is what you would expect. Well, we're hearing more from its people that have been with the company a long time. That would have been on very good wages, that are very good share options, perhaps a near retirement. It sounds like this was decided by algorithm of the parameters being who is expensive to keep on and who can do the job for less. Right? So there's none of this sort of corporate loyalty anymore, right? If ever there was. So a lot of people that have been really good contributors to the company were let go. And who has left? Well, we know Oracle has applied for an awful lot of H1B visas. So these will be people that they will bring into America and pay less. We also know that a certain select cohort of people that let go have been invited back to work from the company on a contract basis, which means that they will be paid perhaps slightly more, but they want to have many benefits, which are pretty expensive in America. Right. Huge expense of yeah. So it's interesting though that you say that the decision, I mean, being fired by email, that's a disgrace. But however, the decision was decided by, you know, kind of the algorithm or the AI if you want to put it that way. And it's all, you know, it's money chasing money. This was not done out of an efficiency drive. This was done because we are spending a lot of money on AI. If this goes parachaped, we can't let it affect our bottom line. What can we get rid of? Okay, we reduce our operational expenditure. What does that mean? Wages and people. Moving on, but keeping with the theme of decisions made by AI, new science fiction movie on Amazon, Chris Pratt is called mercy. And the gist of it is is that Chris Pratt is a cop who's been accused of murdering his wife and the trial is being held by an AI. Okay. Right. And he is 90 minutes to defend himself. And if he doesn't do it by the end of 90 minutes, he gets fried. Oh, tell me this is done in real time. Yeah, it probably is done in real time. I think it is. I watched it last night and I thought, oh God, do you know what? In some ways, kind of it was like the cast was so small and the set was so small. It felt like one of these Amazon movies where they're like making it really cheap. But then I looked it up on the IMDB and it cost 60 million to make it. I didn't know that I was kind of going, why did it cost 60 million to make it? I'd say probably cost 15 dollars. I'd say probably a lot of that. Like now listen, it was a good movie and a good production values. And actually, it turned out to be an awful lot better than I thought. How and ever that was just interesting that you're talking about Oracle and AI making decisions. That was an interesting way where an AI and from our point of view, it's kind of looking at it and just to think about those ideas about how an AI could act as George, Jury and executioner. All right. Another movie. And I know you haven't seen this. I am. Yeah. Project Hail Mary. Project Hail Mary, right? Ryan Garland went to see it. Yeah. Okay. What you think? Again, same thing. It's another Amazon movie. And same thing that there was, there's not a huge cast in it. Just suppose that's probably to do with the time right. It's another one of these kind of, you know, man, lost out in the middle of space. How is it going to survive kind of a thing? Right? I kind of was written by who was Andy Weir, whose book The Martian was absolutely brilliant. I read it. And then of course, it became a movie with Matt Damon. Matt Damon. There you go. Brilliant brilliant science fiction movie. So same guy. And I would say if you enjoyed the Martian, you'll really enjoy Project Hail Mary. Okay. He has that kind of a, how can I best fit? Will you see it in the trailer? He meets an alien life form. Okay. And the thing is, well, how do I communicate with this thing? All right. Okay. I love all that in science fiction movie. I go, oh, we're not alone. And then aliens will come down. And like, and every 99% of the examples that we see in entertainment and movies are some how the aliens all speak English. Well, you know, we know is not true. One of my favorite episodes is Star Trek, the next generation. Yeah. I forget the name of the episode, but it's basically Picard and Alien of the Week have to survive together on a planet. And they can't communicate. They both speak English because of Universal Translator, but they still can't communicate. And it's because the Alien speaks in metaphors and references to mythology. So that's the challenge. And at the end Picard has to do what Picard does excellently, which is give a speech. But he has to use, he has to use this other aliens metaphors to actually explain what happened in the episode. It's absolutely brilliant. And it shows the challenges of communication even when you have a shared language. Yeah. And we've gone on about that. We can't talk to dolphins. They don't want to know. I know that it sounds like a strange thing, but they say that they're very intelligent creatures. Like you can't communicate with them. So why would we communicate with an alien life form from another planet? Do you remember the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy? The fourth book. Fourth book. Not not not. Oh, sorry. It's mentioned in the first book, but yet the Babelfish, but also the dolphins had spent years trying to tell people that the planet was about to be bulldozed to make way for an interstellar highway. But people mistook the urgency for wanting treats. So the dolphins found their own way to leave Earth and they left a message saying, so long and thanks for all the fish. And hence the title of the fourth book. There you go. All right. Listen, speaking of books, Kindle from Amazon. If you own an older Kindle, and it will be more than 12 years old this date, pre-2013 Kindle, and I think I might be the same. And why would you change your Kindle because it does one job very well in that it displays text on the screen and you just move from page to page. This is the third. On the third book. A pre-2013 Kindle, you're in trouble. You are in a lot of trouble. Amazon is ending support for pre-2012 Kindles. Having in mind that the first Kindle appeared in 2007, so I didn't know. Like a 2012 model, like it's 14 years old. Yeah. You're doing pretty well, I wish. But Amazon is saying, well, that's it. We're not supporting it anymore. You're going to lose access to the Amazon store. I guess that means your e-book library as well. If you've bought anything through Amazon. So yeah, if you have, and this is the list of affected models, Kindle first and second generation, the Kindle DX, DX Graphite, the Kindle version with the keyboard, still attached, the Kindle four, Kindle touch and Kindle five, and the first generation Kindle paper wise, I think I have a Kindle five. Those are all going to lose their support. So fire tablets from 2011, 2012 will also lose access to the Kindle store. What's interesting is that only the last supported version of software is 5.12.2.2. The current version is 5.19.3.0.1. Many devices released in 2024 or later are on that version. Are on the most current version. And that's in the last two years. Yeah. And like it's a weird thing that this story is popped up. Because as you said, we only need a Kindle to do one thing well. That's it. The idea of losing support for a Kindle is it's almost an estimate to its station purpose. You know, it's bizarre. And I opened my Kindle for the first time in a while. I charged it up. And it wasn't detecting any of my Wi-Fi networks. And I was like, okay, the Wi-Fi chip and this is either gone or this is a sign of something really bad to come. Guess what? It was the latter. I think it's the latter. Yeah. You see, is that kind of stuff like handing down? I can understand from security and they don't want people connecting to their store if they're running out of date software and stuff like that. But this kind of like, you know, if you reset your Kindle, you won't be able to sign back into your Amazon account. You'll lose your ebook library and stuff like that. They're essentially breaking their own product. Yeah. You know, and there's nothing wrong with it. And we live in a world where what's it all about? It's about sustainability and getting more out of our electronics as the years go by. And so, I just, no, I'm not, not, not impressed. Anyway, but I will run out and I'll check my Kindle immediately after I recording. See if I'm, see if I'm affected. Listen, just one or two more stories. We're just about at a time. Digital wallets in Ireland. Now, if you want to try it out there, bring in a digital wallet. It's part of an EU drive where all countries in the EU have to have some form of a digital wallet available for their citizens by the end of this year. And a digital wallet for Ireland is part of the government's digital services plan 2030. So what they're doing at the moment is they're obviously designing it. They're looking for people to test it. If you're interested in testing it, there's a link you can go to either just do a search for digital wallet, Ireland on Google or I'll stick a bit link into the description area of this podcast. So at least you can try it out. What they are promising is that you will have control over how your data is managed. So you can say, yeah, you're in a, you'll be able to hold things on it like your birth search, your married search drivers license, that kind of stuff. I'm not too sure about passport. I don't know who to accept it. You can verify your age with the app, but I don't know how that'll work. And I hope it will be just something that'll kind of go this person is over 18. There you are. All right. And without identifying them, you know, that kind of way. But we won't know until they come out. So if you want to be one of the early testers, as I say, the link is in the description area of the podcast. But let's go with, sorry, I had one of the story and that's the Apple foldable phone, which is not working out for them. They're still trying to get around the tech design. And I bet you that is to do with the crease on the fold, because if they can get rid of that, well, then they are leaps ahead of everybody else. And if they can't do it, two things that could be two things. The crease is one. Yeah, that's fine. The other from my perspective, I think would be pretty nifty is multitasking. Yeah. And how to manage that at your screen device. We shall wait and see. Final story of the week is a computer scientist in England is the latest person to be identified as the inventor of Bitcoin. The latest person saying, no, it's not me. But thank you for your, thank you for your interest. Thank you for calling. Bye bye. Yeah. Gentleman named Adam Bach. He's based in London, computer scientist and entrepreneur. He was named, I think is the New York Times didn't investigation and said, this is the guy. He went on to accent said, no, not not me. Not the first time the finger has been pointed at somebody with a sorry, he only for them to say no. Back in 2014, I remember when the story broke, we had a charge of Azure. Gentleman and I think San Francisco, there was an investigation by Newsweek and chopped by the name of Dorian Nakamoto, who was sort of a, I just say software engineer, but also huge proponent of cryptography and libertarian by politics. Very much an anti government anti establishment figure. It was claimed that he was the guy. He sort of came out and said, no, stop invading my privacy. So that was, that was another dead end. Sort of another potential creator was a gentleman by the name of name of Nick Jabo. He'd done work on bit gold and a couple of, you know, a Ryzer on other things. And so the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto still up in the air. Some people think it's a number of people that were working together. But there you go. Mr. Adam Bach says, nope, not me. Not me. And we shall never know. Maybe my own personal belief is that this whole event of Bitcoin is a complete, maybe up because it's kind of like, oh, do you want to get really deep, really quick one? It's like religion. We need an answer. All right. So it's kind of who event Bitcoin? We need an answer. So they've come up with this guy. And I don't think he is this. I think it was probably just a load of people who were coding and went, well, let's try this out. And it just grew a life of its own. Anyway, listen, let's leave it up there for this week. Well, thanks as always for keeping us up to speed with all the news. Delivering Irish tech news since 2006, this is tech radio. This year marks the 10th anniversary of Porteshed, the goal-based starter pub. Now, Kitson sat down on how to chat with their CEO, Mary Rogers, to talk about its history, ethos, and what makes it such a special place for exploring ideas. Mary, thanks for joining us on the podcast. Now, you've been with Porteshed pretty much since the beginning. So I guess you're the best person to talk about the history of the facility. But before we do that, I always find it interesting talking to people about their journey and technology. And you kind of have an eclectic one as well. So just tell us a little bit about it. Yeah, I would always class myself as a confused Irish American, immigrated to the US in 94 to the whole American thing law firms, credit suites like at a brilliant time. But then it was Long Island or Ireland. We'd had two kids and so I moved home and I set up a consultancy helping Irish companies enter the US market. But as you may know, startups don't have a lot of cash. So sometimes I was cash rich and sometimes I was cash poor. And that's when I saw the PortaShare opportunity and I was like, oh, I think this is something I could do because the whole point of stateside was connecting people to opportunities and so my journey into technology or into PortaShare land was a job at I saw on Facebook. Just just that simple. And so I guess the idea then of being around ideas was, it was a serious attractor and PortaShare, of course, being a new facility. It was all kind of uncharted territory as well. So whenever we look at a space for startups outside of Dublin, there's inevitably a little bit of skepticism because Dublin is still the national startup hub. So did you feel PortaShare had kind of an uphill struggle at the stardust or was it a case of answering something that was already on people's lips and it was sort of a perfect solution? Yeah, Galway had already been quite collaborative and I used to go to startup meetups in Max Wiggins and different places and I remember feeling disconnected because I was so focused on the US. I wasn't figuring out what was happening within Galway or within the ecosystem. But I would attend the events and there was a buzz and then it was the, it was a risk because first of all, co-working was new like that. I remember googling co-working and looking at the WeWork story and trying to figure out why people want to sit beside each other. I was thinking like, aren't they worried they're going to steal their, you know, IP or their content and the engineers have since told me that it's all in their head and not in a notebook. So not to worry. But it was, it was a chance like PortaShare was set up by a group of volunteers. It's like a board of like eight people who came together and said, we need to do something for Galway because tech companies were coming to Galway and asking where, where are the techies and the idea we're saying they're out here in this beautiful business park. And they said, well, are people want to live in work in a city center? And that's kind of where the PortaShare emerged from was the need to have a downtown Galway innovation tech center. Of course, Galway having a wonderful reputation as being a city of artists to see a city full of, full of discourse, full of sharing of ideas. And I suppose that brings with it kind of a challenge of tapping into that source of Galwayian quality, if you will, and kind of making that palatable to and over to and overseas, I suppose, investor audience, if you will. Have you found that to be a selling point? You know, come to Galway, not just part of Ireland. Absolutely. I think so because the PortaShare was based, a regional building was based in Air Square. We were part of the IDA tour bus. So as FDIs would come through to visit Galway, they would come through and they'd see all the engineers working and they're like, ah, this place is vibrant and there's a buzz and there's an energy. And so the, we're really lucky like with the FDI tech community, really strong relationships. In fact, Josh Builder has brought three companies to Galway, tech companies, rent the runway, signify health and now, now date event. So and all of those three companies would have soft landed in PortaShare. So while they were waiting for their fancy building to be built. And that's that kind of collaboration or working together or just that synergy between ideation startups, new innovations in PortaShare and then the established FDI advanced technology companies merging really creates a really good energy. And they continue when they left PortaShare to support us and be speakers and mentors and run tech events here. So I think Galway, John Brezzlin did a tech map of Galway in 2016 and I think it's been updated recently. And so you could have probably had 14, 15 companies on that tech map. And if you had a job and technology in Galway in 2016 in Cisco or Fidelity or any of the other companies, you probably, if you left those companies, you probably landed up going to Dublin or Dubai or New York, right to advance your career. We're now in Galway. There are multiple opportunities within the tech community like really and the other thing I think the Galway tech companies have is really good quality work. Like you're always working at really good innovation. You're on cutting edge. It's not a rinse and repeat rolls at all. One of the things I find quite interesting about the ethos of PortaShare is putting engineers at the heart of what you're doing there. Tell us a little bit about why that focus came around as opposed to other areas of business say, you know, going out and having meetings or attracting investors. You know, engineers really seem to be at the heart of what you do. Yeah, I guess like you said in the beginning, as a non techie, understanding the needs of engineers or how to ensure that we were delivering for them was really important. But the PortaShare was set up exactly for that. It was a community, so community collaboration, connectedness were kind of the three pillars. But the idea was that engineer peer to peer support is that engineers could problem solve around each other. And we knew that if you started introducing consultancies, professional services, marketers, salespeople into that mix, it changed the dynamic. And the engineer's voice concerns or share knowledge if they felt they were going to be pitched to or pulled from in those conversations. So we were meticulous in recruiting member companies as in you have to apply to be a member. We have a 70 30 rule, which is 70% indigenous tech companies in the building. And then 30% other, which could be FDI or short term members. We were really diligent about that. It was that meant it was a slow burn as in we could have filled the building four times over. I do remember having no money and working in an overdraft and seeing these applications come in from consultancies and different big companies and goals. I could fill it and we could be profitable and John Brezlin on our board was amazing. And John's like slow and steady Mary just don't, don't fear. And he was right. I mean, we filled it perfectly and that peer to peer piece has been the magic sauce, I think. So looking then at the actual creation of the space because different sort of different professions have different kinds of environment in which they thrive. Some people are naturally more social than others. And constructing the space was that something that you were aware of? Was it something that you sort of came across by experience? Well, it was, we didn't have a lot of options. It was a blank space as in it was an old CIE building that was not derelict or unloved. And we basically got it and we set it up for 64 co-working spaces and three meeting rooms. So the options for closed office space and that type of thing weren't there. We did put in three, like four phone boots. Dogpatch had opened before that, maybe six months before us or maybe 12. But we had gone to visit and we had seen like that model and said, oh, could this could work, you know, as a starter. But like our original mission was to kind of fill the 64 seats. The co-working place is now in the end that first building landed up with 130 desks. And the feedback from the members was that the desks were too big. And so sometimes they would come in and there would be another desk at the end of the row. And I remember Joe Smith from Alchelau joking that I'm going to come in tomorrow and my desk is going to be in the garden, you know, like you keep pushing me towards the window. And people were, they were agile. Like they were innovative. So I remember one day looking out the window and there was a team, a stand up happening in the car park. So they kind of used the space that was available. But the hustle and that kind of energy. I remember one member saying, you don't have air conditioning. I'm like, yeah, but you're paying 180 euros a month. So if you want air conditioning, I'm happy to get that and charge you 300. And so we all were part of the hustle to make it work. So let's start looking at the returns that were started started start to generation. I mean, you wouldn't be around 10 years if it wasn't a successful endeavor. So are there any particular areas that you found were more successful than others? Or was it a case of sort of an element of serendipity where it was just the right company at the right time? I think it was definitely intentional and curated as in the building of the success. We were supported by Enterprise Ireland. And initially we found the building and flipped it ourselves. And then Enterprise Ireland came on board and helped us bring on buildings, Porteshette Dough and the Hayne which are, you know, two additional buildings and that funding through the red F really allowed us to build exactly what we wanted. You know, like a mix of co work in space and office space and meeting rooms, production studios and all the things that an innovation hub should have. So that was critical. The success that the identifying the right companies in the building and that mix of indigenous tech whether they were in logistics or, you know, act tech or whatever space they were in making sure that that balance like blockchain AI as they were coming in and matching them was really important. But it's, yeah, it was definitely, definitely, it definitely continues to be intentional on who's in who's in about who's in the building. idea of fascination that to be able to strike that balance or to perhaps see where that balance will be needed as technologies like blockchain come into the mainstream, as we're starting to see more companies, of course, in the AI space, where you're looking to a creative situation where AI doesn't take over space, which would be very tempting at the moment. So are there any particular areas that have surprised you in terms of their popularity? Well, one of the fun companies we would say here because Maritai was formed during COVID at the coffee machine. So you had your UX designer and you had an AgTech specialist like a deep tech engineer, both having a coffee and worrying about the world and the Maritai gone offline, right? You couldn't no longer go to the Marit and then Mark who was the UX guy was like, oh, I could design something for you and the AgTech guy is like, oh, this is the problem you need to solve and they formed Maritai. Maritai do Maritai. So they gamified the gavel basically so that people can bid online and in person all over the country and now and Italy and a lot in the UK. And that was really interesting to see that company evolve from that coffee machine conversation to, I don't know, 20 plus people now. But you see the, it disrupted the marketplace and we often, they'll often share stories of calls they get from friends showing a picture of their grandfather with the smartphone bidding on cows and corks when they're in Dunne Gaul. So that was a fun company to watch and watching, watching members solve for each other and form companies and pivoting or not even like Norma Carthy is a member here. She's on her third startup. So she would have had a startup, my doe sold the license, had a central bank license sold it. It was perfect card, EML payments and now she's back with farm bitty. So like, even though Norma's been with us for 10 years, she's had three companies, exited, sold, failed, all the things the startups do. And that's been amazing to kind of watch those and then as she, we see members moving now from company to company in different roles and there's no issues with that because we're keeping the talent in the region and that's really what's key for us. That element of, you know, talent extraction and maintenance is so important to all startup spaces. And I know for portrait shed members, there is well, and I guess founders and engineers in general to a lesser extent, you'll be marking 10 years with portrait shed sparks. So tell us a little bit about what's going to be happening at the event. Yeah, we're super excited for this. So portrait shed typically only host events here in the building. So we're going a bit mad and we're running a conference at Dexcom Stadium. So it's the first public facing conference in their brand new very cool Conor Trabi Stadium just up the road. And the conference is a bit portrait shed asked to, so we're trying something different. So we've a series of 10 keynotes, no panels. We've lots of really supportive sponsors and like, thanks for your support, but you won't get a seat on the panel, which is actually they've been great. We're the inbound support has just been incredible. And so we have speakers from the US like Stuart Bryston from ServiceNow, Elaine Brennan from Northwell Health talking about the US marketplace, talking about how companies selling in the US, closing, scaling, kind of just driving that ambition. We have Mike Cran, who's an innovation evangelist, I think, is the, the, our catalyst. And Mike was here in 2015 and he spoke about what was missing in the west of Ireland and he kind of posed the challenge. And he's going to come back and tell us what we fixed through portrait shed and what we still need to do. That'll kind of set the tone for the day. Another great speaker is Alban Brugas from Scaleway coming over from Paris, talking about data security and all the really good work that Scaleway have done in Europe and kind of to amplify that message. I heard her at the the French Irish summit and I was blown away in Dublin and I'm like, how do we not know about this company and why are we not listening to them? So I'm really excited that that Albanes able to come over. And then we have, oh, really good. We've got great stories from the west of Ireland or the Midlands. We have city swept from Longford based here in the Porta Shed, Brian O'Rourke is going to talk about their journey and like they're in Hong Kong, the US, UK, like massive support and logistics offer in the busing system. And then we have Fadalma McGurk from Westport who's built a global payroll company out of Westport with 80 people. Fadalma started 10 years ago. So it'll be really interesting to see her move from founder to CEO and how that's worked. So we've kind of a mix. We've then AIB who've been with us from day one are going to Colin Hunt, the CEO's coming and he's going to speak about how he kind of made sustainability profitable in banking and like how like if we get on that journey, how it works for everyone. And our own Rob Shocks, who's an AI expert who has his own YouTube channel and Rob is amazing. Like he can do an event for us out in the innovation space for two eyes and he can do it for enterprise large companies. He's really adaptive and he'll just kind of energize about the future of AI and all the fun things. And of course Sean Blanchefield's coming from Dublin to you know Sean. I'm hoping that Rob will be the the other side of Sean Kushon always scares people about AI's coming to take our jobs. But it's a good mix. So it's kind of a mix but it's really interesting is that these are not. So we literally have keynote, keynote at five minutes for questions. Paul Hayes from Beachhot is our MC and so he'll bring a lot of good energy and knowledge to the day. And then that evening we've got market a little as our keynote at our Gallaudet dinner. So it's a full on day and night with the many of our members coming back and many people traveling for the event and we're super excited. And that was not kids and chatting with Mary Rogers from Porteshed. The Porteshed Spark Conference Mary mentioned is taking place on 23rd of April at the Dexcom Stadium in Galway. There's still time to register for that. But places are limited. You can find it more at porteshed.com/spark. That link is always in the description area of this podcast. This is Tech Radio with Dusty Rhodes and Nile Kitson. That's almost it for our show this week. A couple of more stories that we couldn't get into the podcast but are online. What have we got lined up now? We have Marie Boran on the next generation of AI Slop. Jason Walsh on why people are stepping away from social media and Claude's mythos model on Earth's decades-old software flaws. All those stories are more online at techessential.ie. We're back again next Friday with a brand new show for you. In the meantime, please do share a podcast with a friend. Tell them to look up Tech Radio Ireland on Apple, Spotify or YouTube. Until next week for myself, Dusty and from Nile Kitson, thanks for listening. Have a great weekend. Remember, you can get the latest Irish tech news with hourly updates, daily newsletters and more at our website techcentral.ie. Share the knowledge and invite a friend to listen. Search Apple, Spotify or YouTube for Tech Radio Ireland or listen with RTE Radio 1 Extra. Tech Radio is produced by Dustpa.io for techcentral.ie. From me, Artemis, live long and prosper.